Tonight's Card: Windmills vs. Rogers

This is the text of an e-mail I sent to the SciFi channel from their feedback page:

I rather hope someone actually reads these things.

Dave Rogers

Okay, blogosphere - thrill me. Make this a meme. Become a smart mob. Make the world a little "flatter." Free the Galactica mini-series!

Or, just ignore me.

Going Broke Saving Money Redux

This should probably be a series. Target had the Samsung YP-MT6 512MB MP3 player on sale for $29.99, normally $119.99. Once I exhaust my curiosity with it, it'll probably go into the hurricane box, against the day when I have to get the hell out of Dodge. I'll probably bring my iPod along, but it's got an FM radio feature, the ability to record to MP3 from the radio, and a voice recording capability, which may be worthwhile features to have in a compact device.

Plus, maybe I could barter it for something if it came to that, if the ATMs were down due to power outages. You never know.

Random Notes: Hands-free for Cops

I was channel surfing the other night and I happened to stop on an episode of Cops. There was a chase underway, and that always brings out my morbid curiosity. Anyway, I'm watching this cop try to drive his cruiser at high speed, pursuing this guy, and he's having to pick up his mic to his radio, and key it to transmit to the dispatcher his location and the actions of the driver he's pursuing, which happened to include shooting at him.

And it occurred to me that this guy should not be taking his hand off the wheel, reaching down to his radio to grab a mic and then bringing it up to his mouth to speak into it. Why aren't these guys on some kind of hands-free wireless headset so they can keep both hands on the wheel when they're pursuing fleeing drivers?

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

BSG: A Wider Audience

There was an interesting interview with Ronald Moore, the lead writer and co-producer of Battlestar Galactica, in the Seattle Times recently. If you're one of the new fans of the series, and haven't seen all of Season 2 yet, you may want to give it a pass unless the surprise in the season finale has already been spoiled for you.

What I thought was especially interesting was this comment by Moore in response to a question about whether the show can appeal to a "mainstream viewer." Moore replied:

The challenge to the show at this point is ironic in that the name, I think, now holds people back from the show. Initially, the name "Battlestar Galactica" got the show made and it got people to tune in. Now we've gotten to a place where literally the viewers that would like this show won't watch it because of the name. And it's hard to jump over that, because I think the people that would really like this show are the people that watch "The Sopranos," "The Shield," "Nip/Tuck," "Six Feet Under." If you like classic, high-quality dramas I think you'll like this show, but "Battlestar Galactica" on the Sci Fi channel just doesn't register.

I pitched BSG pretty hard to Jonathon Delacour because I thought that the subject matter of the series, and its creators' approach to it, would interest him. Jonathon's not normally a science fiction fan, so it's not the type of show he would see just on an offhand recommendation. Since I've been writing about it here in Groundhog Day, not only has Ethan Johnson become a fan (and Ethan has a write-up of the series newly up on his site), but Steve Vore wrote to me to say he'd just become a fan as well. And Jonathon has shared with me that he's been able to introduce some of his fellow countrymen to the series, who hadn't given it a chance before, and they've become fans as well.

I told Jonathon at one point, just before he saw the mini-series, that I was afraid that I had perhaps over-sold the show, and raised expectations to an unfair level. I was relieved to find that that didn't seem to be the case. He's just started watching the first season episodes, and I've enjoyed reading his reaction to the series.

Steve Vore sent me a note asking about the use of the term "actual" in the radio communications between CDR Adama and the pilots or other ship's captains in the mini-series. As I explained to Steve, that practice is consistent with naval radiotelephone (RT) communications today. I'm pretty sure "actual" isn't an official RT proword, like "roger," "over," copy," "out" and others, but in my experience, it has been used quite frequently. Over an unsecure circuit, ships are identified by a daily changing alpha-numeric callsign. On a secure, or "covered," circuit, ships are identified by the ship's name, regardless of who is speaking. So, on those occasions when it is important or appropriate to be aware that the commanding officer is the voice at the other end, the use of the word "actual" following the ship's name has become a fairly common practice. This was one of the little details that helped draw me into the mini-series.

But, returning to the interview, Moore's comment seems consistent with Jonathon's experience, and that of Ethan and Steve as well — that if you give the show a chance, you'll find it's a compelling drama that's as good as, or better, than anything on television today. If you loved The West Wing, I think you're a good candidate for becoming a Battlestar Galactica fan. But I think Moore is also correct that the name is something of a barrier.

Now, Galactica isn't perfect. I've mentioned before that I've felt as though the writing or plots are a little uneven at times. Part of that is due to the format. Sometimes they just try to put too many great ideas into too little time. Sometimes it's a function of coping with the realities of a weekly television series with a limited budget, and limited production time. Sometimes it's just an externality, like the actor who played Billy being unwilling to commit to a contract, and thereby kind of forcing the writers' hands. But even when it's not at the top of its game, it's still just as good as anything on television, and when it's at its best, it's better than anything else on TV. Partly because of the cast, who are outstanding, partly because of the characters, who are believable people, with strengths and weaknesses we can believe, partly because of the challenging approaches to topical ideas, partly because of interesting new ideas, there are just so many strengths to this series.

I would like to see Battlestar Galactica go on to receive a wider audience, and, hopefully, a higher budget, to help them tell the great stories they have to tell, the best way they can. Not just next season, but starting right now. The first season is available on DVD, and that boxed set includes the mini-series. The first half of the second season is available on DVD, while all of the second season is available for download at the iTunes Music Store. If you just want to sample the waters, as it were, download the mini-series from the iTMS. Watching it on your computer is probably not the best way to experience it, but it's a low-cost, low-effort way of finding out if it's something you'd enjoy. (Well, maybe it's not so low-cost anymore. It used to be $1.99 per "part" with the mini-series a 4-part series. Total: $7.96. Now, it's still four separate downloads, but you have to buy the whole thing at $15.99, which isn't a great deal for the mini-series. Not sure who made that decision, but it's a tad cheaper than $19.86 at Amazon for the mini-series alone, and you don't have to wait for it to be shipped. At this point, I think the producers would be better off giving away the mini-series as a free download, to introduce new viewers to the series.)

If you're someone who reads Groundhog Day, and you haven't been inclined to see the series yet, I'd say you're missing a treat, even if you're not a science fiction fan. The "science fiction" part of the series is simply a canvas, upon which a compelling picture of humanity is being drawn. Now, every time I write something like that, I feel like I've gone a little too far.

But only a little.

DS: Thirty Seven

Brain Age now assesses my "brain age" as 37. I think I've licked the handwriting recognition problem for the word recall test. I was spending more time trying to recall words than I was trying to get them recognized.

The math problems still burn me occasionally with a misrecognized answer, but the idea is to answer them as quickly as possible, so I'm writing the answer even as I'm solving the next problem. It usually isn't a problem, but sometimes the lack of attention to the writing part makes it interpret a 9 as a 7 or something, so I get penalized for a wrong answer.

One of my favorite tests is Low to High, where you're presented four or five numbers in a pattern, at the vertices of some polygon. You get to look at it for a couple of seconds, and then you're presented with the same pattern without the numbers on the other screen, and you have to tap the vertices in the order of the numbers on the screen you were just shown, low to high. You have to kind of make yourself look at the overall pattern, take it all in at once, and not try to explicitly go through and say to yourself, "Okay, 3's the lowest there, and next is 5 over here..." There's no time for that. You just have to remember what it looked like, and then kind of figure out what the order was. It's a little hard to explain, but it's even harder (for me) to do. Pretty fun though.

The head count test will probably be fun when I master low-to-high. Right now, head count is just hard! It's a fast-moving simple animation of figures going into and coming out of a house. At the end, you have to know how many figures remain in the house. Very hard. Haven't quite figured out how to approach that one yet.

Non Sequitur du Jour: Zero Sum Conversations

You know, for a guy who gets off on the whole "conversation" metaphor, there's a fair amount of "winning" in Doc's commentary:

"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

Gandhi came to mind because for the first time, winning was clearly in sight. Winning not just for *top (* meaning desk, lap, palm, phone or whatever) Linux, but winning for an open-source-driven change in business that will be as profound as are the open-source-driven changes in software development and use.

Bottom line: Yes, GandhiCon 4 is in sight. But it won't just be Linux that will win or open source or free software. It will be markets themselves. Because they'll be made free by the same individuals that make and use goods of all kinds.

How many "conversations" have you had where you worried whether or not you were "winning?" Speaking strictly for myself, none. Most forms of discourse involving "winning" and "losing" are called "arguments," or "debates." I've had my share of those.

Winners imply losers, which implies competition. Markets are competitive. Conversations are not competitive. Markets are not conversations.

