16-31, .340 winning percentage, on track to win 55.08 games.
Archive for May, 2010
Friday Astros update.
Friday, May 28th, 2010Obit watch.
Friday, May 28th, 2010Is it just me…
Friday, May 28th, 2010…or do other people read about the Sestak affair, and see “Sestak” as “Sleestack“?
Then again, Congress would be vastly improved with a larger population of Sleestaks.
Then again again, there are those who would say that Congress already has an excessively high population of lizard people.
Edited to add: Lawrence’s response: “Did you just miss the last six months of Sleestak jokes on Fark?”
My response: “I don’t read the Politics tab. It makes me stabby.”
Honor.
Friday, May 28th, 2010Obit watch: John Finn, the last of the 15 Navy men who were at Pearl Harbor and received the Medal of Honor for their actions on that day, and the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient.
When Chief Finn arrived at the hangars, many of the planes had already been hit. He recalled that he grabbed a .30-caliber machine gun on a makeshift tripod, carried it to an exposed area near a runway and began firing. For the next two and a half hours, he blazed away, although peppered by shrapnel as the Japanese planes strafed the runways with cannon fire.
While I hate to say anything negative about a Medal of Honor recipient, his taste in movies left something to be desired:
In 1999, Mr. Finn was among Pearl Harbor veterans invited to Hawaii for the premiere of the Hollywood movie “Pearl Harbor.” “It was a damned good movie,” he told The Boston Herald in 2001. “It’s helped educate people who didn’t know about Pearl Harbor and what happened there.”
“I liked it especially,” he said, “because I got to kiss all those pretty little movie actresses.”
At the same time, the NYT also has an article asking why so few Medals of Honor have been awarded for service in Iraq or Afghanistan. The article is tied to the case of Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who may (or may not) have thrown himself on a grenade after taking a bullet in the head.
Sgt. Peralta was recommended for the MoH, but that was downgraded to a Navy Cross; however, his family has refused to accept the award and is campaigning to have him awarded the MoH. It seems to me that they have a strong case; yet, it also seems to me (as an outside observer) that refusing the Navy Cross looks bad.
Three men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong…
Thursday, May 27th, 2010Slate has an interesting summary/review of Milton Rokeach’s book, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
Rokeach’s book is one of the more fascinating works of psychology I’ve read. I’d put it up there with When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of A Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World
Basically, Rokeach found three men in an asylum, each of whom believed he was Jesus Christ…and then put them together to see what happened.
Well, we fired our Canon til the barrel melted down…
Thursday, May 27th, 2010The NYT, of all places, has taken notice of one of my favorite projects: the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK).
CHDK is basically alternative firmware for the Canon PowerShot cameras that allows you to expand the camera’s capabilities. For example, you can store images in RAW format rather than JPEG, set the camera up to do time lapse photos, or do motion detection…or even write your own software in the CHDK development language.
Even better, CHDK isn’t a permanent modification; if you want to put the camera back the way it was, all you have to do is take the CHDK firmware off the SD card, or swap in a different SD card.
The CHDK Wiki is here. I’m hoping to spend some more time working with CHDK now that school’s out. I’d be interested in hearing from folks who are already working with CHDK.
Academic update: Spring 2010, part 2.
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010The final grade is in for my “Implementing Information Systems in Organizations” (aka implementing and managing SQL Server 2005 databases).
I’m sorry, did you say something?
What was that?
You’re going to have to speak up.
Yes, that was an “A”. Yes, the streak is alive.
What’s next? Something called “Systems Analysis”, and a course called (no kidding), “Modern Revolutions” (which fills three out of the six hours of “Global Perspectives” I need to take before graduation).
This course is a comparative analysis of the problem causes, stages, and accomplishments of some of the most significant revolutions in modern times– such as the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian revolutions of 1917 and 1991, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the Eastern European and the South African revolutions of the later half of the 20th century.
Oddly enough, both of these are online courses, so I don’t have to go to either campus this semester. So much for that parking permit.
How far out am I? I sat down with my academic advisor earlier in the semester to figure that out. It looks like I need six hours of “Global Perspectives”, three hours of a literature or humanities course, three hours of an elective (I’m thinking about something related to law or the forensic sciences; if St. Ed’s offered a computer forensics course for credit, I’d be on that like Lindsay Lohan on a bottle of vodak), plus I believe one more in-major computer class after this one, and then the final Capstone course. At this point, I’m thinking four more semesters: Fall 2010, Spring and Fall of 2011, and then Spring 2012 for Capstone and graduation.
So how was your day?
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010My primary care doctor has been on my case to see a cardiologist. She sent me to one practice, who we’ll call “Austin Heart”. I fired them after my first visit. This time she sent me over to a practice we’ll call The Grace L. Ferguson Heart (And Storm Door Co.)
I go in last week. They interview me, do an EKG. Some minor abnormalities on the EKG, but “nothing that really causes us concern”. Still, given my age and other factors, they want to do some tests “just to establish a baseline”. “Fine,” I say, “let’s get those scheduled and get them all knocked out in one day so I can minimize the amount of time I have to take off work.”
So they schedule a nuclear stress test, an echocardiogram, and a PADNET test (for peripheral artery disease) for this morning. Except for some reason they can’t schedule the PADNET test; I have to call The Hospital and schedule it myself. I figure this is going to be just a half-day thing, right? So I schedule only a half-day off work, and spend Monday night and all day Tuesday off coffee, soda, chocolate (not that I eat a lot of that anyway), tea, and anything else with caffeine in it.
Show up this morning. Somehow, the camera for the nuclear stress test had gone down over night, and they weren’t sure it was going to come back up. It takes time for “the heads” to come up to operating temperature.
