Busy Week

The last week has been crazy with me working something like 9 out of the last 10 days, plus being on the phone or biking up to the doctor's office whenever I'm not working. Today is the first day I've had to catch my breath and get caught up with all my house-husband stuff.

The doctor issue is two-part. The first is just the usual scrambling that goes with changing doctors. I have no idea why switching doctors is more difficult, time-consuming and expensive than moving from one side of the country to the other, but it's certainly a pain. Then to keep things interesting, my A1C came back so bad (14+) that my doctor nearly sent EMS to the apartment, convinced that I had lapsed into a coma when I didn't call the office back right away. When I told him that the reason I hadn't called until the next day was because I was busy biking the 7-mile distance to my job, he just shook his head. I get that a lot. My other blood work also showed all the markers of final-stage leukemia, which also had him a bit worried, but those all disappeared on retesting, so either it was something transient related to whatever has been killing my lungs since the first of the year, or a lab screw-up. In any case, I seem to have appeased the gods of the medical industrial complex for a few months at least. Maybe now I'll finally have time to bake a couple loaves of bread.

Proportional representation has some downsides compared to the winner-take-all approach we use here in the United States, but one of its major advantages is the opportunity for fringe parties to develop:

Four members of the German Pirate Party have been elected to the Saarland state parliament, the second state in the country in which the party, associated with copyright issues, has gotten a foothold.

Disappointingly, no eye-patches or parrots; just geeks looking to reform copyright law, unlike the  Polish Beer-Lover's Party (or PPPP, no doubt in reference to the fact that you only rent beer), which is exactly what the name would lead one to expect. The Polish Beer-Lover's Party is, alas, no more, the victim of a split between the large- and small-beer factions.

Best Buy is closing another 50 stores and refocusing on being a cell phone reseller. Thus history repeats as Best Buy follows the business model of Radio Shack, which transformed itself about 15 years ago from a store that was actually interesting to enter, into a chain of cell phone kiosks. Way to innovate, Best Buy, and good luck with that.

Bigger picture is the continued implosion of big-box retail as they try to race Amazon to the bottom on price while slashing knowledgeable staff and customer service, the very areas they could give Amazon a serious spanking. But when you view your customers not as fellow human beings, but amorphous blobs of protoplasm labeled "consumers" contributing to the corporate bottom line, it wouldn't occur to you to act any differently.

Speaking of which, it looks like on April 1, Blogger will be forcing everyone to switch to the crappy new "minimalist" design that is supposed to look better on a smartphone or tablet. Having never used either of those, I can't say if the new design meets that goal or not, but on a computer with a real screen, it's like a trip in the way-back machine to how web sites looked in 1994. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

All the yapping about the shooting of Trayvon Martin continues. The county has had to close down its office in Sanford twice in as many weeks due to "rallies" by "supporters" of the Martin family. Meanwhile, in spite of attempts by the local news stations to slant the story in favor of Martin, details continue to leak out that show him as anything but the innocent little Boy Scout victimized by the big bad white dude (who was in fact Hispanic). Meanwhile, the Black Panthers have announced a $10K reward for the location of Zimmerman (the shooter) who has gone into hiding for obvious reasons. Here's the thing: Hispanics as a rule hate blacks with a white-hot hatred, and the feeling is certainly mutual. We had a number of incidents in the ghetto tax prep office between black customers and Hispanic staff as well as between black and Hispanic customers. And I'm sure it didn't go unnoticed by either side that my white cracker self and the Hispanic women were inside the air-conditioned office doing taxes while all the black employees were outside on the side of the road wearing a humiliating costume and waving a sign. Bottom line is that a number of people are attempting to light a fuse in the mistaken notion that the resulting explosion will somehow benefit them. The last thing we need is another long, hot summer.

Well, the bread ain't gonna bake itself. Later.

Oliphaunts!!

Our baby elephant was playing shy last time we made a run down to Animal Kingdom, so here's some video of a different one gettin' a bath:

In an Uproar

Sanford is in an uproar over a white guy shooting an unarmed black kid. The details are still murky at best, but that hasn't stopped everyone from Al Sharpton to the Federal Justice Department (who still has utterly failed to even slow down the criminal activity in our major banks) from jumping all over this. Never mind all the other murders, rapes, robberies, car-jackings or even the 108 registered sex offenders in Sanford. A white guy shot a black kid. In an election year!!! So we have protests and calls for resignations and fights in the city council, all before the police even have time to collect evidence and interview witnesses. Nice.

I am once again wondering if the morons in the media or any of the self-appointed "community leaders" have clue one about the damage they cause outside their little gated enclaves? None of which has effected us personally other than the constant yapping on the boob tube. We may have a Sanford mailing address, but we don't live, work, or frankly even drive through Sanford proper now that I no longer work for the ghetto tax prep store.

In spite of the second course of antibiotics and the steroid kicker, I'm still battling whatever is trying to kill me by slow suffocation. Things have improved mostly due to the steroids loosening things up, but I still have a lot of fluid in my lungs and now I have a sinus infection that I picked up while on antibiotics. Sweet. I have an appointment next week to follow up on this and labs, etc. We'll see what the new doc has to say.

Not much else going on. Debbie's work seems to be going in fits and starts with the phones ringing off the hook some days and other days so dead everyone is counting the holes in the ceiling tiles. As usual, the next batch of new-hires will be hitting the floor just as busy season ends; too late to help out when things were crazy and the company was losing customers because everyone was so backed up, but just in time to drive everyone's number into the dirt so management can stop paying bonuses.

The carpet project I was supposed to be working on this weekend was canceled, so now I'm spending my time on "special projects" trying to kill time. Normally, there is no lack of work, but it has been incredibly slow the last week or so. So I dust and scrape old gum and rearrange shelves and "shelf read" (check every single book on the shelves to make sure they are in the correct order) and other fun little bits. No one knows what is going on with the carpet project; the company discovered some problems when doing our branch (the first) and now is trying to renegotiate with the county for more money to do the other library branches the right way. What that means for the quality of the work they did at our branch is fuzzy, but they won't back the work at the other branches unless they get the additional money to do it right. While the county seems to be doing OK budget-wise, I doubt they have several tens of thousands sitting around not allocated to anything as a "just in case" fund.

Well, I have to go start getting ready for a long day of reading Dewey decimal numbers.

Miscellaneous

The energy is definitely lacking. There has been something attacking my lungs since January. I've had one course of antibiotics already and am now on my second with a massive steroid kicker. It doesn't seem to be getting any better. Maybe I should just go dig my dying hole.

The good news is that I am rid of the ghetto clinic and have a real doctor now, complete with an M.D. after his name and everything! It's like I'm living in the First World or something! I've also started research into getting some of my meds cheaper and discovered another strike against the ghetto clinic/pharmacy. First, they lied about/were ignorant about which of my meds are eligible for discount or free. Second they lied about/were ignorant about how the meds could be delivered to me, insisting I had to pick them up at the ghetto pharmacy, when in fact they could have been delivered directly from the manufacturer to my house. And third, they were marking up meds they were getting for free with a handling charge. Done and done.

Good Tom the Dancing Bug:

Who would have thought we would ever be in such a place. The only "good news" is that Peak Oil will bring an end to much of this nonsense over the next few generations. Not that what replaces it will necessarily be any better, but at least the opportunity will be there.

With my crazy work schedule, we haven't had any time to do much of anything. We did manage a quick trip down to Animal Kingdom on Thursday. It wasn't as much fun as usual what with me stopping to gasp for air every 20 steps or so, but it was still a break from sitting in the ghetto apartment. We were hoping to see Jabali, the baby elephant born last August, but I think Mom is keeping him hid away from the tourists. I caught a quick glimpse of the two of them behind the boulders first thing in the morning, and nothing when we went back later in the day.

