Saturday, December 17, 2011

Thirsty

I don't think of myself as a hypochondriac, but lately I've begun to realize that I need more distractions in my life.

Dead idle and getting older - you start thinking about every new ache like its the beginning of something terrible.

That's new, you think as your arm starts to twang. You waste a few brain cycles coming up with the most sensational reasons why it might be acting up, then move on to worrying about your eating habits.

The other day, I ate two Italian beef sandwiches for lunch.

I mean, that's messed up. Not exactly the largest amount of food I've eaten, but a good indication that when I'm enjoying what I'm eating - I keep eating. This is totally at odds with my stated goal of being more active - so I waste a few brain cycles on worrying why I might be doing this.

One of the byproducts of sleep apnea is increased appetite. Which is downright evil, since eating more can narrow your throat opening - leading to less airflow and less sleep and (naturally) a body screaming for more calories.

Am I not sleeping enough? But I know I am - because I'm dreaming. Dreams are my benchmark for R.E.M. sleep - and I'd been dreaming plenty.

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that I've simply grown accustomed to eating more - and need to dial it way the hell back.

Any time I'm thinking of hitting the cafe for a snack - I opt for the water bottle. I slug down a bottle or two of water and I figure I'm doing myself more good than a latte and a pack of Reeses.

Makes you feel almost virtuous. I'm just having water, thanks. But I drink like I eat - fast - and you feel pretty odd lingering over the water fountain wishing the water flow was a hell of a lot faster. I want what I want - and a lot of it.

Once, I started drinking out of work's slow fountain as a co-worker went into the restroom.  I was still drinking after they came out. We have the newer handicapped-accessible fountains, so they're very low - so drinking at them for any length of time makes the blood slosh down to your head.

You pop up from an extended drink like that an your head looks like you've been out in the sun. My co-worker glared at me for a moment and said, "You okay?"

As drinking necessarily causes you to hold your breath, I responded like a person surfacing from a long dive. Gasp "I'm fine." Gasp, gasp.

Try to do something good for yourself - end up looking like a bit of a goober.

I'd fallen off the running circuit, too. Not really helping myself - but I'd spent a lot of lunch hours running around looking for hardware to fix our destroyed bathroom. I'll get back on the horse, but y'know - not today. But you think about it - when you're on the scale - or every time you look at your running gear sitting in the trunk like a vengeful accuser.

******

"You losing weight?"

My office mate was asking and I'm like "Huh?" Not likely. Kind of them to say, but more water and no exercise is unlikely to result in weight loss.

I'd recently resumed a more technical role at work, so in addition to more typing - I get a lot more time in front of a computer screen. About few weeks after I start up, my eye goes blood red and it hurts to focus up close.

This, at least is not much fuel for anxiety - I have this recurring thing where one eye or the other will turn red and ache for about a week. No big deal, no lasting effects - no identifiable cause - but the remedy is to get 5 days worth of eye drops and it goes away.

By the time I could get a normal appointment it would go away on its own - so I do urgent care. I give them the same description, they do the same checks, and I get my eye drops.

Simple.

But as long as I was there I wanted to ask them about other stuff. I'd been getting these pains in my hands - numbness mostly - when I was going to sleep. I'd been typing a bit more than usual, so I'd briefly wondered if I was getting carpal tunnel. My dad had it - but then he did an awful lot more with his hands than I ever did.

And there was other stuff. Odd pains here and there. I started rattling off the list until I sounded like a hypochondriac. Watching your doctor shift from active listener to "I'm waiting until they stop talking" mode does not inspire confidence in your message.

I've done the freak out before. Let a number of random inputs convince me I was in dire shape - only to find out I was fine. Wired up to telemetry and it was nothing.

A collection of aches, pains, and odd sensations that seem dire in your head comes out as a rambling collection of random things. Just what happens when you save it all up.

I sounded like a dork.The result was predictable.

They asked me to do some tests - and sent me on my way.

So - I'm at work on Tuesday, tests done - clacking away at the keyboard and I get a call from the school nurse.

The boy has fallen on the playground and hurt his leg. They need me to pick him up. They hadn't been able to reach E, so they're getting me. Just as well, she has no wheels anyway. I'm thirty minutes out and tell them so. "He's okay?" They tell me he'll be in the nurse's room until I get there.

I leave a few messages with E and head in. I'm down to vapors on PTO, but this is just how it goes. Lose two weeks to an appendicitis, and this is what the end of the year looks like.

I pick up the boy and he's shivering, but totally calm. There's no swelling on his leg, no bruising, and I get him to put his sock back on, then his shoe. He can move his toes, he just doesn't want to walk on it.

Sprain.

We get him in a wheelchair and into the van. We're off to urgent care to get him looked at. Might as well be safe.

I'm about twenty minutes out from urgent care when my phone rings - luckily I have the buds in, so I click in.

It's urgent care. I'm like, How did they know we're coming?

We're going to the west clinic - this is the east clinic, the one I went to this morning.
Sir, I have the results from your blood tests this morning.
Okay, I've kinda got something I need to do here...
Sir, your blood sugar is very high.-
Ma'am, I'm taking my son in to - 
Normal range is around 70 to 100-
-get his leg looked at.
Yours is at 320.
 ...I am, uh..

The dread I'd been feeling for weeks is finally redeemed - but it doesn't help.
You need to be on mediation as soon as possible.
Those nights I woke up with numb arms and tingling in my hands...
Your doctor just updated my screen. He wants you in in the next two days. I'll give you his scheduling number... sir?
I'd lie awake and wince at the pains sparking off in my legs, my chest. Vacillating between thinking I was about to have some catastrophic event and believing myself an idiot for thinking so. I'd go downstairs, unlock the front door, and sit on the couch with the phone in my hand. I'd watch television until I calmed down. Go back to bed when it passed.
Sir...?
The boy's in the back asking about what they're going to do to his leg - he's oblivious that his dad is on the phone - I cover the mic and tell him they're going to put it in a splint (I'm wrong, of course - he's broken both bones in his leg, but I won't find that out for another half hour).
Sir...?
I know what she's going to say, but I ask her anyway.

What does this mean?
Sir your A1C is 12.7% that's an average over the last 60 days or so...That means...
I'm a diabetic.
Sir, you need to see your doctor in the next day or so...
I'm at a stop sign about 3 miles from getting my son to treatment. I'm head down at the wheel until someone honks at me.

Bin the later - it's time for the now.

My boy needs his dad - and not one who is a self-pitying mass of useless.

I wave the other car by and make the appointment.

Blinker on. We make the turn.

Friday, December 02, 2011

Too Soon?

Overheard at the sandwich shop:
Q: What do you call a woman who chases after a much younger man?
A: A cougar.

