Grifters

Some years ago I was a housekeeping supervisor for the Sun Valley Company in Idaho. One day at work, I was in the house keeping office and I got a call from the front desk that a room was requesting extra towels.

We managed several condo complexes as well as two hotels and so most of the time I would call or page the supervisor in the area of the request and they would take care of it. In this case, the room was right around the corner from me and I always kept a few supplies with me in the office, so that I wouldn't need to find a maid's closet on the way to a delivery. So, I decided to grab the towels right next to me and hustle down to the room myself.

It couldn't have taken me more than one minute to get to the room from when I took the call from the front desk. I knocked on the door, "Housekeeping!, I'm here with your towels!". No answer. This was weird, but not too weird: I had found that customers often make a request at the front desk or just before leaving--possibly to avoid the need for a tip...but these guys had supposedly called the front desk and I got to their room very quickly plus, I didn't pass anybody on the way there and the way I came in was the only way out.

Our standard protocol when faced with a request and no customer is answering, is to key in, drop-off the goods and go. So I keyed my way in, put four bath towels on the foot of the bed and then immediately noticed an odd thing: There was a pile of cash on top of the TV. My instant thought was that these guests were trying to set up the poor shmoe who brought their towels. In retrospect I should have called security and had them take a gander at the room and then wait to see what shook-out of the situation. I left the towels--and the money and the room.

Sure enough, security called me a few minutes later and wanted to know who had been in the room: I involuntarily laughed and explained the situation to the security guy, who I knew pretty well and that was that. I think the company still comped the room, but everybody knew that the customers were scam artists. It was just lucky that I, a trusted supervisor, had gone to the room: A new guy would probably have been fired on general principles, or would have taken the bait and actually deserved to be fired.

A similar thing happened just a few days ago in Washington DC. I'll give you Mark Steyn's version from The Corner:

On March 20th, something truly extraordinary happened. On the eve of the health care vote, a group of black Democrat Congressmen (eschewing the private tunnels they usually use to cross from their offices to the Capitol) chose to walk en masse through a crowd of protesters, confident that the knuckledragging Tea Party goons they and their media pals have reviled for a year now would respond with racial epithets.

And then, when the crowd didn't, the black Congressmen made it up anyway. Representative Andre Carson (Democrat, Indiana) insisted he heard the N-word 15 times. He's either suffering from the same condition as that Guam-flipper from Georgia, or he's a liar. At a scene packed not only with crews from the Dem poodle media but with a gazillion cellphone cameras, not one single N-word has been caught on audio.

Grifters. All of them!

Home day.

Still a little sore from the exertions of yesterday, so I just did little odds and ends today:

• Let my wife sleep in by taking the dog outside for her morning routines.
• Cleaned up the kitchen from the previous night--basically emptied the dishwasher and refilled it...
• Made breakfast by experimenting with yeast risen pancakes. They were a hit with the kids, especially our guest boys. (Two neighbor kids stayed with us for the weekend while their parents went to NJ for a funeral)
• Made up a batch of spaghetti sauce.
• Made a batch of dough and four pizza shells--one for dinner tonight and the other three for the freezer. They will make for easy meals.
• Put Google Chrome on my computer--it was really easy to do and my browsing is easily 2-3 times faster than it was with Firefox, which was itself about twice as fast as IE.

A nice Saturday run

Many thanks to the Greater Lowell Road Runners! They got us to the start, encouraged us along the way with cheers and fluids, and got us back to Drum Hill safe-n-sound!

Two Venn

Okay, two can play that game...

Over the past year there has been a lot of misinformation spread around about health care reform. Plenty of fear-mongering, plenty of overheated rhetoric. Turn on the news, see the same folks are still shouting about it: it’s going to be the end of the world if this bill is passed. I’m not exaggerating. The leaders of the Republican party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon! Armageddon. End of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling. Any cracks opening up in the earth. Turns out it was a nice day.

President Obama yesterday in Iowa

So, following the same reasoning: There have been lots of meetings on how to deal with "Global Warming", but no actual steps taken to combat it. Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit came out in 1992. All I can conclude is that if HCR is judged a success after not causing Armageddon in two days, then AGW won't cause Armageddon either--since we haven't done anything about it for some 6,500 days with no ill effects. Or put another way: We are some 3,250 times more certain AGW is not a problem than we are that HCR is not a problem.

CAUTION!

Signs of Spring

All of these shots were taken today:

The flooded Patio

The first day I noticed these crocus blooms

This basement siphon has been running off and on (mostly on) since Sunday afternoon. The basement is more-or-less dry, but water is still coming into the sump-pit.

