Blind Shaft

Based on familiar scandals in China's mines, Blind Shaft is a raw Chinese film about two ruthless grifters who, by pretending to be the relatives of miners who die in "accidents" they've staged, collect money from the mine owners. Mines owners pay because the mines are operating illegally or with substandard safety.

An unsparing camera follows the two men and their next victim, an innocent 16-year old who's trying to earn money to get back into school or get the school fees for his sister.

In a karaoke type singalong in a brothel, one of the grifters selects "Long Live Socialism" on the karaoke machine. As the men start to sing one of the girls asks if he's a hick. He's singing the old lyrics? Old lyrics? The new lyrics (according to the subtitles) include "The capitalist came back with their American dollars."

In one of the nicer touches in the film, one of the men who has misgivings about this particular scam tries to give him a last good taste of life with session with a prostitute. The boy bolts, but later, by chance, meets her again at an office where both have goneto wire money home.

The very fact that the film got made speaks volumes about changes in China. There is no musical sound track. There are no special effects. The production values are low. The story seems to have been caught on home video and seems just as real. The depiction of the underclass and the relentless drive for money makes its case more than any proletarian socialist realism film ever could.

The Future of Textbooks is Colored Orange

This has been sitting in draft since May 25^th 2009.  In the interim the textbook rental market has taken off.  The references to the movie theaters, airlines, and credit card companies are still relevant as business are still nickel and dime-ing, "breaking out services", or scrambling to make up forlost revenue.

On the very first day of Stats the instructor asked who had purchased the book, where they got it, and how much they paid. One student said she rented her book on line from Chegg.com for ~$40. Others had paid over $150.

I took a look, rented the text on Wednesday, paid for expedited shipping, and, lo and behold, an orange box arrived via UPS on Friday. The book looks pristine. Amazing!

Chegg.com and the recent Credit Card Bill Of Rights legislation got me thinking about capitalism, movie theaters, and credit cards. It seems that credit card companies cannot make money on people like myself who pay their bills on time in the same way that supermarkets can't make a profit from me because I've never left the impoverished graduate student mentality behind.

Credit card services provide an exceptionally useful service by minimizing the need to use cash for transactions and speeding commerce. If I had to pay for the textbook by check I would not have gotten the textbook anywhere as quickly as the check winged it's way to the vendor and being routed through the banking system. Add on the delay of a weekend and I would be half way through a summer course without the book unless I forked over considerably more money.

If the credit card companies are making money, they're not making money on me.  Someone else is taking up my slack. Thank you, but is it fair? It is analogous to the movie theater owners who can't make money on what is ostensibly their business: showing movies. I'm told that their profits come from the (overpriced) concessions.

(It was not always thus. Back when I was an undergraduate, someone obtained a large brown paper sack of popcorn. I was told that the sack was what theater owners poured into their popcorn machines. The popcorn machines in theaters only warmed the popcorn.   The machines didn't actually pop the popcorn. (It was one of many myths shattered in college.) I remember bringing the sack into the theater with about half a dozen others. The kid with the sack sat in the middle seat in the second of 3 rows with the sack extended lengthwise so it overlapped the seat of the guys next to him. We punched a hole in the top side of the bag at either end and in the middle so all of us could reach in for popcorn. Nowadays, something like that could only happen at free films.)

In this regard what is fair? Am I taking unfair advantage of the poor credit card companies, enjoying the good life financed by the wretched of the earth who can't manage their credit or driven in desperation to borrow at exorbitant rates? (Will Jesus not drive these money lenders from the temple?)  Could be.  On the other hand, by taking advantage of the situation I'm revealing flaws in the business plans of the credit card companies thus strengthening the capitalism's Darwinian imperative. (The Cato Institute is invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or helping to destabilize evil Capitalism. (Surviving members of the International Communist Conspiracy are invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or playing into the hands of the Capitalist masters so they can appeal to their government lackeys to use legislation to save them from the proletarian onslaught when their profits tank. (Whoo. the 60's are coming back with a rush!)

Is there a sensible way of viewing the situation?  I always considered credit card purchases as a short term, no interest loan. In my days of impoverishment (make a note: not a bad title) I would keep a mental tally of what I owed. I was fortunate enough that I didn't need to cover a large unexpected medical bill. Are the frequent flier miles programs essential for their business or a marketing idea come back to bite airlines? Does the need to offer inducements or grow their market by extending credit to those who can't repay the total represent a flawed business model or have credit card companies found themselves caught short like Long Term Capital Management: strategies which worked well during "normal" economic times fail disastrously in times of upheaval.

Statistics - Aaarrrggghhhh!

