July 2005 Archives

I'm not ashamed to admit I read a few comics. Now most comics are pure pabulum (does anyone living remember when Peanuts was actually funny?) but I do enjoy a few: Doonesbury, The Boondocks, Dilbert, For Better or For Worse, and Non Sequitur.

For no other reason than pandering self-censorship, the Baltimore Sun long ago moved both Doonesbury and The Boondocks from the funny pages to the editorial pages lest some fundy or BCD take offense at their pointed - I'm sure some would say liberal - satire.

After today's Non Sequitur, can it be far behind?
K-

1. You know it's hot when the high in Baltimore is 97 and you can't complain because it's so hot elsewhere in the country.

2. My mother's house, which was so full of stuff last February when she died, goes to closing next week. It took not quite six months to sell.

3. D- called from the Jamboree last night to say he was OK. "They made me call" is what he said. I head for the Jamboree to visit this weekend.

4. Letters to the Editor in the Baltimore Sun overwhelmingly support the orchestra musicians in their struggle to be part of the process to appoint a new Baltimore Symphony music director. One letter noted the "astounding arrogance" of Baltimore Symphony president, James Glicker. When quizzed about public reaction to the orchestra administration's appointment of Marin Alsop without musician support, Glicker quipped "The Baltimore concert-going public wouldn't know its ass from a hole in the ground."

K-

What a day at the Jamboree. I already knew about the 4 scouters from Alaska who were electrocuted. I heard about that on the national news. Then around 10:45 last night, my phone rings.

"Kem, this is Mr. S-, D-'s scoutmaster at the Jamboree. D-'s been involved in a little incident."

Do tell. Do tell.

It seems D- was taking a shower and some bozo left a razor blade on the floor. My son stepped on it giving him a cut that required 9 stitches.

Poor D-! Only the first day at the Jamboree and already he's hobbling. And now because of the cut he can't go in swimming. But it's nothing like what happened to that troop from Alaska. Such a pity that.

Things can only go up from here.
K-

I had to call my mother's electric company this morning. DTE has just installed a "new voice-activated menu system." You know the kind... where you must say the response and listen to this perky robot woman explain how to use the system ("Speak or say: main menu")

If I ever meet the guy that invented these voice-activated menu hells, I'd tear his heart out.
K-

I spent this past weekend with my hand in a paint can. The family room and kitchen are getting a makeover. Walls are painted; the woodwork is next.

This morning I ran by Duron paints (shameless plug: Duron rocks!) to get some paint to touch-up the ceiling. I had to wait in a long line. All these professional painters are in there buying 5, 10, 15 gallons of paint in big gray barrels for their Monday morning jobs. Then it's my turn.

"May I have 1 quart of shell white ceiling paint, please?"

The store burst into applause.
K-

My younger son, D-, leaves Sunday for the National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A. P. Hill in Virginia. He, along with 500 of his closest Scouting buddies from the Baltimore Area Council, will spend 10 days in the heart of the southern Piedmont as scouts from around the country come together to become something like the 5th largest city in Virginia. The Jamboree includes arena shows, hands-on displays, patch trading, and more walking than most city-slickers can imagine. Visitors are more than welcome.

He is really psyched.

To keep him on the straight (sly pun intended) and narrow, I provide him with a list of Things To Do and Not to Do while away:

1. Drink plenty of water. No kidding. Really. No kidding. "Clear and copious" as us scoutmasters like to say.

2. Don't set any more fires.

3. Don't shoot the soldier's rifles. They're not the kind we use at summer camp.

4. Feel free to take Dentistry merit badge. I've heard it's a hoot and I could use some free dental.

5. Avoid the mosh pit during the Louise Mandrell show.

6. Shower. Please, God, I beg you, shower.

7. Your troop will be staying in Sub-camp 20 with scouts from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. They'll think they're "up north". Humor them. (And they really do think "Dixie" is the National Anthem.)

8. Care for you feet. Gold Bond is your friend.

9. I've been told that President Bush will make an appearance at the Jamboree at some point for photographs. Under no circumstances are you to have yourself photographed with that man.

