October 2003 Archives

It is very orange outside right now.

So, the solar disc and Southern California have quite a bit in common these days. All broken out and splotchy with fiery eruptions. One of the biggest sun spot/solar flare eruptions in the past hundred years has been gooshing a coronal mass ejection through the Earth's magnetic onion over the past 12 hours or so. I've never seen the Aurora Borealis before, and I was getting kind of excited that we might see some tonight. But the winds have shifted, and we're getting a different kind of light show now. The monstrous fires around San Diego and LA are pasting a thick coat of smoke over us. It is getting progressively oranger and oranger. A lot like a heavy Phoenix dust storm glow. This is how things will look on Mars when it gets terraformed. I bet this would make for good outdoor portrait light. But no Northern Lights tonight I guess.

...as I glibly ignore the plight of thousands of people suffering through it first-hand. So far sixteen people have died because they couldn't escape the fire. Probably more will be found when the burned houses are examined. There they were, taking just a few extra minutes saving personal belongings, or pets, or maybe hoping they could make a stand, and BAM it's on them. I just can't imagine. But there it is up in the orange sky--grass, trees, corrals, houses, photo albums, dogs, horses, people. Bleh. Okay. That's over the top.

Anyway, I'm tired. I pulled a mostly all-nighter at work and I'm buzzing on 2 hours of sleep.

buzz buzz buzzzzz

I cruised Safeway for lunch supplies today only to find that somebody with their dragon lady French manicured nails had played Itsy Bitsy Spider with 90% of the tomatoes in the produce bin. Blehhhhh. Why must people do that? Does it mean I'm not an accomplished fresh fruit connoisseur since I don't sink my fingernails into every piece of unpackaged food I touch? Whatever. I still prefer licking to test for freshness. It's so much less intrusive.

Macintosh users are a 3% minority in the U.S. computer user market. To look at any given movie or tv program, you would think it was more like 60%. But that's just because the computers are so purty. Anyways, three percent. That means lots of software and peripheral developers generally don't like to be bothered with catering to that measely population beyond some token effort. So we get to deal with peripherals that stop working when the Mac OS gets updated (I'm talking OS 10.1 to 10.2 here) and the people who make the peripherals are like "Update our drivers? No. We have no plans to do that." ... "No?" ... "No." ... "So, uh, that means I need to go out and buy a different brand of your product to get something that works?" ... "Yeah, it looks like that's what you'll have to do." That's a pretty accurate transcription of a recent conversation.

Then a couple weeks ago at work, we got a new monster color laser printer from HP to replace a busted up 5 year old Tektronix that was wheezing it's last dying breaths. Like the Tektronix printer, we got this particular HP model because it can print sheets larger than 11" x 17". It goes 12.27" x 18.5" to be precise. Excellent. We print that size on a daily basis. Except, we haven't been able to since we got the new printer. That's because the Mac OS X print driver, with it's mondo page-size list of 20 exotic sizes, including JB4, 16K, and ooooh, double-postcard size, does NOT include an option for the maximum paper size the printer can handle. What the? I went to their website and downloaded the latest drivers, installed them, and got exactly the same fluffy list. :PPP

So I called up HP, and fiddled around during the 20 minutes it took to get transferred from their computer help desk to their printer help desk to their print driver help desk to their switchboard and then to their Mac department, which I'm sure consisted of one lonely guy stuck in a 4' by 4' cubicle in the basement next to the HVAC equipment anxiously guarding his stapler. During that time, I went into the printer description file folders, uncompressed the HP5500 file, opened it in text editor and started perusing the code. About the time the guy came on the phone, I had found the pertinent parts of the file. The connection was so bad, due to the basement rats chewing on his phone line, that I had to use interpolation to fill in the voice gaps. I think I got most of it right, and it came down to, if I've downloaded the latest drivers and the max paper size is not on there, well...then...it's not on there.

He said I could 'still put the large size paper in the manual feed.' Oh for joy. Then I could enjoy gazing at the useless extra-wide margins as a 10.5" x 16.5" image prints on a 12.3" x 18.5" sheet. Oh, you want a full-bleed 11x17 sheet? Sorry folks, we reserve that luxury for the Windows population. So I told him, "Oh well, I just wanted to be sure you guys didn't already have something set up with that size. I just didn't want to have to hack the printer description files if I didn't have to." To which he says, "Heh, if your editing those files, you should be working for us, heheh..." Sorry pal, I'm a one-trick pony.