St. Patrick's Day fare

Plane Diverted...

The flight plan for the trip home was simple: Aguadilla (on the West coast of Puerto Rico) to Newark NJ, then a connecting flight to Boston.

Bad weather prevented us from landing in Newark, so the plane diverted to Boston! Here goes; we will sit on the tarmac for two hours then fly to New Jersey and I will miss my flight back to Boston.

No. It all worked itself out. Our Continental plane was able to use a Delta gate and they let-off all the people who had Boston as their final destination. Yeah! Home three hours early!

A Little Black Bug

I departed from Aguadilla PR this morning bright and early. I had a window seat just in front of the wing, so the engine nacelle was right next to me. As we started to taxi, I noticed a little black droplet on the white paint of the engine. No. It was not a liquid--it was a bug. The shape was the same as that of a lady bug, but it was maybe half as big and totally black.

I didn't exactly see that it was a bug: I figured out that it must be a bug by the way it moved across the surface of the engine. It traveled up to a seam between metal sections and then would back-away or follow the junction until it could find a way across. I watched this little bug and had two trains of thought: 1. I wondered how fast we could go before the wind blew it off. 2. I had metaphysical thoughts about the situation.

To me, insects are more like things than beings in that I don't think they are aware of their own existence. (Not counting a certain cockroach) Certainly to a bug, an average human such as myself is beyond comprehension. In terms of a meaningful existence, one could say that this bug accomplished more by being observed than the whole rest of its, quite possibly short, life. This lead me to thinking about God. By extension, wouldn't his thoughts about each of us, with his incomprehensible consciousness contain more meaning for him than our own existences are for us? A little mind-blowing! But if there is a god, it almost certainly has to be true--or not. I'm just a bug crawling around propelled by forces I don't understand.

Our little black hero held-on for the length of our take-off roll. Only when the plane began to rotate did it fly off. I was amazed that it held on so long; we must have been going at least 150 mph by the time of rotation. The bug was on the upper half of the engine nacelle and so when the plane nosed-up, this would have created a vacuum (or at least lower pressure) on the top of the nacelle. This essentially sucked the little black bug off the surface.

Clubbing...

This was a common term back when I used to go to night clubs and so far as I know, it is still used. It never quite made sense to me in that these "clubs" were not really clubs at all. They were private businesses that would allow anyone in as long as they were properly attired and were willing to pay the cover charge. There weren't actually any members at all. Well, language is not always logical and so this is neither the first nor last example of that.

What got me thinking about clubs is that I joined one last week and participated in it today for the first time. It is a local running club and I joined because I figured it would help with my training. It just seems to be a fact of human nature that when you do things with others, you get better at it than if you try to go it alone. It is no real mystery: More minds focused on problems will come up with more solutions. Also, there is a kind of bench-marking that goes on--when you see how well a thing can be done you will push yourself to approach that level. In an earlier naive state, you would have been happy with your proficiency.

It is not necessarily "all-good" though; small groups are susceptible to group-think and it is easy to fall into alignment with this since the experienced members should and do know more about the subject at hand. One thing easily overlooked is that in the past there may have been a strong, but misguided, personality who got everybody thinking along some line and it hasn't been questioned since then. I should note that I saw no evidence of this today, but these are the kinds of things I try to be aware of.

Today the mission was to go to the Boston Marathon course and run a bit of it. It was a beautiful day and I had a very pleasant run. The nice thing about a group run is that there is always somebody you can run with who is close to the same speed. My pace was pretty good even though I didn't feel as if I pushed myself as hard as usual. Also, I normally take Saturday off and am rested up for the long run on Sunday. Besides this, I ran fast on Friday, which is a habit that comes from the expectation of Saturday off--so I started today already a little sore.

Perfect execution, less than optimal time and place

Between degrees at the university, I took some time off to do a little skiing and a lot of minimum-wage drudgery at a fancy ski resort.

One night, the suits rounded up all the warm bodies they could find to help with an emergency: An overhead fire sprinkler pipe had burst and flooded the ballroom and a gala new year's eve party was scheduled (and sold-out) for that room.

We had about 30-40 people to tackle the problem. First, we used wet vacs to suck-up water that had pooled on top of the carpet. The next step was to pull up the carpet. This was complicated by the fact that the carpeting was in strips about 12 feet wide and as long as the room. The system we used was to have 3-5 guys start from one end of a strip and crawl under it. Then we would stand-up, lifting the carpet and teams on either side would feed us chairs which we would arrange behind us as we progressed forward.