Q: What do you call a man who chases after a much younger man?
A: A Nittany Lion

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Quote of the Night

 Just because it made me laugh...
I'm ashamed of what I did for a Klondike bar...
-Texts from Last Night

Monday, November 28, 2011

Eighteen Digit Number

There's an obvious irony in this - but all I can see right now is suckage.

Like the rest of the country - I seized upon the falling mortgage rates to refinance. I missed a historically low interest rate by a day - thank you very much - but I got a rate that should make a difference in our finances.

The refi guy at the bank was email only - so buried under applications that they only processed them via the web, and promised to call you within two weeks. I was happy to snag the low rate, so I did what they said.

So it's the day of the closing and I'm looking at the paperwork and I see a name that gives me the creeps.

MERS.

Yes, that MERS. The one who holds more than 60 million of the country's mortgages, yet ignores state laws on the registration and foreclosing of mortgages. The company that breaks chain of title and damages the property rights of adjacent property holders.

Those guys.

I asked the title insurance employee (who was the only one there) if MERS had any role on our loan. They were like "No, no - they're just there to save you money on filing the paperwork."

And they do this in what capacity, relative to my loan?

The title insurance employee gave an answer that established that they had no idea what role MERS played on our loan - but that they were "certain" that everything was fine.

Now, you're the consumer with a bad feeling about this - but you know that the MERS voodoo causes problems when other problems emerge. If I pay my loan, MERS, role does not matter. But then you wonder what happens when my loan gets sold and re-sold? Will I know where to send my payments? Will the servicer stay the same?

And because the alternative is to scrap your re-fi - the one with the sweet rate - you sign. Because, scrapping the deal means you lose a good chunk of your closing costs - and you honestly don't know if your chosen lender has any options that don't include MERS.

So... y'know. F$&#!

But in the back of your head, you're thinking. MERS is seriously in the news lately. Losing cases left and right. Telling its members to list MERS in an alternate role.

Maybe it won't be like that - and again - I pay my bill, things will be fine, right? 

Enter the Loan Servicer - a company called PHH. PHH?

Never heard of them.

Googling, I find:
David beats Goliath: Homeowner wins $21MILLION payout from mortgage firm in dispute over credit rating 
In which an Army NCO paid PHH by direct deposit every month - until PHH decided to ignore the fact they had his money and notified the credit agencies that he was a deadbeat.

This is the kind of thing that gets me all worked up. Not that my loan will go this route, but my state has two lawsuits this year against PHH where PHH botched the paperwork and asked the courts to let them take people's homes anyway.

I call PHH to make sure they have my first payment and they've never heard of me. Even though their name is on the paperwork, even though I give them my loan number and SSN - they have no idea who I am. Mind you, this is over a month after our loan closed.

Anybody ever had an argument with a bank where you were trying to convince them that you owed them money? Pretty freaking surreal.

PHH insist I call my previous lender, because they have no record of me.

My prior lender agrees that the paperwork is backed up, but that I should send my first payment and PHH will "hold onto it" until the loan gets set up in their system. Because, hey, what could go wrong, right?

Then I go poking around and find a search engine for MERS properties. And yes, my property is listed in it.

There's a note date, a listing of my prior lender and an long string of digits that make up my MIN: My  MERS Identification Number.

I have been assimilated.

My local customer-friendly bank has sold me to the corporate wolves.

Great.

Just great.

Father of the Year

(via The Two-Way)
"Zach Tomaselli, 23, of Lewiston, Maine, said Sunday that he told police that [Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie] Fine molested him in 2002 in a Pittsburgh hotel room. The third accuser to come forward, Tomaselli said Fine touched him "multiple" times in that one incident." Tomaselli's father, however, told the AP he is certain his son never had any contact with Fine.
As in, "Gee, dad. Why don't you shut the hell up and let your grown son speak his mind, huh?"

Friday, November 18, 2011

Do You Feel Lucky?

So, it's open enrollment and (as tradition dictates) I'm in the final hours of the window reading the help files and wracking my brain to remember what we do and don't have as a household.

My employer outsources the process to a webservice which is (workflow wise) pretty impressive.

They give you a progress meter ( 1, 2, 3 steps and you're done!) and they offer you every single option imaginable. You're required to waive or accept each and every plan, twice - so there's no single misclick can sentence you to unwanted benefits.

Getting you through the process in a few minutes speaks to a process that is well formed. Having online validation makes sure you don't submit bad choices - so I'm sure it's win-win for the employee and their employer.

There are even tutorials on what the various plans do for you -  which is pretty freaking important, seeing these are year long commitments to plans that can be the difference between maintaining your current lifestyle and total catastrophe.

While some of the tutorials nicely illustrate the broad concepts of things like flex spending accounts - there are also moments like this one detailing the reasons a person might get disability insurance:


I mean - the chances are "very good" that I will become disabled? Really? This is for a plan whose benefits start on the 15th day of disability, supplemented by another plan whose benefits start on the 151st day of disability.

And this is for a business whose employees work in information technology.

Thinking back to my closest brush with disability - surgery and in hospital for five days. Still nowhere near qualifying for the short term disability coverage.

But it's not like I'm getting any younger.

Do you listen to the merchant trying to sell you stuff...?

Smartmoney says there is a good chance, so now you're comparing your own experience against the odds.

How does a person make an informed choice about getting this kind of coverage? 

Arrgh.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Penn State, You Suck

The Grand Jury document is unbelievable.

  • Grad student reports sodomy of a minor to Paterno.
  • Paterno brings in the Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz.
  • According to the grad student, the grad student tells Curley and Schultz that Sandusky was seen sodomizing a minor.
  • According to Curley, the grad student said Sandusky had "inappropriate conduct" but specifically denied that the student mentioned "sexual conduct...of any kind"
  • According to Schultz, the grad student said Sandusky had "disturbing" and "inappropriate" conduct with a young boy - but he was very unsure about what he remembered. Also, that the conduct was "not that serious" and he had "no indication that a crime had occurred."

Here's some wonderfully understated Grand Jury snark
Although Schultz oversaw the Universtiy Police as part of his position, he never reported the 2002 [shower sex with minor] incident to the University Police or other police agency, never sought or reviewed a police report on the 1998 incident [where Sandusky was alleged to have behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner with minor boys in the football showers] and never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower in 2002. No one from the University did so. Schultz did not ask the graduate assistant for specifics. No one ever did.
They follow up with
The Grand Jury finds that portions of the testimony of Tim Curley and Gary Schultz are not credible.
Paterno's going to retire - he should be fired, sued and prosecuted.

Likewise Curley, Schultz and the Penn State President Spanier.

Heads gotta roll.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Ya! ya! Yawm!

Dune project: done.


Tell me Muad' Dib, how you say "dorkwad" on your homeworld?

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Natural 20


"Daddy, why do you have a big bald spot on the top of your head?"

"Uh...."

Amazingly, the conversation went downhill from there.  

Rollingl to confirm.... and....yes!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Find a Problem, then Crush It

These days, its very common to have a programmable thermostat.

