Demolition of the Stone Volute

The wrong Mexican

It's so early in the day, yet I've twice already been gob-smacked into amazed silence.

In gob-smackdown #1, I was sitting on a bench at the dog park with another woman. A third woman came over and said "this dog" was a bad dog, a trouble maker, etc. I assumed she was talking about her own dog in the hyperbolic way some dog-owners do, but it slowly because less and less plausible as her dogs walked away and she continued to talk about "this dog." It turns out she was talking about the dog of the woman next to me, the dog who was now sitting next to us. I had seen nothing anti-social in this dog's behavior. The scolder simply felt it was a good idea to come over and diss the dog to the owner. Nothing she said was even constructive, which is the usual dog park social-vice: unsolicited advice. This was just unsolicited insults.

The gob-smack the second (homage à Buffy, "lesson the first") was courtesy of my downstairs neighbor, an 80 year old white show-biz guy. He was standing at the back gate to our complex, holding the gate open whistling at someone I couldn't see. He continued the whistling as I approached. I offered to hold the gate for him if he needed to talk with someone. He accepted and went to the corner, where I saw he was trying to get the attention of the young Mexican gardeners across the street. I didn't watch closely, but soon he was headed back to me. As he approached, he said it was "the wrong Mexican." He went on to explain that he had more clothes than he could possibly use due to the excessive wardrobing that happened in show business and he often offered them to the gardeners who work in our complex. The wrong Mexican. The phrase is evocative of a particular world-view in which all Mexicans are gardeners and all gardeners are Mexican. Where this is the extent of their identity. Where they want to wear old show-biz guy clothes.



Googling "the wrong Mexican" yields two sets of grimly humorous results. The majority of results cite the movie "The Machete" the tagline of which is: "They just fucked with the wrong Mexican." The other humorous result is the suggestion by google that I change my search to "the working Mexican."

In San Francisco, They Love the Devil

[Drawing of Sutro Tower by Lee Feynves]

Ok, not exactly. But this is the second of the humorous devil-related events I've seen. I'm quoting from boingboing in near-entirety here:

[The driver of the San Francisco cab with medallion number 666] convinced assistant commission executive director Jordanna Thigpen to request that the board retire medallion No. 666 forever. Unfortunately for Byrne, the commission voted 5-1 yesterday that the number should live on. From a pre-vote San Francisco Chronicle article:

Byrne, a 30-year veteran driver, was assigned No. 666 only last August, Thigpen said, after another applicant refused to accept the number. Since then, sources said, Byrne has been involved in at least one accident -- even after taking the precaution of having the cab blessed at Mission Dolores.

"Do I believe in the Mark of the Beast myself?" Thigpen said in an interview. "No. But there is a lot of negative energy around that cab. If we can help somebody out, why not do it? If something's a nuisance, it's our duty to get rid of it, right?"

A commission clerk, who asked not to be identified, said Byrne "had many deaths around him and his family" and that getting rid of the cursed number "is an idea that speaks for itself." Link

And from a post-vote article: "How dare you take Lucifer's number away," said Thomas George-Williams, president of the cab drivers union, who was sporting the red horns (at the hearing). "This is a serious issue."

A cabbie named Tom warned the commission that it was "opening a can of worms" and would soon be deluged with requests to retire other numbers. A cabbie named Barry pointed out that 666 was the address of SS Peter and Paul's Church on Filbert Street, an outfit not thought to be in Satan's pocket." Link

The original humorous devil-related San Franciscan event involved a controversy over a large monument of a cross in a public park. While many felt that it was inappropriate for the city to appear to be endorsing a particular religion, there was no agreement about what action to take: selling it on the cheap to a particular religious group was seen to favor that group. One editorial suggested selling landmarks to all interested religious groups, including selling Sutro Tower to the satanists.

Note: Thanks to dolface for finding the source of the drawing.

Domo-kun ipod case

When life gives you lemons (and your dog eats your (plain leather) ipod case), make a Domo-kun ipod case. I based it on this tutorial.

Favorite slur

You grog-faced villain!

Dog fighting

This is an incredibly disturbing article about a dog fighting ring that an NFL star was involved in. The cruelty went beyond the fighting and training for fighting; dogs were destroyed cruelly. For once I agree with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)*

''Some of the grisly details in these filings shocked even me, and I'm a person who faces this stuff every day,'' Goodwin (of HSUS) said. ''...Those are extremely violent methods of execution -- they're unnecessary and just sick.''

*Generally I dislike HSUS because they capitalize on the people's good will toward their local shelters by implying through their name that they are the national group for local shelters; actually they have no affiliation. They are a fairly radical political group like PETA; I agree with about 50% of their policies and initiatives.

Nuclear Power

I was listening to a radio show about nuclear power today. The safety concerns and the potential improvements with respect to carbon emissions are pretty well-trodden ground, but I haven't heard much about where uranium comes from. Is there an OPEC for uranium? Would using more nuclear power allow us to be more independent?

This article, titled "Lack of fuel may limit U.S. nuclear power expansion", says

Much of the uranium used by the United States is coming from mines in such countries as Australia, Canada, Namibia and, most recently, Kazakhstan. Small amounts are mined in the western United States, but the United States is largely reliant on overseas supplies. The United States also relies on Russia for half its fuel [converted from weapons].

Silver Spoons at the Dog Park

(Based on the title, I seem to be on an 80's television theme.) I saw a funny sight at the dog park a few weeks ago. A man, maybe 60 was at the dog park with another man, maybe 30. It's unusual for two people to come with one dog during the day, so they caught my attention. Neither was dressed remarkably. They left the enclosed area shortly before I did, and I was amazed to see a town car pull up to them as they walked out. A uniformed chauffeur got out and brought wipes from the trunk over to the men and the dog. One of the men began to clean the dog while the driver filled a water dish. As I left the parking lot, the chauffeur was opening the door for the older man to get in the car.

