Hey Bob-a-Ree-Bob

A name popped into my head a few days ago and I turned to the web to look for information about Bob, a musician I hadn't seen for many years. When I'd first met him almost two decades ago he'd been married multiple times and was renting a room from a friend. He was separating or had just been divorced again and, as a result of multiple alimony payments, always short of cash.

He said that he'd meet woman who seemed fine, but after marrying them, they turned into castrating bitches. I repeated his comment to my mother, who replied, "Maybe he's comfortable with that type."

After Bob told my friend that he felt that every date should have a real possibility of the two of them ending up in bed together, my friend, who was in her 80's, dubbed him "Hey Bob-a-Ree-Bob". I don't claim to understand why, but the term seemed appropriate.

When I last saw Bob, perhaps in the early 90's, he was getting getting married again. My friend, who'd gotten the blow-by-blow account of the courtship told me that as the nuptials got closer both Bob and Betsy, his intended, admitted to being older than they originally claimed. At the time I was surprised that I wasn't surprised or even cynical about it. Bob must have been in his early or mid 50's and Betsy in her 40's.

Betsy was a computer programmer and was teaching Bob about programming. (I remember Bob being enthusing about using fractals in programming.)

It turned out he had a web site. He'd had a stroke in 1999. As part of his recovery he worked on web pages, picking the letters out one at a time, which show the effects of the aphasia:

and posted pictures of his notebooks to show how his handwriting was affected.
He seemed to have recovered enough so that a year and a half later he lead a big band at a gala celebration for Beverly Sills. There were links to an English Springer Spaniel Rescue organization, site survey for property upstate New York, and pages about his living in Mexico.

The web site has a script which makes each page appear to be updated when viewed. Broken links made it clear that the site wasn't being maintained.

I sent him a "hi-how-are-you" note, which bounced back the next day.

More searching and I found a Requiem announcement that he'd died in 2006. The same page also listed "Michael L. Brecker - Saxophone".

Rest in peace Bob.

Gas at $1.91

Yesterday I saw regular gas for $1.91 at the Citgo station on Hempstead Turnpike in Hempstead, NY. Wow! To think that a few months ago a good price was a little over $4.

An image flashed through my mind of me standing under the price sign with a newspaper in the same fashion as a kidnap victim holding up the front page of a paper to demonstrate proof of life.

The (Financial) Sky Is Falling

Today started with a segment of Brian Lehrer's talk show with Michael Oxley of Sarbanes-Oxley fame. A long time conservative Congressman (R-OH 4th) and now Vice Chairman of NASDAQ, Oxley pointed out that changes in banking regulations his Financial Services Committee proposed passed the House, but died in the Senate with White House opposition in 2005. Those regulations would probably have prevented a good portion of this situation by increasing transparency and documentation. Can you say "Liar Loan"?).

Listening to NPR and Market Place today I was struck by the wide spectrum of the opposition to the Bank Bailout ("Cash for Trash"). One southern Congressman made this point about the unspecified portions of the bailout: the motives of people in the administration who may be responsible for devising the minutia in the agreement cannot be known. What assurance did the taxpayer have that the people in the administration who were responsible for hammering out the details will not be exploiting them by returning to Wall Street after the next election?

Caught Peeing at the Crime Scene

I was taking a wiz at the urinal closest to an open window overlooking the forensics lab's crime scene when one of the students, pointing to the bathroom window said, "Hey, there's an open window there."

The lab assistant, spotting me, said, "And there he is." I waved with my free hand, wondered if this was similar to the Paris pissoirs: guys relieving themselves while people looked down from their offices.

There was a difference: I was above rather than below the crowd. In the time I had to reflect, I wondered whether I should wave? If so, with one hand or two? What was the proper look to have on one's face while relieving oneself? Impassive? Joyful? Relieved? Studious? (Will a survey reveal a gender-based difference in responses?)

Emanuel Haldeman-Julius - "The Henry Ford of Literature"

This blurb was irresistible: "He was the 'Henry Ford of Literature,' a 'Voltaire from Kansas,' and 'the Barnum of Books.' The greatest American publishing genius you never heard of." I followed the link from Arts & Letters Daily (September 3, 2008) to Rolf Potts article in the September issue of The Believer.

