Stewie's Blog

Love and climbing

2012-01-14T07:50:00.000-06:00

From the Amazon reviews of Forget Me Not: A Memoir by Jennifer Lowe-Anker -- and even, if taken out of context, a sentence or two in Krakauer's forward -- I had to assume this was some sort of angry or at least pitiable self portrait of a woman abandoned in life and death by her selfish climber husband. Or, perhaps, it would be a regrettable story of an obsessed, stupid, unloving climber who finally got out of the way of his family's happiness.

It is neither, to my eyes. This book is a beautiful but realistic love story. Lowe-Anker's writing about her late husband is the portrait of an intensely focused person who struggled but mostly found a way to live and love outside of the mountains that kept him sane. And it is the story of a couple that each found commercial and personal success in their respective obsessions, following years of struggling as a young couple of unconventional career aspirations on both sides. When commercial success came to the climber, it obligated him to commercial trips, first guiding and then sponsored trips. At the time of his unfortunate end, the story is that of this couple struggling to reconcile their respective needs for fulfillment and employment with Lowe's frequent absences. For a couple with that big issue to overcome, though, they seem by Lowe-Anker's recounting to have had a deeper and more passionate relationship than a good number of couples whose relative lack of passion for life gives them more time together.

Lowe-Anker writes wonderfully, and she includes here a good deal of the writing of the late Lowe, enough to see he had a deep appreciation for life, for her and for their children, not just for climbing (he also had a great gift for writing expressively and intelligently). She is a serious climber herself (or was; as she states, parenthood increased her drive for self preservation), and she conveys clearly the concepts necessary to understand the climbing stories she relays. I read this as a frequent reader of climbing literature, but one could read it just as easily without that background.

This book is well worth the read for any number of reasons: if you climb, if you know someone who climbs, if you know and can't understand someone who is the 12-cups-of-coffee-per-day-can't-sit-still-must-achieve-something type, if you love Bozeman, if you read any and all climbing books, or if you want to read a touching story of two strong people making their way through the world together.

Home LED lighting

2011-10-16T13:27:00.002-05:00

Emily and I just moved into a new apartment. The place is larger and has much better natural light and interior lighting than our old place, which should make the Chicago winter pass more easily. However, this great interior lighting comes courtesy of a lot of light fixtures, most with incandescent bulbs. I believe I counted all of them: 54 bulbs, and they range from 35 watts (track lighting) to 100 watts (recessed cans), save a couple 13-watt CFLs.

This was unacceptable to yours truly. Even in the previous apartment, which was much smaller, I had replaced all of the bulbs with CFLs and some tolerably performing LED bulbs, though the use of the latter was limited by their poor output per dollar a couple of years ago.

However, LED bulbs for general 110-volt home lighting recently have improved significantly in light output and beam spread. That has allowed the replacement of most of the lights in this new apartment with the following two bulbs:

GT-7D LED Globe Light Bulb (warm white version) -- I have been buying bulbs from Golden Gadgets for years. They have always had among the lowest prices for advanced bulbs, and I have never had a problem with the quality of bulbs I've purchased from them. This seven-watt LED bulb looks good. It is best for fixtures that face up or down (in a ceiling can, a ceiling fan or a vertical lamp), but we have them mounted horizontally in fixtures as well. The bulb looks good, especially if only the lit globe is visible, and a casual glance does not betray the fact that it is an LED bulb. Light output, to my eyes, is comparable to a sixty-watt incandescent in the area directly in front of the bulb, though off-axis lighting is less. Fifteen of these bulbs have replaced or are replacing forty-five- to one-hundred-watt incandescent bulbs around the apartment. Three- and five-watt versions are available, too.

Dimmable E26 A60-M 6-watt LED, warm white -- For better or worse, more than half of the fixtures in the house are on dimmer switches. Unfortunately, my trusty Golden Gadgets does not list a lot of dimmable LED light bulbs, so I turned to Amazon. This bulb got mixed reviews, but I chalk most of the negative ones up to people who don't understand or acknowledge the limitations of off-axis LED lighting and have not seen how far this technology has come and how much prices have dropped. This bulb works with no noise or flickering with the variety of dimmer switches that are in this apartment, though results with other switches may vary. The light output on high power is similar to the non-dimming bulbs discussed above. These bulbs dim at a consistent and pleasant color (unlike incandescents that turn orange at low power). Twenty or thirty of these have been or are being deployed around the apartment to replace incandescents.