I have a fairly advanced one. It stores separate programs for heat and cold, with each program storing four points in time to set temperatures for. It will do this separately for each day of the week.

I hate it.

And not just a little bit, either.

Consider the typical use scenario:  

I'm cold
  1. Walk to thermostat
  2. open lid
  3. locate 2nd button from the top (from a series of four identical buttons)
  4. Press 2nd button from top
  5. Read dark grey text (on light grey background) to see what mode you're in
  6. When the mode is "Heat," read the dark grey numbers to see what temperature you're at
  7. Then hit the "^" button to change the current temperature to the desired temperature
  8. The display will replace the temperature you asked for, with the temperature it actually is (making you wonder if you've changed anything)
  9. After a few minutes, the fan will kick in to let you know the furnace is increasing the temperature (It worked!)
This blows. Here's what I want: I'm cold
  1. Walk to thermostat
  2. Read the current temperature
  3. Turn the dial to the temperature I want
  4. See the display showing my change ("I got it.")
  5. Go back to whatever the hell I was doing before
I'd looked into wireless thermostats and programmable thermostats. I figured there had to be a thermostat that logged its settings and temperature to give the homeowner the full picture of what goes on in their house.

I mean, how many people know what the ideal settings for their house should be? TheHellIfIKnow!

(I mean, I set my thermostat to stay at 55 when I'm not home in the winter, before I realized that my house won't drop anywhere near that temp over the course of a normal work day.)

So there's a big gap in user interface. People used to build a small box and all the controls had to be buttons on that box. Wireless access removes that issue. I figured someone would make another box and then some solid web app to tweak it out. Obviously, I suffer from a lack of imagination.

Enter these guys:



This is just full-on awesome UI design. Simple up/down controls that feed software that learns what you want over time. *Standing Ovation* Wireless? Check. Controllable by your smartphone? Check. Remote internet control? Check. Plot usage and temperature over time? Check.

But I don't feel like paying somebody to swap out my thermostat. 

Oh really? Here's the how-to installation video on YouTube:



Talk about the modern customer experience in action. That's a home run illustration of how to remove the fear factor and let the customer's want take over.

Want! Want! Want!

Friday, October 07, 2011

Monday, October 03, 2011

The Dune Project

Not quite sure how the whole thing started, but awhile ago I got the idea in my head to make a version of the out-of-print boardgame Dune.

Contributing factors would be:
  • Secondhand versions of Dune cost north of $100 
  • I loved the book. -I liked the later work of these game designers (particularly Cosmic Encounter, which shares a lot of game elements) 
  • I like board games with good bits 
  • The internet exists 
Of the items on that list, the last one is key. Any fool could have the idle thought that Hey, I could make my own… but you’d need to know enough about the game to want to even try. You need motivation. Enter this guy:


Seem like a game worth putting in a little effort for? Incidentally, a video like this kinda gives you the idea of the online community that exists for this game.

Next, you’d need access to the rules and a list of all the components to make a complete game.

No interwebs? Good luck.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) there happened to be an online community that was willing to make PDFs of pretty much everything you might want.

The bullet list was:
  • Two decks of full-size cards (1 with 33 cards, the other with 21) 
  • One deck of half-size cards (30 cards) 
  • 120 stackable tokens 
  • A large gameboard with a map
  • A rulebook 
  • Game wheels (two pieces of cardstock pinned together to make something akin to a decoder wheel)
Any one of those items might make a sane person turn back.

How do you make a deck of cards? What do you make them out of? What's the best way to get them printed?

But the online community is there with all sorts of advice, how to's and examples of successfully finished projects.

I managed to cobble together PDFs of all the pieces I wanted save for the map. An Italian guy named Neri had posted a really great design, but it was riddled with mistakes (English was not his first language). So I pulled his map into Photoshop and cleaned up the map the way I wanted it.


Wasn’t entirely satisfied with my efforts (the board surrounding the Map looks like what it was – a late design add) but it was an improvement.

I bought tokens from Fantasy Flight, printed the board and cards at FedExKinkos, spent a truly ridiculous amount of time trimming cards on a paper cutter and presto – I have my own Dune game.

Took forever to finally get a chance to play it. Getting 5 like minded gamers into a room isn’t easy when half of them have small children – but a run through was done and I thought the game showed its worth.

So then I’m going through the interwebs looking for clearer answers to some of the rules questions we came up with and I see a post by this Russian guy.

He’s put together a set of files for print that are just incredible… I mean, I think anyone who started a project like this will think, one day, I’ll get some free time and put together an awesome set of components and post them online and…

Ilya? The Russian Guy? He’s done that, and I think the rest of the Dune home brew crowd feels like Wile E Coyote watching the Road Runner vanish into a vapor trail.

Just look at this stuff

He made all the artwork:



And there are people linking to sites like artscow.com that will print playing cards for you. Hell, uploading preformatted sets of images so you just have to click to buy them. Then they link to shops in Germany where you can buy wooden tokens in bulk.

Want to know how to make a folding board? How about a video of a magnetic, modular game board? The geek out never stops!!

I mean, cripes, the original game didn't look that good:


Ye Gods...

Ilya even formatted a rulebook that was written by this Brit in Manchester who has seriously cleaned up the copy and made some mechanical improvements.

It's like looking for a bit of gum and being gifted a seven-course gourmet meal.

After the first run through of the game I was thinking of searching out a clearer version of the rulebook, now I'm thinking I need to print up some new components.

Not like I need to keep up with the Joneses, but c'mon... a board gamer sees that much concentrated awesomeness and does nothing...?

I think not.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Big Pair of Brass Ones


It’s 7:20 on a weekend.

I’m coming home with the kids – about to reach the house door when I hear it:  
Bddddt! Bddddt! Bddddt! Bddddt!

I’m like WTF is that?

I’m standing in the garage, the kids are coming up behind me and the noise is pulsing, but constant. Sounds like a machine that’s straining to do something and failing.

Bddddt! Bddddt! Bddddt! Bddddt!

I open the door thinking something’s wrong with the dishwasher, ’s the beater arm stuck?

No. Dishwasher’s off. Sounds coming from the right and-

-there’s water on the hall floor, right in front of the bathroom. Water flowing out of the bathroom.

Damn.

I scramble into the bathroom door and see a geyser of water shooting out of where the faucet’s cold water shutoff used to be. It’s spraying easily 7 feet into the air and the walls have water stains on them. There’s standing water on the bathroom’s tile floor and on my hardwood floor in the hallway.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

I fling open the vanity doors under the sink and go for the shutoff valves. I’m congratulating myself on having the valves installed a year ago (for reasons beyond my understanding all three bathrooms had no local shutoffs – I could not see that as a good thing long term, so we paid a plumber to put in shutoffs when he put in our new faucets).

Two cranks on the cold side’s valve and the water stops. We go from a thundering geyser to silence punctuated by steady dripping sounds.

