Still No Power

We live in Newton Center and we've been without power since 11am on Sunday, May 28th. Let me know if you hear somebody say that the pre-Irene warnings were all "hype" - I will track them down and throw them into the prison that is my house. Not only have we lost a certain amount of food, feeding a family of 5 is tough in this semi-kosher accessed place. I'm writing this in a "Panera" and I'm surrounded by other families without power, but they can bring their kids here to eat, we can't.

We're naturally out of hot water as well, and since I have a Motorola Droid phone - known by cognoscenti as a hunk of crap in a plastic case - my phone batteries have been burnt out. This was already after the phone became impossible to directly recharge because the silly little prongs in the recharge port became slightly bent. When that happens, a few cents of breakage, renders the hundreds of dollars phone useless.

Our power-company, NStar, is ignoring their customers, as far as I can tell. We're not even told when we will be scheduled to be visited by a friendly crew. I'd switch companies, but as far as I know they have a government mandated monopoly of my neighborhood.

My kids are doing a decent job in handling this stuff, but there's just so much three kids under 7 can understand.

The only silver lining in this lovely episode is that I can use the experience to convince my family, or anyone I know, to never ever go camping. Because everything I'm suffering through right now is what 'camping' people endure on purpose.

Droid Update

As mentioned here and here, I purchased a new phone, the Motorola Droid, to replace my aging and cracked Palm 680 Treo. It's been a few months and while I still need more time to test it, my confident judgment is that this is not only the worst cell-phone I've ever owned, it may even be the worst purchase I've ever made in my life.

I hate this phone so very much. My biggest problems are (a) its dependence on the touch-screen (I understand that all phones are going this way, aping the accursed I-Phone, but I still can ladle my hate on the subject) - I believe my fingers aren't made for touch-screens, or something, but I'm constantly doing things I don't want to do with this freakin' phone because the screen alternates between being unresponsive and too-sensitive. Hate hate hate.

(B) The second, and big, problem is that the phone sucks up energy. My treo could sit for a day or two without draining its battery, but the Droid eats energy just by sitting there. Hate^3.

I'm stuck with this tech-turkey for another year or so. And I have nobody to blame but myself (oh, and the entire country of tech users who have forced all phones to be these asinine toys instead of TOOLS).

Pic from here.

Dental Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I'm going in for a dreaded dental procedure. My dentists in New Haven botched a root canal, and the crown has fallen out, the tooth irreparable... good times. So I'm going for a full fledged tooth extraction. Following that, I'm told that I can't blow my nose for three days and that sneezing could be dangerous. Again, good times. I may be stuck in bed for a while so I may be able to blog some stuff (the backlog on the blog is enormous).

Image from here.

End Semester Nigh

I haven't blogged in a while because I'm working furiously to finish all my papers before the end of the semester. It's coming close... and then I'll be able to relax a bit and sort through all the ideas that have clogged unblogged. In this Fin-de-Siecle push, almost everything has been breaking down except for the overall health of my family (and may it stay that way!). My back has held up (but I did lose a tooth - long story), and compared to last year's hospital saga, this has been a breeze.

One last note, I am now indebted to Endnote that I will need to give it much love in an blog entry soon. It's so amazing, especially when paired with the academic search engines (PDF delivery machines, more like it), that I have through school. I know I'm in the right professional direction when I consider it a valuable professional perk to have access to a full online library.

More on Droid

So why did I switch to the droid?

1. My phone went kaput. Well that's not totally true. My old phone was a Palm Treo 680, which I have had since July 2007. It was my upgrade to the "trio" of phone/web/PDA. I've been using Palm devices for nearly a decade (I believe) - starting with the Palm IIIe, then the Palm Vx, and then the Treo. In all cases, I acted like a good middle-class Gen-Xer: I waited until the first one died before upgrading. This time, my Treo was a bit of a lemon from the git-go:
   
   
   1. The online activity was spotty and over time, I stopped having access to almost every webpage except, luckily, my email and yahoo. No explanation was available on the intertubes except possibly my SIM card was messed up. Lovely.
      