While our first trial bulbs of each type have been in service only a couple of weeks, and the remainder only days, there have been no bulb failures. Neither bulb creates any appreciable hum or other noise, no flickering and no harshly colored output. The bulbs look nice, with the fairly standard LED heat sink and a frosted dome. Neither bulb has demonstrated any start-up lag. I highly recommend you try replacing high-draw incandescent bulbs with low-wattage LEDs, starting with these two models. If you currently use CFLs, good for you, but you should see much longer life, especially if you frequently switch them off and on, with LEDs than with CFLs. Also, LEDs are far more disposal-friendly than mercury-laden CFLs.

CAP radio and uniform updates

2011-05-22T09:11:00.001-05:00

To follow up on my earlier series of posts about buying a radio and buying and configuring a uniform for Civil Air Patrol, here are a few more things I've learned recently:

- Make sure your radio has the right antenna for your wideband VHF needs. There are several antennas available for most VHF public-safety radios, and you need the one that covers the whole band. In the case of Motorola radios and their EF Johnson sisters, the color of the plastic core inside the base of the antenna is the indicator of band coverage, and red is wideband.

- Make sure your radio has a firmware version that is new enough to be properly aligned and programmed by your comms staff. There is no way of knowing this without asking questions of your seller and your comms staff. It worked out for me, but there is no guarantee that what you find on eBay will work, even if the model number and frequency band match.

- On the uniform front, I've noticed there is some disagreement between the regulation manual and common practice regarding the cloth grade tabs. The uniform regulation states there is to be 1/8" of blue cloth showing around the "CAP" (Senior Members without grade) or grade. Common practice, probably due in part to the difficulty in sewing those damn things with the edges folded over, is a bit more than 1/8". I still wear mine pretty tight, like this:

Note that once you attain grade, you'll need to order a pair of rank tabs for each blouse and another for your cover(s). I didn't take a picture of the cover, but the same rank tab, same tight stitching, needs to be sewn vertically into the front face of the cover above the brim, centered.

- The unit patch goes here, on the wearer's top-right pocket:

It needs to be centered in that open area of the pocket below the flap. Whether you sew this yourself or bring it to someone, note that sewing a patch on an open pocket is difficult at best. It is far easier to remove that pocket's buttons, sew the flap neatly down and sew the patch through the entire front of the uniform.

- The Wing patch goes on the wearer's left arm, centered and spaced from the shoulder seam identically to the reverse-field American flag on the right arm (shown in a previous post). I do not have a picture yet. Our Wing recently updated its patch, so I am waiting for a couple of those to arrive from Vanguard.

That's it for now -- just wanted to clarify those few things since the earlier entries have been getting some hits from people looking for instructions this.

CAP radio update

2011-04-17T07:44:00.001-05:00

See update here: http://blog.mattstewart.org/2011/05/cap-radio-and-uniform-updates.html.

So I stuck with the EF Johnson 5100. It was not the least expensive option at the time I ordered it, but I thought it would be best for the sake of consistency, ease of programming and legitimacy.

First, consistency: I know it will work (assuming it is in the proper band and has a good flash code), that Civil Air Patrol radio techs can program it and that most exercises are likely to see more than one compatible charger available in case of a low battery. This was, in the end, a big argument for the EF Johnson or Motorola equivalents instead of the older Motorolas like the Astro Saber and other brands like Midland. As much as I like the price of the Astro Saber and the format/design of the Midland, the knowledge that the 5100 can easily be put into service won out.

Second, ease of programming: The 5100 has the latest and most well maintained codeplug of any portable radio within our service, I assume. In addition, the EF Johnson software is well designed and easy to use (though programming the entire radio from scratch is not a task for the uninformed or faint of heart), and the cables are available on eBay at a reasonable cost (note that this programming cable is one of the accessories that is NOT equivalent to the same accessory for the Motorola XTS 5000 or other Motorolas). Finally, I ordered a model that was flashed for front-panel programming; you can imagine doing the whole codeplug by hand would not be a good way to go, but it is an option (since we are NTIA-regulated).

Finally, legitimacy: The overseas sources of some alternative radios advertised to be without a tag on the back of the radio scared me a little. This looked to be a legitimate source for a radio.

Portable radios for CAP

2011-04-03T19:39:00.005-05:00

See updates here: http://blog.mattstewart.org/2011/04/cap-radio-update.html and http://blog.mattstewart.org/2011/05/cap-radio-and-uniform-updates.html.