Dripping down.

I go down the basement stairs and see water dripping through the ceiling tiles. The basement ceiling seems to be snakebit when it comes to water.  Remembering how I’d managed to spray water over them two years ago -  I’m like: here we go again.

I walk across the sponge-like carpeting and go into the finished half of the basement. Water is dripping through the light fixture nearest me and the floor is totally soaked.

I tell the kids to stay upstairs and I begin flinging the sodden mass of stuffed animals and pillows into the uncarpeted side of the basement.

Damn.

The downstairs ceiling is not merely wet, it’s soaked. The ceiling fixture is now an inverted fountain, and our laundry pile is now a sponge. I call E and ask her to come home with a shop vac (wondering for the thousandth time why I got rid of our shop vac when we moved), we’re going to have a long weekend cleaning this mess up.

As an afterthought, I call my insurance company. Their WATS line tells me they are closed, but I can report my claim online. I do. An hour later, they call me to tell me they are sending a water remediation expert to my house – that night.

I’m like Uh, okay. An hour later I have a guy in my house evaluating what I need to have done, and his team shows up with serious gear an go to town.  The remediation guy tells me they’re going to set up fans and dehumidifiers in my house. “It’s going to be loud. For days. It will also raise the temperature in your house by about 15 degrees. For days.”

Uh, okay.

The guy is right on both counts, we have big machines blaring in our house for four days. It's 80 degrees in the house and that's with windows wide open to pull in 60 degree air from the outside.

Bleah.

But enough of the what, let's cut to the why. The cold water shut off on my bathroom tap shot failed.

See it here in the picture?


Yeah, that handle is supposed to be attached. As in here:

Inside the cold water handle, still held in by its screw, are the valve and the valve nut. So the handle shot off because the valve somehow allowed water to get past it and propel it up and off the supply pipe.

I'm thinking I have two more faucets just like this. Was this just one bum faucet? or a failed design?

My faucet is the American Standard Cadet Centerset Faucet. 8125 Series or 8124 Series (no way to tell at this point and the documentation is identical for both). I bought three of these at Home Depot about a year ago.

I get my paperwork and head over to a local plumber. He's set up a storefront so you can walk in and get expert advice and good parts.

I plunk down my documentation and the part and ask him what the heck?

The plumber says "Well, if you buy a Ford anywhere - its a Ford. But if you buy American Standard, it matters where you get it from. These box stores lean on their suppliers to lower their prices - and the suppliers like American Standard are shipping a lower cost version that isn't as good as their regular stuff."

I checked the American Standard website, looks like my faucet (American Standard Cadet Centerset Faucet. 8125 Series or 8124 Series) is only available through Home Depot. According to the plumber, they are total garbage.

He's like, "I'm betting there are going to be an awful lot of lawsuits when these things start failing all over the place. You should save your parts and give them to your insurer. They might be able to get your money back through subrogation."

I'm half listening, half thinking about the two ticking time bombs I left sitting in my upstairs bathrooms.

The plumber digs into his parts cabinet and pulls out a valve with a brass valve nut. "That's the part you need. The valve is basic, but the valve nut is the key piece. Brass isn't always brass. You'll see this bright yellow stuff they call brass but it's just a piece of crap that's waiting to fail on you."

I blow $78 on four valves and four valve nuts, about what I paid for two of my three (useless) American Standard faucets from Home Depot. Swapping them out turns out to be easy enough, but (oh hilarity!) one of the old valve nuts cracks in half while I'm taking it out. Could have had a second flood in my house.

Nice.

So here's the offending object:


On the left is the valve and valve nut in the American Standard Cadet Centerset Faucet (available from Home Depot). As you can see, the valve nut it is coated with calcium carbonate, which means the nut's been getting wet a lot. When the water evaporates, the calcium carbonate remains and crusts things up.

More important than that is the large crack you see in the middle of the valve nut.


For comparison, here's the valve and valve nut I bought to replace it:

New valve nut = good. Old valve nut = total piece of crap.

I don't have a engineering degree or industrial forensic tools, but my kitchen scale gave me a big indicator of how useless the original valve nut was.

Here's the original nut American Standard / Home Depot supplied:


It weighs 1 eighth of an ounce.

The new one I got from the plumber?
It weighs three times as much.

I'm insured, and we'll be re-doing the bathroom, but I'm out my $500 deductible and the major hassle of losing a bathroom for a few weeks while this all gets sorted.

Now, I know I was buying a faucet based on price, but I went with a known brand at a big store.

Which just goes to show you how utterly meaningless those pieces of information are when it comes to quality. Consumer reports doesn't do faucets (there are just too many models) and even if they did, the model numbers would turn over and rapidly make them obsolete.

I have to say I look at Home Depot merchandise very differently now. All the other parts on those faucets were none too solid - and when I see a boxed up toilet that says "Contains everything you need, no tools needed!" right below a giant "Sale!" sign - I'm thinking and what did you turkeys cheap out on to make this price, eh?

Like dad always said: Sometimes the cheapest is the most expensive.

Friday, September 09, 2011

The Standard That Works Best For Us

(via illusory tenant)

In July of 2008, a convicted sex offender named Dinkins was due to be released from prison. State law required him to register his future address with the state's sex offender registry ten days before his release. He did not do this and was charged with a class H felony as a result.

His argument at trial was that he did not know where he would be living. No relative agreed to take him in and he had no solid prospects. He had no address to register.

Nonsense, cried the state:
...Dinkins, like everyone, knows that he must sleep somewhere, and Wis. Stat. § 301.45(2)(a)5. and (e)4. merely requires incarcerated sex offenders to identify and report the address or nearest address of the place where they plan to sleep at least ten days prior to their release—even if the place is a park bench or similar on-the-street location. The State asserts that such a location is an “address” within the meaning of § 301.45(2)(a)5., citing several dictionary definitions of “address.”
That's the WI Appeals Court summarizing the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice's position in their published opinion.

So, according to the Wisconsin DOJ, a convicted sex offender can fulfil their address registration requirement by stating they live under a park bench.

Understand they are saying this because they want Dinkins to go to jail - but consider:

Dinkins fulfills this requirement by scrawling "I think I'll sleep under a bench on the 100 block of East Main St. Not sure which one, but there are quite a few on that block" on his form and he's good to go.

Let's set aside the fact that makes the sex offender registry a whole lot less effective and zero in on the point illusory tenant makes so well.

According to the state of Wisconsin, registering as a sex offender requires filling out the address form as best you can. There is no requirement that you show a utility bill for that address, a rental agreement for that address. There isn't even a requirement that it actually BE an address. Quoting the WI Chief Justice, "...park bench okay?" State says, "You betcha!"

But if any Wisconsin resident tries to vote in an election, they will be asked for a photo ID with an address that will be checked against valid addresses for their polling place.