But it's clear I've already "lost" that "conversation," because when a metaphor, however bogus, offers a competitor a competitive advantage, they're not about to let it go.

To use Seth Godin's vernacular, we're all just telling ourselves a "remarkable story" about markets and marketing that makes us all feel better as we surrender our authority to junky plastic metaphors.

Going Broke Saving Money

I've gotten good use out of my Sony Clié TG50, but I've never taken a shine to the miniature keyboard (thumbboard?), and its limited onboard memory.

The Palm TX looks like a winner from my perspective. Onboard flash memory and lots of it, so no worries if the battery dies. Half-VGA screen (320x480 versus the 320x320 of the Clié), Bluetooth and WiFi, a Secure Digital expansion slot, and updated PIM applications all make for an appealing package.

MSRP is $299.99. The Navy Exchange offers it for $289.99, sometimes on sale at $279.99. Amazon offers it at $269.99. But this week there's a 5% off coupon for selected electronics products, including the TX, making the price $256.00, with free shipping and no sales tax.

Like all mortals, I'm afflicted by desire. Or maybe I'm just conditioned by marketers to wish to acquire stuff. Anyway, I've wanted this thing for some time and it's been in and out of my shopping cart at Amazon more times than I care to think about. And I've actually gone to the Exchange a couple of times with the intent of just buying the thing and scratching this annoying itch, then changing my mind at the last moment. Well, the coupon finally put me over the edge, so I ordered the damn thing.

The downsides, and there are always downsides to any hardware purchase, aren't many or terribly serious. One is that it doesn't have an audio recording capability. The Clié's is quite impressive, though not as useful as I thought it might be, as it turns out most people I encounter seem to object to recording meetings. I've stopped asking. It seems to prefer a dedicated AC adapter for charging, although it will trickle charge through the USB port if it's connected. I normally just connect the Clié to my iBook while I'm working on the Mac at the office every few days or so, and it fully charges in a couple of hours. Battery life on the Clié has been consistently excellent, though I have no illusions about similar performance from the TX with a larger screen and a faster processor. I won't have the wireless features activated all the time, which will help to conserve battery power, but I expect I'll have to pay closer attention to the battery than I've been accustomed to on the Clié. Finally, it uses Graffiti 2.0, which is really Jot!, a handwriting recognition engine I became acquainted with when I was using a Windows-based Everex handheld several years ago. It works as a recognizer, but many characters require two strokes, and I've become quite accustomed to Graffiti's single stroke characters. Then again, maybe it'll help me with Brain Age!

Should be here next week. I'll be sure to share my trials and tribulations, as I'm sure I'll have some. I just got the Clié syncing reliably on 10.4.6 using The Missing Sync 5.1, and now I've got to introduce another new handheld, which always creates confusion, at least for me.

BSG: Caprica Prequel

It seems the SciFi Channel has approved development of a spin-off series from Battlestar Galactica.

I have mixed feelings about this. First, I think Galactica remains a little too uneven in its quality, although I hasten to add that on its worst days, it's still usually better than nearly all the other crap on television. I think it could stand to receive continued close attention from Moore and Eick.

Second, the other creative person associated with Caprica is Remi Aubuchon from Fox's 24. I don't know if I've ever said it here before, but I absolutely cannot stand 24. I think it's one of the most ridiculous shows on the air. I initially liked the premise of following a story in asynchronous "real time," but the ridiculous perils Jack Bauer's wife and daughter kept encountering in the first season turned me off to the show forever; to say nothing of Bauer's near super-human abilities to endure sleep deprivation, beatings, drugs, double-crosses, emotional stress, and still save the day just turned me off. (Viper pilots, naturally, are expected to do just that, I know. But I do find the human qualities of the characters in Galactica more believable than Jack Bauer's.) I don't regard it as a good sign that a 24 person will be associated with Caprica.

In the end though, it'll all depend on whether or not they can tell good stories in a compelling way. The development of an artificial intelligence with sentient qualities poses some interesting moral and philosophical questions. But I'm not optimistic, and I hope Galactica doesn't suffer for it.

DS: I'm Younger Than That Now

I've discovered the secret to getting decent character recognition from the Brain Age game on the Nintendo Double Screen.

First, the lines on the entry screen are more important than I first appreciated. This isn't pointed out in the small printed manual that accompanies the game. The horizontal line is for the base, and descenders are expected to, you know, descend beneath it. Second, I've found that sticking with lower case letters and using the horizontal line as a base to help measure the relative height of the letters, in addition to clearly indicating descenders, makes an enormous difference in recognition accuracy.

I would say my experience with Graffiti was disadvantageous to using the print recognizer on the DS. It's much more like the Newton recognizer.

Latest test results show my "brain age" to be 40!

The Boss: The Seeger Sessions

I pre-ordered Springsteen's new album from the iTunes Music Store. Apart from the ideological impurity of that act, it was a convenient way to get it. I haven't listened to all of it yet, but I've listened to several tracks. It's not your typical Springsteen album, not that I expected it would be.

I can't say I have a great deal of familiarity with the music Springsteen is interpreting here. Most of the songs are familiar to me, some of them I recall learning and singing in elementary school, but I can't say I've ever listened to Pete Seeger do them. So I can't comment on Springsteen's interpretation in comparison with to Seeger's, though I don't know how useful that would be in any case.

Something that did strike me though was the comparison between Springsteen's version of John Henry, with a song of his own that I think is similar thematically, Youngstown from the Ghost of Tom Joad album, and the later version from Live in New York City.

John Henry is almost celebratory in tone despite having what might be described as a sadder outcome; while Youngstown, in The Ghost of Tom Joad, is perhaps best described as resigned, and in Live in New York City, it's a slashing, white-hot angry song. I prefer the live version.

Both songs are defiant songs, though you have to listen for the defiance in the Tom Joad version of Youngstown, of men confronting change that leaves them behind, makes their lives mean something different. Not meaningless, but meaning something different. John Henry is left behind literally, working himself to death competing with a machine. The steel mill worker in Youngstown doesn't have that advantage, if it could be called that, so maybe that accounts for the difference in tone. It occurs to me just now that the defiance might really be denial.

A lot of the difference, maybe all of it, might be related to the fact that John Henry is a third-person narrative, while Youngstown is related in the first person.

I don't know what else I can offer about that, but I thought it was an interesting contrast. Something to think about anyway. (Later: I just listened to the Live in NYC Youngstown track, and the thought of Nils Lofgren as another kind of steel worker crossed my mind. (Are guitar strings still steel these days?) Funny sometimes, these connections that occur to you.)

More about the album from time to time, as things occur to me.

Sunrise 4-26

After taking an early look, I almost missed this one. That's what happens when you're not paying attention. Would have been better on the beach. Would have been worse had I not seen it at all.

It is what it is. And if you're paying attention, that's usually enough.

Social Hygiene: Chop Wood, Carry Water

Many people become enthusiastic when they begin to discover Zen Buddhism. Some, perhaps irrationally enthusiastic, extending, perhaps, even to zealotry. But eventually, if they are right for Zen and Zen is right for them, their enthusiasm is extinguished. What's left in its place is, presumably, hopefully, ideally, a clearer vision.

One of my earliest and still one of my favorite "moments of Zen" was in the movie The Deer Hunter, when Robert De Niro holds up a rifle cartridge and says to the late John Cazale, "This is this, and not something else!"

Something we might all do well to remember.

Especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

BeeFlight

I was watching the sun go down again on Sunday, mostly it was a repeat of Saturday, except without the birds. But I noticed these carpenter bees buzzing around the eaves. I used the long zoom on the Kodak 6490 to try and snag a picture of one. Focusing required an old trick I learned with my DC 290 when trying to focus on the spiders and their webs: focus on something else that is approximately the same distance and then keep the shutter release half-depressed while you bring the subject back into the frame.

So I focused on the eaves and then waited for a bee to fly into the frame at about the right distance. A couple of the pictures turned out okay, but they both presented the same head-on aspect, so I'm only showing one of them. Light wasn't great, and at the long end of the zoom it's even worse, so there's a lot of wing blur.

Still can't get birds on the wing.

Social Hygiene: A Most Remarkable Story

I think there lots of things you could do today that would be less worthwhile than listening to today's edition of Fresh Air. It's a remarkable story. It's not a purple cow, but a "big black thing." And it's not a story being told to make you feel good about buying something you don't need.

"When my neck broke, my soul began to breathe."

Listen to the whole thing.

Cheese Sandwich: Pet Medical Update

This just in...

I went back to the vet today to collect Karma and pay for Mandy's x-rays. The news is mixed, but generally good. The abscess on Karma's leg is still quite large, perhaps only appearing more so since they shaved the fur off it. Not a pretty sight. They gave me an antibiotic to give her, and I'm to watch and see if the swelling goes down over the next week to ten days. If not, they'll have to do something a little more invasive and see what's going on in there.

