Attention Deficit David

Damn nature, yo scary

I was outside admiring the array of flora and fauna on display this fine global warming inspired spring day and my eye happened to alight upon the forms of two bumblebees grappling mid flight in the act of copulation and reproduction. Somehow their bodies managed to form a graceful arc up toward the sky, my eye still able to see them flapping as they reached treetop, my ears still attuned to the glorious buzzing of their wings.

Glory be to God for all things in his kingdom are right and good and OH MY GOD A BLUEJAY JUST ATE THEM.

Amazon is pissing me off

Forgetting for a moment the whole scuttle over Amazon and the issue of whether they're against LGBT titles, but the company is starting to piss me off.

I paid extra to have two items shipped to me for next day delivery. $3.99 each for two items, which will incidentally go in the same box. (I have Amazon Prime, so my base rate is already covered.)

Instead of shipping it UPS red label, so I'd have it by now, they shipped it ground, from a local distribution center that has about a one-day shipping time to my house. That's not the same thing at all.

My most recent Star Wars realization

Okay, here's the most recent thing I'm trying to wrap my mind around. Opening scene of Star Wars, Rebel Blockade Runner is stopped by a Star Destroyer. 

Darth Vader and the storm troopers enter the ship. Rebels blast. C3 R2 and R4 units scurry. People die. We see Leia recording a message on R2D2, who then scurries off to the desert in an escape pod.

Vader is mad, he wants to know where the plans are. He even chokes a bitch. But little does he know, the plans are safe inside R2D2.

But, why the fuck are there only one set of plans? Why not fucking email them. Or put them on every R2 unit on the ship. I mean these things are little rolling hard drives. Even Star Trek, which was filmed a decade before Star Wars had 'data tapes' and Tricordres on which they could put information. Why would you take the plans for the Death Star and not copy it enough to ensure that it survived being stopped by a Star Destroyer? 

Really guys, backup your data, that's all I'm saying. 

Put some spice where your mouth lives

I caught a bit of my least favorite show in the history of television (starring one of my least favorite people on earth) Mad Money as Jim Cramer interviewed CEO and President of McCormick Spices Alan Wilson to the show to talk about how safe their stocks are in this terrible market (thereby inflating Cramer's portfolio of McCormick, of course).

In any case McCormick has launched the McCormick Science Institute to help determine the benefit of spices, (which sounds a whole lot like the smoking industry launching safe-smoking studies) and they're using the results of this (company funded) "science" institute to promote things like cinamin, curry, tumeric "and the things that have high 'ORAC' values," to quote Wilson " which is a measure of the antioxidants that are really good for you and taste great.

Then Cramer asked the reasonable question "what do antioxidants do?" The answer is a bit astounding to me:

"Oh gosh, I'm not, I'm not a doctor," said Wilson (about to prove that statement beyond a shadow of a doubt) but what it does is frees up your blood flow and does a lot of positive things..." the ellipses are because he was cut off not because I started yelling at the television.

It frees up your blood? At first I thought he said that it freezes up your blood, so I had to go find the clip, which is here on CNBC but really his answer is no better. Remember, this is a man who is the CEO of a company that has just spent a ton of money on a science institute launched to help figure out if spices really are good for you, and he's proclaiming they are, because they're so high in antioxidants. What's an antioxidant do? I dunno.

I'm not saying he's got to be an expert, but the guy runs the company. Shit, can you imagine what would happen if the CEO of Chrysler got up and said "we're going to make an electric car" and was asked "what does that do?" and replied "I don't know, I'm not a mechanic, but it drives around and makes your streets better."

Seriously man, if you're going to spend millions of dollars pretending your company is doing scientific work, learn the pretend answer.

Old Lambs Eyes

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve, there is something about the inability to stop the big descending ball that strikes me as dreadful (in the original literal sense of dreadful) and I tend to get a bit melancholy.

That's not to say that I haven't enjoyed celebrating the new year, I've had some great times, especially the many trips I took to foreign cities with my friend Jon. We've been in some really interesting places when the date change has come, and I've got some great stories.

Once Jon and I entertained an entire Polish student exchange program in Paris having met up with them on Champs Elysee. We were tear gassed by the cops, walked all across the city and squeezed all two dozen of them into our double-bunk room at the hostile in Republic.

Another year we celebrated in Trafalgar Square in London, this time with Abby and some other friends, although that almost resulted in a fist fight caused by a sudden need to urinate. Well that might not have been the cause, per se.

We rang in the new year with the bells of a long-silent church spire in Vienna that decided to revive the aural celebration to commemorate the launch of the Euro in 1999. And the best trip was when Abby and I rung in the New Year in Mexico (although the actual night itself was a tad boring, and involved a lot of time passing at a bad restaurant while eating ground up worms.)

But the actual passing of the years is always a bit sad. The sole exception to this has been the 2001 to 2002 year change, I was really glad after September 11th to see that year slip away. Maybe a bit of it has to do with my birthday being at the beginning of February—essentially the new year rings in my aging.

This year was a hard one for me, and for a lot of people I know. Personal crisis after crisis, coupled with the relationship trials of those around me made things surprisingly more difficult than in many years past. So it's with a bit of glee that I look forward the new year. I don't think things are going to be perfect in 2009, after all we're facing a horrible economy, the continued horrible economy and a lingering conflict in countries where we don't belong.

And it wasn't a total write off for a year. I had a lot of fun traveling—I got to go to the Olympics, Amsterdam twice, Germany, Hawaii, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Miami, Toronto, Boston, D.C. and more. I got to run a company with my good friend Wil, and we had a lot of fun traveling all over.