Priorities, people.

It's all about priorities.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Chill You To the Bone

Just spent some time listening and watching the NYT's amazing audio site dovetailing the 9/11 recordings with transcripts and the plotted positions of the hijacked planes.

Incredible.

Friday, September 02, 2011

Calling Gableman Out

illusory tenant makes a great call - Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged judge-on-judge action. Not that Gableman really wants that, based on how badly he's managed his accusation. Interesting to see if his actions are scrutinized as much as say, a women who accuses a man of assault?

And there's also this hugely awesome call out
Gableman also told the police:
Justice Gableman said he has not told anyone about that incident and has not talked about that incident with anyone, including Justice Bradley, after it happened.
Then Justice Ziegler tells the police (page 69 of 70):
She then said, recently Justice Gableman told her about Justice Bradley hitting him on the back of the head, but she said she did not have any details of that and did not know when it happened. Justice Ziegler said she could not be specific on when Justice Gableman told her that happened.
Gableman's interview was on July 5, and Ziegler's was on July 18, so presumably Gableman told her about the September 18, 2009 (née 2008) incident after July 5. But Ziegler hadn't known anything about it.

Even though Justice Zeigler would have been present.
Followed by the even more awesome comment by gnarlytrombone:
"Not only present, but a witness: 'Justice Gableman said that he believed Justice Bradley was not joking because nobody was laughing at the time.' [page 64 of 70] i.e., they had to have seen it happen to choose not to laugh. Because it was serious. But not memorable."
Gableman's tying himself in a bit of a knot there, isn't he?

Bring on the investigation!

Two on Foreclosure

CJR's Ryan Chittum says about all that needs to be said about the current state of foreclosures in America, netting a fistfull of great articles- like this one from American Banker:
Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.
Oooh! Tell us more, do!

And then there's Reuters, saying that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is suing the big banks.
The government will argue the banks, which pooled the mortgages and sold them as securities to investors, failed to perform due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers' incomes were falsified or inflated...
Ya don't say...

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Out of Control

While I’m hardly a Swiss-watch kind of person, I’d be hard pressed to come up with occasions where I was totally incapable of asserting myself. Oh, there are countless times when I ought to have done something, but genuinely being powerless to affect an ongoing situation is kind of an odd thing.

The easy example was the time I ski’ed backwards over a snow jump. Flung up into the air as I tried to wrench myself rightwise - I had the distinct, ice-blue memory of falling downward at the mountain slope that was – itself – falling away from me at an alarmingly similar rate. I knew there would be impact – that it would hurt a great deal – and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

The mountainside cometh.

I’m told that the mind retains more input in times of stress – and this is one of the reasons time seems to slow down. You are processing everything – a continuous stream of data rather than the usual staccato of base-level-stimuli surrounding bits your mind already threw away. If your brain is thinking it might die, *anything*  could be important, so you drink it all in.

And you keep it.  I can picture this fall with total clarity, despite decades of inattention. What I wore. What the sky was like. The fact that my ski tips were going to hit first-

It’s funny. I remember trying to tip them away from the slope – to gain a few (micro) seconds more before impact. Think of that, perception of time so compressed that I’m planning my impact despite never being more than a few feet off the ground. The entire episode took probably less than two seconds from launch to bloody heap – and I vividly recall making the decision to bend my knee so my ski would be above me when I hit.

Not that this  made the slightest difference.

With equal clarity, I remember my other ski tip hitting the ground  and (to my mind) launching my leg into an arc that ended with the ski’s opposite end spearing into my lower back. I remember thinking how improbable that was –

-right before I went face first into the mountain slope.

I’ve since forgotten my injuries. They can’t have been terrible, I didn’t go to the hospital, but whatever part of the brain that manages crisis situations was clearly convinced. Cut. Print it. Possible near-death #4.

Funny thing. I don’t even remember where it happened. I broke my leg at Breckenridge and I could tell you the year and location - but I have no idea how I fell.

Odd.

What made me think of this was the feeling of inevitability. Airborne and hurling earthward. The certainty of impact – and the complete inability to do a thing about it.

The mountain cometh. All determining inputs are complete. No further inputs will be accepted. This will happen.
Brace for impact.

So months ago, I’m in a hospital bed – waiting for impact. Three days prior  I’d called my kids and told them that I wasn’t coming home because I was going to have surgery. E’s overseas and my week of being Dad Solo is completely FUBAR. Friends and family have jumped on the logistics grenade and I’ve been left to lay in a room being useless for days.

Having never been operated on before, this was uncharted territory. I’d resolved to be the good patient. I smiled, I joked and generally tried to make the best of it. Whatever danger there was had passed, and now there was just the massive inconvenience of being hospitalized, hooked up to numerous machines and generally treated like a lab specimen.

Anybody enjoy being a lab specimen? Right.

Three days is enough  time to nail down exactly what is wrong with
  • the interface of your hospital bed: the tilt controls change location as you tilt from barely visible but accessible while reclining, to invisible and nigh impossible to reach while inclined. This is an interface designed for people with impaired motor and cognitive function.
  • the CPAP machine: it comes on automatically when you put it over your nose, but no one knows this except a specialist who no one thinks to ask for days.
  • the TV remote / Summon assistance button: It’s on a cord and always manages to fall between the bed rail and lodge there. This is only a big deal for people who have no abdominal strength like anyone who’s recently had surgery.

The bonus round is the Summon assistance button: I hate being a burden, but when you’re alone and essentially helpless, you need help. You push the button and wait for someone to respond. First few days this response is pretty quick, but on day three hitting the button it might take several minutes just to get someone to ask what you need.

One time, it took 12 minutes. Again, nothing was urgent - but I’d filed that away.

I’d been told I could be released the following day, so I’m trying my best to do all the things they want me to do so there will be no last minute snags. You want me to walk? Fine, I’ll walk around the floor.

Ugh. Getting up out of anything without using your stomach muscles is not fun. Walking in a hunch is even less fun. But I’m going to do this thing. For the millionth time, I snag my jammed-into-the-front-of-my-knuckle IV on the bedrail – twisting the needle and generally causing pain to blossom in my left hand. Every nurse apparently has their own style of doing these things, but pretty much everyone who’s looked at mine has sort of rolled their eyes like “I wouldn’t have done it that way.” Whatever the right way is, I’m thoroughly sick of mine.

Once up, I can’t help but tense up – which makes everything worse. I remember spending about five minutes just getting myself to slowly unclench everything until I achieve a bearable baseline of discomfort. But – I’m mobile.

Into the hall. Oh wait. First call the nurse. The antibiotics IV bag is beeping at me. It needs a refill.

Right here, I ponder a career in revamping the user interface in hospital equipment. I’m post-operative and on drugs, yet here is the workflow that makes sense to the designers of this machine.