She seems a little more mobile now, and she purrs in my lap. So hopefully she's on the mend. I usually have trouble getting her into the carrier, but she walked right in when the attendant put her down on the table. I guess she was happy to get out of there.

Mandy seemed none the worse for the experience. X-rays showed her hips looked fine and weren't contributing to her limp. She is showing signs of the beginning of arthritis in her spine, which apparently is to be expected in a dog of her size and age. (She's only five!) Soft tissue injuries don't show up on x-rays, but there is something that can be gleaned from the relative position of the two leg bones and I gather it was just slightly off. What was more telling was manipulating her knee while she was under sedation, with more lateral "play" in the joint than in the unaffected leg.

On the other hand, her limp was barely noticeable, if at all, both upon arrival and on leaving. So he suspects it may not be a serious tear, and perhaps is just severely stretched. The plan is to watch her some more for a couple of months, try to ensure she gets plenty of rest and no running or jumping (That's nearly impossible with Mandy, even though she does sleep a lot.) I've asked Chris to put her crate back together, and he can enforce several hours of rest each day. We crate trained her, and she enjoyed her "house." We never had any problem getting her to go in it. It's been a couple of years though, so I'm not sure how she'll take to it again, or even if Chris can get it put back together. The vet said it would be a good idea, so hopefully he'll pull all the pieces out of the garage and get it back together.

If it doesn't improve, surgery is the next step, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Total bill for both critters was significantly less than what the other vet was quoting for the x-rays alone, so I'm quite pleased with that. I guess it pays to shop around. I'm surprised there can be such a difference in the price of veterinary services in such close proximity. Of course, I was so effusive in my gratitude that they probably believe they're undercharging, and now I can expect their prices to increase!

While we were waiting to talk to the vet, I watched one of the attendants feeding an infant opossum. Apparently the mother was hit by a car and someone brought in the three young opossums. It was a tiny thing, about the size of an average mouse. They told me they were the only veterinary at the beach that took in wild animals, although they don't take raccoons because of the risk of rabies. Opossums apparently don't carry the virus. The one little one was really cute, and the other two were sleeping though one of those isn't expected to survive. Why, I'm not sure, but it didn't look well.

Batman Begins: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

It could be said that if you've heard one Hans Zimmer motion picture score (Gladiator, Crimson Tide, King Arthur, The Last Samurai), you've heard them all.

Then again, it could be said that if you've enjoyed one Hans Zimmer motion picture score, you'll enjoy them all.

Batman Begins' score is described as "dark." Works for me. Your mileage may vary.

BSG: Fandom Grows

At the risk of being perceived as some marketing droid turning a "funnel into a megaphone" or some other nonsense like that, I'm pleased to report that I've increased the ranks of Galactica fandom by at least two. Joining Jonathon Delacour as one of the latest fans of the series is Ethan Johnson, of Vision Monthly and EthMar.com.

Battlestar Galactica is good storytelling. It's not telling you a story to make you feel better about buying some piece of crap, or some numb-nuts' new book on how blogging is going to save the world or change your life. It's just a good yarn that might make you think a little.

You can watch Battlestar Galactica commercial-free by buying the episodes from the iTunes Music Store, or on DVD, although only the first half of Season 2 is available on DVD. (Well, and all of Season 1 of course. Note that the Season 1 DVD collection includes the mini-series, so don't buy that separately if you're thinking of going ahead and just buying the DVD collection. I did, but I don't care. I wasn't sure I was going to like it until I watched the mini-series.)

BSG: Pop Culture Association

Battlestar Galactica gets a mention in this Toronto Star article about a Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, held recently in Atlanta, Georgia.

One of the suddenly popular topics this year is the TV series Battlestar Galactica, which Georgia State University's Daniel Vollaro called a "richly plotted, socially conscious science-fiction TV series with textured narratives and interesting characters." It is that, but it's also, as Shawn Krause-Loner from Syracuse University acknowledged, "a soap opera about people being chased through space by bloodthirsty robots."

So, yeah, it's, like, the best of both worlds...no?

Ooooh... this sounds like it must have been fun:

Thursday, April 13, 10:00 a.m., International Salon B

113 Science Fiction & Fantasy VII: Battlestar Galactica: Special Session

Moderator: James Iaccino, Benedictine University

Modern Realities of War as Reflected in the New Battlestar Galactica:

A Discussion of Episode #212 “Resurrection Ship, Part 2”

Cheese Sandwich: Karma Pharma

My oldest daughter, Melissa, recommended that I use her veterinarian to look into Mandy's leg problem. With Karma also requiring veterinary attention, I figured I'd check with Melissa's vet and find out how much an office visit is, and how much it would cost to have Mandy's leg x-rayed.

As it happened, they're considerably less expensive than my regular vet. An office visit is $32.00 versus $47.00 at the previous vet, and the cost of the x-rays will be proportionately less as well.

I asked about having Karma seen today, and they said they could take her this afternoon. So I brought her in and the doc said it felt like an abscess in her leg. He said it's something seen fairly often in outdoor cats who fight. Karma's strictly an indoor cat these days, but she and Squeaky sometimes mix it up. So he took her into the back and drew a little fluid from the swelling and came back and showed it to me, and it is pretty infected. No fever though, which is a good thing. So they're keeping her overnight. They're going to sedate her and extract as much of the fluid as they can and get her started on an antibiotic. He indicated he may want to keep her another night tomorrow.

So the Karma Kitten is spending the night in a strange place and I feel sorry for her. But hopefully we'll get her back in battery shortly, and she'll be back to lying on my stomach purring away.

I've also arranged for Mandy's x-rays tomorrow. Chris will drop her off in the morning, and then we'll both come back in the afternoon so I can get the report on the x-rays, pick up Karma if she's ready to go, and pay for everything. Chris will take Mandy back home. Getting in and out of his Mustang has to be easier for her than getting into the back of the Montero.

In other news, I got Remote Desktop to authenticate properly with my folks' eMac. There's no overstating the importance of having the user you're supporting click on the pulsating OK button to dismiss the Access Privileges in the Remote Desktop, Sharing System Preference. Something I never would have thought to mention had my mom not asked if she should click on that pulsing "OK?"

"Uh, yeah. Let's try that."

Bing!

Doh!

So I was able to help Dad with some iPhoto printing issues, though there is still something going on that I don't understand, as we can't seem to make borderless prints, and the printed area isn't centered on the 4x6 photo paper. Hopefully brother Mark, who has more familiarity with Epson printers and their drivers may have more insight into this than I do. I follow the same steps I use to print borderlessly on my Lexmark printers, with no problems.

Cheese Sandwich: Nothing Doing

I skipped taekwondo yesterday. My left shoulder has been giving me twinges, so I figured I'd give it another week's rest. Unfortunately, that leaves a pretty big gap in what Caitie and I do on the weekend. We ended up watching Beverly Hills Ninja, a Chris Farley movie, and that was a bit of a disappointment. It reminded me a bit of Who's Harry Crumb?, only not as good or as funny.

Caitie tried Brain Age, and she's already younger than me. I got frustrated with it because the handwriting recognition is poor for letters. One of the tests involves trying to memorize 30 words in 2 minutes, and then writing as many of them as you can in 3 minutes. Well, the recognizer can't tell an "L" from a "C," or a "J" from a "V" and so you spend a lot of time re-writing a word just so the recognizer will get it right. I got rather frustrated on that test. To make matters more complicated, it recognizes both upper and lower case letters. To make things simpler, it should probably just recognize one or the other and tell the player which one to use. On the 100 math problems test, it misrecognized two of my answers, marking them incorrect. I'm less unhappy about that, because if I'm a bit careful, it usually gets the numerals right, I was just writing too fast. The Stroop Test, which involves saying the color of a word, which is itself the name of a color, worked really well the first time I tried it. But now it seems to get stuck trying to recognize "blue." Googling around, this seems to be a problem others have noticed. Oddly enough, most people think the handwriting recognition is fairly solid, which has not been my experience. Of course, I'm very used to Graffiti, so that may be part of my problem.

Since I didn't go to taekwondo yesterday, I went over to the fitness center they have here at the clubhouse. Worked on some of the machines, then did 30 minutes on a treadmill watching Meet the Press. The aggravation helped keep my heart rate high up in the conditioning range, 30 minutes at 163 bpm. Just kidding, about the aggravation. Normally, I don't care for running on a treadmill, but it does give you some feedback. I don't know how accurate it all is, but it's easier to stay motivated if you haven't run for a long time.

I'm going to give my parents a shout a little later today and walk Mom through creating a new Administrator account, and see if I can't access that account through Remote Desktop. We'll see.