There is a stretch limousine that regularly comes to the dog park, but it is owned by a dog care guy and the dogs just hop into it, mud and all. The guy wears shorts, a t-shirt and a bluetooth headset. Entirely different.

Adding a leading zero to a file name

I often find this necessary when trying to get audiobook files to automatically sort correctly. For example, files from chapter one are named "1-01 Book Name" and "1-02 Book Name", but files from chapter 11 are named "11-01 Book Name" and "11-02 Book Name." In the current case, they were in all kinds of strangely named subdirectories, so first I had to copy them all into a single directory. (I did this in Ubuntu Feisty, but it should work in most flavors of Linux and OSX and Cygwin (for Windows users )):

find . -type f -name "*mp3" -exec mv {} ~/bookdir/ \;

Next I moved the ones that already were correctly formatted. There's a more elegant way to do this, selecting files that have digits in the first two places, but my case was so simple that I used the dumb way:

mv 10* 2dig
mv 11* 2dig

Finally we get to the actual renaming, using substitution syntax.

rename 's//0/' *.mp3

The part in the single quotes means substitute anything with an initial zero. In english it would be add an initial zero.

Now move the correctly named files back into your directory, and voila:

mv 2dig/* .

Some wizard could do all this with a single command, but I'm not that wizard.

Motorcycle nostalgia

I saw this motorcycle on the street today. The light color at the front of the tank is not just the light; it's the way the bike is painted.

It reminded me of my last motorcycle, which had a way cooler paint job:

I sold it when I moved down to Los Angeles, on the premise that it LA is a ridiculously dangerous place to ride a bike. I've found that true, but I still miss having one.

"Soviet Fashion Show" commercial for Wendy's

I loved this commercial when it was new (1985), and I still do. I'm not sure why. Partially I fell for the cold war era mockery of Soviet uniformity and communism, but at the same time I loved what may have been self-mockery: the portrayal of a soviet fashion show MC'd in english, subtitles of english...

Wendy's: Soviet Fashion Show

Posted Feb 26, 2002

The classic "Soviet Fashion Show" commercial for Wendy's.

Dog on Art

This is the dog lying in the center of a campus sculpture called "Moore's Stone Volute." It's scheduled to be demolished, which saddens me.

Hobbies of my dog

My sister SB has never let me forget the way I described one roommate: I said, "he watches TV" in the same tone that one might say, "he builds ships inside bottles" or describe some other unusual occupation. So now it is only fair that my canine roommate has similar tastes.

Grim Girl

Or at least that's what she calls herself.

The best part of the LA Zoo.

(Not plastic)

It's called a mojito

but it's virgin and not like other mojitos I've had. It's terrific.

Difficult people

Yesterday I had a brief and relatively unimportant interaction with the head of my homeowners' association. She is superficially pleasant, but I hate dealing with her. She staged a coup, maligning our former association leaders. Whatever their faults may have been (few, to my knowledge), they put in a tremendous amount of work, and her (and her cronies') willingness to disparage them makes me doubt her ability to see the big picture, her ability to make good long term decisions.

Beyond this history (and her ongoing self-aggrandizement) is her lack of a relationship with integrity. Months ago, before her election to Grand Poobah, she was stirring up trouble, trying to get the people with one-bedroom apartments to insist on lower homeowner's fees. She gave me her entire spiel, after which I told her I had a two bedroom apartment. She ended the conversation with an odd way, like a cat who walks into a glass window and then tries to pretend it didn't happen. A cat who thinks she can convince observers that they didn't see what they just saw.

Yesterday I asked if we could add a second entry to the to the electronic directory that visitors use to call up to the apartment from the front entry. She said no, there is only room for 107 entries and there are 107 apartments.

I have no problem with my request being denied; unless the system capacity is sufficient for everyone to have two entries, it's a reasonable policy. However, I am insulted that I am being asked to believe any equipment in the world has a capacity for 107 entries. Fifty, sure. One hundred, sure. Two hundred, fine. You take my point. It's ludicrous.

I am mystified by her inner process. Does she think I believe her? Is she aware that she's lying? Is she simply dumb as rocks? I imagine she must have been a teacher, the crummy kind who would tell kids anything to get them to do what she wanted.

July 4th was the Pathfinder's 10 year anniversary

Ten years ago the Pathfinder landed on Mars. This was the first mission to send a rover to a planet. It proved the utility of airbag-mediated touchdown and automated obstacle avoidance. The mission budget was less than the cost of the movie Titanic.

Three minute video here.

iGoogle

Anyone using iGoogle? I've got a few awesome gadgets I'm happy to share. My favorite is a a webcam of San Francisco from Sausalito. I also have a slideshow of pictures from my Flickr and Picasa accounts, a scraped feed from my new favorite columnist (Robyn Blumner), a John Stewart quote of the day, countdown timers until my vacation and Bush's last day in office (not the same day, alas, he should leave so soon). I also view my calendar, email and to-do list, but you don't want those (if you do, I'll owe you).

Worth Bush's Time

Which of the following judicial matters does the Bush administration think requires intervention:

a) The supreme court upholds the denial of a final appeal on the grounds it was filed later than allowed by law, even though it was within the date specified in the judge's instructions. Gobsmacked legal commentators resort to short words: mean (NYTimes Editorial, St Petersburg Times' Robyn Blumner, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick).

b) Scooter Libby is ordered to begin his prison sentence.

Hint 1: the sentence was commuted, but an eventual pardon "has not been ruled out."