I've been looking for a good portable radio to purchase and use for Civil Air Patrol work. There are plenty of options, depending on budget and how long it needs to last. eBay is probably the easiest source of used radios, though there are some others: the Equipment For Sale/Wanted board at Batlabs.com and the classified board at radioreference.com are two other options.

Regardless of the source, buying a radio based only on its model name is a mistake. So is buying based on a specific model number or on a generic frequency identifier (VHF, UHF, 700, 800, multiband). Each named radio model can have many specific model numbers, and those model numbers can be used to determine the general suitability of the radio for usage on the frequencies you need. However, even a specific model number can be outfitted by the manufacturer with a variety of features, and some of those are highly desirable for CAP usage. Even further, many used radios offered for sale are flashed with outdated and possibly unsuitable control software and voice encoder versions.

Some radios advertised for sale may be sold with the manual, programming software, programming cable, antenna, battery, charger and speaker mic. A lot of them include none of these accessories, meaning any necessary ones would need to be purchased separately. Some batteries are advertised to have a certain remaining capacity, others are in unknown states of wellness. Even if a radio ships with a battery, a backup battery or two is a practical need. It is worth checking prices on all of these items before buying a basic radio.

Unless you feel confident that you understand all of this and know which questions to ask a seller, get help from someone who knows more about it. The information I recount below is simply the result of my recent internet research, and I cannot vouch for its accuracy.

Here are the options as I see them:

Motorola HT-1000

Solid standby in public-safety and other applications for decades. The reason to buy it: cost. VHF 136-174 HT-1000s can be had for less than $200. Accessories and batteries are easy to obtain.

Potential problems: Not all VHF models cover the whole band. Only certain hardware versions, including "DN" coded models, can handle narrowband frequencies. If you buy one that cannot do narrowband, it will be worthless for this application.

Reasons to consider another radio instead: No digital P25 operation. Limited to 16 channels.

Motorola JT-1000

This is pretty similar to the HT-1000, with most of the same features and problems. However, the full keypad and a well-known modification allow for front-panel programming, which could come in handle given the 16-channel limit.

Motorola Astro Saber III

This has been around a while, too, but it is better than the HT/JT-1000s in two important ways: digital P25 operation is an optional feature, and these hold 255 channels in 16-channel banks. With the full keypad of a Model III, front-panel programming can be found as an optional feature. (As with the other Motorola models listed below, the Model III or 3 refers to the presence of an LCD screen and full keypad.) They can be had for around $300, and there are dozens on eBay right now.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc. The Motorola flash code is very important with these radios, as it indicates whether any of the many options (including P25) is enabled. Format is a little large. Most radios on eBay have old firmware versions, meaning digital operation is not likely to be as reliable as radios with newer software. Most of the Astros I've seen have 512-kb chips, and apparently those cannot be flashed with newer firmware. I have no idea how to reflash one, and Motorola does not provide support for this model any longer.

Reasons to consider another radio instead: Possibly poor P25 operation, limited support, price point not far below newer radios.

Motorola XTS-3000

People seem to like this radio, but I cannot make up my mind about it. It is functionally the same as the Astro Saber but in a newer case and with accessories similar to the others in the XTS line. Most of the units for sale currently are UHF, with only a couple of VHF radios listed.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc. I found very little detailed information about this radio and the need for new firmware, limited memory, etc. I do not know if it has the same potential issues as the Astro Saber or not.

Reasons to consider another radio: Limited information, price point not far below newer models.

Motorola XTS-3500

From what I read, it seems best to pretend this radio does not exist.

Motorola XTS-5000

Very nice. To be honest, though, I am not sure what is so great about it over a similarly provisioned XTS-2500. Model II or III would be a good options, since the Model I has only 48 channels.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc.

Reasons to consider another radio: Depends on price and availability.

Motorola XTS-2500

Probably a good, practical option and one that I am seriously considering. My biggest question has to do with whether to pay a premium for a radio with full keypad and front-panel programming (FPP), etc. Again, either Model II or III would be good, and a Model III with FPP would be even better in my mind.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc.

Reason to consider another radio: I guess you could go fancier, stick with an EF Johnson 5100 or Motorola XTS-5000 for sake of consistency and ease of programming. For me, the question of whether to buy this or another model is just one of finding the best deal out there.

Motorola XTS-1500

Not too expensive, newer, most likely perfectly suitable for most uses, but this radio is not fully approved for narrowband usage.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc. Channels are limited to 48.

Reasons to consider another radio: Not fully approved for this application, low channel count.