Speaking of work, they did manage to get the carpet installed in our branch, although everything was done to screw it up and the job wasn't finished until late Monday. We opened anyway and just had the unfinished parts roped off. Now that it's done, we can hopefully put the library completely back together for the first time since I started volunteering there 18 months ago. And because it was so much fun to do it once, I'm being loaned out to another branch next week so I can do it all again. Wheeee!! At least after that, my schedule goes back to something that approximates normality, although the "Ric never EVER gets a Sunday off even if he requests it" rule still seems to be in effect. We'll see what the next schedule looks like.

And I'm probably getting ahead of things saying this, but we may be moving. Yea, yea; big sooprise: Ric and Debbie are thinking about relocating. We don't have anything at this point other than a vague possibility. And it won't be a long move this time, just a quick relocate to the "good" side of Florida.

And that's all I have for today.

Bad Day at Goldman Sachs

The current management at Goldman Sachs is probably too busy swimming in the gold coins in their vaults, Uncle-Scrooge-McDuck-style, to notice, but a dark cloud has eclipsed the sun at 200 West Street:

The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

You can read the rest of Greg Smith's exit piece at the New York Times. The response from Goldman Sachs is the usual, "We disagree! We're fabulous people!" The stock market has pushed the stock down a tad so far this morning, but I'm sure that will be corrected fairly quickly. After all, GS is extremely efficient at Hoovering money out of their clients wallets, and I'm certain no op-ed from some disgruntled, former employee will change that.

I'm off to see if a doctor in private practice is any better at 3rd grade math than the "doctor" at the ghetto clinic. While I'm there, I'm going to see if he has some idea why I can't walk the four steps from our living room to the kitchen without getting out of breath.

The Stupid! It Burns!!!

First we have the idiot meth-head who burns down a 3,500-year-old tree while using it as her personal drug den, takes pictures of the fire, then posts them on the internet for the entire world to see.

Now we have an idiot pot-head who steals a judge's nameplate while on parole for petty theft, takes pictures of himself posing with his haul, then posts them on the internet for the entire world to see.

Both live in Florida, of course.

I remember with great fondness when connecting to the internet required at least a room temperature IQ.

Greatest Literary Analysis Evar!!

Davey Jones, RIP

Once again, deliberately avoiding the news caused me to miss the announcement of the death of someone I marginally care about. Davey Jones, one of the four members of the made-for-TV band, The Monkeys, died last week on Leap Day. I was a big fan of the TV show, but in my defense, I was about five.

Anyway, I don't have much else. I never saw them live and never owned any of their albums until I ended up with a reunion double-CD from sometime in the mid-1990's. They were just a TV show I watched after I got home from kindergarten.

If a train leaves Chicago going west at 50mph...

So I was peddling home yesterday into a 20mph wind, barely managing to hold a 9mph average, when it occurred to me that I was really going close to 30mph air speed. If the freaks of physical conditioning in the Olympics get wind-speed adjustments while jumping and running around, why shouldn't a fat, bald 47-year-old guy huffing and wheezing his way home from work?

So yea; I averaged 29.7mph over my 7-mile ride home.

Neil Tyson is one of the most articulate space geeks in human history:



It's not a time-lapse, but you will still want to watch it full-screen and hi-def.

Today is going to be a sort of catching-up-with-stuff-I'm-going-to-get-behind-on-over-the-next-few-days kind of day. If that makes sense. Tomorrow, the library is closing at noon so we can spend the next eight hours trying to relocate several tens of thousands of books while somehow keeping them in the correct order. We all have Friday off so the carpet people can do their thing, then we all come back on noon Saturday so we can move all the books back and be ready to open Sunday at the normal time. So far I've been unimpressed with the planning phase of this little project, but maybe our Fearless Leader will manage to pull it together. Or this could be a major disaster. In either case, my part is simple; "I lift books up and put them down." Life is so much easier when someone else is in charge. In any case, I'm trying to get everything done today (cookies, bread, meals for the next few days, laundry, etc.) that I won't have time for over the next few days.

Well, the no-bakes should be cool enough to peel off the foil, so gotta go.

Politics and Tree Haters

There are two famous trees a couple miles from our apartment, called The Senator and Lady Liberty. I mentioned a while back that we had gone to visit them and took a couple pictures. They are supposed to be a couple of the tallest and oldest trees in Florida, although both were snapped off in a hurricane in 1925. The largest, The Senator, is estimated to be 3,500 years old.

The Senator

I think I also mentioned that a few days after that photo was taken, The Senator had burned to a stump for some unknown reason that most definitely was not deliberate. Every news article had the obligatory quote from some government official that while the cause was still not known, what was known was that the fire was natural, possibly lightning (even though there hadn't been any in some time) or maybe even the wind rubbing a couple branches together.

But with this being Florida and all, you know the real story is going to involve not just stupid people, but stupid people and drugs:

In January, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service initially suspected an arsonist, and also believed that lightning could have caused the fire.

However, through Crimeline tips, they learned Barnes and a friend were inside the tree taking methamphetamine.

Agents said Barnes took pictures of the fire and downloaded the images to her cellphone and computer. Officials said she showed people the images, and said "I can't believe I burned down a tree older then Jesus."

I can't believe even a meth-head would light a fire inside a tree, then post pictures on the internet.

Speaking of tree-haters, I did an amended return using the Intuit software I'm considering using for The Tax Geek thing. When it came time to print the paper copies for the IRS, the client and myself, I knew the software would print a full copy of everything. I only wanted copies of what changed, which amounted to about a dozen pages of paper in total. So I went into the appropriate screen, spending several minutes deselecting all the unnecessary worksheets and forms, did a print preview to make sure of what I was printing, hit the Print button and watched as a three-inch stack of paper came spewing out my printer. Nice.

Why do you hate the planet, Intuit? Why?

I've been trying to stay away from politics, mainly because the entire "conversation" completely misses the point on every subject. I find the entire process not just sickening, but a waste of time I could use to do something more productive, like watching South Park reruns. A perfect example is the current kerfuffle kicked up by one Sandra Fluke, a law student at Jesuit-run Georgetown, who has recently discovered her inalienable right to birth control paid for by someone else. The "conversation" is largely about Ms. Fluke's inability to keep her knickers on vs. her right to be the Georgetown Slut. Jerry Pournelle attempts to steer the conversation back to what is important:

Sandra Fluke’s solution is to demand that taxpayers pay for her contraceptive pills and devices. She can’t afford to have sex because of the risk of pregnancy, and it is up to us to provide her with the wherewithal for contraception. She hasn’t spoken about protection from STD’s but I think it safe to assume she believes we ought to pay for her insurance for treatment of those when they fail. Of course there are contraception means that are also somewhat effective against STD’s, and they are considerably cheaper than the ones Sandra Fluke demands; but apparently the choice of what we pay for is not up to us. Sandra Fluke has a right to indulge in sex when and however she wants, and to the means of contraception that she wants, and it is up to the taxpayers to pay for it.

The real question here is simple: how do you acquire the obligation to pay for Sandra Fluke’s birth control devices and pills? But in the great flap over her virtue that question seems to have been lost.

This is, of course, the key question regarding a great many things taxpayers pay for. Not can we afford it (an important consideration) or is it constitutional to force people to act against their religious beliefs (another important consideration), but where did I acquire the obligation to be forced to pay for the easily-known consequences of the actions of others? That is the question in nearly any political debating point you care to name, yet is completely absent from public discourse.

Which is why I've gone from being politically active, to the point of once running for public office, to near-complete disengagement. It's difficult to come up with the correct answers, when one is not even allowed to ask the correct questions.

In any case, I'm off to get ready for a short day at work. This weekend, I'm working extended hours to move all the books and other debris out of the way of the carpet people, then move it all back once the new carpet is on the floor. If this goes as well as the painting project did, the library will end up being closed for three weeks instead of three days. Wish me luck.