Karma's limping badly on her left rear leg. I don't know what it is with my pets and injured legs! Mandy is still limping, some days more than others. Apparently, nothing will be done unless I do it, so I'm going to arrange for it to be x-rayed; which is an all-day affair for a large dog, since they have to be sedated. Looking at about $400.00 for that bill. Then if it's something that requires surgery, well, I don't have health insurance for my kids' dog! I'm not sure what happened to Karma. She's moving around a bit more yesterday and today, but she doesn't purr when she's in my lap, and she's moving very slowly. I'll give her a couple more days and then it's probably another trip to the vet for her. Of course, taking my pets to the vet lately is a lot like taking my car to the dealer. You go in for one problem and come out with another one! Probably some bad karma on my part.

And now it's time for lunch! We won't be having cheese sandwiches. Caitie says she wants fried chicken.

Birds

Mainly wanted this for the sound of the birds. Not much to look at, but that one bird was really loud. Probably should have compressed this more.

Sundown

I stood on the back landing last night and watched the sun go down. Took a few pictures, then decided to play with iWeb to start to see how that worked. The results are here.

Cheese Sandwich: "What we have here, is a failure to authenticate..."

Remote Desktop 3.0 arrived back on Monday, and while I'm able to remotely administer my iBook, and it can see my parents' eMac, it won't make a connection, telling me "authentication failed." Everything appears to be properly configured in the Sharing System Preference, and I have the right short name. I've e-mailed my brother who set up the eMac to see if he might have changed the password.

Picked up a copy of Nintendo's Brain Age for the Double Screen. Pretty cool program! And it was only $19.99, unlike most releases for the DS, which seem to launch at $29.99. It uses speech recognition and handwriting recognition (Rudimentary. Apparently limited to spoken colors and numerals written on the digitizer screen. Oh, and "glasses, glasses" at the title screen.) as part of the program. I took the quick brain-age test, and I think it said my brain was 57! Depressing.

There's a "training program" where you do daily exercises that are supposed to improve your "brain age." You get a little reward token each day you complete an exercise. If you do three in one day, you get a larger token. It will unlock various additional exercises as you progress through your training.

One gripe was that it misrecognized my handwriting on a one math problem and penalized me for a wrong answer, and when it doesn't recognize it at all, it gives you a question mark, and then you have to tap the "erase" button and write it again. I don't know how much you're penalized in time for that, because part of your score seems to be based on time to complete the exercise. It is fun though.

Karma's fur problem, which I mentioned back on the 12th, seems to be related to her weight. Her fur wasn't falling out, so much as she was licking it off. The scaly spot on her back was probably an area she couldn't reach to groom herself, because of her big tummy. It was probably itching and bugging her a great deal, and the bare patch was the result of that irritation. He gave her a shot of cortisone, recommended I feed her a little less and buy a brush and help keep her groomed.

Okay, I can do that.

Yesterday and this morning though, it seems as though Karma isn't feeling well. She spent the whole day yesterday sleeping and didn't try to get into my lap once. Looks like the same thing so far today. This has happened a couple of times before and it usually clears up on its own. Just sorry to see the Karma Kitten under the weather.

And that's probably enough about that. Always remember - life is like a cheese sandwich. The more bread you have, the less cheese you have to eat. Or something like that.

Moose and Squirrel

So I stop by the grocery store to pick up a six pack of an adult beverage, and there's this new young lady at the check-out counter named Tanya. She asks me if I'm 21 and I laugh and tell her I'm flattered, but I've been 21 for about 28 years now.

I noticed she had what I thought was a European accent, so I asked her where she was from, and she said Russia.

So I said, "Say, 'moose and squirrel.'"

She gives me this funny look, and doesn't say anything, but the girl behind me starts laughing.

So then I have to try and explain about Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, and the girl behind me thinks it's hysterical; but Tanya hasn't a clue what I'm talking about, or what the girl behind me is laughing about. But she smiled and told me to have a good evening anyway.

That's what I get for watching My Name is Earl.

Sometimes this whole communication thing just isn't worth the effort.

Desktop Art

Memetic origin.

Why He's The Boss

"The approach to the song is, I start with this very alienated person, because that's me," he said, laughing. "That never changes. And the guy can barely sing it — he can barely believe it. But as he moves into it, and people start singing with him, he finds his place in the song, in history, and that alienation eases."

Born to Strum

Saturday Afternoon

I found the bookmarks file for the DVD Player app in the Application Support folder of my user Library. The file names are probably a hash-up of some kind with the name of the DVD encoded in it. I found the BSG bookmarks I was looking for by checking the modification dates of the files. Opening them in OmniOutliner confirmed they were for the BSG mini-series. There are two files, one with .img included in the file name, and a bunch of data that looks like it might be image data. The other file is just text in xml format.

I copied the two files over to my iBook and dropped them into the appropriate folder. I started playing the movie and then looked to see if I could navigate to the bookmarks I'd created on the PowerMac. At first I didn't see them, but then I recalled that DVD Player had been running (with the movie paused), when I dropped the files into the Application Support folder. So I quit DVD Player, re-launched it, and then they appeared in the Go menu.

The user names between my iBook and PowerMac are different, so it seems there is no unique identifying data encoded in the file name or in the data itself that would prevent it from being used in a someone else's Application Support folder.

What I don't know right now is if a new bookmarks file might create a conflict of some kind, when the movie had been previously viewed on that Mac. I may play around with that and see what happens.

What would be ideal would be a facility for sharing bookmarks for particular DVDs, and being able to embed them as hyperlinks in another file, either a web page; or in a QuickTime movie (audio track, mainly, maybe a screen shot too), where the movie would advance to a particular bookmark as that bookmark was encountered in the audio track. Maybe somebody has already solved that, but I haven't seen it in a quick look around.

Of course, it seems like an awful lot of work in order to achieve something many people normally find annoying... talking over the movie!

Recommended

Scott Reynen's Crazy Guy post is a good read.

New Yorker on Iraq

While Seymour Hersh's article about the possibility of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities garnered great attention, another article in the New Yorker is probably more worthwhile to read - George Packer's Letter From Iraq. It's a long read, though it often seems more like the plot outline of a modern tragedy than an essay on current affairs. I think it's balanced, though others will undoubtedly disagree.

Thanks to Jonathon Delacour for the pointer.

Mac Geekery

This is a pretty damn cool weblog for Mac geek stuff. (And I like the tag line.) Stumbled on it from MacSurfer, the pre-aggregator aggregator. The Sync Services post is very cool.

One of the semi-geeky things I want to figure out is what I can do with the bookmarks feature of DVD Player. I was thinking of doing my own sort of fan-commentary track for the BSG mini-series, but even I don't have three hours' worth of things to say about it. But if I could export some bookmarks in a file that an interested person could then use, providing they had their own copy of the DVD, I could maybe do a podcast of my comments on particular scenes, and the interested or hopelessly bored viewer/listener could advance to each scene as I expounded insightfully on it. Kind of a multi-media thing, with hyperlinks, or something.

If this catches on, I want to make sure I'm properly credited in Wikipedia.

My luck, somebody else has already figured it out and there's a freeware app that does all the heavy lifting for you.

Newport, 1985

It's Friday afternoon and there's no place I have to be, and nothing I have to do. Sometimes that's not a good thing. Sometimes it is. This is probably one of the latter.

My head is spinning again with lots of things I want to write about, but it's hard to decide which one I want to focus on. But then I had this feeling and I figured I could write about that. Maybe it'll be interesting for you, maybe it'll be worthwhile for me. Who knows?

So I'm sitting here with a cold beer, the iPod is sitting in the dock connected to the Creature Speakers, cranking out random tunage. I should probably make a Friday afternoon playlist. Right now I've got Billy Idol doing White Wedding, which is a appropriate. Nice day to start again... But the next thing to come up might be some Gregorian chanting or something! Anyway, the point is, it's a good Friday afternoon.

I've managed to get Jonathon Delacour to watch the Battlestar Galactica mini-series, and I confess that the series has become something of an obsession with me at the moment. (Parenthetically, Fleetwood Mac came up next with Sara, a live version. Nice.) Anyway, Jonathon has watched all, or nearly all of the mini-series, and early indications are he liked it. Several of the things (not all) I want to write about deal with Galactica. I have a No Matter Where You Go, There You Are piece about the cathartic appeal of apocalypse in mind, but thinking about that got me recalling Newport, Rhode Island, circa 1985. I used to say 1985 was the last year I had any fun. Well, I started having fun again in 2005, so I can't say that anymore, and that is a good thing.