The article described the Little Blue Book publishing phenomenon, a publishing venture in Girard, Kansas which sold vast quantities of cheap paper back books often with intellectual content. Potts contention was that the venture was done in by a combination of Federal harrassment (the publisher, a socialist at heart had antagonized J. Edgar Hoover who sicked the IRS on the publisher), red-baiting, and television. Quite an interesting read.

"The problem will be deviated"

If asked, I would include myself with the language curmudgeons. I grumble about the term "repurpose" to mean "use for another purpose", "impact" instead of "affect", etc. Will posterity understand terms? I suspect that those who still read will regard these terms as turn of the century oddities.

What leads me here is a search of IBM's web site for a problem with Sonic's RecordNow! software. Although the operating system (WinXP) shows both a DVD and a CD drive, the RecordNow! software can't find either drive. The usual culprit in situtations like this is a driver problem. A search of IBM's knowlege base turned up plenty of links for ThinkCentres and IntelliStation E's, but I was using an IntelliStation M. I finally spotted a promising link, but after reading I wasn't quite sure.

What does "deviated" mean in this context?

Sonic upgrade page - IBM IntelliStation M Pro (9229), Z Pro (9228) ... Install the upgrade pack when you encounter the following problem: When installing CATIA V5R16 SP2 under the presence of Sonic DLA in the system, installer will fail to read the CD. Use the upgrade pack to upgrade Sonic DLA and the problem will be deviated.

I despair.

Menu Cowardice

There, on the back page, was Friendlys' "Over 60 Menu". I didn't have the courage to order.

But You're an Engineer!

The other day EGGDEW, a long time faculty member asked me about recycling his old computer (EGGDEW is his username. Some in the Systems Group dread his calls because the problems won't be solved by a standard fix. But I digress.)

It was unfortunate that he asked me then because just two weeks earlier two towns held their electronic recycling days. His PC still had its original install of Windows 95. EGGDEW said he was concerned about possibly revealing confidential information.

"Not a problem" I said. Just pullout the hard drive."

"I wouldn't even know what it looks like."

"But you're an engineer!" I sputtered. I couldn't believe that EGGDEW, a guy who installed his own Unix workstation, who has his own personal MATLAB license, who uses computers to analyze NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Doppler radar didn't know what his hard drive looked like.

I was and remained stunned.

Someone Stole My Kickboard

I've been known to be absent minded, leaving things and then wasting time hunting for them later. This was not one of those times.

The only difference from last night's swim and my usual routine was that I sat on the can before I showered. (I realize that this falls under the TMI (Too Much Information) heading but...) It meant that my kickboard was left unattended while I attended to a call of nature. But why would anyone take my kickboard?

As you can see nobody else would not be able to use the kickboard at my pool - it's so recognizable. I looked around the locker room, I had a friend look for it out in the car. She even checked the Ladies bathroom. Maybe I'd handed it to her and she'd left it in the bathroom. Nope. The kickboard was nowhere to be found.

I borrowed a board from the pool and during my swim tried to think the situation through. Maybe I'd put the kickboard on top of the lockers. I hadn't looked there, but that would be so out of character. I just couldn't come up with any explanation other than the kickboard had been stolen.

As I was showering after my swim it suddenly hit me, maybe someone had thought the kickboard had been discarded and threw it away completing some previously unrecognized cycle of nature.

At this point it might be pertinent to explain that I'd pulled the missing kickboard from one of the pool's trash cans a year or so before. (I have no pride.) I intended to use it as a backup when my old blue kickboard eventually wore away. You see the old blue one served me well for a number of years before starting a slow disintegration. Each semester I thought I could get another semester out of the blue one before I would need a replacement kickboard. My friend actually bought me a yellow kickboard to have on hand when the blue one couldn't be used any more. I actually got two years out of the blue kickboard before I - this is hard to explain - misplaced it.

I'm sure the blue kickboard is resting comfortably under something I own. One day it will see the light of day and give me another semester or two of service. Be that as it may, sometime between the time my friend bought me a kickboard and I misplaced the blue one I pulled the missing yellow kickboard out of the trash.

As I left the pool to shower I mentioned to the other guy in the locker room that it seemed someone had taken my kickboard. "Y'mean the one with the broken handle?" "Yeah. I can't believe it."