   2. The key factor was that the touchscreen just died. It started acting really screwy at first and finally, on Tuesday, the screen basically went dead.
      
   3. Ironically, the only thing that actually worked, still, was the phone. I lived without full web access for a few months, but when I lost the PDA, the thing was done.
      
      
2. My wife needed a new phone. She had a simple one (ya know, only a camera on it, har!) for almost 5 years by her reckoning. But it too needed to be replaced. She also started to hanker after the web/email uses that she saw others have.
   
   
3. Once we both needed new phones, we felt that we should get a package deal (not only on the physical devices but also on the calling plan). I used to have AT&T and it worked OK but I've grown weary of Luke Wilson's idiotic commercials and my rebel nature against The Man (Corporate Division) made me feel I should switch to Verizon.
   
   
4. The Kicker was that my brother had just gotten a droid and he liked it and showed off all the wicked cool features (youtube! google maps! metallic-droid sounds!)

So, it's been two days, how do I feel about it?

1. The sales process was slow and annoying. The six-foot tall ex-jock doofus who sold us the phones had no real idea what he was selling. He reminded me of what the house sellers must have been like during the height of the bubble: i.e. he had a product that everyone wanted but nobody really looked too closely at. As such, he wasn't prepared to answer any questions.
   
   
2. Quick analysis: This is not a PDA. It sucks at that big time.
   
   
3. This is not really a phone, it's a web-browser with a phone "app." More: Ya remember how weird it was when they first put cameras on phones? And we old-tech people made jokes about it. Basically, we realized, especially after a number of key testimony incidents, that it's good to have an easy access camera/video and while it won't replace a real camera, it's a nice thing. So too, the Droid, so far, is a pretty bad phone, non-existent PDA, but the web access is crisp and keen. So is the sound quality, for all you hip rad children who need that thing.
   
   
4. The Man (Corporate) lives well with the droid. It's a google product. And while I've said in the past that I like the company's plan to digitize every bit of information and place it online, they still seem to act like a "splitting" company. That's a term I use for companies, especially in tech, who force incompatibility with other techs. Apple is terrible about this, IMHO, which is why I refuse to get an Iphone... after my Ipod disaster (which forced me to use Itunes, which meant I had to convert all my files from Microsoft Media Player (which played both WMA and MP3) and modify the data of every one of my billion media files. So here, google apps work well on the droid, but why can't it run Flash? If Youtube works, and Flash doesn't, it looks like an arbitrary "split."
   
   
5. Why is it a bad phone? Because the keys disappear, when you talk, making it hard to end a call. The volume ringer is screwy and will turn on, or off, despite your previous settings. It's like a freakin' embarrassment timebomb.
   
   
6. And it doesn't work as a PDA. Yeah, I've got 10 years of great Palm programs which I can no longer use. And that's a serious loss. But so far, I haven't found a decent replacement on the Droid (possibly because it's too new, but probably because the market is now split between Droid/Iphone/Blackberry as opposed to the not "split" days under the Palm umbrella.

I'm giving myself another week with this. If I can't find a way to have it improve, then I may need to switch. Maybe a blackberry? That looks like it was made for adults...

First pic is yet another version of the Indiana Jones Droid Hieroglyphs. Second is from the 2004 Onion story of the camera-phone.

Vacation, Intertube Problem

We arrived in our vacation spot (my parents' home) last night. Alas, they have limited intertube access (the network key was set my malevolent monkeys and cannot be recovered because it is their holiday today), so I'm posting quickly on the only working computer to say that I'm not going to post much. Happy day, I hear you say.

Shabbas.

Pic from here.

Another Person's Invisible Pain

This Citizen Dog reminds me of a long time pet-peeve of mine: people cannot see most of the pain a person can suffer. Unless there's a cast/bandage/missing limb, the pain is invisible. And many of our words for ailments or injuries are not menacing enough: headache, allergy, a cold, and depression. These terms each have either a range (headache can go from mild to migraine), or are used colloquially (when a person is feeling 'depressed' it can mean either they are feeling the blues or are clinically diagnosed and can be a suicide-threat).

