Friends

Today was a brief trip to Toledo, the original one. It has the singular distinction of being a place where muslims, jews, and christians lived in relative harmony for about 400 years. That is, until Ferdinand and Isabella came in. You know, I thought much better of them when all I knew was that they funded Columbus´ trip, but now that I know they destroyed much of Spanish culture in the name of Christendom, I´m just not quite so inclined to favor them. There´s a huge monastery they had built in the middle of the Jewish quarter, decorated with the chains of Christian slaves liberated from the Muslims. Oh, and they converted all the temples to churches or sometimes butcher shops or barracks or anything else to desecrate them. Hmmm.

In any case, we did get a glimpse of this lovely old city with a long portion of its wall still preserved and quite a mix of architecture from Mujedar to Rennaisance. The streets were lined with Toledo steel in either the form of swords or Damascene decorative plates, gilt with 24k gold.

Now all that´s left is New Year´s in Madrid and the flight home tomorrow. May the new security restrictions not be too demanding!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY azhdragon!

Once again you're as old as me!

Madrid finally shone today when the sun came out. Our trip has been cursed with daily cold rain, but today we took to the streets in the sunny hours and headed to the Prado post-siesta. It´s times like these that I wish I had a better handle on art history. You see El Greco and it seems interesting until you look at the dates and you have to double take! Same goes for Goya, and I´m starting to think that a lot of Spanish painters were really before their time. Or perhaps my eye has been so used to French painters that it´s just startling to see another style. In any case, it was a delight to see some true masterpieces up close and personal.

We have also discovered chocolate con churros. The Chocolateria San Gines is a local operation that produces vast amounts of this typically Spanish dessert. Imagine if you will a thick, almost puddingy hot chocolate, then take strips of fried dough and dip. What you may not be imagining is the carnage that remains. The floor of the place is carpeted with churros dust, trampled by hundreds upon hundreds of customers. It´s tasty tasty stuff, but a little frightening what a factory San Gines is!

The Plaza del Sol, just a few blocks away from our hotel, is already prepping for New Year´s. The police have barricades up, there are truck-sized generators, and we just caught a pre- New Year´s light and sound show projected on a massive building on one side of the plaza. Everyone is already walking around with crazy wigs, halos, or reindeer antlers and various kinds of noise makers. It´s going to be quite the night. We´ll spend most of the day exploring Toledo tomorrow, but then the night will be for New Year´s. We´ve already got the traditional grapes ready!

Peoples of the internet! So I have read over your de-stressing suggestions--a lot of them were what I expected, but I was curious as to what people would recommend most often, and also the more unusual suggestions. (This is related, but I'll go ahead and ask up front where people will see it: does anyone have BPAL/TAL imps of Milk & Honey and/or Blinding Glory of Love they'd be willing to sell me? I kind of want to put off buying entire bottles at $25 each until I've tried them, and also, until I have the second e-book out.) So, I present to you some--not all, but some--of y'all's suggestions, with additions of my own where applicable:

( Read more... )

Yesterday was not as robustly successful as Monday. It started off with a phone call from redmed - on her phone. Which was sitting next to the beeper. While she was at work. So up I hove and rolled in to the hospital to deliver these necessary tools of her trade.

I returned, and was just settling into a stretch of coding when I remembered that I needed to pick up the fish. So I rolled in to J.P., got the cod, returned home, filleted it, and froze the fillets.

Ah, continuing to code - but then it was lunchtime.

So, back to it - but one thing led to another and I wound up in Providence for a very pleasant workout and dinner with old friends.

Gah. Maybe this is why I sometimes feel like I get nothing done. Because - well - some days you just get nothing done.

Today will be superior. Onward!

It's been a bit wet over the last few days.


Starts midnight Christmas Day.

Current Location: Ayer, MA
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: The Sound of Silence - Gregorian Chant

We showed up at Bradley at 2:00PM for a 3:40 flight and waited 3 hours on line to just check bags. There had been a snowstorm the night before, and people who had missed flights earlier were being rebooked by the 3 people (sometimes 2) working the counter. Because they refused to segregate the people who had already missed flights from the ones who could still make flights, they snowballed their problem indefinately. When I made them aware that there were people in line who could potentially make flights, I was told to go back to the line, and wait or go home and rebook. Additionally, I was told that the longer I talked to them, the longer it would be for everyone. I stood in line for 3 hours with a 3 year old and a 6 year old and our bags, and if it weren't for the fact that the flight was delayed twice we would not have made it. We just barely got on the flight at all.