Motorola XTS-4000

Included here just for fun. Google this thing. Power output is a little low to be as useful as the others here, and I would guess the batteries and other accessories are expensive just like the radio itself.

EF Johnson 5100

We all know about this one, but what I had not previously heard was that a good part of the insides of this model was made by Motorola. That is why the accessories for the Motorola XTS 5000 will supposedly work just fine on the EFJ 5100.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc. Availability may be an issue.

Reasons to consider another radio: Price and availability.

EF Johnson 51SL

Same basic radio as the 5100, but without AES encryption.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc.

Reasons to consider another radio: Price and availability, plus the chance that AES capability will come in handy at some point.

Midland STP105B

Looks very nice. Availability of used models seems pretty limited, and I do not know many people that are familiar with it. I have used older Midland mobiles for several years for other applications, and they seem good to me.

Potential problems: Check the flash code, frequency range, etc. Availability may be an issue.

Reasons to consider another radio: Price and availability, plus there may not be programming capability and general familiarity with this make of radio readily available.

While there are other approved options for portable radios, these are the ones I have been considering due to a combination of familiarity, availability in the used market and cost. I will update the blog when I make a decision and buy one.

No time to stop and think

2011-01-09T19:16:00.004-06:00

Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman, Cathy Wilkerson, is a recounting of the author's experiences in various movement groups, mostly SDS and Weatherman. Along the way of fighting against the war and the military industrial complex, she struggles with inter-movement issues of gender equality, the relations between white and black movement groups and a perpetual lack of an end-game plan for change by the various organizations.

It is most of the way through the book when we get to the beginnings of Weatherman, the townhouse explosion and the Weather Underground. Along the way, Wilkerson describes successfully working for a congressman, organizing students in D.C. and elsewhere, publishing the SDS paper and meeting Vietnamese officials on a trip that supposed to end in Hanoi but couldn't due to increased U.S. bombing. Throughout the book, it is clear that Wilkerson, at least as she looks back now, is frustrated by the lack of a plan. After rushing the steps of the Pentagon, she asks, "What good were we doing sitting out here, chanting against those impenetrable stone walls? We were hippies, students, and angry young people without a strategy." Later, as Weatherman leadership restricts information and membership in the newly organized, cultish collectives, Wilkerson is frustrated by the fact that "...Weatherman, for all its eloquent economic and political analysis, didn't have much of a strategy for moving beyond the immediate actions." However, unlike some others who were involved with SDS leadership and now bitterly claim that Weatherman ruined their dreams of accomplishing change, Wilkerson is emphatic in stating that SDS had a similar lack of end-game planning and refused to take the time to discuss such basic things, preferring instead to discuss actions and short-term strategies.

Things come to a head early in the Weatherman saga for Wilkerson, who is among the first to go underground as she and the other survivor climb out of the burning rubble of her father's townhouse after the explosion. Unable to go out into the public for security reasons and depressed over the loss of her comrades and her lover, she spends more than a few years in relative isolation, close enough to the leadership of the Weather Underground to occasionally assist and to be protected but outside the top circle and left out of the loop. After a few years (seems to be around 6), Wilkerson starts to step out, taking jobs on the outside, having a child and having a life of her own, albeit under a variety of assumed identities. Ten years after going underground, Wilkerson turns herself in, is convicted on explosives charges and serves her time in prison.

In case it is not clear from the above summary, this recounting almost totally lacks the intrigue and voyeurism of other accounts written by the leaders of the Weather Underground. Wilkerson wants to talk about the decisions that were made, the struggles that she and others faced, and the war and other events of the day that led them to take the steps they took. There is no bravado, no delight at avoiding the FBI for so long, no secret meeting on a street corner to accomplish a bombing or to reconnect with family. Wilkerson seems never to be comfortable with the cult-like, controlled atmosphere of the collectives, neither early when she was in an anonymous group in Chicago nor later when she was close to the leadership in the townhouse. This telling of the Weather Underground story from the perspective of a member who was there for everything, for longer than most of the eventual leaders, but remained outside the inner circle, takes all of the romance out of the story. To me, this provides a good counterpoint to the video documentaries and other published books.

That is not to say that Wilkerson regrets being there and doing what they did. She remains proud of doing the best that she could find to do based on what she believed about the ongoing injustices. Even the townhouse explosion, she says, finally allowed "the intensity of [their] anger" to be "heard throughout the country" (it also provided focus for the organization and drastically improved their strategy in the future). In the end, she wouldn't have stood idly by, stating that while she did not, in the book, shy "away from exploring the weaknesses of SDS and the Weather Underground, then, like now, the gravest mistake is inaction."

