Ad of the day

I received this ad probably 15 years ago for a magazine of essays and short stories. Never did subscribe, but I had their mailer tacked to my wall for a number of years. Came across it in the move.

Click to enlarge

Plug and play

I was driving home a few nights ago when I got a call on the cell phone. The GPS showed the incoming call, so I clicked the button to answer it. And I heard nothing. I was able to send the call back to the phone and retrieve the call, but only because the caller had been patient listening to silence for ten seconds.

Great, the fancy Bluetooth thingy wasn't working. While I was driving home I tried to figure out what the problem was. Then it dawned on me that there was no real manual included with the GPS, only a 'quick-start guide'. This has become pretty typical these days and that is both good and bad.

On the plus side, many electronic gadgets are set up to be relatively intuitive to use, so a brief guide will get you started. And by not printing out the full manual for every item sold, many trees are saved and less gas is burned to deliver them to the store or your door. On the negative side, people have stopped taking the time to learn how to use things. If a feature doesn't jump right out at you, you may never know it exists. And if something doesn't work, you have little troubleshooting knowledge to fall back on.

I used to be in the habit of reading every manual for every new product I bought. Before I used something, (usually while it was getting its first charge) I sat down to learn about all the features and how to use them. J used to good-naturedly tease me about it, saying I was more excited about the the manual than the gadget. Of course after she had to ask me about how to use a new gadget a few times, she started skimming the manuals as well.

We have come to expect that things should just work without needing to learn how to operate them. Don't get me wrong, plug and play is a good thing. When I was shopping for a digital camera, if I couldn't navigate the menus to the basic features easily, I picked up the next camera to see if it was more intuitive. But by not making the effort to learn about it, the wealth of features on all the new gadgets are kind of wasted. So I still read the manual once I decided on a camera.

Usually there is a reference in the quick-start guide to a web address where you can download the manual. The Garmin guide made no reference to a manual anywhere, but I was able to find it online. And yes, I skimmed through all 64 pages, and no there was no indication why the phone call didn't come through. But I did find out how to get the direction lady to speak in an Australian accent.

Bad kid joke of the day

What do you call cheese that's not yours?


Nacho cheese.

The machine knows

As I have wandered around southern California trying to get acquainted with my new town, on several occasions I have driven in circles to find where I was going. Trying to hit several stores while out running errands became a bit of a chore, usually requiring printed directions or frequent check-ins with Google Maps on my phone. More than once I have missed a turn or exit and found it difficult to circle back. It also looked like I would be doing some regular work at multiple locations, so I broke down and bought a GPS receiver for my car.

I had emptied my change jar at a Coinstar machine and had a $40 credit on Amazon, so that is where I started shopping. I also checked out the local Fry's Electronics to see some of the GPS units in person, but their prices weren't any better. I finally decided on a Garmin Nuvi 285WT which was on sale. I figured the routing ability of most modern GPS units were all roughly the same, so I was looking for a relatively basic model and maybe a few bells and whistles. The 285WT model had some good reviews regarding the intuitive ease of use, and the larger screen seemed to allow for more information to be displayed clearly. It also came with a free 9 month subscription for traffic information and Bluetooth for hands free cell phone calls.

I have used it for a week or two, and I have to say it is pretty handy. Beyond simple directions, it has helped me locate stores, gas stations and restaurants on the fly saving me some time and effort. There have been a couple of misses though, like telling me to turn right on Park St. when you're not allowed to, and leading me to a non-existent fast food joint when I was starving. The traffic info also takes too long to load to be of use during the morning commute, so it is a good thing it came with a free subscription to try it out. But in general the Garmin has been great.

And one of the handiest features is probably one of the simplest - estimated time of arrival. I do hate to be late.

Of course there are some disadvantages to knowing where you are at all times. Sometimes a wrong turn here and there leads to a surprising discovery. My friend Matt was also mentioning that since he has used a GPS for directions, he has stopped paying attention to how he was getting there. It dawned on him as he was leaving an appointment, that he had no clear idea of how to get home.

Probably shouldn't get too dependent on technology.


michael drives into a lake. from peter allen on Vimeo.

Oh, and another thing
Sean and I were standing in line at Home Depot the other day and there were some Thomas Guides by the checkout stand. I wonder how many they sell these days. 15 years ago they were standard issue in any construction vehicle. The books of maps were divided up in grids, and the table of contents in the back listed every street in the county with the corresponding map grid listed. It was a pretty good system to find places, but of course you still had to find out how to get there. And of course parts of it were out of date as soon as they were printed.

Just checked my truck, and there was a year 2000 Thomas Guide for the Puget Sound region stuffed under the back seat. Might be time to put it out to pasture next to the slide-rule and rotary phone.