Hint 2: Joseph Wilson, husband of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose identity was revealed, resulting in Libby's conviction, comments, 'the commutation “should demonstrate to the American people how corrupt this administration is.” He suggested that its goal was to prevent Mr. Libby from telling all he knew about White House actions, particularly in the planning for war.' (NYTimes, "Bush Spares Libby From Prison Term", 7/2/07)

New Leaves

During SB's visit, she organized a renovation of the porch. She (and I) cleaned, arranged, and otherwise prettified the porch. The best part was going out to buy new plants. I'm an inveterate plant-killer, so this round is succulents. These are the "after the cleanup" and "before I've mistreated the plants" pictures. Hopefully having a record of how the plants are supposed to look will help me figure out when they're looking bad. Click the picture to see the individual images. Thanks SB!

Plant shopping

I made this map/list with the batchgeocode tool. The process is a little time consuming, but the tool is nicely designed.

Blogging via phone.

In a size- and cost-cutting measure, I'm using a not very smart phone, and pushing the text capabilities as far as I can. You can expect short, badly spelled entries if I decide to do much blogging by phone. Usually I just send notes for a blog entry to my email and then flesh them out and fix the spelling when I'm at a full-size computer. The other very useful text message option is to text to the to-do list site I use, remember the milk.

For example, here's something I emailed to myself via text message from my family reunion. My middle name, Conley, used to be spelled in the more common Irish manner, Connolly, until there were two men with the same name in a county in rural Maryland. My ancestor renamed himself in the mid 1800s.

Another good story from the reunion: our geneologist cousin kept noting the men who had big ideas but not much money and their habit of marrying rich women. I was more intrigued by the idea that I come from a line of women who marry outsiders.

Deep Gym Thoughts

1. "Tainted Love" has perfect tempo for my pace. "I must not think bad thoughts" (by X) is pretty good too.
   
2. Based on my years-long observations, I suggest that individuals with severe, uncontrolled, persistent flatulence might want to look, at the very least, for an uncrowded gym. Am I being fascistic here? I'm talking about a pretty extreme case.
   

Sync contacts and calendar - Verizon K1m, and (sigh) Windows

First install Motorola drivers from here:

http://mark.cdmaforums.com/1-USBDriver.htm

Then follow directions here (which tell you how to run bit pim and convince it you have a v3cm phone):

http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=8925092&postcount=230

That post says you can sync the phone book. For me it also worked for calendar, although I had to remove all punctuation from my calendar events (which I downloaded from google).
Also, by copying "wallpaper" to my local computer, I downloaded pictures and was then able to export them to a folder. I didn't try copying ringtones. I did try copying sms but had no luck, and no error in the log.

Now all I need to do is get it to work under linux and I'll be all set. Actually, In a perfect world, when I connect my phone to the computer to charge at night, it would automatically (with the aid of scripting) bidirectionally sync with google calendar and a local contact information source AND my google email address book. i'm loath to put anything on the internet (even in my gmail account) that doesn't really need to be there.

The dog who wasn't one

How weird is it for a dog to like to ride backward in the car? I think it's extremely weird. I've never seen it before. He sits calmly, LOOKING OUT THE BACK WINDOW, watching the world recede from him. But then, he also watches me in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth, so we're just going to have to agree that he's got lots of mutations.

marstons restaurant

marstons restaurant
Originally uploaded by _buttercup

i finally ate at marston's. it was all that. we had omelets, oatmeal, bread pudding and cobbler, which is featured in this picture. the cobbler was peach and berry. the wait was long, and i was so hungry that i ate too much of my early orders. by the food was as good as reputed.

Frog!

0620071159b-1
Originally uploaded by _buttercup

I took this with my camera phone, which means I was quite close. What's wrong with frogs these days! They shouldn't let strangers just approach like that.

You've got to stop with the cute thing...

...because it's kind of freakish.

The dog is the subject of abusive love-talk. He doesn't seem to mind.

Weather alerts

7-DAY FORECAST

Pasadena, CA

Date		Forecast	Hi	Lo	POP
Tue Jun 19		Partly Cloudy	82°F	60°F	0%
Wed Jun 20		Partly Cloudy	85°F	61°F	0%
Thu Jun 21		Sunny	87°F	65°F	10%
Fri Jun 22		Sunny	88°F	65°F	10%
Sat Jun 23		Sunny	88°F	65°F	10%
Sun Jun 24		Sunny	86°F	66°F	10%
Mon Jun 25		Sunny	87°F	66°F	0%

1) i really like the new format of the weather channel's news alerts - i hate having to wade through junk to get the simple info i want
2) the weather is going to be hot this week. ick.

Speaking of backing up before editing...

This is my favorite new shell script. I wrote it myself, but after reading many people's suggestions and documentation. I use it when I am going to edit configuration files. I have a directory called "setting-backup" that I store the copies in. Each file is given its original name plus the date and time, all the way down to the second. That way, if you can make several changes in a minute, you can save a copy between each change. For most people this would probably be more useful for documents. The script:

#!/bin/bash
# script=bk
#parameter $1 is the existing file name
#dt=`date +%y%m%d`
#mv $1 $1$dt
cp $1 ~/computer/setting-backup/

`basename $1`-`date +%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S`

#usage: bk.sh myfile
#must be run from directory of original file
#produces myfile070602

Open Firefox downloads

With Kubuntu Feisty and Firefox 2.0, if I asked Firefox to open the containing folder of the download, it would use some wonky and unusual file manager. Thanks to the "Firefox + KDE" entry on this blog, I got it fixed. Before I share the solution, remember to backup any files you edit! The solution:

$ cp /usr/share/applications/kde/kfmclient_dir.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop

Then, open nautilus-folder-handler.desktop and edit the mime-types line to read:

MimeType=x-directory/gnome-default-handler;inode/directory

Sweet!

wrong location, dog

wrong location, dog
Originally uploaded by _buttercup

i love this picture. he actually happily gets in his crate, but in this instance he decided to billy-goat around the car. doof.