Anyway, I think it was May or June of '85 I reported to Department Head School in Newport. Newport is kind of a resort town nowadays. Up until Nixon pulled the navy out of Newport in the '70s, it was pretty much a navy town. There's still a significant navy presence there, with the Naval War College, and the Surface Warfare Officers School, I think OCS is still there, and Officer Indoctrination School (more about that a bit later), and the Naval Academy Preparatory School. Anyway, if you're an 1110 or SWO (Surface Warfare Officer, skimmer, ship-driver, black-shoe, various other appellations), as I was, you spend a fair amount of time in Newport and you go back fairly regularly in your career. Great town. Too cold in the winter, but a great town anyway.

So anyway, I had just previously moved in with Maria into her townhouse in Virginia Beach, and rented mine to a recently divorced or separated woman, beginning my long and mostly unhappy experience as a landlord. Leaving most of my worldly possessions with my fiancé, I packed my Apple //e and Apple //c into my Merkur XR4Ti, along with my uniforms and civilian clothes and drove on up to Newport to learn how to be a department head. It was to be a six month assignment, but I didn't feel like trying to find a snake ranch out in town, sharing a rental property with a number of other officers. I figured I'd just live in the BOQ. This offered some advantages, one of which will become clear shortly.

Excuse me while I go get another beer. You guys having any?

So I check my sorry ass into the 'Q and move all my crap out of my car into my new digs, rearranged the furniture a bit, checked out what channels I got on cable, set up the computers and figured I'd earned a cold beer.

By way of disclaimer, this chronology is likely very unreliable, but it's close enough for my purposes. I mean, I had to check in, get my orders endorsed and do some other stuff, I'm not sure if I got there one or two days early or what, but those are just details. The broad strokes are right, I think.

Now, the advantage of being in the 'Q was that it was (is?) within walking distance of the Officers' Club. Downstairs was like a cafeteria, restaurant thing; upstairs was a bar/pub kind of thing. I forget what it was called. Great place though. Loved it. Cold beer at reasonable prices. Springsteen would like it. (Speaking of The Boss, he just came up on the iPod. So far, no monks.)

So I head on over to the club and head up to the bar to get a cold beer and see who else is here checking in school. Now, this was kind of an interesting time because I was right on the bleeding edge of women being commissioned and serving in ships. I was Class of '79 at USNA, and the first women were in the Class of '80. (We used to say we were the last class with 2.0 balls per midshipman. That's probably inappropriate or something, but we did say it. I'm not trying to varnish anything here.) Not that I was really interested in women, because, you know, I was engaged and all that. But still, I was kind of curious.

As I recall, this is still late afternoon, early evening, but who knows? I get a beer, a draft I'm pretty sure, mug as I recall, (Update: Yes, I recall now it was definitely a mug. And a frosty mug, at that. My IQ goes up at least 10 points with a frosty mug. The kind that makes ice form in your beer. Is there anything better? I think not.) and grab a seat at a table near the center of the bar, right near the small patch of wood that served as a dance floor. Various guys are coming in on and off, I note for the record that I was one of the first. This is a testament to my ability to organize my shit quickly, more so than my affinity for a cold beer.

Somebody started up the popcorn popper so I go get myself a basket of popcorn and another beer. I'm making small talk with different guys, don't really see anybody I know. We talk about what ships we were on, what tracks we're in (I'm a combat systems guy. That's right. I'm bad.), compare the lengths of our cranks, you know, the usual guy stuff. So far, no women and I'm getting kind of bored. But the beer is cold, so that's good.

Anybody need another beer? I'm buying this round.

So at some point I get a couple of guys to join me at my table ("my table" Territorial, aren't I? It's a guy thing. I didn't piss on it or anything, but you know what I mean.) Well, turns out one of the guys was this dude named James L. Warren, or Jim Warren, or just Jim. (I'm hoping he finds this post on an ego-search. Jim! If you're reading this, you sonofabitch, e-mail me!) Somehow we get to talking about science fiction, and that was all she wrote. Holy shit, this guy knew as much as I did, we'd read the same books, seen the same movies, knew everything! I think we had one other guy hang with us that night, Warren Krull, (who actually found me through the old editthispage.com site and contacted me) other guys would come in and leave, but I think Jim and I were there till they closed the place. Sounds kind of gay, I know, but whatever.

That was such a cool night, just sittin' there shootin' the shit with someone who loved something as much as I did and knew as much, or more, about it than I did. That was a great night. Jim and I became pretty good friends. I talked him into buying a Mac (The original 128K kind!), because I sure as hell couldn't afford one. Jim was funny as hell. Not as funny as me, but still, he made me laugh! We used to do this schtick as Vinnie and Vito, two cab drivers from New Yawk. Jim did this thing about naming your kids, I think it was a routine he cribbed from some comedian, but it was still funny as hell. "Nick! Nick is a good name for a son! You want a name for your kid so that when he pukes in his buddy's car, it's gonna be cool, ya know?" Something like that. Jim would remember. I've killed too many brain cells.

We sat at tables, two to a table, in the classroom and we had name tags in front of us so the instructors knew how to identify the trouble-makers. Jim was a trouble-maker. Jim was over in the corner of the room, I was pretty much in the center. One day, we (the trouble-makers) all turned our name tags around and wrote the names of various countries on them, and then sat there at our tables with one hand over our ears, like the UN representatives, just because it would distract and piss off the instructors who weren't much senior to us. Jim was a pretty talented guy. He drew a cartoon of "Benson Swenson, Fleet Ensign," and he'd post a new one every week on the bulletin board in the classroom. One day we gave one of our instructors a big ration of shit about how useless a weapon the Mk 46 torpedo was. I guess it was pretty bad for the instructor, because the whole class had to stay after school while the commanding officer came down and chewed our asses out, and told us that our job was just to "Put the weapon in the envelope."

If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it. He was right though; but we were just pleased that we managed to piss them off so much.

But I digress. I have lots of stories from Newport. 1985, the last year I had any fun. Until now.

Anyway, I was thinking about Battlestar Galactica and how much fun it would be to talk about it over a beer with Jonathon or Shelley and that recalled Newport and Jim Warren, and a time unlike any other I've had since.

This medium, this effort, it's okay, and I'm grateful for it. Don't really know what I'd do without it; but there's something about sitting in a bar, drinking some beers, talking about things that mean something to you - and this isn't the same thing.

But 1985 wasn't the last year I had any fun. My fifties are so going to rock.

Anybody need a beer?

BSG: Wins a Peabody

Battlestar Galactica won a Peabody award. (Okay, it's at the bottom of the list.) The Peabody award is to broadcast media (you know, those main-stream "dinosaurs"), as Pulitzer is to print media (the other dinosaurs).

But still, pretty cool.

It's Quiet

I'm not sure what to write about, and I don't know if I feel like raisin' hell with marketers just now, so we'll just see where this goes. Maybe into the cooler. Or maybe I'll just delete it.

Perhaps a little cheese first? ("Behold the power of cheese!" Marketers! High five!) I'm taking the Karma Kitten in to see the vet tomorrow, to investigate what appears to be a fur problem. Much of the fur on the right side of my feline friend has disappeared. leaving her looking rather odd. And she's much too nice a cat to look that way. So hopefully tomorrow I'll perform a feat of alchemy and convert dollars into cat fur somehow.

I've been using various search engines to keep up with any Battlestar Galactica news. I'm afraid I'm in full fanboy mode. Though I hasten to add that I haven't gone so far as to use the word "frack" (alternative spelling: "frak") in my day to day conversation. Anyway, I can't find the link now, but some fan site or another was interviewing one of the writers, and the reason why Billy was written out of the series was because the actor who was playing him was getting too much other work. I guess that's good news. In my "perfect world," they'd have been able to offer him more money or something to keep him around. Billy offered a good perspective that's missing now, I think. He was more idealistic, maybe naive, but he hadn't been utterly corrupted yet. He didn't have to search for redemption, he was just looking for love. But at least I know it wasn't just some brain-fart on the part of the writers that killed him off.

I'm not sure what I want to say about the recent spate of general officers speaking out against Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. On the one hand, I suppose it's a good thing. On the other hand, I think they're a day late and a dollar short. I noted that General Pace's defense of Secretary Rumsfeld, at least what I read in the news, was limited to how hard a worker he is, or how dedicated he is. At CNN, the quotation is:

"He does his homework. He works weekends. He works nights," Gen. Peter Pace said. "People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld."

I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet you a beer that's FITREP ("fitness report" the annual evaluations officers receive) language. It's damning him by faint praise. He's patriotic, dedicated, and he works hard. But it doesn't say one damn thing about what kind of job he's doing.

DOD needs reform. I thought Rumsfeld might be the guy to do it. I now know I was wrong about that. I don't know that his resignation would improve the situation markedly, but I don't think history will be especially kind to him. Nor should it be.