This process is probably the most dangerous work I have ever done: The linoleum floor was wet and slick, the carpet was heavy wool and blocked-out most of the light. The chairs provided ample tripping opportunities and were appearing from seemingly random directions and velocities. In spite of all this and the fact that this effort was happening around 3 AM, I don't remember anybody getting hurt.

The chairs we used were the kind that are made of plastic and metal and can be stacked onto carts to about 8 feet high. These ones stacked such that the seat back and the seat were each angled at about 45 Degrees. The bare parts of the floor, as I had mentioned above, was very slick. I had even gotten into the habit of taking a little sprint before the bare parts and then crossing that area by sliding. Naturally, I had an impulse to put these two things together and we were on a break anyway...

Running at top speed toward a 7-foot tall stack of chairs I slid the final 15-20 feet. Then took a jump upwards, using my hands leap-frog style as an assist I rotated backwards and stuck the landing in the chair at the top of the stack.

I was delighted for about 2 seconds: Then a serious-looking man wearing jeans and a sweatshirt walked up to me and said something to the effect, "If you do that again and don't break your leg, then I will break your leg". Being young and self-righteous, I retorted that my bones--broken or whole--are really only my business. He walked away, shaking his head exasperatedly. A couple of seconds later, a coworker sidled up to me and let me know that I had just told-off the CEO! I could feel the blood drain from my head.

I didn't get fired, in fact; every worker that night got (in addition to time-and-a-half) comped a dinner for two at any restaurant on the property. In retrospect, the trick I did was really risky: If I had slipped while making the initial jump then a crash into the stack of chairs would have been the result. Slipping would be a high probability since the floor was slick, the jump was taken while in motion--which means the timing of when to jump comes into play and the jump must be forceful since a fair amount of height had to be obtained. The landing was equally tricky and risky--falling from 7 feet onto hard, slick floor with a stack of heavy chairs most likely also falling, seems like the sort of thing one does not emerge from unscathed. So, the CEO had a point. I think I had just gotten so used to risk from the carpet-lifting work, that the trick seemed like nothing.

In all it was a good night: Got paid and rewarded but could have gotten fired and/or crippled.

Dried-on bugs

I'm not sure if this will be a reoccurring series, but in case does become so, I want to give credit where it is due: One aspect is right from this guy's series called Remembrance of things Pabst. and the other is from a writing assignment from this nice lady.

I now live in the Boston area, but grew up and lived in the Pacific Northwest until shortly after getting married. Every place has bugs in the Summer and they tend to make a mess on your car windows, especially on long highway trips. In my experience this is much worse in the inter mountain West (between the Cascades and the Rockies). I would guess that it is a combination of very arid conditions, so the bugs desiccate and harden-onto the windshield very quickly and something about the climate such that all the bugs hatch at the same time. I have seen swarms of gnats so thick it looks like it is foggy out.

It can get difficult to see, to the point that you need to clean the window but they don't clean easily. The wiper-washer combination makes a dent, but you go through the fluid pretty quickly. Most gas stations have window washers, but even these just will not cut through a really thick layer of bugs. I eventually, through a lot of trial-and-error, found a really good solution:

All you need is one of those flat, one gallon plastic containers like the ones that anti-freeze always comes in. Most rest areas have a faucet so that you can re-fill the container but you can start a trip with it already full so that you can use this method any place you care to pull-over. All you do is turn-on the windshield wipers and then get out of the car. Open your Prestone bottle and lay it on the roof of your car so that it can drain onto the windshield. Between the flood of water and the wipers, it just clears the bugs away like magic.

I think the way it works is that the wipers clear away the bugs parts as they re-hydrate. With the small volume of the windshield washers, the bug parts just form a viscous solution with the wiper fluid. You need the large volume provided by this technique in order to clear away bugs.

Once I discovered this method, I almost hoped for bug swarms. My car may have been a piece of crap, but it would be the only one with a clean windshield.

The furniture re-arrangement chain-reaction

The Pappasan chair in our new home office never really fit in the space we had chosen for it. My wife had the idea that if one of the file cabinets could be moved, that this would help.

She spent a couple of hours moving all the stuff out of the file cabinet and I lugged it up to Dahlia's room, where it was re purposed into a toy box.

It didn't really help the Pappasan situation though, so we moved it to the living room where she had always thought we needed a bit more seating room anyway. So the living room had to be rearranged to accommodate this addition. This left us with no couch in the home office though.

We have two futons in the house. The downstairs one in the family room is the kind where the width of the couch form is the length of the bed conformation and so it was too big for the office. We have one which is used as Jemma's bed frame (she has a regular mattress on it) and it is the kind which folds out into three sections and so is love-seat sized when in couch format.