Bag Near Empty? > Yes: Begin beeping at patient.
This will provoke the patient into calling a nurse, who will ask what the patient wants.
The patient will say “something’s beeping,” which will cause the nurse to walk the length of the hall to find out what, in fact, is beeping.
Once the nurse arrives she will determine what the issue is, switch off the beeping, then walk back to the nurses’ station to get whatever materials are needed.

I ask you, in a world of telecommunications – why the hell doesn’t the device send a wireless message to my assigned nurses’ PDA?

Patient in 422 needs more antibiotics.

Why does the device need to beep at a patient at all? Like they have any idea what the hell needs to be done.
Hell, the system could have a queue. My nurse is busy, they can slap a snooze button and bounce it to the central desk who WILL find someone to do this. Coverage and redundancy, and patients can (y’know) not be bothered with this sh!t.

Speaking of bothered:

I, the provoked patient,  spring to action. There’s beeping. What do I do now? I need to call the nurse. Where the hell is the call button?

Naturally, the call button is on the end of a device the size and shape of a multi-plug power stick, and it is wedged between the handrail and the mattress. Again.

Having achieved a vertical posture without using my stomach, I lumber over to the bed and gingerly try to pry the call button wand out and fail. I don’t want to flex, I don’t want to bend, and I will have to do both to get this out.

Arrrgh.

I opt to twist it just enough to press the damn button.  Blip!  There. Now I wait… I guess.
Ten minutes go by. I think I know the button the nurse used to snooze this thing last time, but all the buttons are cryptically labeled and there are MANY buttons. I could guess, but guessing wrong could be (unlikely) hazardous or (more likely) something I’ll have to explain so the nurse can correct it.

I stand for awhile until I decide to sit. I was going to walk outside, but I don’t want to take a beeping machine into the hall. The nurse could arrive any minute, so taking direct action seems premature until I’m around minute twelve.

“What do you need?”

My machine is beeping

“We’ll be right there.”

Sigh. I wait.

Again. Not a huge deal, but I was all worked up to moving around, and now I sit. The nurse swings in, mutes the machine, and swaps out the antibiotics.

I’m off. By now I’m feeling a bit nauseous. Getting up, sitting down, getting up again. Bleah. I do a quick lap around the floor and flop back in bed.

Shift change and New Nurse takes over. She tells me my blood pressure is high. Like 140 over 90. Nothing bad, just something to keep an eye on. I tell her I was walking and she says I should keep that up.

Soon as she’s gone, I try to sleep. Sleep hadn’t generally been a problem – but since my schedule is shot to hell, I’m like a jet lagged traveler. Drowsy in mid-day, but unable to sleep.

Plus, I’m getting twinging pains that aren’t enough to really hurt, but annoying enough to keep me awake. Side, shoulder, arm, chest. Twang!

Bleah. Back to my iPhone. My lifeline and salvation. I’ve paid the phone bills, notified work and kept up with current events with this thing. Anytime I need to kill time – there’s RSS.

I’m eye deep in the Spanish financial crisis, when the twinging pain returns. Mostly across the chest, and not bad – but annoying.

My nurse pulled in to check a my vitals – No signs of infection, but my blood pressure is up 140/100 and she’s saying “that’s got to come down.”

Which is perhaps the least helpful thing you can tell a person with high blood pressure.

I consider asking her about the seemingly random pain – but that just feels wrong. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want to be the whining patient. “Uh, nurse? I have an owie.”

I’m not sure I could pick a precise event that got things rolling. But I started having this cold numbness in my upper arm – then it began hurting.

Now – I’m no hypochondriac, but I know almost nothing about medicine. What little I do know comes from TV, perhaps the worst source for solid information. Ha ha. My left arm hurts. I get it. Funny.

I try to go to sleep, and fail.

I’m warm – and I want to get out of bed. I have this odd feeling that I’m going to throw up. Since I can’t move fast, I start to get up much sooner than I would have otherwise. Don’t want to be late.

I grunt my way up and disconnect the various cords and tubes. Mobile. I’m headed to the bathroom. Light headed.

And now – without any doubt – my left hand is numb. Like I’d slept on it, only I haven’t slept. There’s a tingling pain along the upper arm and I’m coming off my wave of nausea.

Now, I’m as skeptical as the next guy. But I’m a father of two, my wife is on the other side of the planet, and the last time I thought something was going to get better on its own – I ended up having unplanned surgery.

Blood pressure’s up. Left arm hurts. Twinging pain in the chest. This is complete horsesh!t. If I was at risk, they would have said something, put me in ICU-

-I’m remembering the story a coworker of mine told me. Of being at a dinner engagement where one of the guests had a coughing fit and excused themselves. They found her dead a half an hour later in the bathroom. She’d choked to death on a piece of food.

This is stupid.

I get back into bed and try to calm down. My heart’s going fast, I’m warm – my arm still hurts. Flexing my hand merely redistributes numbness with a splash of pain.

I ponder hitting the Call button – but what do you say? “Hey, I think I might be very ill, right now. Can you come see?”

And the last time it took them twelve minutes to even ask what I wanted.

I opt to compromise. I need to walk around, I’ll go walk around. If I’m fine, I’ll be fine. If not, I’ll at least be in the hallway where people can see.

Up again. Light headed again. Disconnected again. And out.

Trying to walk and relax at the same time isn’t doing much for me. My head’s pounding. I’m having that cold feeling. Heart’s hammering. And I’m about halfway to the nurse’s station.

This is stupid.

I can’t see my nurse anywhere, but there’s one nurse leaning on the counter – and I have this sudden feeling like I have to say something before-

“Uh-“ This was my opening bid.

“I… I don’t feel right.”

And like that - a line had been crossed.

I begin to babble. Counter nurse calls a colleague over and we’re headed back to my room.

I’m literally shaking. She’s asking me if I can walk, ripping through a series of questions.

My head’s spinning, I still can’t feel my hand.

And then I’m in the room with three nurses. Mine’s asking me to push on her hands, then pull. They’re checking my BP and staring into my eyes.

And I remember having this disembodied sense of

This is all so stupid, but I have kids. I can’t be found in a room.

My BP was at a level that I cannot remember precisely but when they read it out- I remember thinking This is Bad. Really Bad.  I knew throughout the process that my imagination was getting away with me, but my blood pressure was much higher than it had ever been.

And I’m sitting there watching it all play out – thinking It’s about to get worse, or I’m about to be proven a complete idiot.

All determining inputs are complete. No further inputs will be accepted. This will happen.
Brace for impact.

Nurses being nurses, they rapidly establish that I am not, in fact having some cardiac episode. I am having a panic attack.

My left hand is numb, because my IV keeps snagging on things and scraping around in my hand. My twinging pains are because the air they pumped me full of during surgery is bopping around my body and causing all manner of pain. Nausea, I would learn later, was due to the pain meds having less pain to fight. If they aren’t fighting pain, they screw with other neural inputs. Like balance, and your inner ear. Sometimes they make you feel warm.