Fine, we can still knock out the echo and the PADNET, and maybe the camera will come back up. So we do the echo, they call over to The Hospital and move my appointment up, I walk over to The Hospital and check in there.
The Hospital is out-of-network (OK, fine) and I haven’t met my $500 deductible for the year, so they want $500 RIGHT NOW for the test. “How much does this test cost?” <clerk calls manager> “Between $400 and $500.” Fine. Pay the $500. This test basically consists of one guy and 30 minutes of his time, mostly putting on and removing blood pressure cuffs from my arms and legs, and working the machine that actually pumps up the cuffs and takes the readings. You can’t tell me this is a $500 per person machine.
(But, as a side note, The Hospital is VERY NICE. If you’re going to go to a hospital, this is the one you want to go to. It even has a cafe I’d actually be willing to eat in, although part of that may have been that I hadn’t had anything to eat except some Pringles in the morning, and no coffee, soda, or tea.)
So I go back upstairs to Grace after they run that test. They tell me Dr. X (not THE Dr. X) will be in to see me in a few minutes. Then they come back and say, “Oh, the camera’s up, we can do the test now.” So the Nuclear Camera Guy rounds me and the four other people who were also scheduled for camera time up and takes us back down to The Hospital’s nuclear lab. Lucky me, I get to go first, since I had the earliest scheduled appointment. It only takes him two tries to get an IV into me (the second try he stuck the back of my left hand, so I now have a nice little puckered place there). Then I get to spend a half-hour in the imaging camera, which is about as roomy as an MRI machine when working (but without the magnetic fields, which is a good thing, since I had a pocket full of metal). Then they take me out and tell me they’ll come get me in a hour and a half (1:30 PM) for round two.
Of course, I’m supposed to be at work at 1, so I had to call my boss, tell him it looks like this is going to be an all-day affair, get the number to call and change my schedule from him, call and change my half-day to a full-day, wait around, spend another half-hour in the camera, go back upstairs to Grace; by now it’s 1:45 PM or so.
(Of course, since all the tests are done, I stop by The Cafe in The Hospital and tell the woman behind the counter I want an extra-large coffee. If I had been thinking about it, I would have told Nuclear Camera Guy to leave the IV line in, and just had the girl behind the counter inject that extra large coffee straight into the vein.)
“Did you need something else?” “Well, I thought Dr. X wanted to see me after the tests.” “Let me check.” <comes back> “You didn’t see him already?” “No, he was going to see me, but then the camera came back up, and we went down to that.” <wait> Very nice nurse comes out and explains politely that it’s going to take some time for him to look over the results (which I expected), he’ll call me, and I can go ahead and leave.
Leave. Five minutes down the road, cell phone rings. “How far away are you? Can you come back? Dr. X wants to see you.” “I can come back. I’ll come back. I WANT TO GET EVERYTHING TAKEN CARE OF TODAY.” (By this time, I have probably used the phrase “I WANT TO GET EVERYTHING TAKEN CARE OF TODAY.” with the capitalization, at least a half-dozen times to everyone in the office.) “Let me check.” She puts me on hold. Meanwhile, I’m hanging a U turn and heading back. By the time she gets back on the phone, I’m pulling into their driveway. “Can you come back on Friday?” ” I WANT TO GET EVERYTHING TAKEN CARE OF TODAY. If I have to wait, that’s okay.” “Well, Dr. X left for the day (at 2 PM; ah, the exciting life of a cardiologist) and he won’t be back. Can you come in on Friday?” “Okay, fine, if we do it early.”
So now I have to take more time off work so I can go in at 8:30 AM on Friday, which is going to look real good. Plus, it isn’t like I have unlimited time off work.
The thing that really aggravates me is that everyone was so nice and apologetic about the problems with the camera and all the waiting around. Camera Guy kept apologizing to me, and even offered to buy me a Coke if I wanted one (which I didn’t, plus I didn’t think I was supposed to have caffeinated sodas until after the tests were over). I’m very happy with Grace, and with Dr. X, so far, but this was just one of those days.
At least I finished What the Dog Saw
Edited to add: And, since the whole point of the nuclear stress test was to get imaging of my heart: when I see Dr. X on Friday, I plan to ask him if I can order some color glossy prints, perhaps 8″ x 10″s. If I can, I’ll scan them (copyright permitting) and post them here.
Have you seen me?
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010No, not Kyle.
Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar, which appears to be gone with the wind. (Sorry.)
Continuing our regular “Crimewatch” community service feature, here’s what to look out for:
Oscar
Little metal guy, on a stand, about yeah high. If you see something that resembles this, please contact The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Edited to add: Lawrence has pointed out that Ms. McDaniel’s Oscar is actually a plaque, not a statue, as the supporting actor and actress didn’t get statues in 1943. In my hurry to make a cheap joke, I overlooked that minor detail. My apologies; unfortunately, I am unable to find a photo of the plaque anywhere online.
A long strange trip.
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010I also wanted to link to this post over at Houston’s Clear Thinkers about the strange history of Landry’s Restaurants, Inc., and their stock.
I realize I may be one of only about three people in the world (excluding Tilman Fertitta and Landry’s stockholders) who find this interesting. But then again, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.
Ring-ers.
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010The LAT has an interesting comparison of various recordings of the Ring cycle. (The article is slugged May 16th, but I did not see it on the LAT web site until it hit the front page today.)
One reason I find this article noteworthy is that it was written by Ethan Mordden, noted Broadway historian (among other accomplishments).
Chapter 11 watch.
Monday, May 24th, 2010For everyone who picked the Dallas Mavericks in the “next to file for Chapter 11” pool, you were…half right.
You may be asking yourself, “Gee, I wonder who the Texas Rangers owe money to?”
(Hattip: Lawrence.)