Bellyaching personally [warning: the next paragraph is wangsty], I suffer from many problems that are invisible: allergies, stomach weakness, back pain, etc, that make me appear normal but on the inside can render me inoperable. And, self-conscious that I am for appearing as a malingerer, I have fantasized that as a type of super-power to throw my maladies onto another person for a minute. And, as part of this fantasy, once the person is suddenly stricken, he will collapse stunned and agonized. In fact, this led to my enacting a basic curse: for anyone who thinks I am lazy/shirking or making my problems up/exaggerating, my curse is that they should suffer my pains for a minute, like in the fantasy.

OK, enough unseemly ranting. But this observation comes from a greater point which is the need to exaggerate a self-description in order for your listener to take you seriously. See the Dilbert above for my point; transcript (from here):

That's right...cough-cough! ...I won't be in to work...cough-wheeze-cough... - Bad cold? Well, no, actually I have a bad headache... - But I don't know how to make a headache sound over the phone.

[I actually worked on this idea, within semiotics, for my Princeton JP and one day I will publish it BE"H.]

Ouch…there's a problem attaching?

My yahoo email account (which I've been using for a decade) does not allow attachments on my new computer (I get the above idiotic error phrase: "Ouch…there's a problem attaching...?") I can attach files from my old desktop 'puter, but not the new one. I assume, therefore, that there's something to do with my security settings, but I dunno what.

In any case, I searched yahoo answers for, uh, answers... and not only have I found nothing, the answers that are given are insulting. Many many people seem to be having my problem, and the questions itself is answered stupidly (e.g. your file is too big! you are using a Mexican computer! - actually I made the last up, but ya know)

When I discover the answer, I'll let everyone know.

Update: I don't know if this is the "answer" but I wonder if all ya'll who're having the same trouble as I are also running the free Symantec Anti-Virus? My current theory is that this cruddy program's firewall is preventing the attachments - and I haven't found a way to adjust the firewall (as of yet). Let me know.

New Favorite Product: Chill Stick

I got this just in time, last week, the CVS version of the Icy-Hot Chill Stick. It's the best delivery system for a Ben-Gay-Type-Substance I've used: it works like stick deoderant, so it can be applied one-handed (very important for people with orthopedic injuries) and there's no slime residue left on the hands. Read a review here.

Blogpocalypse 2

As mentioned here, many of you reader(s) may be worried that this is the blogpocalypse because I'm posting so much. The main reasons for the current torrent:

1. A better system of dealing with backposts (as reported here)
   
   
2. I got a new laptop which is lighter and easier to use than my previous steam-powered, concrete-shale alloy comprised one. True, this new computer moos (to paraphrase my wife) often - i.e. the fan runs loud and at inexplicable moments, but it has made blogging easy from many locations.
   
   
3. It's final paper season and I always write more when I'm procrastinating.
   
   
4. But the most important reason, at least for the output since Tuesday, is that I've had a renewed back blowout (last one was from April 2009). This one is a bit milder than the last, but it came on suddenly, yet can be traced to a full afternoon of wrangling jota minuscula. He's feisty, cute and hell on my back. Don't tell him though. Already my boys know to say, when looking to stall at bedtime, "Mommy, my back hurts" - just like Daddy did from his Daddy before him. This is Jewish-kvetchy pride at its most poignant.

Pic made by me referencing my favorite line from a pretty good film, Terminator 3, pic from here.

Belly Button Trivia

This navel gazing is sponsored by Citizen Dog. Trivium 1: Ya know why it feels weird when you put your finger in your belly button? My orthopedist explained its because it has no nerve endings. A life-time mystery solved with an idle comment.

Trivium 2: Navel gazing is a real meditation practice: you're to gaze at the navel to remind yourself that you have always been a dependent creature - from birth, umbilically connected, and now even when the umbilical cord isn't visible. I find it sad that such a profound concept has been twisted into a mocking cliche.