The Light of Stars

As always, play this full screen at high def and crank the volume.

There's No Tomorrow

Enjoy!

Happy Leap Day!

Happy Leap Day to everyone!

What are you doing with your extra day this time around?

"AC Main Bus 1 is on."

Winter is over; 80 and humid yesterday and it is supposed to get near 90 today. Of course tomorrow will be back down in the mid 60's, according to the weather liars. Bottom line is that for the first time since September, the AC is on. We have it set at 80 degrees, so it doesn't run very much. Mostly it just dries things out a little. When I was doing our twice-a-year deep clean yesterday, everything felt wet; the furniture, the carpet, our bed, our clothes. As much as I hate to give money to the power company, there just isn't an effective way to circulate air through our apartment. (If you're curious, the title refers to this little bit of history.)

Working for the county continues to be... well... interesting. My "boss" just handed out the schedules for next week (which starts on Sunday) on Wednesday, then had to correct and re-distribute them yesterday. According to the county rules (or maybe the library rules; I never can tell), our "time cards" have to be in prior to the Tuesday before the week we actually work if we expect to get paid on time, which is obviously difficult to do when the schedule isn't finalized until Thursday. At least I think that's the rule; I got tired of being bitched at for not having my "time card" submitted a sufficient number of days before actually working any of the time "worked", and began putting them into the system three weeks ahead. That the system allows me to even do that tells you everything you need to know about the lameness of Seminole County.

Then I took a look at said schedule. First, I'm scheduled to work on a weekend I requested off. I expected that only because I found out after submitting the time off request that we were getting new carpet in the library that weekend, and it was going to be an all-hands thing to move all the books and shelving, then move them back when the carpet people were done. Fine. Except one of the other pages has the weekend off. This makes zero sense, especially when people from other branches are coming over to help out so one of our own can have the weekend off.

One issue was finally resolved yesterday. It's been bugging me ever since I started working there that I'm expected to know all these rules that are not written down anywhere. Well, they are written down; it's just that they had been misplaced. If you saw the office my "boss" uses, you would understand. So now I'm supposed to read this thing, then sign a page in the back that I have read it. I don't get a copy, of course, and I'm sure within a week of me reading and signing the thing, it will again be lost in a pile of junk.

What. A. Joke.

In other news, I'm still in a holding pattern waiting on the IRS to send out my Enrolled Agent card. I looked at another office on Wednesday and I really like it. It's in one of the old buildings in the original Lake Mary downtown and it's the cheapest so far. The building is owned by a local guy who runs a gelato shop right across the street, so I won't be dealing with some absentee landlord. The building was hit by a crane about a year ago, so everything has been redone. And yes, the crane story makes me feel like Garp (watch for the airplane). We'll be safe there.

We received a notice yesterday that someone from Fanny Mae will be coming by to inspect our apartment. We always get picked for these things because we actually take care of our place and don't have 17 illegal Mexicans living here. I'm not sure why Fanny wants to see the place unless we're about to get new landlords. Or the old ones are behind on their payments. Anyway, that was part of the motivation for yesterday's deep clean, which needed to be done anyway. I have a couple last minute things to take care of so the place will look all Ward and June Cleaver. Debbie even lit up one of our aroma melts so the apartment will smell all cinnamon-apple-y instead of smelling like poor.

And that's pretty much been our week. Later.

...And We're Back Online

There was screaming. There was weeping. There was cursing. There was begging. But at long last, I have my main system back up and running.

We had some other errands this morning, so while we were out and about, we hit Best Buy and picked up a video card. It was less than a c-note, which made me happy. Alas, happy wasn't meant to last. As soon as we got home, I pulled the old video card and plugged in the new one. Still no joy. I tried HDMI. I tried VGA. Still nothing. So I did what I should have done in the first place. I pulled the new card out, uncapped the motherboard's on-board VGA and ran with that. Ha! Everything was major screwed up, but at least I could finally see what was going on.

The video card going out had thrown the system into some sort of major meltdown mode. It took several reboots to install all the updates for Windows, Security Essentials and whatever else thought it needed an update. Once everything was nice and stable, I powered down and reinstalled the new video card, plugged in the HDMI cable and Light! The display was weird, but at least I had one. I ran the driver install, rebooted and ran the monitor calibration. It was like nothing ever happened.

Except my 2011 tax software was gone. It was physically on the disk, but Windows didn't know anything about it. All that disk activity when I couldn't see what was happening must have been Windows doing a rollback. No big, just rerun the installation program, right? Heh. Like anything on a PC is ever that easy. It installed, but wouldn't run. It wouldn't uninstall because it thought it was running. But it wasn't. Reboot. It still wouldn't uninstall because it was running. But it wasn't. OK, time for drastic measures. Wipe out all traces of the software from the C: drive and go after the registry with fire and sword using regedit. Cross fingers. Reboot. Install. All is well.

So a hundred bucks and four hours later, I'm back where I was on Wednesday evening. It's so great having these labor saving devices that make our life easy.

Speaking of things that should be easy but aren't, one of our errands today was to begin the process of leaving our too-big-to-fail bank. We started using Chase when we were moving around the country so we wouldn't have to keep opening and closing bank accounts every time we moved. But recently, every monthly statement comes with a bunch of legalese regarding monthly fees. Now it's bad enough that banks no longer pay any meaningful interest (Chase paid us $.04 in 2011), but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay the bank to use my money for their profit. So with each change, we would burrow through the mouse-print to make sure we wouldn't get tagged. We haven't yet, but the rules were getting more and more complex and obscure, and there is only one reason a bank does that. The last straw was the monthly statement for The Tax Geek; they were raising the minimum balance on business accounts from $5,000 to $25,000. Or possibly $7,500. Both numbers were given as the new minimum average daily balance in different bullet points, and rather than scour through the 3-point type to figure it out, we decided Chase couldn't charge us a monthly fee if we didn't have any accounts with them. I found a local credit union with a branch right by Debbie's work, so that's where we will be doing our banking from now on.

Bu-bye JP Morgan Chase.

And to wrap things up, an interview with John Michael Greer, author of The Archdruid Report:

Dead PC

When I tried to use my computer yesterday morning, all I had was a black screen. The drive light was going nuts, then went solid green for several minutes, then nothing. Uh oh. I did a full power-down reboot, but no joy. The fan on the video card hasn't worked in months, but by running with the cover off, I've been mostly getting away with it. Every once in a while, it overheats and I need to leave the machine off while the video card cools down. Then all is well until the next warm day. It had hit 80 on Wednesday, so I powered everything off and pointed a fan into the case until the video card was stone cold. Nothing.

Crap.

So tonight's agenda is a trip to Best Buy to grab a cheap video card. I don't need anything spectacular; just something that can pump 1080p out an HDMI cable. Given that this is the second failed ATI card since I purchased this PC in 2008, I'm a bit shy of ATI. One failure is bad luck. Two is just bad. I'll see what Best Buy has in stock and for how much; I'm really hoping to get out of this without spending a crap-ton of money.

Stupid PC's.

Meanwhile our ancient Toshiba we bought when we left Michigan in 2006 is still chugging along, although it is in desperate need of more memory and a direct network connection (the wireless is painfully slow). Other than that, it works perfectly for what we do with it.

That's it. If you don't hear anything from me for a while, you'll know I lost patience with some pimple-faced dweeb and stabbed him to death with my old video card.