I also don't know what to make of Andrew Sullivan's recanting of his position on the war. If that's what it is, because, truthfully, I'm not sure what he's saying. I do think he's monumentally stupid if he believes what he wrote: War is always, in the end, a matter of flexibility and will.

Jesus Christ. If it's not marketers, it's assholes like this who think they can sort of glibly sum up what war "always is, in the end." That's the kind of bone-head, dipshit, feel-good, oblivious, monumentally stupid thinking that got us into this damn war in the first place! And I mean monumentally stupid, sincerely. We'll be erecting monuments as a consequence of this stupidity for years. (Implicit in the "flexibility and will" mischaracterization, is the excuse that any failure in Iraq is to be explained by a lack of sufficient "flexibility" - blame the civilian DOD leadership; and a lack of political "will" - blame the Democrats, the anti-war people, the liberal press, anybody but Andrew Sullivan and his ilk.)

Okay, that's probably enough about all that. I want to quit before the vein in my temple starts throbbing. I probably shouldn't post this, but what the hell. My spiritual betters tell me that I shouldn't really oppose anything because the world is perfect just as it is. And it is. But it's also perfect with me bitching about it too. Just because "everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be," doesn't mean we get to sit around on our asses and feel complacent about it. Not that "bitching" is much better than complacency either.

At least it's not so damn quiet around here.

Carry on.

Remote Control

My parents' new eMac is a Tiger machine (Mac OS 10.4.x) which is incompatible with the version of Remote Desktop I have. No problem, I thought, we'll just use VNC!

Well, I don't know if we didn't configure something properly or something, but using Chicken of the VNC and an OS X VNC server on my parents' eMac was more an exercise in frustration than anything else. It works, but screen updates are so slow as to be "virtually" unusable.

Since I didn't have to write Uncle Sam a check this year, I was debating between buying something or just keeping the money I was prepared to spend on taxes in the bank. Well, this afternoon I had to try to troubleshoot a printing problem with iPhoto using VNC, and that experience decided the issue for me.

Apple released Remote Desktop 3.0 today, and I ordered my copy this afternoon.

Cheese Sandwich: Taxed

Did my taxes this weekend. Probably shouldn't have procrastinated so long. For the first time in a couple of decades, I'm getting a refund.

Meaningless Cheese Sandwich Updates

Enough with the angst, on with the show.

While the weather in parts of the country has been deadly, it's been beautiful here the last few days. Naturally, since it's the weekend, it's going to be less beautiful today. It's going to be warm and cloudy, possibly thunderstorms. But it hasn't rained here in weeks, so that's a bit of a welcome change. A little nicer tomorrow maybe.

I was sitting at my desk in my office as I read the news that Apple had released Boot Camp when my cell phone rang. It was my son asking me if I'd heard that Apple had made it possible to run XP on a Mac. I guess that news travelled fast. I'm not sure it really changes much for me. I will buy an intel Mac eventually, but running XP or Vista has never been a real necessity for me. And if I had to, a virtual machine would seem preferable to rebooting anyway. I kind of get the "Hell freezes over!" response of many, but I can't get that excited about it either way.

I've been looking around for a house and the price of housing at the beaches has gone up faster than the price of gasoline. It's absurd. My concern is that the bubble has expanded about all that it can for now and any house I buy has seen all the appreciation it's going to see for the next several years. In fact, it may even contract somewhat, which would pose a potential problem for me in the event that my job went away. When I mentioned that to a realtor once, she said something to the effect that if you lose your job, you just sell your house, and you still make money! Well, not if the market goes flat and you have to sell at a loss to get out from under it.

It's going to be a stretch for me to live at the beach, which is a shame. I make a decent salary and I've got my navy pension, but these prices are absurd. A 900 square foot, essentially one-room structure kind of divided into thirds with a kitchen at one end, living room-dining room in the middle, and bedroom at the end is listing for $200,000! I think I'm going to stay put for now, see what the market does and what hurricane season has to say. If I have to, I guess I can live on the other side of the intra-coastal waterway, but it would be a disappointment. I've lived at the beaches now for most of 20 years, with a couple of tours in Norfolk breaking it up. I know, other people would love to have my problems. The influx of money into this area is changing things, and not necessarily for the better. (Later note: Saw this in the local fish-wrapper.)

If I missed my dog Mandy before, I guess I shouldn't anymore. I'm surrounded by dogs. Below me is Crash, a medium sized mix of some kind, and a nice dog. Across the breezeway from Crash is A's dog, Jazz, a big friendly black Lab and we've become good friends. Next to me is Tucker a very friendly part-Chow, and directly across the breezeway from me a new neighbor moved in with two Labs, though they seem kind of tall and skinny so they may be mixed. One of them, Coby, is very vocal. Lana is quiet and very affectionate. My neighbor, N, who lives at one end of my unit has two little tiny dogs, Yoda and Geronimo, and I just met another neighbor at the other end of the unit who has a brand new Boxer puppy that is the cutest thing you've ever seen. I saw Mandy yesterday when I picked up Caitie and she's looking good. She'd hurt her right rear leg sometime back when I was taking her to the vet for her ear infection, and for a while I was worried she might have torn a ligament, but she's looking good right now. My neighbor A works long hours, so I help look after Jazz a bit, taking him for a walk when I get home from work. I was talking with N about the number of dogs in the neighborhood and she mentioned that someone could probably make a decent little income just walking dogs. Something to keep in the back of my mind.

I've procrastinated long enough and I suppose I'll have to do my taxes this weekend. Caitie has a sleep-over birthday party to attend, so I'll try to do that tonight. Mine should be fairly straightforward since I can't itemize, though I have to get a form signed by my ex so I can claim one of my kids as a dependent. It'll probably be Chris, and since he worked this year, a little, that might make things a little more complicated. He didn't earn enough to not be a dependent, but I think you have to account for all that just the same. I'm expecting I'll have to write a check, I'm just hoping it's not a very big one. Last year's wasn't, and not much has changed I think. We'll see.

I saw Free Enterprise the other day, after seeing the DVD for sale at the Navy Exchange. I'd heard about it before, but I'd never seen it. It's a pretty funny movie, and parts of it are far too familiar. I also picked up King Kong and started watching it with Caitie last night. She hasn't liked it so far. Too many people getting killed, too many bugs and monsters, and she knows Kong dies in the end. We stopped it shortly after the one-T-Rex-too-many battle, and I don't know if we'll finish it on Sunday or not.

And that's probably enough about all that.

Bringing Meaning To Life

Scott Reynen wrote some interesting things in response to Balance that I've been meaning to comment on.

While he liked the phrase, "bring meaning to life," he found it a little vague. It's that way intentionally, to give the reader something to think about. Of course, I happen to think it's true too, and it says about all it needs to say, but I'm happy to kick it around a bit.

Scott says he thinks life already has meaning, we just have to learn to recognize it, and I differ with him somewhat on this.

For most of us, most of the time, the things we're doing are pretty much meaningless. Most of our actions are governed by unconscious behavior mechanisms built into our bodies. We breathe, we eat, we sleep, we scratch where it itches. Even most of our conscious behaviors are mostly habits and patterns of conditioned responses to familiar situations. We have conscious awareness of what's going on, and we often reason backward from our feelings to explain our actions to ourselves, but most of the time we're kind of sleepwalking through life.

Even on those occasions when we're bringing our cognitive resources fully to bear on a particular problem, chances are it's largely a meaningless problem. The universe doesn't require meaning in order to function, and, for the most part, neither do we.

What I think Scott is referring to when he says we must recognize meaning is information. If all we ever do is recognize it, then that's all it will remain: information. We might get excited about it, or stimulated in some fashion, as I try to explain I was when I learned the information about paying attention to one's center ("center of gravity" for those less metaphysically inclined), or about fixing one's gaze at a fixed point to help facilitate balance. But as long as that information was not being incorporated in my conscious efforts to stand on one leg while holding onto the foot of my other leg and stretching it out, they just remained interesting bits of information. They had no relation to my life until I incorporated them into my life and lived my life in that moment in a way that made that information mean something.

Meaning doesn't exist "out there." Meaning only exists inside a conscious life, and only for moments at a time. Memory is only information, it's not meaning. We can have feelings about those memories, feelings about that information, but it remains just information. Meaning is a living thing, though living is not always a meaning thing. It's subtle. It's not tricky, but it is subtle.

When I was doing those burials at sea, I didn't think about whether or not what I was doing was meaningful. I believe now that, for most of the last ones, it was a meaningful thing. What made it meaningful was a quality I'll call mindfulness. I'm pretty familiar with the term, but I'm not certain everyone will agree with me. What I eventually came to acknowledge or embrace, I'm not sure if "recognize" would be an appropriate word, was that what I was doing in those moments required my mind to be present on that task in those moments because that was what that ceremony required, to do for those people what that ceremony was intended to do. I couldn't be thinking about what I had to do after the ceremony, or how much rust had built up under the nonskid on the fantail, or worry about whether an errant gust of wind might blow ashes back up on my face. This was long before I think I'd ever heard about "mindfulness" and I certainly wasn't thinking about it then. Or about meaning, for that matter. It just seemed like there was a right way to do the thing I was doing, and that meant being present in that moment for those men in that task.