My knowledge of statistics is embarrassingly poor. I've a layman's sense of what variance, covariance, and standard deviation means. The calculation part is simple. Understanding when to apply a measurement (1-tail, 2-tail, general linear model) and the significance of the result is beyond me.

I can usually skate by with just this, but I created a program which, among other things, calculates Cronbach's coefficient of alpha. From my readings, Cronbach's alpha is not a statistic, but a measure of internal consistency. As an example, does the overall exam grade reflect the overall question grades? Described as a measure of internal consistency, as I understand it alpha let's you see how the the variations on individual questions compare with the variation of the entire exam. (I've been told that the coefficient of alpha was really designed to be used on Likert scales, e.g., scales from excellent to very poor, rather than on test scores, but I'm having enough trouble wrapping my mind around the concept that I'll agree with anyone who purports to know what they're talking about.)

Onward.

I recently volunteered to analyze the stats of a recent survey figuring that I'd learned something in the process. What I learned was that the survey was not constructed well, that there was no universally accepted way of analyzing the survey, and I needed to know more about stats.

The statisticians were uniformly kind and most enjoyed themselves richly making derogatory comments about the people who constructed the survey. I could smile because I had nothing to do with creating the survey.

In the end, only one of several important questions on the survey yielded a significant result if you made certain assumptions about the responses: instructor's teaching distance learning courses seemed to think that the size of the classes they taught were appropriate. (The reason the results are questionable is that there was no indication that the instructors were answering questions about the same type of class(es).)

But that's not why I started this post. I had rewritten an Opscan/Scantron grading program and all the stats but Cronbach's Alpha worked out correctly. We know that only one instructor actually checked those statistics, so I was able to let that slide citing the press of other work. It looks as though I'll have the time now. So...

Always one to shirk duty, but having used up all my excuses, I searched the web for information about Cronbach's coefficient of alpha and was disappointed to find that the example on the NIH's web site had an error. The bleeping National Institute of Health! Sigh. Double check me: Table 18-2. Number of Teeth in the Sex Comb on the Right (x) and Left (y) Legs and the Sum of the Two (T) for 20 Drosophila Males contains an error. If you've got a moment, find the average value of column labeled x. The total of 20 numbers comes out to 133 with an average of 6.65 by my calculations. The illustration shows the average to be 6.25. The error seems to have escaped the authors and reviewers because the value of 6.65 is used about a quarter way down the page in the calculation of cov xy. The book, should you be inclided to investigage is Modern Genetic Analysis by A. J. F. Griffiths, W. M. Gelbart, J. H. Miller, R. C. Lewontin published by W. H. Freeman and Company (1999) ISBN 0-7167-3118-5.

I'm off to find another reference which will show me how to calculate Cronbach's alpha. Alternatively, maybe I can convince people that they don't need alpha calculated. Most instructors just look at the grades. Only one instructor actually looked at the kurtosis values, but then he was a Psych prof and measurements was his specialty.

Economic Indicators/Latisse

Like my mother, I say I'm reading history when what I'm really doing is reading old issues of the NY Times. Today's readings included two bell weathers of economic tidings. From February 5th, Vanity’s Downturn: Botox Use, and Allergan Sales, Dip reported that facial fillers were down 8.8%, breast implants were down 12%, and botox injections were down 3% for year over year quarterly sales. This is taken as a sure sign of a decrease in disposable income.

As someone who sense of style is notable by its absence, even more fascinating was learning that Allergan, whose main business is eye care pharmaceuticals, will be introducing Latisse an "eyelash growth drug". My immediate thought was that this might be the next Pretty Feet, the product which put Jerry Della Femina on the map. (A web search shows that the product, now known as Pretty Feet and Hands, is still on the market.) (The pro forma sarcastic comments are now inserted: Now in addition to worrying about the economy, health insurance, violence and locusts, women will also have to worry about the thickness of their lashes.)

And if you needed additional confirmation about the tragic state of the economy, there it was in black and white in today's NY Times: More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown. Private sales are increasing for a number of reasons. From the sellers side a private sale hides the seller's need for money and loss of face if an auctioned item gets not bids or if the selling price is low. Auction houses on the other hand charge less for private sales, but that is balanced by reducing expenses by avoiding price guarantees, advertising, insurance, and the logistics of shipping and storage.

It's a different world from my college days when a Personality Poster was all you needed to decorate your room. You knew the student had class and money if the poster was framed instead of just tacked to the wall. (Diverted by the thought, I stumbled around the web trying to locate the iconic W.C. Fields poster: "Never give a sucker an even break". It was offered for sale for $99 plus $6 shipping on ioffer.com. That the offer had no takers since November of 2008 indicates that it might be overpriced. maybe the poster is available in a store. Should real, traditional, you walk-in-the-door store now be preceded by the retronym: "brick and mortar"?)