While showering it hit me, "Hey! Maybe someone threw it out." I looked in two of the trash cans in the locker, but it wasn't there. The guy in locker yelled, "You're right! It's here." My kickboard was in the third garbage can in the locker.

So this tale of high drama ends with a guy reunited with his kickboard, faith in the foodness of others restored, and a moral tale about the unexpected consequences of the urge for cleanliness laid out for all to see.

My Pusher Calls

So there I was at work when a co-worker says the phone call is for me. I didn't place the name at first - it's been over 6 months since we spoke. It was my old CD pusher, Mike.

Mike recounted the last half year: he use to send out a weekly e-mail of used CDs he'd picked up from libraries, garage sales, store closings, etc. The lists were enhanced with his commentary. (Mike is especially knowledgeable about jazz.) Being one of his regulars had certain benefits: Mike knew what I might like, knew that I only bought CDs with the original artwork and inserts, he'd look out for stuff I wanted, and he'd take back stuff which didn't work on my Aiwa. (There were CDs which played fine on Mike's players and computers, but my Aiwa's 20 year old system is showing it's age.)

When Mike found that the response to his e-mail list was falling off he decided to go the eBay/Amazon route. His jazz stuff is selling, but the city-folk music isn't. ("City folk" is one of those descriptions which seems immediately obvious to those who recognize it and a non sequitur to those who don't. As I understand it the term characterizes the music of WFUV (Fordham University), WMVY (Martha's Vineyard) on the east coast: hip, urban, but with roots in folk music. I yield to any authoritative definition.)

In this age of the virtual experience I suggested something classic: what about going to his house and pawing through his CDs? He like the idea. Over the next few weeks or so he'll stack them up and I'll be taking a look and listen. All the money I didn't spend when he stopped his e-mailing may get spent. (I think of music as a kinder gentler drug. It keeps on giving until you lose your hearing late in life.)

Back to My Music

It just dawned on my that in the last few weeks, as I worked on a program with a drop dead date, that I'd started to listen to CDs in almost the same way that I listened to record albums when I was a senior in college.

In those days we usually listened to the entire side of a record. (I can't remember if anyone had a record changer so they could listen to multiple sides without getting up.) In those days I was the only guy in a house with 8 or 9 other guys who did not have a turntable. It was more a matter of me feeling impoverished, rather than real impoverishment or an matter of self-denial. But, be that as it may, my time in that house had an accompanying soundtrack of Jimi Hendix, Cream, David Blue, Tim Buckley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Koerner, Ray, and Glover, and the Doors. To this day, when I hear a song from those albums I find myself anticipating the next track.

Those of us from that era seem to have listened to album the same way. The very first time the album was played we sat on the floor, back to the bed, transfixed by the liner notes. And the album played over and over again the tunes impressed into our brains. If the liner notes had the lyrics we remembered them from simple repetition. (Without the liner notes, "A girl with kaleidescope eyes" became "A girl with colitis goes by", "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" was sung as "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy", and "She's a must to avoid" got an unanticipated frisson as "She's a muscular boy.")

Now I have an old Aiwa boom box with a CD player. Sometimes I have to prop the boom box at an angle for some of the CDs to start to play, but once the CD starts I can lower the box and listen to the whole CD. And then start it up again and listen again. (It just occurred to me that I could press the repeat button.)

Occasionally I have to turn off the music so I can determine if a σ is the standard deviation for a population or a sample, but now the music has become the soundtrack to the program I'm writing.

Over the course of a few weeks I've played, Uakti's "Aguas da Amazonia" (music by Philip Glass), Paul Simon's "Graceland", John William's "The Ultimate Guitar Collection", Rosanne Cash's "Black Cadillac, the Dixie Chicks "Wide Open Spaces", and I'm now listening to David Berkeley's "After the Wrecking Ships".

Every once and a while I throw in Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra's "Viva!".

Some years ago I bought a Richard Thompson CD and was not impressed by what I heard. I listened to it as background music. I gave the CD another listen to confirm my opinion, but for some reason I decided to read the insert as I listened and my opinion changed. The very dull lightning flash: it's words AND music. It was something I'd managed to overlook in the need to actually get something done.

Perhaps it's something to look forward to in retirement.

Have You Ever Exposed Yourself to a Child?

Nope, but it was close. I'm one of the people who get to the pool in the last hour. If I show up before 10 PM all the attendants quickly check the clocks. There are a few other late nighters. If we don't know each others names, we are nodding acquaintances.