10. Have fun. You've worked hard to get there and it'll all pay off now.

I'll be down there with our troop for a visit so look for me, D-.
Love,
Dad

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra yesterday named Marin Alsop to be its new music director beginning with the 2007-2008 season despite howls of protest by the orchestra musicians. Ninety percent of the orchestra wanted the search for a new conductor to continue complaining that BSO president, James Glicker, and the symphony Board of Directors had not adequately involved the musicians in the search process.

Glicker introduced Alsop to the musicians and the media at a news conference at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. "The Baltimore Symphony Board of Directors takes pride in appointing Marin Alsop to be its new music director, the first woman to be named music director of a major American orchestra."

When a reporter asked Glicker about the tension existing between the musicians and orchestra administration, Glicker replied "Hey, if the musicians don't like the appointment made by the Board and me, they can go fuck themselves."

Later in the day, Jane Marvine, head of the BSO players committee, suggested that relations between the orchestra and the orchestra administration had reached a new low stating for the record that "Glicker could suck the orchestra's big, fat, collective dick."

Alsop acknowledged that she had "a little fence-mending to do" and promised to bring brownies and Skittles to every rehearsal.
K-

The uninterruptible power supply (UPS) on my work PC died. It no longer keeps my computer running when the power goes out. So I asked my IT folks to order me a replacement.

It arrived today.

After I set it up, I realized that the power cord for my monitor just wouldn't plug into the UPS the way it did on the old one. The plug recepticle just wasn't the same on the new UPS.

"That's odd...," I thought. So I re-read the instructions.
"Yep, did everything right!" So I read the instructions again.
"Still looks right," thought I.

I figured a call to customer service would quickly tell me what kind of adapter I needed plus give me an opportunity to tell them that they really ought to include the adapter with the UPS since my kind of monitor is fairly common.

"APC Customer service. I'm Silvhat Singh. How may I help you?"
"Uh, I can't plug my monitor power cord into the back of the UPS you guys just sent me. I think you need to send me an adapter, too."
"What model UPS is it please?"
"Uh, CS650EI"
"Are you sure?"
"Very sure."
"And you're calling from the states?"
"Yes, Maryland. Why, does that matter?"
"That model UPS is the international model for 240 volt electric current. I'm sure you know the plug recepticles are different."

Yes... Yes, indeed... That would explain things... That would explain things very nicely... I'm in the wrong damn hemisphere.

Next I'll be selling latex for Vandelay Industries.
K-

My knees didn't make noise when I get up off the couch.
K-

Surfing at Amazon for the last few weeks, I've been noticing that Bernard Goldberg has published another book of conservative political pornography for the red-staters. He calls it: 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America : (and Al Franken Is #37). Just like Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon (and probably Heinrich Himmler), Goldberg has compiled an "Enemies List" of people he contends are actually screwing up America.

Wow... screwing up America.

Now to me, that seems hard to do. I mean to actually screw up the entire country. Not just a community or a county or a state... but screw up the entire United States of America. Who must these people be? What national forces must they wield? What evil must lurk in their hearts? And there's 100 of 'em, too. Together they must be the nucleus of some wicked dark side that has to be stopped.

So I decided I had to find out who these 100 people were. Obviously, I would never buy the book. Bernard Goldberg is a disgruntled former reporter from CBS who now makes his way in the world by contributing to the steady stream of effluvia from the conservative noise machine. I would no sooner enrich the pocket of this pundit wanna-be than I would root for the New York Yankees. But by poking around the web, I found the list, downloaded it, and started performing my own crude analysis. (To see the list in Goldberg's order, go here.)

I began by clumping the 100 into groups: entertainment, activists, academics, and business. After a short time, I had subgroups: Entertainment-Movies, Activists-Liberal, Media-Conservative, and so on. I didn't worry about the rank order. I just looked at who they were and put them into a category that seemed reasonable. I ended up with 16 categories.

To be honest, a lot of the people on the list I had never heard of. In fact, there are seven on the list that I still can't figure out, really, despite repeated Googlings and searches in Wikipedia, exactly who they are. Here's that list: John Green, Ann Pelo, Amy Richards, Katherine Hanson, Richard Timmons, Guy Velella, and Todd Goldman. I would be obliged to anyone who can tell me who these people are and why Goldberg might think they're screwing up America.