Grab Bag Post

I'm not sure what we've been doing, but we always seem to be busy. We did find time to spend the day wandering around Disney World last Thursday after I had a day to recover from jury duty. Normally we pick a park and spend the day there, but the last couple of trips we decided we need to figure out how to use the various Disney transportation methods to park hop. Our last time out we rode the boat from Hollywood Studios to Epcot; this time we ditched the car at Epcot and rode the monorail to Magic Kingdom. The standard line about Epcot is that it is what the future was supposed to look like in 1970, and nowhere does that future look shabbier than on the monorail. Someone needs to tell Disney that a jerky train that tops out at 40mph wouldn't have impressed any railroader from the 1890's when trains routinely hit 100mph while running smooth enough for passengers to have drinks on their table, and did so without breaking down several times a day. Having a recorded voice trying to convince me that I'm riding in the future of transportation while being knocked around in my seat looking at the train car's chipped and dented interior and the stained carpet smelling slightly of piss was just sad. I guess riding the trains in Italy has wrecked the glory of Disney's monorail for me.

But otherwise, it was the perfect Disney day with temps in the high 60's to low 70's and sunny with a slight breeze. We hit our usual favorites and tried out a couple things we hadn't done before, but mostly we just wandered, watched people and eavesdropped on their conversations. We had lunch next to one of my nieces as she was at about age eight. She said something (in that oh-so-serious way that only eight-year-old girls can do) when she was ordering her lunch that had me laughing so hard behind my napkin, I almost had to leave the table. That in itself was worth the drive down Death Highway.

So I was reading one of my regular web pages this morning and someone mentions that Whitney Houston was dead. Wait. When... What? So I head to The Store of All Human Knowledge (you probably know it as Wikipedia) and sure 'nuf: Whitney Houston was found dead Saturday at age 48. I was never that into her music and I'm not sure that I could name one song she sang, although I would probably recognize the ones from that one movie she did with that one guy. I do recall that she had an awesome voice and was one of the last of the truly talented before Auto-Tune destroyed what was left of the music industry.

And you kids get off my lawn!!!

Years ago, I remember reading an article by a biologist about Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that has a weird life cycle that involves living in rats for most of its life, but reproducing in cats. So the parasite essentially tweaks the brains of rats so instead of being terrified by the smell of cat urine (a rat's primary predator) they are attracted to it, thus increasing the chances of a cat eating the infected rat and allowing Toxo to complete its life cycle. It was known then that Toxo infected a significant part of the human population, but was assumed to be harmless other than causing problems in pregnant women.

Well, maybe not:

The subjects who tested positive for the parasite had significantly delayed reaction times. Flegr was especially surprised to learn, though, that the protozoan appeared to cause many sex-specific changes in personality. Compared with uninfected men, males who had the parasite were more introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, and inclined to disregard rules. Infected women, on the other hand, presented in exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.

And:

Webster is more circumspect, if not downright troubled. “I don’t want to cause any panic,” she tells me. “In the vast majority of people, there will be no ill effects, and those who are affected will mostly demonstrate subtle shifts of behavior. But in a small number of cases, [Toxo infection] may be linked to schizophrenia and other disturbances associated with altered dopamine levels—for example, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and mood disorders. The rat may live two or three years, while humans can be infected for many decades, which is why we may be seeing these severe side effects in people. We should be cautious of dismissing such a prevalent parasite.”

...Just as worrisome, says Torrey, the parasite may also increase the risk of suicide. In a 2011 study of 20 European countries, the national suicide rate among women increased in direct proportion to the prevalence of the latent Toxo infection in each nation’s female population.

Now before anyone launches a world-wide cat eradication pogrom, there is one important point the article makes:

Indoor cats pose no threat, he says, because they don’t carry the parasite. As for outdoor cats, they shed the parasite for only three weeks of their life, typically when they’re young and have just begun hunting. During that brief period, Flegr simply recommends taking care to keep kitchen counters and tables wiped clean. (He practices what he preaches: he and his wife have two school-age children, and two outdoor cats that have free roam of their home.) Much more important for preventing exposure, he says, is to scrub vegetables thoroughly and avoid drinking water that has not been properly purified, especially in the developing world, where infection rates can reach 95 percent in some places. Also, he advises eating meat on the well-done side—or, if that’s not to your taste, freezing it before cooking, to kill the cysts.

For years, Scott Adams has operated under the assumption that humans are just meat puppets under the control of brain chemistry and free will is just a lie we tell ourselves. Now it turns out our puppet masters are parasites running their own personal agenda instead of our own brains.

[Aside: How long before some lawyer uses "the parasite in my brain made me do it" as their client's defense?]

And I'll leave you with yet-another time lapse video. What can I say? I'm a sucker for these.

Aurora

Nothing to add other than make it full screen and crank up the volume.

Crazy Lady Lawyer

I'm starting to believe there is something in the water here in central Florida. I've spent the last two days deeply involved in the Seminole County justice system as a member of a jury. The case was simple; a misdemeanor incident to another, larger case. The court had only scheduled the courtroom for Tuesday (Monday is used to select all the juries for the entire week, which saves a great deal of time over the traditional way of doing jury duty.) The expectation was that we would be out early afternoon at the latest. Well....

Everything started off efficiently enough with the judge telling us how real courtrooms work as opposed to how they work on TV. We made it through opening statements from the lawyers and the prosecution's entire list of witnesses by 10:30AM. Sweet. Then the defense took over and everything went off the rails. The first problem that became immediately apparent was that there really was no defense. The police car video, which we would come to loath with a white-hot passion, pretty much told the story. Secondly, every defense witness was either a provable liar, contradicting what was clearly visible on the video, or completely supported the prosecution's case. But the biggest problem was the defense attorney: she was probably one of the most unpleasant human beings I've ever met, and seemingly had no concern other than wasting our time while collecting her taxpayer-funded fee. By the end, it seemed obvious to me that she would stoop to any level to force a mistrial.

She wanted to show the police car video, the only physical evidence, over and over; forward, backward, pause, play, skip back and play the same few seconds again and again. Which all would be bad enough, but she didn't know how to use her laptop or the video software she was using. The prosecution team bailed out her sorry ass a number of times, including loaning her their laptop, then finally feigned ignorance out of self-defense. She constantly violated the basic rules of court behavior, requiring the jury to be tossed out of the courtroom every few minutes while the judge gave her a verbal spanking. She needed to use the restroom more than any human on the planet. She claimed she couldn't hear anything. Her bad knees wouldn't allow her to stand to object, so the judge was constantly having to stop the proceedings to ask if she was objecting to something or if she was just mumbling to herself. (I found her mumbling especially odd given her constant interruptions because she couldn't hear what other people were saying.)

In other words, she wasted so much time that we were still waiting for closing arguments at 9:00PM. But even then, we weren't done. Her closing argument turned into a screaming diatribe that degenerated into the point-blank claim that if we found her client guilty we were a bunch of racist, homophobic neo-Nazis with smelly armpits. I couldn't even watch her because I was afraid I would burst out laughing. The prosecution team and the judge were too stunned to even try to stop her. Then she just ended mid-sentence and wrapped up with a sarcastic comment that we were going to do whatever we wanted no matter what she said. Um, exactly? Opening and closing arguments are not evidence and only serve to inform then remind the jury of what evidence was given. But at least she had finally shut up and we headed back to deliberations.

As the only person who had been on a jury before and the token male of the group, I ended up as the jury foreman. I took a quick poll and we had a unanimous decision without discussion, but I got everyone talking anyway. After ten minutes, it was pretty clear no one had the slightest doubt about their initial vote, so one last poll and we told the court officer we had a verdict. Unfortunately, Ms. Defense Attorney from Hell wasn't done with us. She had left the building. So we sat around another fifteen minutes venting about this idiot woman. Finally we were back in the courtroom and the verdict was read. Florida actually does the sentencing for misdemeanors right then and there, so we had to sit through that. We finally began working our way out of the building at 10:05PM.

Holy. Crap.

As a taxpayer who funded this public "defender", I want a refund.