Today, that's just a memory. It's a memory I treasure, but it's just information. It was meaningful in those moments when it was important for it be be meaningful, now it's just information.

I drive an SUV and I know it's not the best choice in transportation for a number of reasons. There's a lot of information out there that can help us make better choices about what kinds of transportation we might choose. It's meaningless unless we use it when we make those transportation choices. Having purchased an SUV, does thinking about that information as I drive to work, perhaps feeling "guilty" or "bad" about my choice make it meaningful? No. The tag line to Groundhog Day is "Don't drive angry. Don't drive angry," which is something Phil says to the woodchuck as he's driving to his first real effort at self-destruction. Groundhog Day is a deeply philosophical movie, but don't let that stop you, it's funny as hell. All the things I've learned about anger and asking "What's going on inside you?" is marvelous information, but it's meaningless unless I am mindful of it in those moments when I drive. So rather than dwell on information that, while useful at some other time, is meaningless after I've purchased an SUV, I try to be mindful of information that can be meaningul if I bring it to life. Trust me, the roads are a little safer when I do this.

Driving is a big part of my practice. And I don't always do very well. But I do a lot better than I did before I learned all these things. But every time I get behind the wheel I have to try to bring the meaning of that information to my life. That meaning only exists, only lives, when I live it.

It doesn't matter if you say "markets are conversations" or that marketers should respect consumers' intelligence, and then you serve on an advisory board of a company that doesn't respect consumers' intelligence in its marketing. It's just meaningless information. We can have feelings about it. It can make us feel good or angry, depending on your point of view, but until someone actually chooses to live their lives according to that information, to bring it to life, it just remains information.

It's just marketing.

I hope that helps a bit on the bringing meaning to life thing. Meaning is a living thing. Life isn't always a meaningful thing.

Scott wrote, "I think listening for meaning is what people are generally doing when they pray or meditate, but I'm hesitant to suggest anyone do those things."

I can't comment on prayer because different people mean different things when they talk about prayer. Meditation is perhaps a little less complicated. Mostly, meditation is like doing push-ups or sit-ups. It's more than that, and some people probably now think I really don't know anything about meditation, but stick with me.

You don't have to be in shape to be a martial artist, but it helps. How meaningful your claim to being a martial artist may be is probably related, in some measure, to what kind of shape you're in. Being a martial artist necessarily involves trying to constantly improve your strength, stamina, coordination, speed, concentration (paying attention!) and timing. If you're not continually trying to improve those things, well, being a martial artist probably doesn't mean very much to you. So doing push-ups and sit-ups and lots of other exercises is a part of being a meaningful martial artist.

Mindfulness is that quality that allows us to bring meaning to life. We need to be able to stop the ego-centric chatter going on inside our frightened minds and be present in the moment in the meaningful context of that moment to bring meaning to life. The more you're able to pay attention to what you're doing in the moment you're doing it, and to bring the information to bear that makes that moment meaningful, the more you can bring meaning to life.

Meditation is like doing push-ups for attention. And about as exciting.

Like exercise, meditation has benefits greater than merely better attention, and some people might value those more than the better attention itself, and I won't argue with them. When I sit, I have a much better day than when I don't.

The past is gone, fixed, and out of reach. It is only memory. It is information. The future remains forever just a possibility. All we ever have are moments to live. Yet our attention, far too much of the time, remains mired in the past, or worried about the future. We are distracted, unfocused, off balance, and more easily exploited by people who, because of their own anxiety or desire (mostly the same thing), seek advantage over us.

Everything in this post is just information. It is, as it exists on your screen or in your mind, meaningless, until you bring it to life. It's not easy, but it's not impossible either. I can do more push-ups now than I ever could as an officer on active duty. Turns out, you just have to do them. Who'd have guessed? It's pretty cool.

Most of the time, I'm just like everyone else, pretty much asleep at the wheel. But in those moments when I'm awake, it's quite a ride.

Another Observation

It seems as though the "market as God" notion has legs outside this small circle.

Competing Messages: Who Is This Man?

One of the dots that kind of connected for me when I was working on the Observations post, was the dependency of marketers on "the market." Often, dependent relationships breed contempt. When I thought of that, I recalled this picture from Seth Godin's talk at Google:

Who is this guy? What is he meant to represent? He's not the "you" mentioned in the slide. He's the "No one."

Here's some of the audio from the presentation when this slide appeared:

Now, I could be wrong, but let's think about this for a while. Seth Godin could have chosen from any number of stock photographs to offer a kind of generic representation of "everyone else" (besides Google). But he chose this one. Why? What does it say?

Is the picture a flattering one? What is it a picture of? It certainly could be a "consumer." I mean, he's sitting in recliner, so he's sedentary, which is what most consuming activity is. He's got a canned beverage in one hand. Maybe he'll recycle it, or maybe it'll just wind up in landfill. He appears to have food of some kind in the other hand, along with crumbs on his shirt. And is that fried chicken on his left? Is he attractive? No. He's fat, probably from all that sedentary consumption. He's balding. Has he shaved recently? Look at the expression on his face. Is that an intelligent expression? Does he care about his appearance? Evidently not, he's in his underwear and socks. But why should he care about his appearance? He's consuming, he's not interacting socially with anyone. There even seems to be a remote control on the right arm of the chair.

Who is he meant to represent?

Us.

Dependency breeds resentment. Marketers resent consumers, because marketers are dependent on consumers.

Listen to Mr. Godin's description of the lady selling peaches. I'll let you decide if you think that's a flattering description, references to "intelligent conversations" notwithstanding.

I'm sure I'll be dismissed as gazing into Caliban's Mirror and seeing what I want to see. But what if what I want to see is the truth?

I don't know for certain if this is how Mr. Godin regards us. I'm sure he would deny it, if someone presented this to him, and suggest that he was just trying to be entertaining and humorous in his talk. But I think this picture is significant, and it may offer a revealing glimpse into Mr. Godin's beliefs.

More about that talk at Google in later posts. There's a lot of interesting material in there.

Social Hygiene: Learning to Swim

Evelyn Rodriguez offered a response to some correspondence we were having, and so now we're going to have it online. Which is fine.

Evelyen shared with me that she's working to change marketing from within. I told her she could not change marketing from within, because marketing is the result of a process. The process isn't "competition," per se, but it is competitive. That is to say, the pernicious aspects of marketing, presumably the ones requiring change, are a product of a competitive process.

Water vapor and carbon dioxide are two products of metabolism and respiration. In high enough concentrations, both products can be injurious. Carbon dioxide can displace oxygen in an enclosed space and you will die. And you can drown in a small quantity of water if you're not careful. Mostly, carbon dioxide and water are benign, very useful compounds. But if you're ignorant, or unlucky, they can kill you.

Marketing is the same thing. It may not kill you physically, unless we consume our way into total environmental collapse, or obesity-related health problems get us, but at least we'll all have heard a good "story" from our marketers as we go gently into that good night. It may not kill you physically, but it can, and will, suck the meaning from your life, even as it tries to sell you meaning to fill the void it helped to create.

A big part of the problem is the number of products and the marketing behind them encountered in the marketplace. Marketers must compete with one another to deliver their messages. The "markets are conversations" metaphor, as inappropriate as it was, has been corrupted to rationalize deliberate efforts by marketers to intrude into our social space, trying to influence us to deliver commercial messages on their behalf during our social interactions.

Individually, probably no single product, and no single marketing effort is unequivocally pernicious. But in the aggregate, the sheer number of products and messages, creates problems from obesity, environmental stress, consumer debt, concentration of wealth into an ever smaller portion of society, and people who are distracted and uncentered, or coping with emotional problems as they struggle to sort out the various things competing for their attention, the countless competing stories they're expected to buy into, and the struggle to satisfy the desires ("passions?") being instilled in them.

You can't change the biological processes that produce carbon dioxide and water vapor without an adverse unintended consequence, that is, ending the life you might be seeking to protect by changing the "process."

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's good enough. Don't get too hung up on the details. The point is, marketing is the result of a competitive process. Competition is encoded in our genes, like it or not, and it generally produces desirable outcomes in the aggregate. I don't think you can ever "change" marketing because it is not a fixed thing, it is an ever-changing result of a competitive process. By "changing" the way some people do marketing, you offer an opportunity for other people to achieve a competitive advantage. You wind up chasing your tail and nothing is ever really accomplished.