Then there are four on Goldberg's list I've heard of, but they seem so inconsequential to the functioning of America that I can't figure out why he'd think they were screwing up America. Here's that list:

Latrell Sprewell – Basketball player
Matthew Lesko – “Government free money” guy with question mark suit
Chris Ofili – Artist who had tasteless Virgin Mary painting
Jimmy Swaggart - Televangelist

Most of the people on Goldberg's list, as you might imagine, consist of Democrats, liberal activists, liberal media-types, academics, and entertainers. These are the people that BCDs, day-in-and-day-out, love to hate. It doesn't really matter, for instance, that entertainers, almost by definition, are commodities responding to incentives of the market. You stop buying their product and they go away. It also doesn't matter that Democrats (there are no Republicans on Goldberg's list) are duly elected by their constituencies. You may not like them or what they are doing, but that's democracy in action. (The exception to this would be the president. Bush can, and is, screwing up the country. But he's not on Goldberg's list.) Academics are just that... academic. They get noticed and get ahead by saying things that go against the status quo.

Goldberg did have two conservatives on his list:

Judge Roy Moore – Defied court about 10 Commandments monument
Michael Savage – Talk radio talking head

They make the news and blather like idiots but here again, these guys ain't screwing up America.

And then there are the people where I agree with Goldberg. These people probably are screwing up our country:

The Unknown American Terrorist
James Kopp – Felon who murdered a doctor who performed abortions
David Duke – White supremacist and felon
Ken Lay – Former head of Enron and soon-to-be felon

Goldberg's right... terrorists, murderers, white supremacists, and CEOs who commit massive fraud are screwing up the country.

If you want to see Goldberg's list filtered through the Plugs and Dottles lens, expand the entry.

Otherwise, I hope you've been spared the embarrassment of wasting your money on Goldberg's political claptrap.
K-

They (or is it we?) are putting in new floors in our kitchen and family room today. At 8:30 AM this morning, two large vans filled with hardwood, a miter saw, and 5 guys I'm pretty sure don't speak English showed up at my front door. They immediately began tearing out most of the carpet and vinyl flooring in the first floor of my house.

I'm sure (well maybe hope) the finished product will be great but having a gang of strangers come into your house and begin a project by first destroying something that is perfectly good and trouble-free disturbs me. Then to just leave them there while they have at it with saws, nail guns, pry bars, and other implements of destruction requires a certain amount of trust in your fellow man.

I'll post pictures. You'll be the judge.
K-

Over the weekend, the Baltimore Symphony musicians met to discuss the proposed appointment of Marin Alsop to be the next music director of the BSO. Approximately 90 pecent of the musicians believe "that ending the search process now, before we are sure the best candidate has been found, would be a disservice to the patrons of the BSO and all music lovers in Maryland."

The musicians did not mention Marin Alsop by name. However, Jane Marvine, head of the players committee, said in an interview "It's not about her, but about the process."

When someone says "It's not about her, but about the process,"... it's about her.
K-

Last night I was experimenting with Google Earth. And by experimenting I mean wasting time.

I called my younger son, D-, into the computer room to show him this. His 21st-century-born-and-raised-with-computers reaction?:

"Wow! That is so cool! We'll never have to travel anywhere!"

Do you think I can trick him into thinking he owns a dog by giving him a picture of Lassie?
K-

And, no, that's not an oxymoron. From the Baltimore classical music scene, the news is that Marin Alsop will become the next music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She succeeds Yuri Temirkanov who returns to Russia after next season. Whoa... a woman conductor! And one who speaks English! How nouveau is that?

One BSO employee says it's a "done deal" but evidently there is no signed contract yet. And apparently the musicians have a lot of volatile opinions about the selection. They feel the BSO board of directors has not fully involved them in the decision and they want the search to continue.

This one's not over folks. Not by a long shot. The BSO is $10M in the hole, the musicians are grumbling, and it's hot in Baltimore.

Stay tuned... things are going to get ugly.
K-

This past weekend, Jerry and Millie were still actively tending to their brood, which was safely ensconced in the nest box. I'd watch Jerry grab as many mealworms as he could from my bluebird feeder, fly the 10 yards to his waiting family, deposit the worms, and then return for more.