Refocusing

I seem to be in a constant state of refocusing what I spend my time doing. I think about the kinds of sites that used to occupy the right side of this screen and what is now there and it is quite jarring. The latest changes are the demise of my Facebook and Flickr accounts over the last week. I've not logged into our Flickr account once in 2012, and Facebook just seems to be cluttered up with less signal and more noise from "friends" I've not laid eyes on in 30 years or more, and with whom I have less in common than the illegal immigrants living upstairs. Every attempt to inject some sort of relevance was unsuccessful and when you add in the constant Big-Brother-Is-Watching creepiness that seems coded into all things Facebookian, and the new interface that seems to insure that if anyone posts something truly important, Facebook will make every effort to hide it in favor of someone's bowel movement narrative, and, well, I'm done.

Flickr was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but instead became and endless time suck that really added nothing to my life. Growing up in the 1970's, one of the most dreaded things in existence was the Vacation Slide Show where a host would force his (invariably it was a  male who performed this particular torture) guests to sit in a dark room while he projected blurry, badly composed shots of the family's latest "Ha ha we went someplace awesome while you mortals were stuck here working" brag-cation. As perverse and anti-social as that was, Flickr takes it to a whole new level of pathology by inducing me to inflict the torture on myself through its creepy "someone commented on your photo so the polite thing to is to make them your "friend" and go look at their photos and make comments and you really really REALLY want to do the polite thing" passive-aggressive meme. No thanks.

We spent yesterday (our only day off together in the month of February thanks to stupid library people) visiting with my parents in their snowbird nest over on the other side of Florida. When we first got there, it looked like the weather was going to make it a dreary visit, but the sky cleared, the temp ran up to around 80 degrees, and we ended up getting in a couple bike rides, some music, dinner, Dairy Queen and a movie/how-do-we-work-this-DVD-thing teachable moment. (And people wonder why I don't set my parents up on the internet....)

Well, almost time to leave for another exciting day of shelving books and dealing with stupid people.

"Fire in the Spacecraft!"

I missed this yesterday while messing about with other things. January 27, 1967, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1 cabin in a fire that started during a plugs-out test. The cause of the fire was never conclusively identified, but was likely caused by a number of construction and design flaws combined with flawed operating procedures. I don't remember the fire, most likely because I was only two years old at the time and would have been shielded from something so horrifying by my parents even if I had been older. I of course have vivid memories of Challenger and Columbia and can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing at the time. But I know Apollo 1 from second hand accounts, books, old news footage, and of course the audio recording. I'm sure copies of that can be easily found on the internet. Personally, I have no desire to listen while three men first struggle for their lives, then asphyxiate, all while on fire. Your tastes may vary....

Kitchen Goddess

I've been spending a lot of time lately in the kitchen. I made a couple stabs at making bread. The first attempt was an Amish white bread recipe I found at allrecipes.com. It was actually edible, much to my surprise. I'd forgotten how dense most homemade bread is; anything we didn't each could have been used as a door stop. In the closeup, you can see I need to work on my mixing and kneading technique.

The scorch marks on the top were due to me trying to bake them in the toaster oven. The bread got too tall and touched the top heating element. Guess I have to use the big oven for bread. We've also been messing around with a pizza dough recipe as well. No photos of that, but it is quick and easy, and reminds me a lot of the pizza dough from one of my college jobs.

Today it was sourdough bread (I cheated and just grabbed a box mix at Walmart) and no-bake cookies from my mom's recipe. The cookies are for a care package that will get sent to Debbie's niece, who is away for her freshman year in college. The cookies turned out good, although they taste different than I remember, but I haven't had my mom's no-bakes in a long time. Maybe the pallet forgets? My bread mixing and kneading were a bit better this time around, but you could still use the stuff as a boat anchor.

But yea; I'm now a Kitchen Goddess. (Can you tell I've had three days off in a row?)

We went out exploring some a couple weeks ago. There is a park very close to us that featured a couple of the tallest trees in Florida. They weren't as impressive as they once were; both were sheared off by a hurricane in the 1920's. Then about a week after we were there, the tallest one named The Senator, caught fire and burned down to a five-foot stump. The forestry people still haven't determined the cause, but are fairly certain it was not arson. Anyway, here is what they looked like:

The Senator

Liberty

There seem to be dozens of little state parks around here, hidden behind strip malls and hemmed in by subdivisions. They can be tough to find sometimes. This one seems to be used mostly as a place for people to dump their vehicle and take off on bikes down the local bike path that goes through the middle of the park. I understand there used to be a gift shop and all the usual tourist-trap stuff before The Mouse sucked all the tourists away from Seminole County. No way a couple trees and a small zoo could compete with Wally World.

I'm still more or less in a holding pattern waiting to hear from the IRS. I ordered up my software and some other materials, but The Tax Geek is still not full blown reality, although I've been trying to keep the blog alive. I moved the blog from GoDaddy to Blogger; GoDaddy was just too primitive and quirky. Maybe it's just that I'm used to Blogger, but I kept running into roadblocks on GoDaddy and finally decided that I'd rather have a tool I can use instead of one that I constantly fight with. Unfortunately, GoDaddy doesn't give refunds, so it was a rather costly experiment.

In the meantime, I'm still plugging away at the library. I can already see that this won't last long. I expected the normal sort of bureaucratic idiocy that defines any government operation, but Seminole County has bred some very special idiots indeed. Good thing I can just wander off into the stacks and be forgotten for hours at a time. I do know one thing; if you want to find waste and fraud in government, start with county government. As a percentage of their budget, I'm certain there is more to find at the local level than the federal or even the state, which are under constant scrutiny.

Debbie is in the middle of her busy season. She is never sure from one day to the next when she will be getting out of work. I've been riding both ways to and from the library when I get out at 5pm even though it's still a bit more dusk than I'd like by the time I get home. Now that we're past the winter solstice, I have a bit more light every day, it gives me a chance to have dinner at least mostly ready when Debbie makes it home, and Debbie doesn't have to worry about me being stuck at the library if she has to stay late. At least the payoff for all the crazy is some big checks. Woohoo!

If you have an account at Fidelity and you wonder what all those fees you pay go to, here is the answer:

A bit of background: this was a 401K left over from some previous job. So much of the money had been lost that the balance fell below what was allowed to be left in the account. Somehow in the process of closing the 401K, a penny was left in the account, which Fidelity spent accounting and auditing time, check stock, and postage to send to us. They didn't catch their mistake until after the first of the year, which makes me wonder if they will actually be dumb enough to send another 1099-R for a penny. They have already sent two statements, first showing the $.01 balance in the account, then showing the $.01 being disbursed from the account. In addition to sending us the $.01 check. Holy. Crap.

Flickr and Facebook are still on trial. Oddly, Flickr, which I've had much longer and have been a much more frequent user of, is currently in a more precarious position. I haven't logged onto Flickr in several months and I can't think for the life of me why I would. I'm not uploading new photos, I've stopped following any of my contacts, and I've canceled out of all the groups I was in. The only thing left to do is just close the dang account and be done with it already. Meanwhile, I've been on Facebook a number of times in the last week, keeping up with a tragedy involving some old friends up in northern Michigan, making FB far more valuable to us at the present moment. [Aside: This is one of those times when being a long way away really sucks.] No decisions yet on either, but I'll likely pull the plug on one of them before the end of the month.

That's probably enough for now. I have some work to do on the IRS site and I should make a post over at The Tax Geek. Later.

Blast from the Sun

Our Sun throws itself a little hissy fit:



and we get to see things like this:



Awesome.

Entomophagy

One problem with bicycle commuting is that we have these little teeny tiny bugs that fly in little swarms in random places. They're too small to see until I ride through the swarm with my mouth open and get a bit of protein along the way. I've gotten sort of used to that as it happens once or twice each way. Today on the way home I got a little bigger meal. I didn't see what it was, but my first thought was, "God, I hope that wasn't a fly fresh off some dog's steaming pile."

Yea, that's pretty much all I got.

Beautiful Day Off

This is our last day off together this month --- and we are heading to Disney World!