While we were online and after being told to go home and rebook, I called the airline to determine if we would make our connection if we did actually get on this flight. They told us we would. So with the airline telling us to stay and the counter telling us to go, I got the distinct impression that the counter was telling us to go simply to avoid having to deal with us.

Lastly, the counter had at least 8 kiosks but the 3 and sometimes 2 workers behind it were not using them all. Instead of moving people who could make flights to the unused ones, they only dealt with two or three at a time. Essentially one customer to one representative. At other times I've seen two or three reps run people through all the machines, much more efficently.

I was pleased that our connection waited for us, but the service at Hartford was extremely inefficient, and lacking in any flexibility and common sense for addressing their problem. Unusual circumstances require deviation from the standard procedure to acquire a solution. It seemed there was no one there who had the authority or the knowledge to do that. If that's the case then there needs to be a standard procedure for situations like that.

How hard would it have been to divide the line into people who have have a shot at making their flight, and people who don't. Or people who need rebooked and people who don't.

In light of the Christmas Day "hot pants" would-be plane bomber, I would like to make a couple of comments about security - both for air travel and in general.

First off, I like security. I used to be annoyed by bag checks and the like - until I realized that those men and women standing outside the buildings were being paid far too little to take a bullet or a bomb blast on my behalf. Their job is to keep me safe. Here's the kicker: So long as what they're doing actually keeps me safer - I appreciate it.

I was recently in India. While I was there, the whole damn country was on high alert because several Jihadis had come across the border from Packistan, vowing a repeat of the Mumbai massacres. For those who weren't paying attention, in 2008 there was a well organized set of attacks in the city of Mumbai. The terrorists struck ten locations simultaneously, killing 173 people and wounding 308. They both set off bombs and (more disturbingly to me) ran from place to place, gunning down groups of people in hotel lobbies and the like.

Every hotel and public building that I entered on this last visit had both a metal detector and a bag check. After the metal detector, I was patted down - including a crotch and ass grab - every single time. When I flew from Kolkata to Delhi, every single passenger passed through a metal detector and got a pat down - including a crotch and ass grab.

These procedures didn't slow things down too much. A pat down takes less than a minute. You can do it in parallel with the bag check. You probably need a separate line for men and for women. Some people will choose to not travel by air rather than endure it. That's fine with me.

You know what? I felt safer on that plane and in those hotels than I do when I fly in the US. For all the hassle with TSA guards, the yelling, the pointlessly changing rules and the constant confusion about who gets to see my footsies - our airport security theater does less than what India was able to accomplish with their existing personnel, on their existing budget, for their airplanes, hotels, and malls. This is because they have the willpower that we lack - to impose a bit of inconvenience on everyone in order to make us a bit safer.

A lot of noise is being made about millimeter wave imaging in the airports. That's a red herring. The problem is not one of technology. It's not for lack of expensive machines at the airports that we're at risk. We are at risk for lack of willpower.

You want a safe flight? Here's what I say: Pat downs. Men's lines, women's lines. Look in every suitcase. No carry on items beyond a newspaper or a book. Pat everyone down.

Security would go faster under the fdmts model.

Don't like it? Take a train. Drive. Walk. Take a bus.

Security - real security - involves trading in some liberty for your safety. Real security is invasive. Real security gets in your face and emphasizes that the safety of all the passengers is more important than the convenience or assumed right to privacy of any one individual. Real security takes more time than security theatre, but not much more. You have to get your crotch grabbed to be sure you don't have a pipe bomb strapped to your upper thigh. You have to stay seated during critical parts of the flight. People knock on the bathroom door when you're in there more than 10 minutes.

The tactics used by America's 9/11 bombers (seize control of commercial airliners and slam them into population centers) will never work again because of two changes that happened immediately:

1) We put locks on the cabin doors.
2) Passengers know that the rules are changed. I grew up under the "sit quietly and it will be over soon" school. We will never again sit quietly and allow ourselves to be flown into buildings.

All the rest of this crap is theater. Taking off my shoes, taking my laptop out of its case, 3oz containers of liquid ... that's all bogus. With those changes, the stakes change from 9/11 to a single plane being blown up. Still bad - but not nearly so bad as 3,000+ people dying. If you're trying to prevent 9/11, we're already done. Now we're trying to keep pipe bombers off of planes.

Obviously, the hot pants bomber represents a failure of the air travel security system. It failed insofar as it could never work reliably over the long term in the first place. Without the will to get in people's faces, to check their upper thigh for pipe bombs - we will continue to be unsafe.