About a month or two ago there was someone I don't believe I'd ever seen before: a father with his little girl. The kid seemed to be having a great time riding her father's back like a whale rider.

Because it takes me a long time to shower and dress I leave the pool a few minutes before they blow the everybody-out-of-the-water whistle. I was toweling myself off when I heard an exceptionally high pitched voice in the locker room. The title of this post flashed across my mind.

Children under 5 are allowed in either locker room when accompanied by an adult. I imagined being asked about this at, say a Senate hearing: "Well, I didn't really expose myself to the little girl, she just walked into..." or "You see children under 5 when accompanied by an adult are allowed ... "

I gave up, dressed quickly and managed to leave without seeing either of them.

Stealing Shampoo By Accident

About two weeks ago I noticed a half-filled bottle of shampoo in the shower at the pool about a quarter to 11 PM. I was the last one at the pool. My finely honed sleuthing skills reasoned that the shampoo probably belonged to the guy who left as I arrived. Because the swim staff seems to throw stuff out stuff like shampoo rather than put it in the lost and found, I thought I'd take the shampoo and bring it back to the pool and give the shampoo to the guy the next time we met.

When I got home I remembered that the guy I intended to give the shampoo to makes a point of NOT showering at the pool. Duh. Another example of collateral damage from my sleep deficit.

I finally saw the guy tonight and explained the situation. Did he want the shampoo? Nah, you keep it. Sigh. My intentions were noble. Maybe I'll get off with a judicial reprimand.

I Cut My Father's Nails

My parents have long maintained that getting old is not for sissies. My father has stated several times that he's no longer getting old, he's there. He's old.

As they've gotten older my parents have made their accommodations to their diminishing strength through planning. They minimizing the number of times they use the stairs, wait for me to come over rather than chance climbing up a latter to change a bulb, etc.

After triple coronary bypass surgery my father suffered some problems which led to a loss of feeling in his right hand. One of the results was that just yesterday he asked me to cut his nails. The nails on his right hand were nicely trimmed, but because he couldn't trust his right hand to do the job the nails on his left hand were long.

My father had must have thought about it for a while before coming to the conclusion that he had to ask for assistance. It was an awkward experience on my part. I didn't think I'd nip his finger, but I couldn't feel where the clippers were. I had a new respect for manicurists and nail technicians. It might have appeared comical. I'd position the clipper, then move my head around to see if the clipper was going to nip his skin before actually clipping his nails.

I wonder why he doesn't use a nail file, but then maybe it's also a problem with gripping.

Ten Most Wanted

The Director told all the staffers to make a promotional piece/advertisement for themselves. For many years I'd thought that my department should have made trading cards made for the staff or the student assistants.

I tried to make a trading card, but, in my sleep deficit induced dehabilitation, I'd never be able to do a reasonable job with Illustrator or PhotoShop. I settled for imitating a wanted poster.

The first poster I used for a model was a US Postal Inspection Service poster for Sy Hien Nguyen. Nguyen ran a multi-million dollar identity theft ring along with bad check and credit card fraud. The wanted poster is interesting for two reasons:

• The two bands of blue are slightly different shades (0:0:153 or #000099) for the reward band and slightly darker for the bottom band (1:1:154 or #01019A).
  


• None of the sans serif fonts seemed to match the lowercase "n" the poster's fonts.
  

The color difference might just be an artifact. When I went back to check on the n's, the difference I remember wasn't as obvious. What I remember was that the width of the curve of the n as it connected to the vertical stroke was far wider than for any of the fonts I had. (I should really look into the effects of sleep deficit.)

I looked for an FBI poster in the hope that it might be different. Surprise - it was. The very first FBI poster I found was Usama Bin Laden's. The FBI poster uses serifed fonts one of which looks like Times New Roman. I don't know why design people despise Times New Roman, but if it is good enough for the FBI I wasn't going to quibble. Using only MS Word 2003 and PhotoFiltre (a freeware graphics program to resize images and adjust the color) I knocked out the poster. In this poster also the blue colors are different, with the top banner being lighter (0:0:205 or #0000CC) than the color of the text (0:0:255 or #0000FF).