Keep your head up

I've been having a tougher time with marathon training this time around. I'm not sure what the cause is, but my heart isn't in it quite as much this time around. There is also a bit of a scheduling conflict for marathon weekend, but at this point I am still training to run. I've also spent the money on the entry, so it will be an expensive decision if I don't make it.

With the longer hours at work, the mid-week runs have been pretty spotty, but I've made sure to get the long runs in on the weekends. But I need to get out of the house early for those long runs. I had a 12 miler on the schedule today, and I didn't put shoe to pavement until around 12:30. It was a warm one today, somewhere up in the upper 70's. My body isn't used to running in this very often, and certainly not in March. I over-heated and was tapped out of energy near the end, and actually stopped just shy of my goal.

So high temps and flagging enthusiasm are pulling me in the wrong direction. Thankfully I have places like this to run to fight the dark thoughts.

Quote of the day

"Though we might have precious little,
it's still precious."

~ from "Bravest Face" by Rush

I've got no time!

Busy, busy, busy.

I have been working on a kitchen remodel for the past week and a half with a friend of mine. I haven't done much interior construction work in the past (outside of fixing up the house for sale), so a lot of what we are doing is new to me. So far we have done the tear out, moved a wall, put up some Sheetrock, and tiled the floor. Next week we will be installing the cabinets and maybe some of the appliances. Of course it has been hard work, but it has been great to learn some new skills. I am certainly not a pro, but I would certainly feel more comfortable in tackling some of the projects now. Still on the schedule to learn is electrical!

The drag is that the job is about 2 1/2 to 3 hours away, so that means lots of commuting time and not much down time at home. Daily stuff and projects are naturally piling up a bit. This is also the reason for the somewhat limited posting recently. But I have found in the past that I work best with a little added pressure of deadlines and time limits. It is also a good exercise to see what sorts of things can fall by the wayside and not be missed, like tv and internet time.

I read a post on Zen Habits last night just before bed entitled, How to Reclaim Your Attention. The first few paragraphs:

A while back I (a bit ironically perhaps) tweeted this message:

"Consider what you give your attention to each day. It’s a precious resource, & determines the shape of your life."

This seemed to strike a chord with many people, who I think are feeling overwhelmed these days. Our attention is being pulled in too many directions, leaving us feeling overloaded, distracted, chaotic, spread thinly, without focus.

There are a million blogs, people, services, media, competing for our attention. Our attention is limited, and valuable, making it one of the most precious resources we have.

The world wants that attention. Only you can decide where it goes.

Frequently when new lanes are added to a freeway, it doesn't seem to reduce traffic congestion. Car trips increase rapidly to fill the new capacity and commuters are left sitting in the same frustrating traffic. Like highway capacity, if you extend the amount of time available in a day, it often fills up with junk rather than providing additional time spent pursuing your passions.

The remodel job will last at least another month, so I will need to make better use of my free time to get things done and pursue my interests. I certainly wouldn't want to have this sort of commute indefinitely (I don't know how people do it), but I will do my best to make use of the limited time to sharpen my focus. Hopefully when additional free time comes back, I will make great use of it rather than filling it with junk.

Career advice from Lloyd Dobler

"How many of them really know what they want, though? I mean, a lot of them think they have to know, right? But inside they don't really know, so... I don't know ,but I know that I don't know."


 "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

~ Say Anything

Quote of the day

"A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

~Winston Churchill

Update on the pooch

So the pooch and I are a week into the new routine, and things are going pretty well all things considered. Several of the symptoms have abated and her energy and disposition seem to have perked up. She has been very good with the shots, only complaining when the insulin is too cold.

She was diagnosed last Saturday, and I made sure to stick around most of the weekend to watch for any bad reactions. If the insulin pushed her blood glucose level too low she could get hypoglycemic, which in the short term is more dangerous than the high glucose levels connected with diabetes. Fortunately there haven't been any bad reactions so far.

I have started doing some work with a friend which is great, but unfortunately the current jobsite is roughly three hours away. The pooch gets two shots a day, and this jobsite meant that I could not be home to give both shots (I've been getting home between 8:30 and 9:00). Fortunately, my friends/roomies (froomies?) have stepped in to help out when I am not around. I felt bad asking them to do it, but like friends do, they waved off my concerns. I am really glad the pooch sits still for the shots - I'm not sure I could ask them to corral her if she was a fighter. I've been taking care of the morning shots, and they've covered the dinner-time shots. I'm very thankful for their help.