Veteran's Day Story

Last year I came to Brandeis via carpool. This year, since my carpool driver left, I've depended on public transportation. Sadly, I've noticed that the quality of the buses has gone down serverly over the past few months. I blame the recession - more people riding and, I believe, budget cuts that have made busses more unreliable (and possibly the drivers as well). Whatever the cause, I have missed connecting buses many times because my main route (the 52) is never on time.

This is a problem especially when I have a 9am class - because rush-hour makes the bus errors even worse. So this morning, like many a Wednesday, the buses just decided not to run, and I needed to take the emergency route, which involves a taxi.

Note, it is 22 miles from my house to Brandeis. By car, direct route, it should take 20 minutes (17 according to Google Maps). By public transport, if I'm lucky, it's an hour door to door. Many of the "direct" routes (meaning that from the start of the first bus to then end of the last bus, barring schedule mishmash or missing connections) it can take 90 minutes or more. This is nuts. Brandeis is so close to Newton, yet in can take as long to get there as it did to go from New Haven to New York City! Public transportation should not suck! It's better for poor people, better for the environment, better for traffic etc to have good, reliable, common public transport. Rant, rave.

Anyhoo, if I want to go lickity split, then I take the train to the end of the line (Riverside) and then hop a cab to campus. Were there a shuttle bus to campus from Riverside - an idea that's too logical and cost effective to be implemented, this would validate the whole public-travel enterprise. But, as you pessimists have already determined, it don't happen that way.

A main taxi provider in my area is Veteran's Taxi. I once asked where the name comes from and I was told, by the non-vet driver, that the company was founded by veterans. But, luck would have it, the driver I had was an honest-to-goodness vet. USArmy, 1958-1963; good years - he avoided 'Nam (but he was assigned to guard missile silos in Alaska... I wonder who he annoyed to get that assignment). I took extra time allowing him to regale me with his war stories (minus, of course, the war) and I gave him a big tip as a recognition of karma and collective guilt/recompense.

Lobbying Mashiach: Thank You Cards

When Mashiach finally arrives (any moment now, or so I believe with complete faith), he will convene a court in order to (1) determine who is a Jew/Cohen and from which tribe, (2) who owes exculpatory sacrifices, and (3) undo the crazy crazy chumras (this is my addition, but it's a logical extension of his salvation powers). There are many chumras that need undoing; one thing you learn in rabbi school is just how much of halakha is comprised of guesswork and fences to make up for everything we've forgotten and muddled as a result of the exile. Damn Romans. So mashiach will be there to tell us, finally and unequivocally, that we need to only wait a few minutes between meat and milk, that chicken isn't fleishix, that women can learn Torah, science is OK, and there's only one day of Yuntif.

Recently, I've begun imagining other, extra-halakhic, things that Mashiach is going to do when he convenes the court. So the first item that I will lobby for, when there's a lull in the chumra-smashing, is: eliminate thank you cards.

I'm not sure why, in 2009, we still require these. They are a paper-ink-snailmail contrivance in an era when most people use email exclusively (saving snailmail for items that have been purchased online) and almost nothing normal is done in real paper and ink. Case in point: newspapers. They're "dying" - but only their physical being. If the paper-ink version were to die, and the online version stays, only geezer troglodytes will notice or care.

I detest thank you notes. It is expensive to own the stationary, expensive in time spent writing by hand the stupid things, expensive to mail, and - here's the kicker - THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY THROWN AWAY. What is the effing point?!

I have a blanket rule for anyone who receives a gift from me: you are allowed to email or call me to say thanks. Seriously. You *do* have to say thank you - otherwise you're an ungrateful leech - but what is wrong with using email in the 21st Century? Show some respect for the earthly resources, and I'll show respect for your time and money. I'm sure mashiach, if he's what I think he'll be, would manifestly agree.

First pic from here, and you really should check out the link, hee hee. Second pic was homemade via this site.

VINDICATED!

If you know a redhead then doubtless you've been forwarded this Times article: The Pain of Being a Redhead, which reports this recent study that: "A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine." See this as well.