All so stupid on so many levels. And the whole time I’m telling myself this is a load of crap – but unless you really understand what your likely trajectories are – you just can’t sit back and be stoic.

I remember telling one of my nurses afterwards. “You folks have a better picture of where I’m at, what paths I’m likely to move in to and how fast I’m likely to change course. Me? I have three frames of reference and they’re all on a line. First, there’s me in perfect health. Second, there’s me right now – high blood pressure, sweats, numbness, freaking out. And lastly, there’s the ending of an episode of ‘House.’  I have no idea how many other likely paths there are out there, all I see is I was good, now I’m feeling bad, and it seems like I’m moving towards a status I really don’t want to get to.”

The disparity of knowledge was how it was possible for my nursing staff to be totally comfortable with a paging system that alerted them in ten or more minutes. If I was likely to need immediate assistance, I wouldn’t have been in that room. But that’s an easy thing to rationalize when your BP is normal and you feel fine.

A saint of a nurse went out of her way to put me at ease after that. Got an ace colleague to swap my IV to a place where it wouldn’t grind against bone when I moved – and got me telemetry so that if anything bad did happen, they’d know immediately. I had the distinct impression that I was the laughingstock at the nurses station – but honestly, I could give a crap. It let me sleep. You get to a point where you’re afraid you won’t wake up – you are not going to be able to function.

Thinking back, it was an odd transformation. I was cutting up and goofing off only hours before, but the right buttons were pushed in the right sequence and I was completely off the deep end – and watching myself do it besides.

The night I lost my sh!t.

And, I’m betting – a similar set of circumstances presents itself. I could easily do that again.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Entire Eastern Seaboard Destroyed: NYC Now an Extinct Ruin

...At least that's what the media outlets have been leading me to believe.

In other news, Lower Manhattan got a lot of rain.

Now we begin the walkback.
Dodged a bullet.

Not as bad as we told you feared.
Oh fer crying out loud...

Late Edit:
CJR's The Observatory would like to take folks like me to the woodshed. Fair enough.

Later Edit:
And then there's this, which I believe encapsulates a good portion of the irritation that spawned this post. Complain like you invented the sh!t. Makes you all the more deserving in our eyes.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Double Taxation

(Via Felix Salmon)

I was enjoying the gnashing of teeth spawned by Warren Buffett's Op Ed/PR stunt about taxes for the wealthy - and I ran across Daniel J Mitchell whining about how Buffett has it all wrong. The highest tax bracket has it rough, you see. What with their tax rates plummeting to less then half of what they were only three decades ago.

The horror!

But he was useful in that he regurgitated one of the lamer talking points on raising the capital gains tax - It's Double Taxation!!

You see, investors bought stock and were taxed, then the investment barfed out more money and it was taxed again. That's not fair..!

Salmon beats all over that, then pulls in some backup to wail on it more. By far the best 'graph I've read on this yet was from the Citizens for Tax Justice, who point out the very selective nature of objections to multiple taxation:
It’s striking that hardly anyone in Washington talks about how the wage income of middle-class Americans is subject to “multiple taxes.” For the typical American, all income consists of wages and all of it is subject to the Social Security tax, and much or most of it to the income tax. Then when people spend their income, a great deal of the purchases are subject to sales taxes. Apparently, taxing income multiple times is something that concerns economists and politicians only when it affects the wealthy investor class.
As in - hello... whiny little investor b!tches? You think double taxation is a bad thing- I don't hear you crying over how everyone else's paycheck money gets wrung out twice to pay the feds, then stretched again for virtually every transaction its used for.

But taxing capital gains is a shameful double taxation? Oh shut the hell up, already.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Make the Hydrant

I blame the guy with the parrot.

Months ago, he somehow got me to go along with his particular brand of crazy. “I’m starting a running club!” he'd said - with that altered mannerism common to all running enthusiasts. 
I’m gonna run in a circle so I can live longer!
Being me – I’d cut him off pretty abruptly.

“No. I don’t run. Don’t plan on starting."

Parrot guy was not one to be put off. He kept showing up with his bag of running stuff. Every time he’d set off to go he’d ask, “ya gonna bring y’stuff tamarrah?” (Parrot guy was Boston-born)

And then he’d set off and go running in the depths of winter weather. Four or five times a week. For weeks.

“Ya gonna bring y’stuff tamarrah?”

Yes. Alright goddammit, I’ll bring my stuff. Seriously, how much of that can you take?

As if that would satisfy Parrot guy. No, he wants me to run intervals, do serious distance. I am none of those people. Nor will I ever become those people. This was just to shake off the cobwebs - stave off total disaster.

And the routine falls into Parrot guy barking at me to pick up the pace until we get to a fixed marker and then he takes off for a real run while I keep plugging along. Deal is, once I see him coming back towards me – I can turn to go back to the office.

The first time we do this, I’m lumbering along with my glasses fogged over and I can barely make out Parrot guy on his way back. He’s actually waiting for me on the sidewalk, so I wave like “Hey, can we go back now?” Parrot guy doesn’t wave- so I yell at him.

No response. As I get closer, I realize why. Parrot guy’s nowhere in sight. Tired & fogged up as I was, I’d been trying to communicate with a fire hydrant.

- But that was months ago. Parrot guy’s been reassigned, so now it’s just me and the occasional co-worker plugging away out there when time permits.

I’ve discovered that landmarks are my thing. If I can run to a given spot once, I know I can do it again.

The last time Parrot guy and I went out running, he yelled at me to make it to the damn hydrant without stopping. I didn’t make it – but the time after he left, I found myself grooving along to the Beta Band realizing that I could actually make it there in one shot.

I met Parrot guy for a charity run a month after that and managed more distance that I’d ever done – nothing heroic, but enough to convince myself that my earlier limitations were all in my head.  I could write reams about my inner narrative of defeatism – but suffice it to say the first realization you have that you can tell your brain to STFU - it is a good moment.

So a few months later – I’m in surgery for an appendicitis, and then I’m off the wagon for weeks.

My first outing after I’m back on the trail was a total disappointment. I’m back to old habits – and I can barely make it to the signpost, which is about halfway to Parrot guy’s hydrant.

And my knees are killing me – and my side. And I succumb and turn around and walk.

But the landmarks are still out there, and my memory knows I can do it. So I get my gear and save up for another go round.

And then I just don’t go out. The weather’s too hot, or “I don’t run in the rain” or I’m just too busy over lunch…

Weeks of this.

Thankfully, I’d left my bag of gear at the office. A little reminder that I can go any day I choose.

I got my stuff today.

So I’m churning though a year’s worth of bad-news RSS – and I discover that the client has (again) changed the specification in a cosmetic way – so I will (again) have to update the prototype with pointless changes that will take longer to document than they will to actually code.