The scary part was looking at pictures of myself: I looked haggard. (Note to self: get some sleep.) Can someone tell me why haggard in black and white is less upsetting than haggard in color? The best I could do for humor was to describe my eyes as "Penetrating, but kind" and for "Scars and marks" enter "Displayed on request." I listed the charges against me as providing solutions and sound advice. (It was late and the muse had already left to get a beauty rest.)

The next day, the boss said she like it. Mine was different. That seems appropriate. We never got around to discussing the advertisements. Somehow that too seems appropriate. We're scheduled to go over them again at the next staff meeting. (Given that my department is supposed to be a technology department I would have thought that we should have posted the adverts to a web page to save paper, but nobody asked me. As it is other staffers cranked off a lot of colored printing.)

(Maybe I can use the extra time to make a trading card for myself. What I'd really like to do is make something with a foldout. Many from my background will cite Jethro Tull's Stand-Up album as cool, if only for the pop-up of the band when the album gatefold opened.)

Just today the head of a different department sent an e-mail with the words "Promotion" and "permanently" in the subject line. I got a sinking feeling that the poster was going into my employee file.

What a relief to find that message concerned Adobe software licensing.

Sleepless in PA/Sex Scandal

I had to go for training in rural PA this week. There were better times for training, but intervening events intervened. (I was intending to write that "The turn of events turned into this", but considering that this is dairy country and "turning" connotes souring I'll leave it as a parenthetical phrase.) I left NY very late on Sunday, survived two near collisions (the first the fault of the other guy, the other mine) to arrive at my motel about 2:30 AM.

On 4 hours sleep I staggered over to the training site. (I was smart enough to have booked a motel within walking distance of the training site - the only plus I'll give myself for this excursion.) I was surprised to find that the training I'd signed up for was not the one I expected, but what the heck, I could put it to good use anyway. (I have the feeling that I'm an observer in my own life. Hmmm I wonder what I'm going to do next. Thought balloons would be helpful, but there's no guarantee that I'd do what I think I'd do.)

Back at the motel, I couldn't find an NPR station. I was too tired to get the shakes. (It's an extension of my family's joke that my father gets withdrawal symptoms if he's without the NY Times too long.)

As a poor substitute I watched TV - a rare and mystifying event. The camera work confuses me. Why the cuts? If the producers want to show something why not run continuous footage with voice over commentary? The flashy graphics seem to be a keeping-up-with-the-Jones phenomenon. So it was on TV that I learned that Elliot Spitzer, an ostensibly respectable guy, former US attorney with a well deserved reputation for prosecuting despicable Wall Street types, now Governor of the great state of New York, was caught in a prostitution sting. Say what?

Now I'm willing to be as venial as the next guy (if it doesn't take too much effort), but I was naive enough to believe that politicians these days care too much about their ambition to do something as incredibly stupid as get involved in something like this. People delight in pointing out that I clearly overlooked the obvious: many successful people believe they can play by a different set of rules without paying the consequences. I'm so lacking in self confidence that I'm absolutely certain that any misstep I make would be caught on video cameras with unimpeachable witnesses providing color commentary.

So again I don't understand. Spitzer is the bleeping governor. Was the lack of judgment due to something less obvious than hubris? Is this a Wilbur Mills/Tidal Basin Bombshell event? (Wilbur Mills, a Congressional representative from Arkansas was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in the 1960's and acknowledged as one of the most powerful men in Washington, fell from grace after a series of events involving a stripper and alcoholism.) I add this only because I can testify to how impaired judgment can be by things as mundane as a sleep deficit.

So we bid tearful farewell to Elliot's national political ambitions and turn to the best Unreality Show in the World: the US presidential contest.

Sweet Old World/Emmylou Harris

She said, "I've got the lyrics from one of your damn whiny woman singers stuck in my head:

Together with another one
Didn't you think anyone loved you?
See what you lost when you left this world.

"It's Lucinda William's song, 'Sweet Old World' sung by Emmylou Harris on her 'Wrecking Ball' album." I said. (I didn't add that Emmylou doesn't qualify as one of the whiny woman singers whose voices twist my heart, but that's another story or that I was surprised that I could identify the lyrics provenance like the old days. In the old days I might have been able to supply the track listing.)

This post is to document the fact that my memory sometimes works and gives me a chance to say that Emmylou Harris deserves her accolades and respect.