I Make Matzos Balls (Everyone Survives)

I promised my brother I'd make matzo balls for Passover. After many years of experimentation we found the "best" recipe, that is best by the normal culinary standard of uniformity of texture and taste, to be the recipe on the side of the box. All we had in the house was a canister of whole grain matzo meal which did not have a recipe for matzo balls on the side. The previous year my father had a family friend buy regular matzo meal rather than use the whole grain stuff so the whole grain stuff was at least one lunar year old.

Where was I going to find a recipe? I turned to the web of course. (A more traditional approach would have been to go to go to a supermarket and look at boxes of matzo meal.) In the course of searching I learned that Manischewitz revolutionized matzo by inventing machines which could satisfy the rabbinical strictures (I believe that to be kosher for Passover the dough has to be be baked within 18 minutes of mixing), and that Streit's sold their lower East Side bakery in 2007, but I had a hard time finding a recipe. (In these times "hard means a web search which takes more than a minute.)

There were recipes for tri-colored matzo (green colored with pureed spinach, yellow made with turmeric and a red using tomato paste), using matzo with veal, for frying fish, etc. I passed on every recipe which promised "light and fluffy" matzo balls. My brother and I like matzo which my brother describes as aldente. I describe my preference as soft on the outside and rubbery on the inside. (Guess which one of us works in the food industry.)

Matzo Balls III (jewishfood-list.com) got my attention:

"I use a little over a cup of matzo meal but be careful, too much turns them into 'sinkers.'"

The recipe promised to serve 5. That sealed the deal: we expected 5 for seder.

A background in chemistry and biochemistry prepares one to following recipes, but not necessarily for creative cookery. I almost followed the recipe. The list of ingredients contain a "dash pepper", but the recipe doesn't describe when or even if to add the pepper. (Maybe the pepper was to throw at people who annoy the cook or to ward off evil spirits.)

Matzo balls are a subset of genus dumpling. To my embarrassment, I was surprised that the melted margarine solidified when I added it to the dry ingredients. Getting a uniform mix of the dry ingredients and the margarine provided a good aerobic workout.

I stored the matzo balls in the refrigerator, my brother used the turkey broth frozen since Thanksgiving to make the soup, and we all got to weigh in on their matzo ball preferences. Much to my relief nobody complained about the matzo balls and, as the heading states, everybody survived.

My brother conducted two services: Michael Rubiner's "The Two-Minute Haggadah" and then his own service (complete with seder plate orange) from the Maxwell House haggadah. I might have been tired. It might have been the realization of the futility of some other reason, but I refrained from complaining that the erudition of rabbinic sages is a cover for delusional numerology.

So passed another Passover.

"Hey kids! Let's put on a show!"

I was asked to help one of the bigger cheeses with his presentation on the current economic turmoil ramifications for higher education. I've enjoyed working with him in the past because he freely admit his limited understanding of technology, but he knows what he wants, has a decent feel for what technology can do, and has an excellent sense of organization. By this last I mean that he'll find references and statistics and knows how to arrange them in the presentation. I do the dog work, make a few stylistic suggestions which are usually taken, and, in this case, had two slides I suggested included in the presentation. We used PowerPoint in the past and this was no different except we used a newer version.

As deadlines approaches there are always modifications, but these never even rise to the level of an imposition: moving a few slides around or maybe deleting or adding a few slides a day or two before the actual presentation. Anyone in a similar position will recognize this as nothing unusual or onerous. What was gruesome was the videos.

Jumping to the chase: the presentation worked flawlessly on multiple laptops and desktops whether run from hard drive, CD or USB key. On his Lenovo X61 notebook videos froze. Because we weren't as sharp as we should have been and because of certain initial problems with the videos we didn't realize that the problem was the notebook not the videos. We tried to contact the conference's technical contact because it wasn't clear from their instructions whether presentations had to be run on their equipment or whether we'd be allowed to use our own. Could the presentation be on a CD or USB key? Our preference would have been to FedEx a CD with the presentation to someone at the conference who would let us know if there were any problems, but the conference's technical contact didn't get back to us until the day before the conference.

(Because of an ugly incident at a conference we hosted many years ago we've been exceptionally sensitive about these things. People who indicate that they don't need anything special don't realize that their standard company issued PC includes a special sauce.)

Something no one anticipated sucked several other members of my department into the project. In desperation some proposed converting the whole presentation to Flash.

My throw-in-the-towel solution was to send him to the conference with the old laptop they had around his office (the same laptop I used to develop the presentation) and his X61 which he used for business. When I say old I mean a laptop with no Windows key on the keyboard, a Y key which is askew, and a defective left Ctrl key. (The right Ctrl key works.) My guy's attitude is great: if he won't be embarrassed during the presentation he's satisfied. (They may kick sand in his face because he's schlepping an old laptop, but as long as the presentation doesn't blow up he'll be satisfied.) The conference organizers might not have liked it, but it was unlikely that they'd tell the keynote speaker that he couldn't use his own laptop.