So there you have it. We are now printing at the max size on my hackjobbed system files, I say, as I toot my own wimpy horn. Necessity is the mother of duct tape and baling wire.

Sincerest regards,
J

[edit]
Oh boohoo. I'm soooo oppressed. :P

This morning, it was my privilege to run hair-brushing ops on Giselle. Not generally much fun. She has uber s00per tender head. What she never seems to figure out is that the more she struggles, the more it hurts. But every time: brush appears--daughter runs. It's usually very dramatic. Brush appears from behind back. Giselle's eyes go wide, hands up in the air, mouth goes into big ''O" shape and long drawn out cartoon holler as she sprints past the slower, lumbering parents. At least that's the default script.

But I was ready for her. And I'm not as lumbering as she thinks. So I nabbed her, hopped to the couch, did a leg lock, used my left hand to hold her flailing arms, and started spraying the detangler with my right. Her response was a series of offended ptoo-ptooey sounds as she complains that I got it in her mouth and on her arms. Not much I can do, I explain, seeing as how she's whipping around like a beached trout. Then I start brushing from the bottom up--'sneaking up on the tangles' as they say. But what with all the thrashing, it's nigh impossible to be the perfect tangle surgeon. And the screaming begins. Obviously, a great deal of this is a game to her, so I explain yet again that the more docile she is, the less it will hurt and so we cycle between stillness, thrashing, screaming, explaining, stillness, etc. several times. Finally it was over and I set her free, like a rodeo gate unleashing the coiled stallion, BLAM! she was gone.

So I went to gather the rest of my things for our carefree stumble out the front door and off to school. But just then I heard a series of punctuated and quite indignant chimpanzee screeches that told me Harrison was now the object of some offense. So I grabbed a shoehorn to tuck my shirt in, and wandered back into the living room in time to witness Giselle using a scissors leg-lock to hold Harrison face down on the floor while coaxing his hair with her brush. "You NEED your HAIR brushed Harrison!" she tried to explain to him as he shrieked his grievances. She wasn't wailing on him, and was actually being rather deft with the brush, but he was having none of it. I had to vacate quickly to the kitchen to hide my muffled laughter, while Amanda worked to separate them. Their differences were reconciled and it was happiness again by the time we piled into the car, but I can see clearly that the proverbial crap-rolling-downhill process is already working quite actively in our household.

Neither of them thinks it's very funny when I kid about shaving them both bald :D

The City has been doing major road construction right outside our building. They're moving a road and railroad tracks to build an overpass. So they've been blasting the past couple weeks. I forget about their boom schedule every time until the building starts shaking. They set off a huge one yesterday, and Jo and Barb just about jumped in each other's arms when it went off. I love that stuff...the explosion stuff, you naughty person you. So today, a few of us went out to watch the goings-on. Of course, they were behind schedule, so there's this uncomfortable conversation about how 'we got work to do' and 'any time now, right?' Finally the warning horns started going off, so I moved up to a good vantage point and was definitely surprised by what I saw. I was expecting maybe a rumble and some little poofs of dust as they cracked stubborn rocks 20 feet underground. Instead there was a 3 second long series of crackles and the ground heaved East to West in a cascading 10 foot tall wave of dust, gravel and boulders. Whereupon I made a complete fool of myself jumping in the air and yelling "Holy Crap that was AWESOME!! WOOO!!" That does it. If I ever get out of this graphics shtick, I'm going to school to be an explosives engineer. I'm bringing the video camera next time.

Also, I finally got the Expressions section up and running. There's only 3 entries in there right now. I'll pump it up in fits and bouts.

Sincerest Regards,
JP

The tectonic edges of the bitten pear oxidize before me.

Today, I had an irritating ride to work. I had been feeling progressively more and more worn out biking to and fro over the past week. I thought maybe the fact I was only riding 3 days a week was foiling my conditioning, such as it is. Finally this morning, as I was feeling the burn after only 3 minutes of riding, a dim, flickery bulb went off over my head and I stopped long enough to inspect my rear tire which of course turned out to be about halfway flat. Curses. So I mooshed over to the nearest gas station and spent a stinking fortune (50¢) to air up the tubes. And that did it. My gasping quotient fell drastically. Until...