This news makes me so happy (or as happy as I could be given that I'm living under this forced physical curse; yet, I have so many of those, I have learned to live and even value my legion of corporal pain). I'm happy because I've been claiming this for years - and have had many doctors (not just dentists) scoff my testimony. This experience, in fact, is a defining point for why I'm even in the professions I'm in.

Ya see, I've often felt that I notice things others overlook and when I report these neglected facts I've been repudiated by the 'respected' authorities. As such, I've spent most of my life trying to develop both the tools, and the authority, to teach people about these disregarded truths. It's a fiercely personal mission and I'm finding some success (about as much as I can expect) - because while most people absolutely do not want to know about facts that contradict their comfortrably acquired rationalizations, there are many others who have nagging feelings about unanswered questions. Yeah, it sounds like the Matrix, but there's often a kernal of truth in sci-fi.

Anwyay, the dentist thing is a perfect example because I was perceiving a difference in facts that had serious consequences for my health and I was - for the most part - mocked and rejected for these facts. Yet, I kept going to dentists and doctors, and enduring more pain that I needed to, because I could only convince only so many people. I had a root canal this way; and I kept telling the stupid dentist that it wasn't supposed to be that painful and they looked at me as a wimp. But a lifetime of this disregard has toughened up my insistence on more pain killers.

It's a sweet vindication: to live my whole life knowing something was true despite constant gainsaying - it's encouragement for the rest of my life. And my advice for you redheads? Print out the article and take it to the doctor with you. Doctors won't listen to patients, but they may listen to third party authorities...

Post finally written on Nov 9, 2009. Top pic from here of Dentistry in 1611. Second pic from here.

Daytime TV

While lying in bed, gently writhing in lumbar-exploded pain, I was able to catch up on about 5 or 6 years of back TV watching. When I was a child and sick on a weekday, I had to make do with either the weird stuff they put on PBS after 10 am, or, if I was lucky, the Price is Right (in fact, ask any gen-Xer, and we'll tell you that 2 things are synonymous with being sick: the Price is Right, and ginger-ale).

Anyway, this decade, I was able to relive my childhood not through bad TV but through VH1 - which is now strictly programmed for my age group. I was able to soothe my pain with 5 straight hours of the Top 50 One-Hit-Wonders of the 80s. Electric Avenue, indeed.

Back Blowout

So, there I was, minding my own business, right about to leave for hashkama minyan, grabbing my youngest son in an attempt to tickle and/or kiss him, when an almost audible muscular-explosion hit a whole bunch of my lumbars (see pic to the left of me in Terminator-o-Vision).

I've had back pains and problems before - a lovely paternal inheritance - but nothing like this. Holy macaroni.

I was able to struggle up the stairs from the basement and then collapsed on my living room couch where I stayed for 12 hours, almost totally incapacitated. To get to the bathroom I needed to crawl and a round-trip took about an hour. My wife was an indispensable help but since she's in her last trimester, we couldn't risk her supporting my weight (which usually requires two strong men or one small burro).

A fellow-congregant of my shul, a high-demand orthopedic specialist, even paid a house-call Motzei Shabbos. He gets a big bunch of Olam Ha-Ba for that.

It took 24 hours of immobility until I was strong enough to stand for a short period of time; 48 hours until I could sit for a minute or two and 72 hours until I felt half-way normal. Today I'm still in pain, but I can at least stand and sit for longer periods. Let's see if it can handle a three hour seminar today.

Oh, and what ran through my mind was the Wilfred Brimley line from one of my top-5 movies, Hard Target: when asked "can you get up?" he replies, in a weird Cajun accent, "I cannot dance, but I can get up."

It's in this clip below at 3:47 (to get there you need to sit through almost 4 minutes of straight gunfire, explosions and John-Woo-Style killing... see above for 'top 5.'):



Pic of my back pain from here.

My New Lifesaver: Mucinex 1200

My allergies are the stuff of legend. And Connecticut has not been kind to them (mainly because most houses here are 100+ years old and without A/C... air conditioning, it's not just about cool air, it's also about getting the sneeze-making crud out of the windpipes).