As for the methods used and the growing lack of faith in democratic change, Wilkerson astutely notes that "Many of those ideas, like Leninism, arise again and again because democratically led radical change is exceedingly difficult and slow moving." Revolution will remain an attractive option for young radicals, especially given the example in smaller countries where small groups were able to oust rulers backed by foreign powers. Yet, she has a healthy appreciation of what the U.S. possesses in its democracy, even while she learns its less than admirable interventions around the world. Early in her journey, she states: "I had been fascinated with the origins of our secular, constitutional democracy in college, but the more I learned about the damage we had done, the easier it was to forget what an accomplishment it had been. The US system had cobbled together many of the most progressive ideas of the times in a powerful combination, ideas from Native American federalist government, from utopians, from the philosophers of emergent capitalism, and from advocates of religious tolerance." She returns there at the end of the book, noting appreciatively that thousands of '60s radicals took to their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, churches, etc., in the following decades to make real in little, progressive, individual ways the change they had all sought with marches and violence in those movement years.

BDU preparation for CAP

2011-01-02T14:23:00.003-06:00

See update here: http://blog.mattstewart.org/2011/05/cap-radio-and-uniform-updates.html.

This is a blog entry I have been meaning to write for a while -- my effort to compile what I have learned in trying to purchase and prepare a set of BDUs as my first Civil Air Patrol uniform. I'm not sure I am correct in absolutely everything I write and show here, but I have attempted to cite CAP and other internet sources where necessary to verify that I have done things properly.

The CAP BDU consists of the BDU blouse, BDU trousers, cover, boots, undershirt, socks and belt. I will leave aside outwear for now, because I have not yet dealt with that issue.

BDU trousers are the simplest part: Find an army surplus store and try whatever they have available in the Woodland camo pattern. Unless you want thick pants rather than using layers when necessary for long periods outdoors in the cold, buy the "summer weight" trousers. Once you know which size fits you, you can look for deals online for the additional uniforms necessary for your GTM gear. Trousers are to be bloused over the boots, which apparently means that you use the ankle ties to tighten the bottom of each leg over the top inch or so of the boots, tuck in the ties, and let the excess leg fabric hang down loosely. Wash and iron your trousers when you get them (see below).

The BDU blouse and properly sewing on the required patches gave me the most trouble. Again, go to a local suplus store and try on the summer weight blouses in Woodland camo. (And, again, buy the winter weight if you are really going to be cold and really don't want to just use layers.) Wash, dry and iron your blouse (see below) -- make sure you do this before you start on the patches.

It seems easiest to simply buy all of the patches from Vanguard. They are not unreasonable, and you know the color will be correct. New Senior Members putting together one set of BDUs need one nametape with their last name, one "Civil Air Patrol" nametape, one set of two "CAP" collar patches and one reverse American flag patch. Once you receive your order, drop all of these into a microwave-safe bowl, cover them with a healthy amount of water, and microwave the bowl full of patches and water until the water boils. Let them cool, then remove the patches and let them dry. Now your patches and the fabric on which you are going to install them have been shrunk, reducing bunching later.

Next, figure out where everything goes. This is where the CAP manual falls a little short of comprehensive explanations, in my mind. One helpful source for additional details is the document entitled "Placement of Civil Air Patrol Patches and Insignia on BDU Uniforms" from the Evergreen Composite Squadron in Colorado. Another source of less comprehensive and up-to-date but better illustrated information is this PowerPoint presentation from a Florida squadron. In addition, I took some pictures for you. Perhaps the best aid, though, is an existing, properly put together BDU blouse borrowed from someone else in your squadron. At least, when you get one of these done, future uniforms should be easy to duplicate.

The nametapes get folded over on each end and are placed directly above the two pockets. Note that each nametape needs to be folded (NOT cut) to the length of the pocket (NOT the length of your name or "Civil Air Patrol"). Use pins or tape to secure them there.

The last name goes on the wearer's right.

Now for the reversed American flag: On the wearer's right shoulder, the flag is centered on the seam that runs the length of the shoulder and one half inch below the seam connecting the sleeve to the shoulder. One half inch where you ask? The Colorado document makes it clear this is measure from the widest point, measured at the center of the flag in line with the top seam.

The seam on top of the should is hidden by the measuring tape here.