I got to the corner of Route 66 and Steves. Now, Flagstaff has a bike path system through certain parts of town. And on Route 66, it consists of an extra-wide sidewalk with a dashed yellow line down the middle to accommodate two-way bike traffic. For sissies like me. So I take that. Even though it means I'm riding on the left when I head to work in the morning. And riding on the left is hazardous, I know. People don't look to that direction when they pull out to make a turn. But it's sanctioned by the city, and there are no driveways, and only two places where traffic intersects it, so I take the chance.

Anyway, I was sitting there at one of the intersections, waiting for the light (See Fig A). The left turn arrow is spilling traffic just ahead of me, and there's a big white truck waiting there to my ten o'clock. He doesn't have a blinker going, his wheels aren't turned, and he isn't moving, even though he has about twenty seconds of clean and clear opportunity to turn right if he wants to since all the cross traffic is making left turns. So he must be waiting to go straight, right? Wrong. I assume far too much, as I am wont to do. The second my light turned green, I pulled out, and by golly, at that very moment, he decided to put on the gas too (Fig B). I mashed on my brakes, he slammed on his, and after a bit of momentum-whiplash, I bounced back on my seat for some reason and totally jacked it up. I was in full-blown panic mode, and unable to ride with a downward pointing seat, so I hopped off and walked it the rest of the way across the street.

With a little fiddling, I got the seat ratcheted back to horizontal, but I had also managed to jam the seat pole (is that what you call it?) down a few inches and had to ride fully bent-kneed through the prairie dog hive. So back came the burn. I've been dreading riding home like that, but I just copped out and asked Amanda to pick me up and I'll fix it at home.

And so, there you go. One big reason why the pros ride smack dab in the thick of traffic. That way you're in everybody's face, and sure they're cursing you and flipping you off, but at least you're not just some invisible little moron sitting on the sidewalk at a traffic light, waiting to catch a ride as a hood ornament. Oy. I'm working on contingencies for those two intersections now.

Regards.

Now and then I have to send business emails to doctors or folks in Europe for one forgettable reason or another. I always struggle with how to address and close those emails. When I'm communicating with your average slob in the U.S., I can pretty much use informal email protocols:

Hey Bob,

Enjoy,
JP

Back in the old days of handwritten letter writing, you opened business correspondence with "Dear so & so," and closed with a selection of "Yours truly," "Sincerely", "Best wishes," etc. And I've tried that now & then with casual slap & dash office emails, but it just feels silly.

If I may be my own apologist here, I'm not saying I don't care if I sound curt or rude. I do make an effort address people by name, and end with my name, and try my best not to swear at them. It's the "dears" and "sincerelies" I get hung up on. I used to end all my memos with "Thank you," because it was safe and easy, and because I'm a cog, and that's what the cogs do. But I stopped doing that when I realized it was diluting the times when I really meant it. It's just stupid to say,

Hi Scragg,

Thanks,
Jer

See, I seriously used to do that. It makes absolutely no sense.

Folks across the Atlantic aren't sloppy about these things though, and they use "Dear" when they address you, and then finish with two very popular European closings, "Regards," and the much peppier "Best regards,". Oh okay, and sometimes you'll get the snazzy "Ciao!" But that only holds on so long. If you start emailing back and forth during that one hour in the morning when you are at work the same time as they are, they'll start dropping the formalities. And this requires attention so that you're not throwing in alternating varieties of "regards" when they've hit the casual threshold and you look like a machine.

The toughest though is the doctors. You just can't mess around there. It's got to be Dear Dr. [last name], even if they are the really casual personable types that like to sign with just their first names. So no matter how simply they address you and sign off, you've got to come off like a tool the whole time. And then when the ones you think are casual come back and address me as "Mr. Perez," I don't know whether I misread them, or they're just playing the game too, or if they really think I am a stiff.

I'm going nowhere with this, I know. I just haven't posted anything in a while because I've got a couple pictorial posts I want to do, but haven't had time to mess around with.

Kindest regards,
Mr. P