The doctor at the veterinary clinic has also been great. He has called twice in the last week to check in on how the pooch and I are doing. Rather than pepper him with questions over the phone, I stopped by the clinic today. I had done some online research, but I wanted to touch base with the doctor to make sure what I had found made sense to him. The next step is to start checking her blood glucose level on a semi-regular basis. We first need to do a baseline day of testing to see how her glucose levels change throughout the day. Based on what we find, we may need to adjust the insulin amounts or schedule.

So the options are to have the pooch spend the day at the clinic, or for me to do it at home. I am planning on doing it myself because I think she would be much more stressed to be at the vet all day. So I need to pick up a meter and some test strips, and then hope that she is as cooperative with the blood draws as she has been with the shots. Thinking good thoughts.

Keep it secret, keep it safe

Finally, a good use of those stupid store cards. Full story.

As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time - the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

With permission from the patients, investigators followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat.

Never before had the CDC successfully mined the mountain of data that supermarket chains compile.

Of course it does raise some privacy issues

Longtime shopper-card critic Katherine Albrecht, director of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, said she worries that the practice could lead to a switch from a voluntary system to mandatory use of such cards.

"That sends chills down my spine," she said.

I've never been all that paranoid about the privacy aspect of the store cards - I just hate having to carry around ten or twenty cards on the off chance I might stop in to buy something. But I can see how the information could be abused. Imagine if your health insurance company started looking over your buying habits, jacking your rates if they saw too many bags of cheesy poofs.

Of course our expectation of privacy may be changing. And it is no longer just "Big Brother" from 1984 that we need to worry about - we are doing it to ourselves. We are broadcasting so much information voluntarily through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like. There are apps that use the GPS in your phone to update folks on your whereabouts at all times that folks are paying to have. "Over the last few years the consensus about privacy on the Internet seems to have changed a lot. A few years ago, people were still hesitant about using their real names online, but nowadays people are comfortable sharing their exact location with the whole world."

To raise awareness of the dangers of this voluntary broadcasting, some Dutch folks launched a website called PleaseRobMe.com. For a while it was publishing Twitter posts from random users like "I'm enjoying a drink at Murphy's Pub" or "heading out of town for the weekend" to point out how that information can be abused, and how little we think about posting it. The response was understandably huge and mixed, and they are no longer broadcasting tweets. "We're not showing the Twitter messages anymore, as they no longer add anything. If you don't want your information to show up everywhere, don't over-share ;-)"

I avoid mentioning out of town trips, etc. until I get back for this very reason. But in this over-broadcasting era we live in, it doesn't hurt to get a reminder once in a while to think before posting.

Oh sweet sugar

I have had my pooch for just over seven years now. We adopted her from the Humane Society when she was four, so she has recently turned 11 years old. Most any dog owner will tell you they have the best dog in the world, and I am no different. I don't know where I would have been without her in the last year when I was coming home to an otherwise empty house. She is my fuzzy buddy, my chunky monkey, my sweet sister. 

The pooch made the move down to San Diego with me. As I mentioned before, she had a tough time on the trip down, bad enough that I was concerned about her well-being. She has recovered somewhat, regained some appetite, but she hasn't returned completely to how she was before the trip. Her bum legs seemed a little weaker and she seemed to have less energy and excitement.

In the last two weeks, something else had changed. She started drinking much more water than normal, and as a result she needed to go outside more frequently. She has had a urinary tract infection once before, and I thought that maybe this was what was going on now. Her water consumption continued to rise to the point where she was drinking four times as much as normal. The night before her vet appointment, she woke me up three times just so she could get to her water dish.

It turns out it wasn't a urinary tract infection. The pooch actually has diabetes. When they tested both her urine and blood work, the amount of glucose was off the charts. The normal range is 70 - 143, and her reading was 630. The veterinarian had little doubt about the diagnosis.

I had heard that diabetes was a concern in cats, but for some reason it was a surprise to hear that dogs can develop it. In my still limited internet research, I have found one statistic that says that one in ten dogs will suffer from it, and that the incidence is increasing much like it is in humans. Heavier, older, female dogs are more susceptible, and the pooch falls into that category.

A quick synopsis on diabetes for those who have not had experience with it, taken from caninediabetes.org:

When we eat, our bodies break food down into organic compounds, one of which is glucose.  The cells of our bodies use glucose as a source of energy for movement, growth, repair, and other functions. But before the cells can use glucose, it must move from the bloodstream into the individual cells. This process requires insulin.