No security system is perfect. Locks do not buy you security - they buy you *time*. All systems - and all components of systems - fail eventually. We fly millions of passengers all over the world every single day. In that regard, actually, we're doing pretty well. Can we do better? Absolutely - but it will be invasive and and it will involve pat downs.

Countries with a little bit of backbone are already doing this. Why aren't we?

Current Mood: irritated

Peoples of the internet! I have another question. Stress relief methods: do you have them? Because my blood pressure is currently Not Happy, and I can tell it's an emotional thing--my doctor has told me that I have surprisingly good blood pressure usually, and the onset of this is sudden enough that--well. I won't get into the whole mess, but it's emotional, and I need to figure out a way to counteract that.

Peoples of the internet! Bring unto me the After Christmas Sales. I hear Lush has a huge one?

My company is ostensibly closed this week, and I'm making an effort to put in time on stuff that has been on the back burner all year. To wit:

* Spent a few hours getting back up to speed with the iPhone developer kit. Got back to the point where I could build a hello world app, from scratch, and put it on my phone. Tomorrow begins the application development in earnest.

* Cleaned the basement, level 0. I don't claim that it's "done," by any stretch of the imagination - but there are four big garbage bags of crapola out back, plus a waist height stack of cardboard to go out. In addition, we have the tool chest of many drawers, and a primitive beginning of a work bench. I even found an ancient Powerbook running Linux to be the workbench computer. If only I knew the root password.

* Ate Pho for lunch. Let us not forget lunch.

On deck for tomorrow is expanding my hello world to include some calls to built in tools (GPS, accelerometer), and cleaning the office - level 0. On day 3, I hope to get either the office or the basement to level 1.

Mixed in with all this, I plan to get to Judo, karate, and finish Dragon Age, Origins.

Most of the kids knew who Batman was, but not necessarily Indiana Jones, and almost completely not Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain. Poorly organized but neat stuff regardless.



More:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantharos/sets/72157623088913250/
 

The end-of-the-year book sale ends when 2009 does. So there's only a few days left to pick up signed hardcovers of INSIDE STRAIGHT, TUF VOYAGING, and WINDHAVEN at bargain prices.

(See my post of December 8 for details).









Going, going...

So, today, I'm in the Dartmouth Ski Lodge as oakfellow goes skiing with his mum, dad, brother, and sister-in-law. I am next to a *huge* stone fireplace, surrounded by wood beams and wi-fi signal, and I've got a yuppie food-stamp in my pocket for vittles. Aw yeah, this day is pretty awesome. :-D

I have frequently typed it out as Darthmouth, and quite frankly with all the writing George Lucas has done to the latter half (Ep 1-3, excuse me) I don't why there hasn't been a Darth Mouth... Oh wait. There was! First episode. Just... technically a different way. *grins*

So, as I sit hear, listening to the 60+ kids having lunch and now dressing up to tackle the race training (yup, race training. Wayne told me so), I can't help but have a really big smile on my face. It's pretty groovy in here, dear reader. The snow is coming down and since there isn't any mental pressure on my end to ski, I am totally psyched for the few hours I'm here by me lonesome. *watches as another kid runs by, holding up a prized Hershey bar* And I use that term lonesome very loosely.

The benches here I covet (yo, that's a sin!): they are simple craftsman and most likely built together from a kit. But who cares? They hold up tons of weight, they don't wobble, they are a light-ish tan, and they can take years of abuse (as seen by all the scratches and nicks, and the dirt contained therein). I don't care, though: they kind of remind me of me today: I may look pretty awful on the outside and dinged all to hell, but damn if I'm not still useful and do my job well.

I do need a job, though. I've been largely unsuccessful on the Boston Craigslist, but I revisit it today not only for myself, but for Brohenna's best man: Colin. He's finally moving down to Stoughton, MA, from Lyme, NH, and living out on his own (technically). However, he put in his notice at his job before securing one down here. D'oh!

But I won't give up (on my own job search). Even having a little part-time near to where Brohenna works is a good time, and more $ in the bank for us. Although, I do confess to not wanting any more food drops. Let me explain my weird terminology there: when a food place, say McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts puts out a sign and says they are hiring all shifts, I enter and fill out the whole application. I then get through the interview a few days later and find they are actually only hiring for over-night or late-night shifts (not conducive to transportation and sleep schedules). Some are polite and tell me outright that it's a shame I can't work it, but that's what they're looking for and we part amicably. Others are down-right pussies and walk me through the whole process, then don't follow-up. I tend to call about four or five days later back, wondering if I got the job, and get the hedged response of being 'over-qualified'. Over-qualified? Really? To flip burgers? On the other hand, I think they know, deep down, that if I received an offer for a better job, I'd leave in a heartbeat. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps not. I won't know until I get hired somewhere.