Painfully cute

This is the same pup who was Bonden's shadow a few months ago, growing in leaps and bounds

Campus life

It's great to be able to let the dog run around off leash around groups of people. As I discovered last year with Mac, putting a bandana around a dog's neck makes them seem much less intimidating. There was a small child chasing him around which made him a bit nervous, but he tolerated all the attention. It's a somewhat awkward and unfamiliar situation for me when people want to interact with him and he is aloof. It's a typical shepherd behavior though; they don't typically warm to people quickly. He was overjoyed to see his friend AR, and it's nice to see what his enthusiasm for someone other than me looks like. He didn't scrounge the burgers, which I attribute more to weirdness than good behavior.

How to explain Los Angeles

I went out the other night to a friend's birthday dinner at a nearby mall. When I went into the underground parking garage, this sign was resting on the ticket dispensing machine. I had to dig through my backpack after I took the ticket to find my camera, hoping the barrier wouldn't drop. The sign says "'Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.' - Ralph Waldo Emerson." It looks like it was simply run off their printer and stuck in a cheap lucite stand. Do they rotate the epigrams? Is this why they call themselves _Modern_ Parking Inc?

Live free and splat

The third of today's rants comes from my favorite crazy libertarian state, New Hampshire, with a quote from one of the anti-seatbelt law lawmakers: "When people get in their car in the morning and put on their seatbelt, they'll think 'I'm no longer free.'" (NPR Morning Edition)

When children are present

Another piece of vagueness that I drive past every day is a sign restricting the speed limit "When children are present." Well, it's a school. Children are present from 8-4 or something like that. What if there are evening programs? Is there summer school? How can I know these things.

After a web search, I found that I wasn't the only one with this kind of question. Here's what the California driver's handbook says:

Within 500 feet of a school while children are outside or crossing the street, the speed limit is 25 mph, unless otherwise posted. Also, if the school ground has no fence and children are outside, never drive faster than 25 mph. Always drive more carefully near schools, playgrounds, parks, and residential areas because children may suddenly dart into the street.

I think that means unless students are going to or from the school, I can go the regular speed limit. Most cars don't slow down and I expect to be creamed if I do.

p.s. I wanted to use the word "vaguery" but neither miriam webster or the OED would approve.

"i quoted quotes from osama bin laden"

i turned on the radio to the distinctive voice and phrasing of our national village idiot. naturally i turned it off immediately.

my mental dialog during a first date

(you = perfectly nice prospective from online dating who i drove a long way to see. she suggested we meet at barnes and noble at the mall. ok, the nicest mall ever, but still, the mall (The Grove if you must know). )

wow, you're young-acting. you act younger than all the 23 year olds i work around.

you're out of your 20s and living on someone's couch?

hmm, that putting yourself down thing is pretty unappealing. guess i don't have to wonder how light hearted the self-deprecation in your emails was.

[she apologizes for her appearance]

well, if you wanted me to have a different impression, you could have set up a meeting for a different day.

[we're looking at a fountain and at how the shape of the water droplets change. i record a movie of it, and show her the last picture i took, one of bonden]

her: you have a dog?

mental me: uh, yeah. note for your future dating success: make an effort to remember the few pieces of information you have about someone you're having a convo with. especially if it's something that seems to be relevant to you (i infer from her tone).

Fatigue per calorie

Today I thought of a new metric by which to analyze exercise: fatigue per calorie. People who exercise to help them sleep might look for a higher fatigue per calorie. I aim for a low fatigue per calorie workout, so I can work out in the morning and not be exhausted during the work day.


I took a new route biking with Bonden today. I tried going north and east - ultimately I'd like to be able to bike to the dog park, which is in that direction. My normal route is more directly east through a quiet residential area without much traffic. Today's route was 4 miles, half on multi-lane streets with stoplights. I spent the whole ride watching for dogs, cars and narrow spaces and keeping an eye on the fatigue level of the dog. I realize that this might be the worst fatigue per calorie workout - I'm barely sweaty, but I'm beat. Even riding our usual route is pretty tiring. I think the treadmill has the minimum fatigue per calorie rating. Sorry beast. Dog park for you.

One thing that irked and amused me was the placement of signs around highway entrances. On two corners, huge highway signs were placed not only in the middle of the sidewalk, but on a corner so one could not use the cut-away to ride up onto the sidewalk (or for more virtuous causes). On the other hand, the car obsession of the region is good for me - there are very few people on the sidewalk, so when we do ride on the sidewalk, we're not menacing too many people.

A mouthful of a dog description

According to this page, the color of little bear's coat is black sable, it has the blanket-back pattern and the length is indicated by calling him plush-coated. There is apparently also some interesting genetics behind it. Interestingly, the same genes are used to identify mice when we're trying to make a mouse that is missing a particular gene.

If a narrative is going to be as clumsy as that,

...can't it have some guns?

from Clive James' "Blood on the Borders," New Yorker Magazine, 4/9/2007

Bonden has a shadow

Chase, the blur on the left, loves to stalk Bonden. Bonden chases the ball, Chase chases Bonden.

just desserts

(for some reason the table gets pushed down in the entry, a plot no doubt. just scroll down for the entry)

desperately hopeless situation	US public education	Bush's prosecution of the war in iraq
proposed solution	quantification of achievement: "accountability"	quantification of achievement: "accountability"
group doing the proposing	president	congress
measurement goal	adequate yearly progress	benchmarks (progress with militias, oil revenues, minorities, elections)
unstated belief	if they really wanted to teach those kids, they would	he's a dangerous idiot - how can we limit the damage?
program  name	no child left behind	no president left behind

My other vehicle is...

unmanned.

I saw this bumper sticker on campus, naturally.

There's some fantastic feminist commentary to be made, but I'm just not coming up with it.

My favorite tax day tradition

I love that some local post offices stay open until midnight on tax day.Cops were blocking off neighborhood streets, All traffic was funnelled in one direction down the street past tents of postal workers holding bins for the passing cars to toss their tax envelopes in.

awesome tv

too bad i'm trying to unclutter...