The shoulder insignia ("CAP" for new senior members without rank) is centered on the collar side-to-side. Before you can figure out where the center is, you'll need to iron the color into its laid-down position (see below). The shoulder insignia on each side is oriented so that it reads from the outside and aligned perfectly with the front edge of the color (NOT the side). It is placed so that the distance between the front edge of the color and the white embroidery of the insignia (NOT the blue background) is 1". Of course, the unfinished edges of these small patches need to be folded over, and CAPM 39-1 answers (at the bottom of the relevant page) the obvious question: 1/8" of ultramarine blue background is supposed to show on each side of the white embroidered insignia. As with the other patches, you will need to secure these in place for sewing, but this are a little more difficult due to the small size and the extra material folded underneath.

Looks like I have 1/16" too much blue showing here on the right collar.

If you have a unit patch, wing patch, etc., you'll need to add that as well, following the CAP manual and looking to the Colorado document for help. I have not done those yet.

The easiest thing to do now is to take your blouse with patches temporarily installed (along with a sample if you were able to get one) to your local dry cleaner. Explain that you want the patches exactly where they are; that they are oriented properly (especally the collar patches that are aligned with the front edge, not the side of the collar); that they need to fold over the edges of nametapes and the collar patches; and that they need to match the thread color (ultramarine for the tapes and collar and yellow/gold for the flag). If you want them to do the ironing first, make sure you note the issues discussed below and pass those on. Come back in a few days, and hopefully you have a blouse with properly applied patches.

Cover is fairly simple for a new Senior Member, since no rank patch is required. The CAP regulations allow for the Air Force or Army style of BDU cap in Woodland camo. I don't know enough to tell the difference between those two, but I do know that in the northern part of the country you should consider the earflap-style BDU cover. Vanguard does not sell that, so again try a local Army surplus store or, if you already know what size fits your head, any of the numerous online surplus stores.

The regulations also allow the wear of a Woodland-camo baseball hat. Vanguard sells these, as well as the standard BDU covers.

Boots are pretty easy to buy, once you know what you want. If you are serious about participating in missions, waterproof boots with Goretex are the obvious choice. If you live in a cold part of the country, those waterproof boots should probably contain some Thinsulate or other insulation. Bates boots were recommended to me, and I love them so far. You can find them at police and other uniform supply stores, army surplus stores, online shoe stores, even Amazon.com. You may want to consider the composite-reinforced variety for weight reduction, and take a look at the design to make sure you have heel and toe surfaces that are unobstructed by plastic and rubber -- you need open, leather areas to polish up. Of course, make sure you try them on and get them fitted by a professional if possible.

Once you get the boots, wear them. Wear them to regular meetings, walks around town, whenever you can for the first month or so. You do not want to be breaking in boots during a mission, even if it's training. If you do not know how to polish boots, take them to a shoe store, shoe-shine business, leather-repair shop or something similar. You can pay $5 or so to have them polished while you wait. They may strip the factory polish the first time, and it make take a few shines to get a good base layer built up for a mirror finish.

Eventually, you should learn to polish the boots yourself, and you can learn a lot from watching someone else and then practicing. At least get good enough to shine them out in a field in case of an extended deployment. Shining boots takes patience and should not be rushed. There are plenty of tips online for how to do this best, including the use of floor shine, flames, etc. I just use polish and a light spray of water on a soft, cotton rag.

Undershirts and socks are pretty easy, and you do not need to buy these from Vanguard. For starters, just buy a pack of black crew-neck t-shirts that fit you. For winter layering or summer heat, you may want to go with Under Armour or similar tight, wicking materials rather than cotton. Socks can be as simple as a pack of black socks, but again for winter cold you may want layers of technical socks -- try REI.

The belt is, in my opinion, best bought from Vanguard. The specification in the CAP manual is just too specific to find at a surplus store: blue fabric, black buckle and that buckle must be open-faced. Buy it, trim it, carefully melt the trimmed fabric down to prevent fraying, and put it back together.

Ironing BDUs technically ruins them in certain ways -- they can lose their IR-signature-masking skills, they start to look worn, and they tend to look especially horrible over the buttons. There are plenty of opinions online about how to do this, too, including the heavy use of liquid starch, high heat, tape, wire, etc. However, in CAP we need to look clean and professional -- not satisfy a drill sergeant in basic training. This is what I do:

First, I wash everything inside out with every pocket closed and every button (hook-and-look fastener) fastened. I use cold water, a gentle cycle, and an undersized portion of laundry detergent. I use a tiny portion of a fabric-softener sheet in the dryer -- but don't overdo that -- and use low heat. When the trousers, blouse and cover are mostly dry, I hang them to finish drying.