With the schedules and Ric being sick around the holidays, we did not make it to DW during the Christmas season to take pictures. :-( This year -- no matter what -- we are going after the decorations are up and checking out each park and some of the hotels.

Cool this morning -- but suppose to warm up to the upper 70's -- great day for trekking around at Disney World.

Medical Misadventures

I went to the local ghetto clinic a couple weeks ago for two reasons: one, I had picked up some sort of nasty sinus/upper respiratory infection that I just couldn't shake, and two, my ghetto "doctor" isn't capable of doing simple math and had screwed up one of my prescriptions. This is nothing new, of course. The ghetto clinic has a history with us of screwing up prescriptions, ignoring the main reason for a visit in favor of focusing on trivialities, losing things, and just generally being incompetent.

But my latest visit really takes the cake. It may be my last visit if I can find an actual doctor somewhere in the area that is taking new, uninsured patients. I expect that to be an impossible quest, but that is a whole 'nother post.

The ghetto clinic has been in the process of a major, multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded, remodel since we moved here. The remodel is now complete. It is a disaster. The lobby is completely nonfunctional, not to mention a HIPAA nightmare. My visit starts at 8:45am (appointment time is 9:00am) standing in a queue to sign in. There is no place for the queue that doesn't block the entrance, the door to the ghetto pharmacy, the hallway back to the waiting area or all of the above when everyone without a previous appointment bum-rushes the front counter when the ghetto clinic first opens. Arguments over who's next are common and it is impossible to have the HIPAA-mandated privacy when speaking with the person at the front counter.

Once I had run that little gauntlet (it is now 9:15am), I was told to have a seat in one of the dozen chairs in the lobby, which are already filled up and in any case would mean putting my face at ass-level with the mob at the front counter. So I stand leaning against the wall where I have an unobstructed view of the computer monitors displaying other patients' medical and financial information, and listening in on the conversations regarding patients' medical history and finances. Whoever designed the space needs to be beaten to death with a copy of the HIPAA law. I watch as several employees walk away from their computer terminals without locking them or blanking the screen. It's also obvious that there are massive computer system problems with a lone IT guy running around putting out fires.

At 9:40am, a woman who must have formerly been employed in a fish market screams out my name indicating it's now my turn to have my medical history and financial information on display for the benefit of everyone in the lobby. The only person unable to see the computer screen is me. I sit down then wait for a full five minutes of typing and mouse clicking before the person acknowledges that I exist. The "conversation" goes something like this:

Medical Person: Are you Richard Frost?
Me: Yes.
(Several minutes of typing and mousing.)
Medical Person: Is Debbie still your emergency contact?
Me: Yes.
(Several more minutes of typing and mousing.)
Medical Person: Is [redacted] still your main phone number?
Me: Yes.
(Several more minutes of typing and mousing.)
Medical Person: Is [redacted] still your secondary phone number?
Me: Yes
(Several more minutes of typing and mousing.)
Medical Person: Today's visit will cost you $20.

I hand over my credit card, she swipes it and hands it back followed by several MORE minutes of typing and mousing. Finally she hands me my receipt and points me to the waiting room. She manages to complete the entire 20-minute process without once making eye contact.

It is now 10:00am; it has taken me an hour and a quarter just to get to the waiting room. Fortunately, my butt didn't even hit the chair before another female ex-fish merchant screams out my name. While she takes my vitals, I get a running commentary about how slow reception is due to the new computer system not working and how the medical staff are all standing around waiting for patients to trickle back. As she leaves the exam room, she practically collides with the "doctor" coming in, making for a novel experience: no secondary wait while sitting in the exam room. The "doctor" takes a quick listen to my lungs and prescribes antibiotics then asks what else I need. I tell him I need my prescriptions fixed because he obviously failed math in college. He responds by pulling up my old lab results and regaling me with how perfect everything is except my blood sugar.

Um, duh? We've already had this discussion. How about rewriting my prescriptions correctly? He goes on about how I need to "take control" of my diabetes. I tell him I would love to except his ghetto pharmacy is withholding my insulin forcing me to ration what little I can get out of them. I then get a lecture about how I have it all wrong and what nice people work in the ghetto pharmacy. He must be thinking of a different ghetto pharmacy than the one in the ghetto clinic, but I just inform him that we will agree to disagree on that point and can he please just correct the prescriptions he screwed up?

Finally, I escape. Sort of. At least that whole thing was the shortest part of my adventure so far at a mere ten minutes. He sent off the corrected scripts for my regular meds to Walgreen's, but I had to get my antibiotic at the ghetto pharmacy to get the Poor Person Price. So I go into the pharmacy to stand in line to turn in my prescription. Why my prescription can be sent electronically to Walgreens ten miles away, but I have to queue to turn in a paper script to the ghetto pharmacy in the same building is not explained. Must be a feature of the new computer system. Anyway. The ghetto pharmacy is another space with no place to queue, so it ends up being a mob blocking the door into the pharmacy. I turn in my script, then sit to wait with my face in the asses of people waiting to turn in their scripts. An hour later (it's now 11:15am), I get called up to the counter to pay $10 for an empty bag with instructions to have a seat because the pharmacist needs to speak to me. Holy frackin' crap. So back to the face-ass position for another 45 minutes. After enduring a five-minute explanation of how a Z-Pack works, I finally make the dash to my car. It is 12:05pm.

But the fun isn't over yet. I go to Walgreens to pick up my other prescriptions only to find out that my asshat "doctor" has yet-again screwed up the same prescription. I ask the pharmacist if she can please call over the ghetto clinic and fix it. She says she'll take care of it. A couple days later, I get an e-mail saying my prescription is in, but the count is still wrong. I head over to Walgreens to see what in bloody hell is up now. The answer: My ghetto "doctor" is holding my prescription hostage because he wants me to come in and do my labs. My labs aren't due until May. But what the hell; it only costs me $15 (the rest being billed to the taxpayers) and it's not like I have anything better to do than spend hours and hours standing in line at the ghetto clinic. I'm just another one of those poors after all.

And the elites wonder why poor people routinely go nuts on "service providers".

Duh!

Friday the 13th is on a Friday this month!

SEE Part III Complete

I completed the third and final section of the SEE. Even as I type this, my application to practice before the IRS is winging its way to the Department of Treasury. With that out of the way, I can finally focus on something other than test prep.

Old Age

I forgot to clear out the Past Reading list at the beginning of the year. Senior Moments (tm) can really sneak up on you. Anyway, we read 129 books in 2011. That was on the low side probably because of the whole tax thing taking time away from my reading. Debbie kept up her end of things, but I've been seriously slacking. But my last test is Friday, so I will be doing some major catch-up with the to-be-read pile.

More Crazy People

Isle of Man TT: motorcycles at 200+ mph:



I love that there are both crazy people and video cameras in our world.

Don't ya?!

I hate when it is my day off and I can't sleep in! It would have been nice today since it is still cold down here in Florida (39 degrees now) to keep snuggled up in a nice warm bed. But no! I woke up around 730a and just couldn't fall back to sleep. After tossing/turning and punching the pillow; I decided to give up and just get up.

Work has been busy since the day after Christmas. With the new rules about no working off the clock and only up to 1hr OT per day, it is kinda hard for me to get caught up. I can only do so much in a day and I am lucky to have several repeat clients and referrals of those clients. I still have some emails from after New Years to research and respond to. Hopefully they all understand this is now busy season and be patient for me.

Ric is still sick --- sinus infection and coughing (hacking up his lung) since Christmas. He finally has a Dr's appt tomorrow am -- we will see what the "ghetto clinic" has to say and give him to help. I know he has not been sleeping good for awhile. Most nights he is sleeping upright on the reclining loveseat --- or, at least dozing on and off between coughing fits.