...because this is seriously cute.


(found on craigslist, url will expire soon)

Obsolete

Do you remember the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" from 1979?

i got a color tv so i can see
  the knicks play basketball

When was the last time you thought about a black and white TV (except those of you who watched the Academy Awards during a blackout)?

Mish-mosh linux

When you've installed Ubuntu, then Kubuntu, then Xbuntu, then back to Kubuntu, you get errors (like "cdrecord has no permission to open the device") trying to burn an ISO file to a CD. The solution?

gksu k3b

Thank you Internet/Easter Bunny

Seriously brilliant

This is from the delightful, occasionally uncomfortable xkcd, "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language."

Warm and dead

She's not dead until she's warm and dead.

This phrase was on Grey's Anatomy this week. It's one of my favorite medical sayings.

Crazy Puple Lady quiz

The woman with a purple wool poncho was walking a small dog with a purple poncho!

It's like I've moved back to Seattle or something.

things to do in pasadena with a dog

i rode my bike this morning while the dog ran alongside. i saw several things.

one: a small woman having an argument with a tall man. she had him backed up against a car and i heard him meekly defending himself as i went by.

two: a different woman talking to a man who was lying in the trunk of her car.

three: a disaster waiting to happen - a woman forgot something in her car, so she left her dog and kid on the sidewalk while she went back to the car. the kid was under two, in a huge stroller. the medium sized dog had its leash looped over the handle of the stroller. i wasn't sure she had seen us, and i was envisioning the dog chasing after us, pulling the stroller over, etc. luckily this didn't happen.

Quiz: How well do you know your blogger?

This morning I was driving back home from the dog park. About a mile from the dog park I saw a woman in a bright purple wool poncho. She had a small-ish dog with her on a leash. Guess what else about the scene (something I haven't mentioned) made it blog-worthy.

ski trip list on the internets

I figure, why not use the hive mind to make sure I don't forget anything when i go to Mammoth this weekend?

First item on ski trip packing list here: Bible. OK, that's not on my list. I was amused. Almost as amused when AR said she was taking banana bread skiing and it sounded like they were going to schuss down the sloops alongside her. The last person who went skiing with her ruptured his spleen trying to keep up. Lesson: I better not let my ego get caught up in my skiing.

Overheard at the dog park

someone calling their dog "buckbeak"

Dog crack

apparently, this is the formula: one Hol-ee roller ball, partially destroyed. Insert a tennis ball. Give to curious young dog, too smart for his own good. Crack, I tell you.

Meet Bonden

He's my new dog. I got him Sunday from the Westside German Shepherd Rescue group. He's around 2 years old. It's shocking to have a dog in the house other than Mac. It's a good thing Bonden appealing enough to make the shock worth it. He's lovely and outgoing and curious and energetic and friendly and affectionate. He plays fetch (pictured!).

In case you are curious, Bonden was named for a character in a book. You can find a description of the character here (you have to scroll down or search for "Bonden"). The character's full name is Barrett Bonden.

amazing food experience

just back from melisse. i had a creamy onion soup with a small bready cylinder in the middle with a little bit of crab cake on it. the soup was impossibly smooth and yummy. for a main course i had lamb. there were a few lamb medallions, again cylindrical, with some kind of yummy coating, made partially out of cream cheese. wow. the seasoning on those was transcendent. the rest of the food on the plate was fine, but the taste of the lamb dwarfed it. a choco-chocolate dessert that was fantastic. i also had some foie-gras (insanely good), some mushrooms (not bad, but didn't change my world, which was the standard i was quickly developing). the service was personnel-intensive, generally good although disconcertingly in my space. the description of the menu ("it is all special") was overwhelming, and could have been shorter. one of my side dishes was too salty. there was a bit of fatty gristley something in one of my pieces of lamb (but i'm especially squeamish about this kind of thing). i've really had to dredge to come up with any negatives at all, so keep in mind that this place is amazing, probably my best food experience ever.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I am reminded of what a genius she was. She has a special, troubled place in my heart because her writing reminds me of my mom. In "A Book of Common Prayer," the main character shares my mom's own weird combination of flinty competence and thorough denial of reality and ability to be completely dominated. Several of Didion’s other books contained similar characters, and I find some of her discussions about her relationship with Dunne in The Year of Magical Thinking to be troubling.

It’s amazing to me (and not inherently troubling) that for something like 39 of the forty years they were married, they both worked from home, sometimes on the same project. I love what Didion reports her aunt as saying: “For better or worse, but never for lunch.” Of course now its a self-help book because people can't be trusted to expand truisms on their own ( http://www.amazon.com/Better-Worse-But-Not-Lunch-Retirement/dp/0809297205 ).

Some of my other favorite quotes from the book:

"In fact I had no idea how to be a wife...[she finds a note John wrote that says] 'as we walked down the aisle, we promised each other that we could get out of this next week and not wait until death did us part.'"

She dismisses the psychological explanation of a dream about how anger creates guilt which creates anger, saying "I did not disbelieve this answer but it remains less suggestive to me than the unexamined image, the mystery of being left alone on the tarmac at Santa Monica Airport watching the planes take off one by one."

I agree. By analogy, as much as I love talking about art and meanings, I think the sensations elicited by art are generally diminished by explanation.

When crafts go bad

here

Roomba intelligence

If you are watching your roomba go about its vacuuming business, and you notice a piece of fluff on the floor, it will skip around the fluff as nimbly as a champion agility dog.

sonic weapon immobilized by dog-snoot

From here. Be prepared to turn down the volume.