For the last couple of days, I've noticed that Jerry and Millie were ignoring their box but still came to the feeder. This morning I saw both sitting atop the feeder - waiting for their daily ration of mealworms - so it was safe to open the box. Sure enough their brood had flown the coop. I'm not sure when the young birds fledged (probably Tuesday) but I missed it. (I've never once seen a bluebird fledge despite numerous nestings.)

By this same time last year my second brood had already departed; this was just the first for this year. Last egg date for bluebirds in my part of Maryland is very early in September, so there's plenty of time for a second go-'round. Bluebirds are randy little creatures, so I wouldn't be surprised if I had a second visit from the bluebird stork (Get it? Bluebird stork? One bird that brings babies to another bird? Now THAT'S funny.)

I'll keep my eyes peeled.
K-

Voyeur food for those of you with Google Earth.
K-

Do you have a hot-spit computer that you just don't know what to do with? Do you enjoy maps and other cartographic devices? Do you get goosebumps looking at aerial photos of your house? Have you ever wanted to see beautiful Raymond, Ohio, by air by the goddamn pilot just wouldn't fly low enough?

Then head on over to Google Earth and download the application.

Enjoy.
K-

I got a new car about two months ago. We needed a third vehicle so my son could get to work without major inconvenience to his parents. It was either buy him an older used car or buy me a new car and give him by 8 year old Camry. We opted for the latter.

I had to get new tags for the new car (a 2005 Camry). I chose the nifty-looking Maryland Chesapeake Bay tags. Rather than the usual 3-letter/3-digit format used by most Maryland license plates, the Chesapeake Bay tags have just a number. I remember thinking when I filled out the registration form at the dealer, "Boy I hope I get a prime number on my plates." I've always liked prime numbers. There's just something special about them. (Like they have no factors other than 1 and themselves.) And they have many useful applications, like making good seeds for random number generators.

My tags recently came in and do you know what the number was? 43067! That's right, my license plate number is 43067.

A prime number! How cool is that? I am tickled to death. You're all excited for me, right? Just a bit? Maybe a little? No? Not at all?

*Sigh* I suppose little things please little minds.

FYI, 43063 is also prime.
K-

I'm considering buying a propane grill. Yes, I know, I've said that before. But this time I'm close, reallllllly close, to buying one. So I checked out the Weber gas grill website. One of the links discussed real people grilling real food on Weber grills.

I saw no explanation about why a guy would be playing a french horn while grilling hot dogs. I know I don't play anything while grilling hot dogs. Not even the radio. I drink beer. If the Weber folks had a picture of a guy drinking a Dogfish Head, well, that would be real.

Best caption for this picture gets a virtual ice cream cone.
K-

And by wacky I mean "Wow! Why haven't I appreciated this site before?"

If you haven't checked out Wikipedia by now, head on over there without delay. There seems to be almost nothing - nothing - you can't find out about. They claim it's mostly accurate although I don't see how it could ever be considered authoritative. (Considerable effort is spent describing the project and why it's "pretty good authority".) But if you just want to find out about any old thing very quickly, the Wikipedia looks like a great place to start. And at Wikipedia, you're always welcome to edit and add content. Nevertheless...

Caveat lector.
K-

Rob made me do it.
K-

What was left of Tropical Storm Cindy blew through Woodstock last night and early this morning. By the time it got to my house, it was little more than a big, wet, windy rainstorm. It dumped about 3 inches of rain on us overnight but I managed to sleep through most of it. An unusual occurrence by the way, since inclement weather - particularly strong winds and hard, blowing rain - get me wound up. ("Will the sump pump go out?", "Will the roof blow off?", "Will the trees come to life and the dead rise from the ground like they did in Poltergeist?" And no eye rolling... all of these have happened to me at one time or another.)

At dawn's first light, I saw that one of our ancient trees had blown down. Such a pity, first Maryland's Wye Oak and now this old fellow in the yard behind me.

Mother Nature takes no prisoners.
K-

I'm sure I'm the only one that feels this way but thank God the US didn't win the 2012 Olympics. After the 1996 Atlanta Olympics with the bombs and the unrelenting corporate drum banging and the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics with the bribes and the jingoistic bombast from the media, I don't care if the US hosts an Olympics ever again. Let some other poor schmuck of a country deal with the cost, the security, and the hype.