A new lifesaver in the war against Histamines, Congestion and Associated Scum is Mucinex 1200. Mucinex is guaifenesin - a non-stimulant decongestant. Sudafed (pseudoephedrine hydrochloride) for example will bang my heart like a pinata. Mucinex works very well, doesn't stress the ticker, and the 1200 is a 12 hour timed release pill.

I'd be happy to see a 2400/24-hour pill, but the 1200 is already as big as my pinkie from tip to first knuckle... a 2400 would probably be too big to be taken orally (but a patch would be wunderbar!)

Mircosoft and Norton

I switched from a Macintosh to a PC four years ago. I was forced to do it - against my very fibre of warps and woofs - for two reasons: (1) my mac up and died, (2) all the decent Torah software (e.g. the Bar-Ilan CD-ROM, Dagesh) were written exclusively for the PC. So I switched. And I have hated my (computer) life ever since.

Macintosh has largely been free from the evil influence of Bill the Gates and all of the ancillary problems; in fact, while I think Microsoft makes and markets barely disguised trash, it's the fact that it's the most popular platform that attracts the greatest threats: spam and viruses. Your run-of-the-mill mamzer anarchist writes viruses and spyware for Microsoft software first and then decides to zombie up Macs later. As such, to use a PC, I need to use powerful virus and spyware protectors. Which leads to my second horrific purchase: Norton Anti-Virus.

It's taken a few years of abuse till I finally realized that most of my problems with Microsoft - and the main program I use, Internet Explorer - have been caused (probably) by Norton Anti-Virus. I have purchased a new AV program - Kaspersky Lab Security - and we'll see if I can un-install Norton and if my maddening problems cease.

What problems you ask? (Note, I've seen people complain about the same things, so I assume my irritations are from Norton):

1. EVERYthing runs slow - opening programs, documents, sending/receiving mail; I compare it to our post-9/11 immigration inanities (which my wife just went though, needing a frick-frackin passport to go to CANADA!);
   
2. my system freezes and crashes from having "ccApp" balloon in size, taking all my RAM, restricting use for other programs
   
3. Internet Explorer becomes impossible to use - and this is what prompted me to finally dump Norton - I was at first restricted from seeing videos from Youtube (and I can no longer download them - at all - using my favorite devices). Originally I thought this was a IE cruelty and so I tried to (finally) switch to Mozilla... but I was prevented from downloading it! I thought this was a vicious MephistoBillgatesian trick to preserve IE's monopoly. But the more I investigated, I realized it was instead a Norton cruelty.
   
4. The Youtube/Mozilla indignity was the last straw. While Gates would be mean enough to prevent a download of another web browser, Norton was just being a shoddy project... and I should have realized that this fit the pattern of over a year whereupon Norton has "protected" my homepage from being hijacked (a decent idea) by making Norton's homepage my permanent - never can switch it - homepage. Yes, they hijacked me in the name of my security. And they have eliminated cookies so I need to sign into every website each time and I can't use scripted windows in blogger, blah blah blah

Note, all these problems could still be caused by Gates and IE, but I'll know which way is up soon.

The Scrolls of Lankhmar

To while away the dreadful hours when my allergies or other sundry illness force my brain into stolid unproductivity, I can divert myself with some set amusements. One diversion is the Lankhmar book series by Fritz Lieber.

My diversion interest is arbitray; even though I have the books on a nearby bookshelf I won't feel like reading them until - boom - one day I do. Odd. For example, when I first made this post in April, I was into the books and 4 months later I wouldn't want to read them. For a while. Anyway, a good website of background info and other resources is here: The Scrolls of Lankhmar

Backpost finished 8/21/07.

Blogstapation

Woo, my brain is clogged from not blogging in a month. Ever since the birth of my second child (another boy, woo-hoo), I've been unable to muster the strength to clear the brain-blog barrier. But I took some Mental-Kaopectate and I will post some stuff today.