In a diabetic animal there is insufficient insulin to switch off glucose production by the liver or to efficiently store excess glucose derived from energy giving foods. This means that the blood concentration of glucose rises and eventually exceeds a level beyond which the kidneys let glucose leak into the urine. This loss of glucose in urine takes water with it by a process called osmosis and causes larger volumes of urine to be produced than normal. The excessive loss of water in urine is compensated for by thirstiness and increased water consumption. The principal clinical signs of an animal with diabetes mellitus are therefore polyuria (excessive urination) and polydipsia (excessive water consumption). In addition, diabetic animals tend to lose weight because they breakdown stores of fat and protein (muscle) to make glucose and ketones (an alternative fuel) in the liver. Other clinical signs diabetics may include: cataracts, polyphagia (increased appetite), exercise intolerance and recurrent infections. If the production of ketones by the liver is excessive, a condition called ketoacidosis occurs which makes the animal very unwell.

So the major (early) symptoms of canine diabetes are:

• Lethargy
• Excessive water consumption
• Increased urination
• Cataracts
• Weight loss

The pooch has all of these symptoms, which makes the diagnosis seem even more believable (she has lost almost 10 pounds in a month and a half, but she is still at a healthy weight). From what I understand, the damage diabetes does to the body progresses to the liver and kidneys among other things. Fortunately, the blood work did not show indications of organ damage at this point. The cataracts are permanent, but hopefully if her diabetes is managed properly, they won't get any worse.

So, what does this mean? She is now on a special diet of prescription dog food. The food is higher in fiber, more whole grain, and slower burning fuel that shouldn't spike her blood sugar as much. There will be no treats or dog biscuits in her future unless I find something that won't mess with her glucose level. She also needs to get shots of insulin twice a day (by yours truly). I am not a fan of needles, but we are four shots into the program and we are both doing OK so far. I had heard that in humans, it is possible to modify your diet sufficiently to reduce the need for insulin. The vet did not think this was possible for the pooch, so at this point she will be getting shots for the rest of her life.

It is all still sinking in, but I have found some helpful websites and a Yahoo group dedicated to diabetes in pets. After getting some background medical information, I am hoping to learn even more from folks that are going through this with their own pets. There is a list of things I need to get or figure out including how to check her blood sugar, how often we will need to go to the vet, and how to dispose of all the needles.

The good news is that the insulin shots seem to working. It has been less than two days, but her excessive water consumption stopped almost immediately like a switch had been thrown. I am hoping that she continues to improve, and that some of the weakness in her legs may improve under the new regimen.

Who knew she could be too sweet.

Students helping students

From the February 8th posting on the3six5.posterous.com, a film about a organization at Kansas State University called "K-State Proud".  Good stuff!

Notes on reading

“But you know Matilda, you can not pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames. For me, Matilda, Great Expectations is such a book. It gave me permission to change my life."

~ Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

I've been having a hard time reading lately. Not trouble finding the time, but rather I'm having trouble focusing. I used to be able to read in a loud coffee shop, becoming engrossed in the book so as to shut out the noise of the world. It has been getting a bit more difficult to focus over time, but it has been particularly bad in the last year. Jangled thoughts and emotions flying through my brain, tangent after tangent distracting me from the words on the page. And the distracting thoughts have made it more difficult to understand and appreciate each book. I have found myself coming to the end of several books thinking, meh, it was OK.

I have been highlighting passages in the books I've read over the last year for a number of reasons including, book club discussions, failing memory and the desire to be a better writer. It is mostly in the non-fiction/self-help books, but I also make note of good turns of phrase in novels. And it has been an interesting exercise. When I come to the end of a book that I didn't feel was all that great, I am often surprised at how many good quotes I have made note of. It again makes me feel like my distracted mind isn't appreciating what is in front of me.

So the books I have been reading are filled with a bunch of little scraps of paper marking pages with good passages. I've felt books are somewhat sacred and shouldn't be abused with folded pages, broken spines and pen marks throughout. Several of the books I've read this year belong to the library, but I have resisted marking up books that I own as well.

But I am softening my viewpoint a bit. I was talking about marking up a book with Matt after he showed me a book that looked trashed. It seemed like nearly every other page had been dog-eared to mark a passage bracketed in pen. My point of view was that if I lend out a book that has been marked up, I am sort of telling that person "this is important" and affecting what they might come away with through their own eyes. Matt on the other hand feels that marking passages that he found important was like a conversation about the book with the next reader.

Never say never. I didn't think I would be happy with an electronic reader, but I have really enjoyed my Kindle. I have also started marking up my non-fiction books when I find a great passage I want to refer back to. But for the novels (and of course library books) I'm still using scraps of paper or post-it flags.

And I still can't break spines and dog-ear the corners of pages. A line has to be drawn, even if it is in pencil.

Quote of the day

If you want to go fast,
go alone.
If you want to go far, 
go together.

~ African proverb