The desired end state is not to "change marketing," because marketing is always changing in response to competitive pressures; but to educate people so they know how to make better choices in the presence of marketing. Think of it as teaching people to swim. We teach people how to protect themselves during a thunderstorm. We teach them how to operate machinery safely. We teach people many important lessons so they can minimize the inevitable risks that go with life.

Competition is not a bad thing, it's not exclusively a good thing either. It's an element of a process by which the universe seems to sort out what works and what doesn't. The human race is an unfinished experiment, and the data isn't complete yet. The chances are very good that the universe will sort our species into the "doesn't work" category. But there's a chance we can find a way to keep the experiment going. Even if we're successful, it'll never end, but we might be able to keep the question open long enough for it to be interesting. If we pay attention and are willing to learn.

BIG "if."

Don't get the wrong idea about the whole "universe seems to sort out what works and what doesn't" thing. For each of us, making this life work is all we need to worry about. We're not going to be able to stop the flood of marketing and consumer products that threatens to drown us. We're just going to have to learn how to swim.

Breather

Lots of stuff in the hopper, some of which appeared briefly last night, but I didn't like it so it came down. It wasn't an angry post, but it was probably a little too self-consciously flippant. Or something. Anyway, it'll be back later. Right now there's too much "noise," so I'll wait till my head stops spinning.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to note Tom Delay is resigning. Before getting too happy, bear in mind that there are any number of people who want to be just as powerful and influential as he was, thinking they're smart enough to do it without breaking the law, or at least without getting caught. Plus, if Delay manages to stay out of jail, he'll be behind the scenes exercising the most liquid form of authority: Money. But I think he's definitely past his zenith. It's all downhill from here, I think. Of course, someone probably said that about Nixon once or twice too.

New update to Mac OS X is out. Haven't installed it yet, probably tonight.

New updates to Tinderbox, Mellel, Comic Life Deluxe and Delicious Library also on the street.

Happy to read that all seventeen souls walked away from the crash of that C-5 Galaxy yesterday. Tough way to start the week though.

I put the Pioneer 111 DVR in on Friday last week. Had some problems getting things started back up again, but all's well that ends well. Works great.

Moments to Live

Scott Reynen offers some worthwhile comments on Balance.

More, another time.

Until then, consider the meaning of time.

Not to, you know, go all Hugh MacLeod on anyone or anything.

Ken's Kids

Ken Loo has two very cute kids. You're a fortunate man, Ken.

Balance

Since we've had new instructors at the dojong, we've had some new warm-up and stretching routines. One of the things we do is probably a yoga pose of some kind. While standing, you raise one leg and then grasp the inside of your heel or instep in the palm of your hand. Then raise and extend your leg to its full extension. So you're standing on one leg, holding the other leg outstretched, and your other arm extends to the opposite side to keep your balance. Kind of looks like a "Y" if you can get your leg up high.

I couldn't do this for the longest time. Now I can. Nobody told me how to do it, I had to figure it out for myself. But it helped me remember some things I had been introduced to, but hadn't managed to learn.

A few years ago, I attended taekwondo class on my lunch break. A lot of the time, I was the only student in class. One of my instructors had also practiced aikido, which is a very interesting martial art, and I asked him about it. It's often better to show than to tell, so he offered to do a drill with me that he had to do in aikido.

We faced each other, feet about should width apart. I grasped his wrists in my hands. He told me that my task was to ensure that neither of my feet ever left the floor. I was to remain standing, with both feet touching the floor, no matter what he did with his arms.

He moved his arms and it wasn't much more than a few seconds and I was lifting one of my feet in order to keep my balance.

Then it was my turn. He grasped my arms, and I was to move my arms in such a way that he would have to come up off one of his feet. And so I moved my arms this way and that, and his feet stayed firmly on the ground.

So I thought it was something special about the way he moved his arms when I was grasping his wrists. So we switched again, and I paid attention to which way he moved his arms, and again I was up on one foot within seconds.

So we switched again, and I tried to copy the motion of his arms, to no effect.

So then he explained, you have to pay attention to your center. When he was moving his arms, I was paying attention to my arms and my upper body and my feet, which I knew I didn't want to move. What I should have been paying attention to was my center.

We switched again and again I failed.

We switched again, and I watched what he did as I tried to move him off balance. I noticed that most of his motion was confined to his hips. He would raise them and lower them, and twist them from side to side in response to my torquing his upper body around.

So we switched again and I tried to pay attention to my "center," being my center of gravity. This time I went several seconds before I lifted a foot. I failed because it was hard to keep my attention on my center, it was always shifting to my hands that held his wrists, and my feet that I was afraid to move.

We did the drill several more times, and each time I got a little bit better, but I never did it as well as my instructor did.

We never did that drill again, but I recall that it was a significant insight to me in the larger context of my life as well. I wrote it up here, and I suppose if I can find it, I ought to link to it. The idea is that too often we allow our attention to be seized by peripheral events, and we lose focus on our center and we allow ourselves to be pulled off-balance, from which it is difficult to respond to changing situations. The result being, we frequently fall on our ass.

Which is, I think, a marvelous insight. Having had it, recorded it, shared it and congratulated myself for it, I did what I do with many of my insights: I forgot about it.

I remembered it doing the stretch.

One of the long walls in the dojong is a mirror wall. You can see yourself as you move into a particular stance, or execute a block, you can focus on yourself as a target for a strike. It's not ideal, but it's not bad either.

You can also focus on how stupid you look. Which I, too frequently, do.

Doing that stretch, I'd see myself kind of hopping around on one leg, the other bent with me trying to hang onto my foot while at the same time wanting to drop it to the floor, so as not to fall over; and feeling profoundly silly doing it. Meanwhile, the instructor was up there doing it and making it look easy.

Then the aikido drill came back to me, and something I learned about balance some time ago. The eyes play an important role in maintaining our balance. The brain integrates motion data from the eyes and the inner ear and figures out how it has to move to remain upright. If your eyes are moving around a lot, you get low-quality visual data. A lot of "noise." If you focus on a fixed point, you get high-quality visual data, all the motion is from your body and not from your eyes moving around. It's much easier to find and keep your balance.

Anyway, it came to me that this was an attention problem. I fixed my eyes on a feature in the mirror that was on the opposite wall. I also tried to focus my attention on my center. Not on my knee, because I was unhappy that it was bent and not locked out. Not on my hand, because I didn't want to let go of my foot. Not on my other foot, because I didn't want to be hopping around. And not on how silly I looked. I tried not to focus on all the things I was afraid of doing wrong, and just tried to focus on where my center was.

And I could do the pose. Knee locked out. Not hopping around. Not looking silly. Well, kind of silly. About as silly as a middle-aged, short pudgy guy standing on one leg in his pajamas looks. But there's not much you can do about that!

And it was a pretty amazing feeling.

But here's the thing, I kind of knew all this stuff before, it didn't really matter, did it? I think you could reasonably say I believed it, don't you think? I didn't disbelieve it. But it didn't matter, because even though I knew it and believed it, I still couldn't do the pose. If we say something doesn't matter, that's another way of saying it's meaningless, is it not? Look at a fixed point, focus on your center, that's just information. Believe it, disbelieve it, it's just information. It only mattered when I did it. It only mattered when I lived it.

Think about that when I say that life is meaningless, we must bring meaning to life.

Then think about that when you read things like "the market for something to believe in is infinite." Think about that information. In order for that to matter, in order for it to have meaning, someone has to live that information. Someone has to sell something to believe in, to someone. There are a couple of problems with that. First, there are many good things to believe in that are perfectly free. One might even say that "the best things in life are free." So someone selling something to believe in has to overcome that hurdle, and I don't think there's an honest way to do that. Second, I've just tried to show that "something to believe in" remains something meaningless, until someone lives it. Until someone brings it to life. Meaning is a living thing.

It's not the lack of things to believe in that is the source of the feeling of emptiness in many people's lives. It's the lack of living. And who can sell you that?

A Correction

I received an e-mail from Kathy Sierra wherein she objected to my characterization of her use of the word "passion." She maintained that it is not intended to mean mere "enthusiasm," and cited a number of posts where she explains what she means by "passion."

The posts she referred to are at this link, and at this one.

While I am not persuaded that the difference overcomes my objections, I promised that I would point to her own words where she explains what she means by "passion."

I also note that the use of "passion" in this context, whether one agrees with my complaint about it or not, remains, I think, a legitimate example of the use of religious themes or allusions for secular promotional purposes; although I think Kathy would object to my characterization of her usage as "promotional." To which I think I would respond that her use of the word is intended to advance or promote her views on what a desirable user experience ought to be, hence "promotional."

Reasonable people may disagree.