Science podcast

Radiolab is a kind of "This American Life" about science. The topics are approached as a story. The narrators have a conversational tone and allow their curiosity to move the story along. The guests they get are tremendous (Oliver Sachs, Robert Sapolsky). The format is a little annoying: they do this arty-effects thing where they, for example, talk over each other or repeat phrases many times. Still, in total, I like this show a lot.

Quilts that I actually like

This, on the other hand (see previous post), is quite beautiful.

Tirade

Sure, I'm in a bad mood. Who would be surprised about that? Here's what I had to say to the USPS store:

This is the worst interface I remember dealing with in an online store. Of course I don't remember the password I used once a year and a half ago. Most sites will send the password (or reset it and then send it) to your registered email account. I had a miserable experience with your website. If amazon sold stamps, I'd never be back here.

I figure I might as well rant while I've got the energy for it. I didn't even add, "and your logo's ugly too."

I'm going to the gym as much as possible. It's a strategy. Insufficient, but it's something.

The End of the Road

I put Mac down on Thursday, December 7th. He had abdominal bleeding from an unknown source, most likely a tumor from a different kind of cancer than he was already being treated for. It was sudden - probably developed over 12 hours. The night before, he was well, soaking up attention from AS. He was my wonderful dog, and I was lucky to have him as long as I did. 

the aesthetic of ineffable rightness

this phrase was used by Martin Kemp in the 11/30/06 edition of Nature. He's talking about the sectioned rocket engine in this picture (taken by Kemp). i love the phrase both because of the funny way that it makes wonderful sense and because it is a perfect description of a particular aesthetic that i love.

Pie!

This is the first pumpkin pie I've made. I used Cook's Illustrated No-Bake Pumpkin Pie recipie. I'm quite happy with the filling, although it could have been slightly more gelled. The flavor is fantastic. I've never made a crumb crust before, and I made this one too thick at the bottom of the edges. 

Caltech then

There is an interesting article about and interview with Jenijoy La Belle, "the first female hired on the tenure track" at Caltech (1969). She taught literature. The board of trustees had voted to admit women to undergrad programs only the year before, mostly for the benefit of the men, who had many complaints about the absence of women on campus. When the time came, Dr. La Belle was denied tenure. Subsequently the institute being charged with sex discrimination by the EEOC. Dr. La Belle eventually was reinstated and received tenure.

The facts have changed since then, but we still live with many unchanged attitudes from that time.

Miscegenation

I did a double take today when I was passed by a Miata, top down, with a tandem cruiser bicycle mounted to the trunk, extending far off the back of the car. It could have been some fabulous tail.

(image originally from flickr user loosenball, CC license)

Below 70!

For the first time that I can remember this fall, the high temperature is expected to be below 70 degrees. Lately, I've been thankful for temperatures in the 70s rather than 80s, so this is a huge joy.

Even though I drink only intermittently...

Be Drunk

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it--it's the
only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks
your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually
drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be
drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of
a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,
drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave,
the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything
that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is
singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and
wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:"It is time to be
drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be
continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Charles Baudelaire

Chemo - Day one

Today the little beast got chemosensitization for tomorrow's radiation treatments that are supposed to shrink his tumor. They also took a needle aspirate from the bone marrow and dosed him with pamidronate for pain and bone strengthening. The tech told me that the oncologist said the sample from the needle aspirate strongly suggests that the tumor is osteosarcoma, as expected, but they want to send it out for culture anyway. Fine by me.

I had more frustrating interactions with the practice. I met the other vet, and I'm not a huge fan. She doesn't have much of a bedside manner, and it appears that she's the junior vet. Anyway, I expressed my concerns about the administration of Mac's care. She told me why she thought it had happened. We made a clear list in the chart of the treatments I authorized. I'm slightly mollified.

He was full of vim when he came out after the anesthesia (for the needle aspirate), but now he's pretty tired. I had to hand feed him treats to coat his stomach enough so he could take his anti-inflammatory.

I'm happy to have taken some action.

Lesson

Lesson: Don't expect the step-stool to stand stably in the shower.
Cost: Shin bruise.
Cost-benefit analysis: considering initial state, not too expensive. Good to learn from the ground rather than from on top of the stool.
Wisdom attained: limited. I went ahead and used it, but cautiously.

Casino Royale: portrait of "an erotomaniacal British toff"

(for a much more withering perspective, the source of the "an erotomaniacal British toff" quote, try this)

I saw it yesterday in a new theater. The first two hours were pretty good. It's a nice action-thriller movie, with high production value. The locations were terrific. The script is fine, exceptional in places. The story is deeper than usual.

Daniel Craig was not bad, in spite of the fact I can't find one particular thing I actively liked about him or his performance. His wardrobe was miserable in several scenes. I don't think he's very good at fights or foot chases or action in general. The first chase scene was nicely planned and fun to watch. The guy being chased was incredibly agile and strong, which probably highlighted Craig's inadequacies. I'm ambivalent about Craig's repartee and expressions. An example of a scene that I enjoyed but also think showed his lack of gravitas is the black and white opening scene, excerpted here). I didn't think I would miss Pierce Brosnan - he was lacking in soul. Yet, here, I do miss him.

Eva Green is fun. I like her accent, and I think she's a reasonably good actress (better than most Bond "girls"). She reminds me of Deborah Winger. Her wardrobe was terrific. There was some inconsistency: even at the end of the movie, I was unable to confidently reconstruct her motivations. Judi Dench's M was wonderful, of course. There was no Q, and it was no loss.

The movie is incredibly long. The last half hour is slow and agonizing. Clearly they tried to make it shorter, but the results were a few painful discontinuities which left the viewer surprised to discover what city we were now in.

I think I'm not conveying the pleasure I took in seeing it - I did enjoy it. If I knew before I saw it how much I would enjoy it, I would still make the same choice. But I'm a sucker for action movies.