This upstairs futon was taken apart, hauled down and reassembled in the office. The cushion from the downstairs futon wouldn't fit on it though, since it is too plush. So the original thin futon mattress was hauled down from its place under Surenna's bed and installed on the office futon. The thicker mattress was too thick to slide under Surenna's bed, but we managed to get it under by lifting up on it until the futon mattress cleared the foot board.

The family room futon needed to go to Jemma's room and be used as a bed frame, but it is a really complicated design so we tried to bring it up without taking it apart first. We ended up taking it apart at the top of the stairs, where it was solidly stuck.

Every thing is put back together now, but let me tell you about my aching back...

Today's route

Ends of the food spectrum

The fancy dessert my wife fashioned for tonight..

I dined alone for lunch and so had a kind of man-lunch: Smoked oysters, beer and crackers.

Saturday Family time

Just an easy Saturday:

My wife normally lets the dog out on weekdays, so I like to--when I can drag myself out of bed--take on this chore on some weekend days. It is a big thrill for both the dog and the wife. The normal routine is for the dog to go outside, do her business and then she runs upstairs, jumps up on the bed and wakes me up. The dog seems to do this more out of duty than love, still it is nice. When I take care of her in the morning, she quivers with excitement before I release her to go upstairs. Then she dashes, as fast as she can go, to her mistress' bed. The dogs excitement is thrilling to my wife, who really loves the beast.

Later, we had scrambled eggs, sausages, orange rolls, toast, potato patties and coffee for breakfast.

Dahlia needed to do a make-up Karate session from 11:00-Noon today, so we took the dog to the dojo and walked her on the bike path while the girl practiced her Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.

Right after we got home, my wife took Surenna for a hair-cut while I napped on the papasan with the dog.

Off to the movies! We deposited the kids in the Percy Jackson movie and then went and saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was very entertaining. I think Madonna had sucked all the talent out of Guy Richie (he never made anything good while with her IMHO)but the talent seems to have seeped back in, if this movie is anything to judge by.

On the way home we picked-up Chinese food from the better (and more expensive) of the two places we acquire it from.

And it was great!

Chicken Pot-Pie

Fill with meat and vegetables.

Add some gravy--home made of course!

Add a top crust and bake.

Enjoy!

I know it is a spoof

But I still like a lot of the songs from, A Mighty Wind

Now, if I was a music critic and I wrote about these same songs AND didn't realize they were from a mockumentary, then I would be justly derided a fool.

Case in point:

Bernard-Henri Lévy

The Big Silver Jugs of Jaipur

There were two identical (as far as I could see) jugs like this. It seems that Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II, when he journeyed to England for the coronation of Edward VII, only wanted to drink Ganges water on his trip. These vessels were commissioned for that purpose.

These jugs and other impressive items, such as weapons were housed in buildings that are part of the City Palace complex, most of which is still occupied by the royal family.

This is the pavilion which houses the silver urns and had been used for royal audiences back when the Maharaja ruled.

That fickle feeling of speed

I would be willing to bet that this has happened to most people who drive: You travel some long distance on an interstate highway and then the last few miles to your destination are on regular streets. You look at the speedo and are doing 65 in a 30 MPH zone! It is perfectly understandable, not to a police officer of course; you've gotten used to tooling along at 80 and so 65 seems slow. You really have to rely on your instruments.

Speed, when running is measured differently than in driving: Runners will mostly express their efforts in minutes and seconds per mile. The range of speeds is much narrower than when driving. Drivers could realistically expect to be going anywhere from 25 MPH to 80 MPH while a typical runner may go as fast as 6 minutes per mile (in a short race) to as slow as 9 minutes per mile in a long slow workout. This is a range of only about 4 miles per hour. Even with this small range, it is easy to tell within 20-30 seconds/mile what your pace is.

In spite of this fine precision, one still feels the effects of habituation: For instance, I have been injured for a few months and now that I am feeling better, am trying to get back to my usual speed. At my age, I need to run 8:00 minutes/mile to qualify as an entrant into the Boston Marathon, so I naturally try and keep all of my training runs at or below 8:00 per mile. Last week I finally broke 8:00 a couple of times and not by more than a second or two per mile. It felt really fast and not due to effort--my cardiovascular system is not being pushed at this pace. I'm just not used to this speed. Again, it is good to have instruments: In this case a digital watch with a timer on it. If it wasn't for the watch I would think I was right back up to speed, rather than around 30 seconds per mile slower than I ought to be for these distances.