Still, it was a tough year.

But we've got a new president coming in, possibly a new era and I'm looking forward to that. I'm hoping life will calm down a bit (and that business will pick up—when do we small business owners get the Federal bailout money after all?) and that I'll continue to be healthy, the strep throat I've got now not withstanding.

So, should you be standing around tonight at midnight waiting to sing in the new year, here is the original lyrics of Auld Lang Syne, as written by Robert Burns in 1788. (And if it isn't Scottish, it's crap!)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne ?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo,

For auld lang syne,

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
And surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot,
Sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
And gie's a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
For auld lang syne.

CHORUS

The Washer Dryer Cycle

About a dozen years ago Hurricane Floyd hit our neck of the woods, flooded our basement, and left us pretty wet. Our washer and dryer was under about 3 feet of water and we were told they wouldn't last long. They only put in another ten-years of service before giving up the ghost, with the washer finally unable to keep up. We replaced it with a nice front-loader unit, which had gotten great Consumer Reports ratings.

We decided a few weeks ago that the front-loader isn't really cutting it for us—the super-soft water pumped into it from our Culligan filter combined with all the super-smelly bike clothes i have didn't seem to be a good fit. Clothes often came out smelling cleaner but when you're starting with a bike jersey, you don't just want cleaner. It's a great unit, just shouldn't be attached to a water softener. It's easier to get a new washer than to re-run the pipes, and that's what we're doing.

(Which reminds me, that washer is now for sale, anyone want it? It's going for cheap and I'm going to put it up on Craigslist.)

So we went to Sears and ordered the biggest-capacity high-efficiency top-loaders we could find—big enough to do full-size sheets and blankets—and ordered that for delivery.

Yesterday the guys showed up and brought us the new washer and dryer, and had them take away the old dryer and the hosing for it that survived the flood.

About an hour later the Sears-assigned plumber shows up to connect the dyer. This has got to be an easy gig for those guys. Connect dryer, leave. Get paycheck from Sears.

They were surprised that the old gas hose had been removed. They attach dyer, leave.

About half-an-hour later I go to the basement, smell gas. I call the plumber, who thinks that it might be that the dryer just needs to burn off the gas-air mixture that it's go in there. I look behind the dryer and the gas hose is a bit of tubing that's even older looking than what was taken out—clearly this is some kind of fitting they had laying around in the truck.

Basically, their advice is to run the dryer to see if the gas smell burns off. Now mind you that the dryer works by creating fire from electricity and gas and is right near the gas smell. After a while it still smells like gas and I have them come back.

They put some of their blue bubbly gel stuff on the hose to see if they can find where it's leaking and pronounce very quickly that they don't see a leak, so i should call O&R to come check with the sniffer. (For those of you not living nearby O&R is the local gas utility.) I call O&R, who is super friendly and they say they'll send a guy out within the hour. (Faster service is expected if you answer the question "do you read books by open candles" in the affirmative.)

The O&R rep has been here before, I recognize him from some building project we did, and he's got the sniffer and wouldn't you know it the ancient hosing is leaking in several places. Luckily, O&R guy is smart enough to have a few brand-new in-bag hosing connectors in his truck (no doubt for guys who have dealt with Sears' recommended plumbers) and offers to put it on for me, thereby saving me a $150 plumber house call. Awesome.

So here's my question—if you were a plumber under contract with Sears and you were putting on shitty, old gas connectors, and someone has one that's obviously leaking, isn't it worth a trip to Home Depot to get a new hose? Because I'm sure as shit going to call Sears and whatever body licenses plumbers in the county and tell them that these guys gave me faulty gas connectors and then recommended I create a spark and flames right near the leaking area. Why not spend the thirty minutes and ten bucks to save your contract? And why not, like the utility guy did, have the right parts on the truck in the first place?

The Final Continuity Issue

Okay J.J. Abrams, I appreciate you taking on Star Trek and refreshing it. It was a stale franchise, and even I lost faith in it. I know you've got to throw some things out, and I know you're trying to be judicious.

I also appreciate the trailer in front of the Bond film (actually more than I appreciated the Bond film itself) but one thing. Enterprise was built in space dock at Utopia Planitia, orbiting Mars. Couldn't be looked at from the ground. And the guys building it, probably wouldn't be arc welding. Cause you know, they would have phasers.

It's going to be a lot to swallow for us geeks.

A few forgotten items

I usually have my travel shit together, at least when it comes to packing. However, I often find myself without nail clippers for some reason. I can't tell you how many pairs of nail clippers I've bought in the last few years of constant business travel. Luckily, they're cheap.

This trip though I forgot the handle of my razor, bringing only a pack of blades. I was going to head over to a pharmacy before some meetings here, but I never ended up with time, and so I discovered that one of the virtues of the Gillette Fusion razor blade is that the part that mounts to the handle is actually big enough to hold comfortably. So comfortable in fact that on space-limited trips I might leave the handle at home. I haven't yet figured out how to make the blade vibrate without the battery powered handle—jumping up and down does not seem prudent—but I'm working on it.

Yes, I know that most hotels have razors at the front desk. The single-bladed plastic torture items that pass for razors do not do good things to my face. It's better to go to most meetings with stubble than with toilet paper stuck to recent wounds.

Happy Change Day!!!

When Fox reports it, it's time to celebrate!

Google Street View Walking Directions - Fail!