Beast Pain

Puppy seems to be in a lot of pain this morning. Last night he licked his knee for the first time that I've seen. He was gimpy after our walk all day yesterday. This morning he's drooled a few times, and he's not putting any weight on the leg when he stands, although he does when he walks. I called the vet today for some opiates; it's something we had talked about a few weeks ago.

Gimpy morning

Today Mac was very gimpy when he got up. He had trouble getting on the couch and was not using his back left leg much at all. He ate his breakfast after a little encouragement. I took him out about an hour after his Rimadyl. He was less gimpy than when he had gotten up. We walked to TL's to collect her mail for her. He was tired and gimpy on the way home, but when I showed him a squirrel he ran and jumped up at it like usual. I spaced out and took him up the stairs when we came inside instead of taking the elevator.

Time to nuke the dog

i started writing this post while watching the dog eat his breakfast while he's lying down. the past couple mornings he seems to be in a lot of pain, and eating kibble standing up is harder on the tile than on the carpet. it also seems harder to for him to reach down to the floor. but even when he is eating his food off a raised platform on the carpet, he's uncomfortable enough that he doesn't eat the whole bowl. after he lies down, i put it next to him and he'll almost finish it. he usually gets hungry later in the day, but i have to make him eat in the morning so he has some food before he takes his pills (which probably make him feel good enough to want to eat, frustratingly enough). a few hours after getting up, he seems a lot better though.

in general, he's in good spirits, racing around the house when i come home, happy to meet new people, always thinking about how he might cadge some food or chase a cat or squirrel. i have decided on radiation over amputation. one of reasons is this: according to statistics, he may only live another couple months (if the radiation and chemo are started early enough and work, it should be more). if he died in a couple of months and had spent two weeks of that time recovering from an amputation, i would regret the amputation. the side effects of the radiation aren't much, maybe a little sun-burn like irritation on the site. his quality of life is pretty good right now, it seems a shame to waste it.

i'm also planning on following the radiation with chemo. the doc said only 20% of dogs have any chem side effects at all and 5% have significant side effects like vomiting or diarrhea. mac is an old hand at digestive indiscretion and subsequent gastrointestinal upset, so the package of odds and symptoms don't seem too bad.

monday is our next appointment with the oncologists. hopefully mac can start radiation next week. apparently he needs some chemosensitization first and administration of a supplementary bone-promoting drug, pamidronate.

i have found the way the oncology practice is administered to be very frustrating. they are bad at returning calls, bad at gathering records, bad at hand-offs between doctors (i should add that once i have an individual's attention, i am completely willing to believe they are at the top of their field). due to this and recent events with my own medical care, i will be treating this as if i were mac's primary doctor, wanting everything that will happen to him at each visit explained to me before it happens, making sure i understand it completely first. i don't trust their disorder. at this point i believe that i can compensate for their deficits in organization and communication with my own organization and focus and will. if i stop believing that, i'll have to find another oncology practice.

in an effort to be informed about our options, i have been doing a lot of reading. scientific and medical research articles are written in code - i'm glad that i've spent the last half decade learning to read at least the scientific side of the code. there are journal articles on immediately relevant topics. if want to buy access to them through the publisher, the articles cost $30. happily i can request copies from my university library for about $6. knowledge is power, but power is power too: if i'm associated with a powerful institution, i can access the knowledge.

and attention is a kind of power. i'm not the best at steady focus, organization and preparation. i think i'll need that for this process. motivation helps.

Ancient Latrine Expert

I came across this on boing boing of course. Why do jobs like ancient latrine expert (ok, palaeopathologist) and official bird flu spokesman of the International Badminton Federation fascinate me so much? Perhaps because my own job has a fairly straightforward career path and is defined enough that children can grow up thinking about it. Deciding you want to be an ancient latrine expert probably does not happen by browsing through a list of possible careers.

More love for wikipedia: my recent wikipedia history

From my November google search history. I have a firefox qucksearch that takes me directly to wikipedia, so this is only a fraction of my wikipedia usage.

Grgich Hills Cellar
Fort Mason
Chemical synapse
Hollaback Girl
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive
Patch clamp
99 Luftballons
California gubernatorial election, 2006
Harvard Board of Overseers
Aleister Crowley
Chocolate
Exponential decay
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Category:Nosology

More wikipedia history, this from my browser history on my home computer:

Percept
Chicken
Mike the headless chicken
Frank Sinatra
Why did the chicken cross the road
Mallorca
Gray (unit)
Piroxicam
Photon
Wizards of the Coast
Surbiton

I heart Wikipedia: The United States order of precedence

I love this stuff:

The United States order of precedence is a nominal and symbolic hierarchy of important positions within the government of the United States. The order is established by the office of the President of the United States and can be changed by the President, though in practice it is fairly established and rarely modified. It has no legal standing (for example, it does not reflect the United States presidential line of succession), and is instead used to dictate ceremonial protocol. The United States Department of State is responsible for enforcing matters of protocol in U.S. diplomacy.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_order_of_precedence

Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

so good, i have to quote the whole thing. from "the right was right":

Here is our 25-point manifesto for the new Congress:
1. Mandatory homosexuality
2. Drug-filled condoms in schools
3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act
4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses
5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State
6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein
7. English language banned from all Federal buildings
8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups
9. All taxes to be tripled
10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated
11. On-demand welfare
12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish
13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems
14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning
15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8
16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor
17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery
18. God to be mocked roundly
19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN
20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement
21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy
22. Texas returned to Mexico
23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day
24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore
25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"

The Big C

To the left are three x-rays of Mac. The far left is his healthy tibia. In the middle is his other tibia. You can see a relative increase in blurriness compared to the healthy one. To the right is the same tibia two weeks later. I'm a bit fascinated with x-rays. This is the first time I can remember really seeing something clearly on an x-ray.