Heh. *looks to the right* In not having a paid account, I finally see why it was a big deal to a lot of LJ people; there are advertisements pretty much everywhere. The lack of userpics doesn't bother me in the slightest, and I still have access to all my Scrapbook photos (something I really enjoyed and will most likely be replicating on Facebook). However, I feel confident in knowing that $, no matter how much, was spent elsewhere on something wicked important. As strange as that sounds, I'm really happy about that.

One cheeseburger and small sweet potato fries later, Brohenna has come in briefly from the snow and cold to rest his weary feet. After wet cuddles (dude, the snow was melting!) and the nom nom nomming of fries, he has ventured out to tackle the slopes again. My manly man. :-) Also, my manly man needs a ski helmet! I'll ask Wayne about that later.

Brohenna commented on his way out that I have a 'fuzzy butt': my yellow sweater sheds like a cat in the summer and I have no idea how to keep the fuzz under control. It's my hope in being more domesticated that I can just hand-wash it and it'll be fine, but it actually says Machine Washable, so I'm wondering if me attempting it on my own will just make it worse. That brings up another rattling thought in my brain: just how domesticated can one be in today's day and age? It seems with the invention of the Internet, it would behoove stay-at-home moms and dads to actually find a lucrative business to work for on top of chores, kids, pets, and more. While I am challenged at this point about my own lack of job, I also feel that I do have it easier, for I have no children and only Bud's cats to worry about. Where the legit Internet businesses at?

I'm now available on Twitter & Facebook. Have yet to figure out how to just make my own blog on Aven, but when I do, good times as I move old things over and will just eventually shut down the LiveJournal account. I've been getting friend'ed by more spam bots than actual friends. Kind of disturbing, really. About that time I may or may not desist with the Facebook as well. We shall see as I'll need a good photo lay-out for everything. *thinks* Of course, HTML coding is a thing of the past, but that's what I have and I'm happy with it when it works for now.

That's all I have for thoughts at the moment. To you and yours.

- Peace.

Current Location: Dartmouth Skiway in NH
Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Mother India - Caedmon's Call

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Hands of the Potter - Caedmon's Call

Ok. (Im pretty riled up about this)
This is pulled from a press confrence released within the last week.

The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation is an NFL-supported charity dedicated to recognizing
courage in the League while improving the lives of abused/neglected children in NFL cities
throughout the country. The Foundation annually bestows a prestigious Ed Block Courage
Award to a player from each NFL team who, in the eyes of his teammates, exemplifies a
commitment to sportsmanship and courage.
That awesome. sounds wonderful. Help the kids, honor those who go above and beyond to make a life better. Im all over this. Why am I pissed. (If you dont know where this is going, then you might not know me super well.)
For the last 32 years the Ed Block Courage Award has been given to NFL players who have been
selected by their teammates. The rest of the 2009 class includes players such as Shawne
Merriman from the San Diego Chargers, Carnell “Cadillac” Williams from the Tampa Bay
Buccaneers, Brian Dawkins from the Denver Broncos, Phillip Daniels from the Washington
Redskins, Kevin Mawae from the Tennessee Titans, and Michael Vick of the Philadelphia
Eagles.
lol, wut?

Im thinking some emails might be in order. Seriously? What courage has this beast shown? he has yet to be punished properly, I cannot believe he is playing again, and now this?
I do not think I have been so insulted before.

http://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/fanzone/contactus.asp
This is the contact for the team, but I cannot figure out what to say. This is the contact means that were given to me by PBRC (pit bull rescue) but I say screw that, lets go for the charity:
For more information, please contact Paul Mittermeier at 410-821-6252 or via email at
Paulm@edblock.org

... meaningless and full of pain... but sometimes it gives you an unexpected gift.

The Giants game was a disgrace. Bill Sheridan has to go. How he could destroy the Giants defense in a single year, when he had all the players Steve Spagnuolo had and then some, is a mystery for the ages.

And the Jets... well, yeah, I'm glad they got the W, but really... call me old school, but I believe a team should play hard every week, no matter what. What Caldwell did was a disgrace. A nice late Xmas present for Gang Green, sure, but all the other teams contending for the AFC wild card must be steaming, and Peyton and the other Colts first-stringers looked none too happy on the sidelines either. I would not be the least surprised if the Happy Horseshoes make an early exit from the playoffs after this. Disgraceful.

Meanwhile, back in the Meadowlands, I can only hope that the final Jets home game in Giants Stadium has a happier result than the final Giants home game.

Current Mood: disappointed