Of course, there's a gray cloud for this silver lining...

We've still got Bob Costas.
K-

The TBS network has been running a series of ads asking the question "Is this funny?" People phone into this mission control-looking place describing a situation they're witnessing. They then receive advice on just how funny the situation is along with guidance for an appropriate level of laughter. My favorite is the one where this boss is chewing out an employee named "Raphael" only she thinks his name is "Dwayne". ("Ooooooo, way off.") Cracks me up every time I see it.

Well I stumbled across this link surfing. It's kind of along the lines of the Raphael-Dwayne thing only it's real. At least it sounds real. I've listened to it a couple of times and each time I hear it I start laughing. So I have to ask, is this funny?

It's crude but at least I know to keep my shirt on the next time I'm on Paul Anka's stage.
K-

The Laurel Highlands are located in extreme southwestern Pennsylvania. You can find beauty and history throughout the area. The French and Indian War, Frank Lloyd Wright, mountaintop vistas, and waterfalls are everywhere. I had a great time there this past weekend and you could do worse for a getaway vacation. Expand the selection to see more highlights of the Laurel Highlands.

But it's back to work in the heat of this Baltimore summer.

No cool mountain breezes today.
K-

We went to a very nice wedding this weekend. The reception took place at The Summit Inn, which is a turn-of-the-century mountaintop resort.

It fit my mental image of the Overlook Inn almost exactly. Old, top of a mountain, big, lots of rooms, nooks, and crannies.

You remember the Overlook Inn, don't you? That was the place Jack Nicholson and his family stayed as winter caretakers in The Shining only to find out the place was haunted. The house caused Jack to run screaming through the empty halls with an ax trying to kill his family.

Well, this place was just like it. Only it was summer, and there were lots of people there, and there were no ghostly bartenders or infernal typewriters that spelled REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM over and over again. And there were none of those big animals made out of bushes. And no one was running through the halls screaming with an ax.

Other than that, it was just like it.

Have a happy 4th of July.
K-

We attended a wedding this weekend in a part of the country I'd never really been in: southwestern Pennsylvania. Turns out it's quite beautiful. Lots of mountains, scenic overlooks, waterfalls, and mountain lodges dot the landscape.

Only rarely in our marriage have we gotten away without A- and/or D- with us. In fact, this was the first time we've ever gone away and left them alone in the house to fend for themselves. Because we'd never really done it before, we weren't quite sure how best to leave them. In the end we decided to play it safe: we stocked the shelves with Poptarts and Mountain Dew, left them an ample stack of DVDs (The Amityville Horror, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Risky Business), and nailed the doors shut.

Because the wedding was so far from home - about 4 hours - we decided to make a weekend of it rather than having one long day of driving. S- found a really neat bed-and-breakfast for us to stay in. It was run by an older married couple.

We stayed in B-and-B's early in our marriage (BK). But ever since the kids came along, we always opted for hotels, almost always bringing the young'uns along with us. It was just easier. So we'd forgotten what it's like to stay in a bed-and-breakfast.

As soon as we arrived, the woman innkeeper greeted us. As we were checking-in, she asked casually, "So, have you folks ever stayed in a bed-and-breakfast before, hmmmmmm?"

What an odd question, I thought. No hotel check-in clerk has ever asked me, "So Mr. White, have you ever stayed in a hotel before, hmmmmmm?"

She waited expectantly for our answer.

"Oh, why yes, of course," we sputtered. "It's been a while though. Not really since the kids came along."

"I see," she said not quite covering the condescension. "Well, you'll find we have a few rules here." And with that we received our check-in lecture.

The next morning, we sat down for our breakfast in the dining room. The male innkeeper was our server. He hustled over and started pouring our coffee.

"So have you folks ever stayed in a bed-and-breakfast before, hmmmmmm?"

Again with the checking of our away-from-home credentials. This time we didn't even bother to hide our embarrassment.

"No, we're sorry. We've been staying in hotels. We realize now that we were wrong and it will never happen again."

"Just you see that it doesn't," he said with a small hiss.

We can't wait to go back.
K-