That said, he knew humor was needed to leaven the steady drumbeat of grim economic news. Video clips seemed the most natural.The first was a clip from Horsefeathers, the Marx Brothers' farce, where Groucho deciding that it is too expensive to maintain both the college and the football team decides to tear down the college. Where will the student's sleep? "They'll sleep where they always sleep: in the classroom." (Always mindful of running afoul of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Horsefeathers clip came from a VHS tape.)

Then there was a scene from Damn Yankees. He wanted to introduce the clip by saying "Nobody likes times like these, except..." and then the clip of Appplegate (the Devil) singing about the "Good Old Days". (The clip included scenes of people jumping from windows on Wall Street. )

What we all felt would be a natural conclusion was a clip with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" A quick web search turned up an einsiders.com review indicated that it was in Girl Crazy in which Rooney and Garland put on a show to save Cody College. As fast as you could whip out a credit card the box set was ordered on a Friday and delivered to me on Monday. (I did say the presentation was for someone at the top.)

After watching over 6 hours of the dynamic duo (Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, and Strike Up the Band in addition to the aforementioned Girl Crazy), I stand before you to say that "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" may join the ranks of "Play it again Sam" or "Alas poor Yorick. I knew him well." - lines which everyone remembers, but were never said. The line may exist in an Andy Hardy film, but not in the versions of the films in the boxed set. (What did you do today? I watched 4 Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland films to find 5 seconds of non-existent dialogue. Three other people scanned the films looking for the line.)

We tried to cobble three snippets from Girl Crazy) to show a radio news flash of the legislature's intention of closing Cody College due to a lack of enrollment, Mickey and Judy suggesting to the dean that they put the college on the map with a rodeo show, and the scene where they dump a sackful of applications on the dean's desk as Judy triumphantly exclaims "The governor can't close the school now!" Our ability to extract a clip from DVD to QuickTime worked fine. Editing the QuickTime clip worked fine. The conversion to WMV format not so fine. We lost or gained fractional parts. In the end we never got a usable clip from the boxed set. (I now have the background, but not the nerve to apply for a grant for Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland studies.)

TheGreat Train Robbery

When I spotted the book at a garage sale I remembered the movie with Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and Leslie-Ann Down was a good historical drama/thriller (a "ripping tale") and thought, why not?
The novel reminded me of a Mark Twain story, the title of which now eludes me, and John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. Twain interspersed statistics, the effect not unlike the cinematic effect of a voice over describing a city with the subsequent action reflecting the facts. The French Lieutenant's Woman provided Fowles ample opportunities to discourse on Victorian era sociology. (I'm a sucker for this stuff: I have fond memories of a classic sociology study Family and Kinship in East London")

Part of the enjoyment of The Great Train robbery stemmed from deciphering period criminal slang. In one section, ostensibly quoting from the trial transcript one of the thieves explains, "... he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don' want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot." (p 104) and then the theif is perplexed when the judge asks the thief to explain his explanation. (I thought that a judge who dealt with criminals would have mastered the argot, but then this is a novel and the passage is amusing.)

I was struck by one curious difference between the movie and the book: the novel made repeated reference to the mastermind's red beard, but this was not significant enough to have Sean Connery's beard dyed red for the movie.

Boots Of Spanish Leather/Suze Rotolo

I heard her girlish voice introduce EmilyLou Harris on a YouTube video, but couldn't remember Nanci Griffith's name. In these times, I search the Internet to fill gaps in my memory. Remembering one of her albums was titled, "Other Voices, Other Rooms" I was off to the races. The track listing led me to a discussion of Bob Dylan's "Boots Of Spanish Leather".

There I learned the meaning behind a song I've known most of my life. Well, yes, I see now that the initial verses alternate between characters and the last three stanzas belong to the lover left behind. And knowing something about Suze Rotolo made it that much more poignant and embarrassing to see how much I missed.

(Aficionados of the era knew that it was Suze, a red diaper baby, who introduced Dylan to William Blake, Bertolt Brecht Arthur Rimbaud and certainly sparked his social conscience. Dylan obsessives know there is an instrumental named for her, Suze (The Cough Song). Suze's name pops up in David Massengill's concerts. I first heard her voice when she was interviewed on WNYC when she was interviewed about her memoir, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties". In an interview on WFUV's Words and Music from Studio A Steve Earle commented that he spends a lot of time turning German tourists in the right direction when they try to have their picture taken in the same spot as the cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.)

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.