Well---time to find something for breakfast and decide what I want to do today at home. Maybe start making some birthday/anniversary cards or go shopping to spend my Christmas money or clean the bathroom (probably not this one!) or book our flights home to Michigan for the Wiklanski family reunion. (Yep, we are coming to Michigan twice in 2012 -- Vargason and Wiklanski family reunion times)

Happy New Year!!

It's 2012 and I'm actually sitting in the exact same spot as last year. It feels kind of good to be able to say that. As expected when you don't relocate to another part of the country, it doesn't seem like we really did all that much over the last year other than work and keep our heads down. The year didn't totally suck like the last couple; staying in one place has at least allowed us to catch our breath financially. We know we don't want to make this place permanent, but it will serve its purpose in spite of the drug dealers, human traffickers, incompetent office people, and whichever of our neighbors has really noisy sex every night with their bedroom window open.

The 2011 tax season for me ended up going pretty much as one would expect working in a ghetto tax office. I won't be back even if they call, and I seriously doubt they will. I had planned on becoming an Enrolled Agent and opening my own office when lightening struck and I ended up with a paying job at the library where I've been volunteering. I love the pretty colors Plans make when they explode on contact with Reality. I'm still working on the Enrolled Agent thing with my final test scheduled for Friday the 13th (yes, I enjoy tempting fate), but for now, renting office space is off the table. While part time, at least the library job is predictable and as permanent as any job can be considered these days; something I haven't had in over five years.

Debbie is still working at the same job, for now at least. The owners' actions over the last year smell like desperation to me; the business model is a pure race to the bottom similar to what happened with car dealerships a decade or so ago. The internet removes middle men by reducing what they can add to the price of whatever they are selling to zero. The days when you can simply wet your beak without adding perceivable value are long gone. I just hope these guys figure that out, for their sake and for ours.

I've stopped following news and markets (highly recommended, by the way), so I don't have any deep insights into the world. In general terms, the US stock market ended 2011 almost exactly where it ended 2010. I'm sure people made money, especially the brokers who get a cut of every transaction regardless, but retail investors made nothing, just like anyone with money in the bank. The places where one can earn the requisite 8% yield that will allow us all to retire at 55 into a life of golf and 4pm dining grow fewer by the day. The rest of the economy still seems stuck at slow idle with no movement in real unemployment, housing, retail. Early reports are that Christmas shopping was up over 4%, but that seems to be the case every year. I'm not convinced that any increase, assuming it isn't a complete fabrication, isn't being more than offset by decreases at other times of the year, just like increases in online shopping are coming at the expense of physical stores. And if that figure isn't adjusted for inflation, Christmas sales were either flat or down 2% or so (depending which inflation figures you believe).

The real story of 2011, which will continue into 2012, is the slow-motion train wreck formerly known as the European Union. If nothing else, we'll get to see how long the politicians there and here in the United States can keep the plates spinning before it all comes crashing down. While hardly the Mayan Apocalypse, it will prove interesting from a number of perspectives, not least of which is the complete evaporation of whatever confidence is left in governments. I seem to recall the US getting sucked into some sort of kerfuffle in Europe the last time the people there lost faith in their leaders.

2011 will also be noted for what didn't happen: no one is yet in prison for the massive fraud engineered at the nation's too-big-to-fail banks and investment houses. Matt Taibbi is about the only person to keep hammering home that, contrary to what our president insists, much of the grift that lead up to the financial crisis was not legal. Certainly, many of the dirty deals that put multi-million dollar bonuses into the pockets of Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, et al were legal (the primary reason no one in the middle class should be in the stock market), but many were old-school pump-and-dump scams that have been illegal for decades. Maybe someone should check in on the Obama Justice Department and make sure they haven't committed mass suicide and gone off to live with the Space Brothers.

2011 also saw the last launch of Americans from American soil. Like the loss of the Saturn V, the capability will never be recovered. In the meantime, we hitch rides from our former sworn enemies to a destination that serves no real purpose. On the upside, Cassini is still returning drop-dead gorgeous images from the Saturn system, Opportunity is still chugging away doing science, and an all-new probe, Curiosity, is on its way to Mars.

I won't make any predictions for 2012 other than these: The economy in general will continue to sputter along making a small number of people wealthier than anyone ever in the history of the human race. Meanwhile, the rest of us who don't have politicians on our personal payroll will watch the slow erosion of our standard of living. And speaking of the Mayan Apocalypse, John Michael Greer has suggested that we call December 21, 2012 Nothing Happened Day. I think it's pretty safe to assume that the day everyone expects the world to end on will be the most extraordinarily ordinary day anyone can remember. The universe has a sick sense of humor.

I think I'm going to cut this off here and watch the House marathon. Everyone have a happy/productive/sexually satisfying (that's mostly for our noisy neighbors)/whatever-kind-of-year-you-want 2012!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my family and friends!

Make it a great year!

It's Not Christmas Without...

Porky Pig doing Elvis! With all the traveling over the weekend, I completely forgot.



And new this year (to me, at least): Jim Carrey slaughtering White Christmas!



Merry Belated Christmas!

Christmas Pics

A selection of our Christmases (plural because we had more than one celebration, not because I built a time machine so I could relive December 25, 2011) in pictures. We did more this year than we normally do, which isn't saying much as we almost never do anything. Beyond monkey bread and the NCIS Christmas Marathon, that is. We started with early Christmas at my parents' snowbird nest:

And because she's a mom, we had a formal table setting with real plates and everything! It took me a minute to remember how to sit at a table and eat after years of eating on the couch in front of the TV. And yes, the knobbly knees are mine.

Here's Mum slaving away in her travel trailer kitchen. I'd really like to help, but I'm not sure where I would stand.

Christmas at our place was the usual simple affair. Our only Christmas decoration was Herman sporting a rather festive bow.

Because we both had a few days off around Christmas day, we decided that we would drive over to Mobile for Christmas with my niece and her family. We got into Mobile on Friday evening after a 10-hour drive to find that we had scored a sweet suite:

We were completely whacked out, so we made our excuses to my niece and went to bed around 7pm. Ten hours in a car made a very plush bed with a big stack of fluffy pillows irresistible. We are seriously getting old.

Christmas Eve day was spent with my niece, her husband, and the cutest kids in Alabama. I may be slightly biased.

So that was pretty much our month of December other than working and sitting around our ghetto apartment.

Speaking of photos, I'm putting Flickr on probation along with Facebook. I no longer use Flickr for anything other than off-site photo backup. There is certainly value in that, and at $20/year it's cheap. But Flickr is getting nearly as creepy as Facebook, getting all bossy about how I can use my own frackin' photos. According to my Flickr stats, only two people ever look at them anyway; for $20/year, I can zip of all the year's photos onto a couple USB drives and mail them to my two viewers and not have to deal with Flickr's crazy EULA. Like Facebook, I haven't made any decision, but I won't be posting the full set of December pictures just yet. We'll see.

Well, I need to go empty the big green gobs infecting my sinuses. Thank the gods for my sinus pump. The last time I used it, something the size of a hamster popped out.

And yes. You needed to know that.

...And We're Back

We just arrived back at our apartment after a quick jog up to Mobile, AL to visit with some of my family for Christmas. We're also back in the sense that our internet and telephone crapped out Thursday evening around 7pm, but is now working. I called the help desk, but they were pretty far into the Christmas eggnog when I called Thursday around 11pm. They couldn't fix it remotely (hardly surprising given their obvious inebriation), so I set up an appointment for Monday 8-10am. When we got home tonight, there was a Sorry We Missed You card hanging on the door and the phone and internet seem to be working fine. The card says they came out Christmas day at 9:30am. I guess when you're half in the bag, "Monday" sounds a lot like "Sunday" especially when several of your office mates are merry-making in your cubicle.

My Christmas gift was a raging sinus infection. Thanks Santa; right back at 'cha. So I'm off to self-medicate and probably pass out on the couch.