This will be my main accomplishment that I will report out to my team tomorrow. Thankfully nobody listens to anyone - otherwise it would be utterly humiliating. Today, I removed an asterisk from a prototype. Then I documented the fact that I'd done it for three hours.

It’s 11am.


F*%# it. 

I get the bag. I walk past the row of H1B developers, and they cheerfully wave as I go by. I wave back, knowing that the client is about to change the UI technology and that – very shortly – most of these wonderful folks will be looking for work.

One chats me up about where I’m going. He’s a great guy, and I’m not allowed to breathe a word about the impending change. All smiles, we finish some banter about the weather and I head for the stairs. I need to get out of here. 

I’ve gotten the gear down to the essentials. I blow too much money on hobbies as it is, so my running kit consists of a re-purposed Eddie Bauer diaper bag, New Balance shoes, a towel, and a change of clothes.

The locker room in CorpWorld is miniscule, but never crowded. The usual crowd is mercifully absent today. Which is good. I hate locker rooms.

Getting changed at work is odd enough, but the truly loathsome bit is the laddish locker room crowd who cope with stripping down in front of co-workers by loudly proclaiming their heterosexuality to all within earshot. Announcing every sexual conquest, speculating about the physical qualities of any mutually known prospect, and generally making it known to the world at large that the person speaking is among the manliest of manly men.

Dude, we get it. You’re a raving queen. Now STFU already. 

Gear on, and out.

Starting up is a bit like getting into a pool, the danger of the initial plunge vanishes as soon as you take it. The real battle is for the mind. My salvation has been earbuds and loud music, but today my brain is going 100 miles an hour – a sure sign I haven’t slept enough.

I fire up Florence + the Machine and try to ride the harp intro.

A slideshow of current events keeps drowning it out – a sure sign I haven’t had enough sleep. Fukushima-Daiichi - Once again, the official story of how bad it was has to be revised – because new and incontrovertible evidence has surfaced that proves the previous versionwas utter crap.
Happiness…hit her…like a train on a traaaaaack…
Oh. You know who’s corrupt and a total asshat to boot? FIFA’s Sepp Blatter. I mean the South Africans were reprehensible for bulldozing schools to build stadiums – but FIFA and co were only so happy to encourage this sort of thing. And if you think the IOC is a bunch of votes for sale, savor the description of the South American FIFA rep flat out asking England to give him a knighthood for his vote. Lovely.
Coming towards her, stock still, no turning baaaaaack..
I’m on the uptick towards the halfway post, feeling good, but I need a fresh distraction. Here’s one: The big banks – having brushed aside underwriting standards, good business sense, and oh-by-the-way THE LAW - now find themselves unable to document that they – in fact – own the loans they are attempting to foreclose on. “No one moved the paper

This is a state law matter, so Congress can’t write them a sweetheart deal (and you know if they could the Washington lapdog crew would have already done so). No, what the banks are trying now is to get all 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement that would broadly protect the banks from liability and criminal consequences by paying between 8 or 20 billion to wash their hands of the problem.

Except they’ve caused a problem easily worth hundreds of billions of dollars and the banks think that $20 billion is far, far, too much to pay. They think perhaps $8 billion would work for them. Provided they are immunized from prosecution and liability - Oh, and they still want to take people’s houses without good documentation – because, y’know - they want that.
She hid around corners and she hid under beds She killed it with kisses and from it she fled...
The real winner, though? The 50 AG deal is on the rocks because some attorneys general are balking at it – y’know, because it sucks for everyone who doesn’t work at a bank. NY’s AG is actually suing to block the deal - and the NY Fed is leaning on him to get on board. Oh, and the Federal Department of Justice would like him to fall in line as well. Thanks for nothing, Obama administration. Way to be a complete tool.
With every bubble she sank with a drink And washed it away down the kitchen sink...
I hit the signpost, and it’s obvious that I’m going to do better than last time. The post is at an elevated fork where I can see the full length of the route. I get a good downhill spell across the road and then it’s a modest hill to the hydrant. So far, so good. I check my motivation:

 Banks? Suck

Run you bastard.  

Which brings me to perhaps the most disappointing bit of current events. A stray post on TPM references the fact that Jamie Leigh Jones is being counter-sued by her former employer, KBR. This would be the woman who claimed to be gang-raped by KBR firefighters, then confined by KBR, then prevented from suing due to the contract she’d signed saying all disputes would be handled by binding arbitration.

That woman.

I have to say “claimed to be gang-raped” because accordingto Mother Jones (about as left leaning a rag as you are likely to find) the media accounts and the trial evidence are very different things. So different, in fact, that Ms. Jones lost her civil case against KBR.
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
It’s difficult to describe how utterly demoralizing this is. First off, the indisputable fact is that KBR is an employer who wants its employees to sign away their legal rights even in cases of physical violence between its employees. That’s just sick. But there’s so much in the MJ account that makes you want to scream at someone.

As the Strauss-Kahn case has amply demonstrated, if you are victimized by a wealthy or well-connected person, you can expect your conduct to endure far more scrutiny than that of the accused. KBR’s pushback on Ms. Jones involved them somehow obtaining medical records of her as a minor. It’s difficult to know if this is just another well-financed demolition of a rape victim – or a failed attempt by a huckster seeking attention and personal enrichment. But either way, any future legitimate claim for a rape victim will be that much more difficult. A total, epic fail all around. 
The horses are coming
So you better run
Damn right. I’m past the downhill stretch, tooling uphill toward the Parrot guy’s hydrant – and this is typically the worst bit mentally. Because your brain keeps thinking “I’m pretty close – I can stop here.” The thought of stopping becomes a fixation, and pretty soon body and mind are working in tandem to lobby for a complete shutdown.


Don’t want to strain anything... what if you hurt yourself and had to hobble back? Or worse?

Looking back at anything I’ve wanted to do that I actually did is about as satisfying a feeling as I get these days. The patio actually got done. Little E’s room actually got done. I actually did run in a charity race – and I used to make it to the hydrant-

-that was before surgery.
And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had
And what was left after that too. oh.
Yes, dammit, that was before surgery, but surgery’s done now and you can take your raggity-@ss-wich self up the hill and do this for right goddamn now. Because last time was over a month ago and it flat out won’t matter unless you make it this time. What do you say, Florence?
Run fast for your mother run fast for your father
Run for your children for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive
Hell yeah. Melodrama? I’m good at that sh!t.

Move your damn feet so your kids don’t grow up with a tired old man. Or have to feel ashamed because dad just can’t keep up. Or can’t be bothered to. Would dad punk out on this? Hell, he’d be running back by now. He’d have never atrophied down to this potato-like existence you’ve managed. You gonna fail everyone? Walk your @ss back with a big “L” on your forehead for the rest of your life?

F*%# that.

Knees popping, red-faced and pathetic, you’re making this damn hydrant.
The dog days are over
The dog days are gone
Can you hear the horses
Because here they come