The vet today had a great manner. She told three things:

1) After examining Mac and looking at his chart from his regular vet and looking at his x-rays, she feels that there is no need to do a biopsy. She says she is 99% sure that Mac has osteosarcoma. She says she's acted on this analysis before and hasn't been wrong so far. I'm greatly relieved - it seemed silly to go through a painful and expensive surgery (the biopsy) when it's unlikely to be anything else.

2) She recommended a consult with a radiologist. Since he's still using the leg, he might be a candidate for radiation therapy instead of amputation. I have an appointment with her recommended guy next Tuesday. I'm pleased at the thought of this option. My concern is that I don't want to do things by half measures. I keep seeing that by all measures dogs get 100% pain relief from amputation and usually do very well with it.

3) If I end up having his leg amputated and I have it done at her hospital, it will cost between $3200 and $4000. Nope, I didn't leave a decimal point out. That's more than twice as much as what the local vet estimated. I may not need the fanciest surgeon in LA after all. If it comes to that, I'll ask my local vet what the level of difficulty is and if she feels comfortable doing it. I will say that it was a fantastic practice, by far the nicest I've ever been to. They had the highest level of service, and, from all I've heard, a great level of care.

Naturally, Mac acted like a puppy all day, barely favoring his leg at all. He was more mobile and energetic than he's been in days. His recent slump is due to a little chocolate digestive indiscretion of his (and mine for leaving it where he could get to it). It's great to see him back to his usual self, but ironic. I have to imagine it was one of the things that gave the vet the idea of radiation therapy. She said she doesn't usually recommend it, because usually the tumors are too far along.

Biopsy

I've schedule a consultation for tomorrow. If the consultation goes well, the biopsy may occur tomorrow. I wasn't able to see the Ventura orthopedic surgeon, who did a successful double hip replacement on a lab I know. The surgeon is a friend of a friend and a board certified surgeon, but he wouldn't be able to do the biopsy for the next 2.5 weeks. The recommended surgeon is also board certified and was a strong recommendation from my vet. Here's her bio:

Dr. Mary Somerville, Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons.A graduate of the U.C. Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, she served as Director of the Emergency Pet Clinic of South Bay, performing emergency medical and critical care for three years. She completed her internship and surgical residency with our surgical department. She then successfully completed the ACVS examinations to become a Diplomate (Board Certified Surgeon) of the ACVS.

Another advantage of this surgeon is that she's only 35 minutes away, about 30 minutes closer than the other one. Still, all of Los Angeles is between me and her.

dog health: the story until now

I'm planning on posting health updates about bad dog via blog. This is my first one, so it covers a lot of territory. BD started limping about 5 weeks ago, which I'll call time zero. After a few days, I took him to the vet. They took an x-ray, saw a shadow in the bone below the knee in his left hind leg, said cancer or fungus. Bone cancer is very common Rottweilers and in all dogs his size and age. Furthermore, the location of the shadow on his bone is a common location for osteosarcoma. Standard treatment: limb amputation, chemo. It is practically always metastatic. A chest x-ray was clear, so any metastasis isn't advanced. Two weeks after the first x-ray, a follow up leg x-ray showed that the shadow hadn't changed. Often bone cancer is really aggressive and will grow in that time period.

Three weeks after the first x-ray, I found out that the fungal test was negative, which is unfortunate. It means the shadow on his bone is almost certainly bone cancer. It is possible, but unlikely, that the bone damage could be an idiopathic infarct, which means destruction of the bone from an unknown cause.

Monday (week 4) I saw my regular vet to make a plan; she'd been on vacation. The choice was between a biopsy to confirm the cancer diagnosis or proceeding with amputation. The problem with bone biopsy is that they don't always get a diagnostic sample, it's painful, requires anesthesia (which has risks of its own) and, presuming it confirms bone cancer, requires him to recover from two surgeries rather than one. Even if it's not bone cancer, the biopsy carries risk of damage to the bone that can ultimately require amputation. The problem with not getting a biopsy is the chance of amputating a healthy leg. The biopsy test is not fast enough that they can test it while he's still under and then perform the amputation if it's positive.

I'm not especially worried about any significant decrease in Mac's quality of life if he has to have the leg amputated. He's in good shape, and dogs generally can get along quite well with 3 legs. I'm worried about the metastasis. The typical life expectancy after amputation is 3 months, 1 year with chemo. I had always assumed the pain and sickness of chemo wouldn't be worth putting a dog through, especially since they don't have the knowledge of the benefits to weigh against the discomfort. My recent research suggests it's usually not as sick-making for dogs as it typically is for people. Also, it doesn't simply prolong life expectancy but acts palliatively to reduce pain and secondary sickness from tumors. That's huge to me.

Right now Mac is on Rimadyl, a potent (and liver threatening) anti-inflammatory. It seems to be working pretty well. He's just as perky and happy as always, chasing squirrels and begging for food. My goal is to keep him pain free as long as possible. This is all quite expensive, of course, but hasn't exceeded my old-dog health cost expectations.

Here's a link with information about osteosarcoma in dogs. http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/vmth/clientinfo/info/onco/k9ost.html

Mac is already past the life expectancy of a dog of his size and (assumed) breeds. Hopefully my mental preparation for this kind of news has helped somewhat, but it's still incredibly hard emotionally. He's been a daily part of my life for eight years. He's got lots of qualities I could do with more in my life: happiness, enthusiasm, friendliness, outgoing (ness?), loyalty, stability. I can't imagine what my life will be like without him. My friends and family have been very kind and supportive, and I can only take it as it comes.

People pay for this weather?

when i came down from my weekend in the mountains (5200 feet) yesterday, it was a massive disappointment to descend into the heated smog of los angeles. the air was so clear up there. when we went for a hike saturday, we started out in fleeces, but soon stripped down to t-shirts. back home, today's forecast is for 89 degrees. vile hell-pit.