Oh yea; Happy Whatever Makes You Tingly.

Bah Humbug

I'm waiting for Debbie to get home from work so we can get ready for our Christmas weekend. She is making a quick stop for gas at Sam's Club. Unfortunately, the line starts about three miles down the road. I think I hate Christmas a little more each year. We need to start saving up money for a vacation on a desert island during the last two weeks of December.

Having said that, now I want Christmas 2012 to get here NOW!



Awesome.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Looking like Christmas in Florida mostly means plastic wreaths on palm trees and overnight lows in the 50's. At this moment, I'm sitting in the living room in shorts and a t-shirt thinking I should close the windows because my toes are getting a bit cold.

Our Christmas plans are still up in the air; we should have a plan after we do Christmas with my parents over the weekend. Then we can decide whether we sit here and have Christmas in front of the TV or drive up to Alabama for Christmas with some of my family.

As usual for us, not a lot going on other than work and (for me, at least) studying tax code. I scheduled my last test, but due to limited seating and a bum-rush by everyone trying to get their Enrolled Agent testing completed before tax season, the first available day was January 13th. Not ideal, but I'll still get the thing done and move on to the next step. The hardest part will be to keep up on what I need to know for the test. I'm ready now, so I'm stuck forcing myself to review the same material over and over for the next month to keep it in my head. It would suck dead bunnies if I have to make multiple attempts at the easiest of the three tests.

We made a quick road trip over to Tampa on Sunday to do an NCL ship inspection. This is my second encounter with NCL and I'm still not impressed. Part of the deal was free lunch which, like our NCL cruise we did in September, was nothing to write home about. The ship itself is nice enough, although there were bits of it that looked... well... shabby is probably the right word. Maybe they need fewer staff dancing around squirting people with hand sanitizer, and a few more polishing the brass. There are some impressive suites if you have the spare cash, and we loved the Villa, with three full suites, a living area big enough for two seating areas and a baby grand piano, a full kitchen for the butler who brings up your meals, and a private outdoor area with a hot tub, eating area, Japanese koi pond (sans koi; maybe you're supposed to bring your own?), and seating areas in and out of the sun. You could basically pretend you were on a private yacht and never leave your Villa. But even as nice as it was, surely with a price tag to match, there were things like woodwork that needed a good sanding and refinishing that threw the whole thing off for me.

Because it's Christmas:

For nearly four decades, Star Trek and Star Wars fans have been at each other's throats. George Takei is calling for Star Peace so we can all focus on the real threat:



I always suspected Sparkle Tits was a threat to humanity.

More (barely) controlled falling off a cliff, otherwise known as skiing:



Given my hatred of cold and snow, you will never see me on a pair of skis, but it's nice that there are insane people willing to kill themselves for my entertainment.

One for all the doomers that think the world is ending because of the recent spate of earthquakes:



Even the Tohoku, Japan earthquake, as horrifying as it and the resulting tsunami was, is small beans when compared to the 1960's earthquakes in Chile and Alaska. Which can happen again, by the way. Something to consider given the massive increase in population in both areas.

And finally, something that people should be thinking about instead of worrying about the Mayan-Calendar-is-ending non-event (there is nothing in Mayan mythology that gives the last day of it's calendar any more significance than December 31 on the Gregorian calendar holds for us):

The mismatch between the economy we’ve got and the economy we can afford has many implications, but one of the largest is precisely the issue I raised earlier in this post: across the industrial world, there are very few bankable projects to be found, even at a time when there are millions of people who need work, and who would happily buy products if they had the chance to earn the money to do so. Our economy is burdened with an unproductive superstructure it can no longer support. The globalization fad of the 1990s, which arbitraged the difference in wage costs between Third World sweatshops and industrial-world factories, was in effect an attempt to evade the resulting difficulties by throwing the industrial nations’ working classes under the bus, and it only worked for a decade or so; as so often happens in the declining years of a civilization, a short term fix was treated as a long term solution, and a brief remission of symptoms allowed the underlying crisis to worsen steadily.

While I greatly appreciate the bags of shiny rocks I was given as a COBOL programmer, I thought at the time that I could have done more for the accounting departments I wrote code for with a box of Blackfoot #2 pencils and a stack of 13-column paper than I ever did with 10's of thousands of lines of COBOL code, not to mention the millions of dollars in hardware and infrastructure, including (pre-internet) the launching of a communications satellite. Our motto at one job was, "[Name of proprietary software package redacted]: Turning user input into error messages at the speed of light!"

And that's probably enough for now. I need to wrap some Christmas gifts.

Brrrr!

Well a cold front finally hit us in Florida. It got down to 47 last night and right now it is only 49. Today's high is suppose to reach 65. The past few days it has been in the high 70's/low 80's.

Another SWAT Shooting

A Pima County, Arizona SWAT team gunned down an ex-Marine in his home with his wife and 4-year-old son in the house. Some random thoughts in no particular order.

Once again, in a repeat of the Branch Davidian mess at Waco, Texas, military-style tactics that were unnecessary and inappropriate were used instead of police tactics. Instead of a simple arrest outside the home, lets pull out all this cool storm trooper gear we got here in the back room and go make a big media splash. Operation Showtime Part II.

Five supposedly highly-trained officers fired over 70 rounds in a matter of seconds with less than a third of them hitting their intended target located a few feet away. Spray and Pray. With a four-year-old in the house. Ye flippin' gods. Maybe next time they should put their storm trooper helmets on backwards; it may improve their accuracy.

The family lawyer called SWAT "an overly excited group of poorly trained law enforcement agents." I hate to agree with a lawyer, but I have to go with him on this one. The cop retort of "We're not a bunch of country bumpkins... with big bellies and cowboy hats" may or may not be true, but doesn't address the point: You provably are a bunch of "overly excited", "poorly trained" bumpkins in storm trooper gear. As evidence, see above.

All it takes to be a drug kingpin is to be related to someone who knows someone who at some point had been in still-another person's house where marijuana was delivered. And ride in the truck of someone who owns a large roll of plastic wrap. Which is sold at U-Haul. For packing furniture. I have two sizes of the stuff in my closet left over from our last move. I'm also most likely related to someone who knows someone who at some point had been in still-another person's house where marijuana was delivered. I guess SWAT will be smashing in my door at any time now.

The fact that the suspect is a Marine is irrelevant. Plenty of Marines and ex-Marines engage in illegal activity. Being a Marine doesn't remove you from the human race. Especially when you're an ex-Marine trying to raise a family in one of the most economically depressed areas of the country.

The fact that the suspect had a crappy job is irrelevant. In fact, having a crappy job with long hours is just the sort of motivation needed to ask a drug-dealing relative's twice-removed friend if they need a hand with the family business.

The fact that "everyone" says the suspect is a great guy is irrelevant. That's what everyone says about the nice guy next door who coaches Little League. Right up to the moment the cops find the videos he made of himself banging the center-fielder.

I'm not sure what "problems with his vision" would allow the suspect to serve in the Marine Corp, but would disqualify him from any kind of job in the Border Patrol. Unless the vision problem was caused by over-ingestion of his brother's twice-removed friend's product. Maybe he should have signed up for Pima County SWAT; they seem to prefer people with vision problems.

Anyway.

Here's what will happen now: there will be an "investigation" in which SWAT will be found to have acted bravely while defending the innocent citizens of Tucson, and will be given medals and promotions. The investigation into this alleged drug cartel, which may very well exist, will be forgotten. The media will get distracted by Snooki's tits or the next fake Kardashian sister's wedding or bashing whoever the current Republican not-Romney front-runner is, and forget all about our dead ex-Marine and his family. No one will question why we need military units patrolling our streets and gunning down anyone with the misfortune of being related someone with a twice-removed friend in the drug trade.

And I need to go make the donuts....