Next I warm the iron to medium heat, just enough to get the steam going. I fill the iron with plenty of water and use plenty of steam. I take my time and work my way around the blouse and pants, going over each pocket and area in between separately. When I get to the pocket flaps, I iron the bottom layers first, going around the buttons; then, I take a small piece of cardboard, lay it over the buttons, lay the upper flap containing the button holes on top of the cardboard, and iron that upper flap. The cardboard prevents the round outlines of the buttons from immediately showing as faded circles on the upper flap. If you find later that you do not use your pockets, you may want to have the button removed and the flaps sewn down.

You will probably want to iron creases in the sleeves, but I do this without starch, tape, etc. Eventually the creases go away and need to be ironed back in. One place where you will need to add a crease is each collar. Take a look at the first picture above to see how the collar is creased on each side to lay flat. I'm not sure I have that exactly correct, but that is the basic idea. If you have the dry cleaner do your ironing, make sure they understand that the collar needs to lay flat.

That's about the extent of it. Again, I believe the above suggestions are based on accurate information, but I wouldn't swear to it. Part of the issue here is that new members pretty much join in isolation and assemble their uniform and equipment on their own at home -- not in a concentrated group of recruits. Note that, when in doubt, CAPM 39-1 is the authoritative source, though other resources such as those linked above are sometimes of greater help to a new member.

Kindle and first books for it

2010-12-26T18:57:00.002-06:00

I got a Kindle for Christmas from Emily! Other than out-of-print and hard-to-find books best picked up randomly at a used bookstore, I am moving away from printed book purchases. This certainly will hold true for newly published books -- fiction, non-fiction, just about everything except where the book is heavy with color or large pictures.

So far, I do not have a lot of complaints about it. Pagination went crazy on me one time, with lines getting cut off at the bottom of each page, but power cycling fixed that. There are some features I would like to see added: book lending; Twitter updates for reading or completing a book (currently the only Tweets allowed are quotes from what you are reading); fully customizable fonts; a clock display (the shortcut key from the 1st Gen. Kindle seems to be gone); and configurable, automated filing of reading into Kindle's Collections (sending new books to one collection, completed books to another, etc., without having to move things manually).

Overall, though, I love this thing. On this weekend's Amtrak round-trip and family holiday out of town, I needed only to bring the Kindle. There was no deciding ahead of time which book I would want to read when I finished the current one. There was no need to choose between bringing a half-finished book and spares and starting a new one to cut down on the number of books I'd have to haul. And, as much as my schedule allowed, there was not loss of connection to the day's news, since the few newspapers I am trying out were downloaded to the Kindle each morning.

On that note, the expiration of my Kindle trial of the New York Times subscription will mark the first time in a decade when I will not get a daily subscription to the Times. I started off with a home-delivery subscription, but a couple of years ago I switched to electronic delivery: first what is now called the Replica Edition, then to the Adobe Air-powered Times Reader, and now to the Kindle Edition. (Why NYTimes has so many electronic editions, plus their website, with completely separate subscriptions is beyond me.) The Times for Kindle is the same price as the Times Reader, $19.99 per month, but with no access to the subscription parts of the website (as far as I can tell).

Instead, I have been trying out the Washington Post, and I think I am going to stick with it. The Kindle price is $11.99 per month, and the reporting is just as good in my eyes. It is a little weird getting used to a new style guide, most immediately their use of "Burma," but that will pass shortly. I like the Times, I will miss the Times, and I feel like I am losing some continuity here, but I cannot justify hanging on to it when the Times digital-publishing decisions are obviously off-base on pricing, cross-platform availability, etc. So, the Post it is.

Other than the daily paper, the first thing I read on the Kindle was Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season, Nick Heil. This is a seemingly fair and thorough accounting of the more commercial and controversial events of the 2006 climbing season on the Tibet side of Everest. After watching the Discovery Channel program that year and reading some of the follow-up discussion, angry, blame-filled and irrational, reading this book added a bit of clarity and balance to the story. It's not that Russell Brice is the bad guy or the hero, but there are certain things wrong with the commercial Everest experience that lead to these kinds of tragedies. First, when commercial clients and even non-guided climbers are led to believe they can always be short-roped down the mountain by Sherpas, they will not appreciate the risks and plan for them, and they will cry foul when someone dies. Second, as long as Everest is an open playground for anyone with enough money to afford the trip, the unqualified commercial clients will flock there and outnumber the seriously qualified few who should perhaps be there.

Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob, Jeff Coen. This story is incredibly interesting and enlightening, and the book is very well researched and well written. I can't believe I missed this whole story when the trial was going on for over two months -- I was living in the city by then, but all I remember is the search for one fugitive in the west suburbs. The look inside decades of Chicago Outfit operations and murders provided by the government's star witness is amazing and apparently unheard of. While this book and its stories stand alone and need no introduction, the background provided by Gus Russo's The Outfit, which I mentioned here last year, was helpful. Amazing stuff and well worth a read if you live here or are interested in the somewhat recent activities of organized crime.

A few books

2010-12-19T12:29:00.001-06:00

High: Stories of Survival from Everest and K2, edited by Clint Willis. To be honest, I didn't quite finish this book yet. I left it back home for my brother to read after Thanksgiving, and there was not quite enough reading time on that trip to get through the last couple of selections. What I read, though, is great. The book is a series of selections from longer, published accounts of climbing expeditions on Everest and K2. The chapters are short and leave the reader hanging on what happened during the rest of the expedition. However, Willis' focus here is to compile the experiences of death and near death during these climbs. There are some that end with a struggle back to high camp, barely alive. And there are others that end with the surviving climbers slowly giving up hope, realizing their teammates are not coming back.

A little more context for some of the stories would have been nice, but one could seek out the source material and read the entire story. Overall, this is a good introduction to a variety of expeditions, including some of the most significant ones in the history of these two peaks.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland. Yes, I read this. And, yeah, it's not bad. The story gets very engrossing after about 250 pages, and it is an exciting story. However, the translation could have been done better, especially since this is such a hit. Even the UK generally uses jail instead of gaol, for instance, but gaol is used here. To me a good translation explains a bit about the original language, leaving key words and phrases untranslated with footnotes or parentheses explaining the nearest English translation. There have to be nuances of Swedish that are completely lost in English, and there was no effort here to try to explain Swedish language or culture to the English-speaking reader. I think that is unfortunate and a missed opportunity.

The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland. This book and translation are similar to the first book in the series, but here the engrossing action starts at the beginning of the book and runs all the way through it. I'm baffled by the need to start with a prevented murder halfway across the world, since that event had nothing to do with the rest of the book, but it wasn't bad. I am starting on the third and final book now.

Civil Air Patrol GTM gear

2010-12-11T10:46:00.015-06:00

The next step after putting together the basic Civil Air Patrol UDF gear is to compile my 24-hour and 72-hour bags for Ground Team Member (GTM) missions. I'm in the middle of this process, but here is what I have so far and what I am planning to use to complete it:

Uniform
For GTM training, I will need BDUs, boots, hat, etc, and not simply the polo-shirt uniform discussed in the previous post about UDF equipment. The one item remaining on my list is to get BDU outerwear and some base layers. My legs tend to stay warm, so some moisture-wicking ECWCS Gen II long underwear is all I am going to add on the bottom for now. Up top, I plan to layer a light undershirt, the BDU blouse, the ECWCS Gen III fleece and the ECWCS Gen II parka. The parka will need to go to the dry cleaner down the street, this time with my BDU blouse as an example, to get patches sewn on.

BDU cap
In northern climates, the BDU cap with earflaps is an easy choice.

24-hour gear pack
It seems best to have 24-gear stowed in a front-loaded gear vest rather than a backpack. This potentially leaves room to carry the 72-hour gear on your back at the same time. While looking for an appropriate vest, it immediately became clear that this is something on which I could spend an obscene amount of money. However, a CAP discussion board link led me to this reasonably priced load-bearing vest. Maybe in the future I will look again at a 5.11 Tactical vest that holds my individually customized MOLLE attachments, but that does not seem prudent until I experiment for a few missions and know what I want to carry and where.

Multi-tool
For now, I'm using a generic multi-tool I picked up at a conference, but this Gerber Suspension model is on my list.

Signal mirror
It needs to be lightweight and unbreakable and contain a sighting hole. This one seems to work.

Whistle
I received this one as a gift a few years ago. The compass isn't much to rely upon, but it is potentially better than nothing. It also contains a magnifying class and thermometer. A thermometer probably would not be missed if I didn't have one, but since I have it along it gets quite a bit of use.

First aid kit
I have a couple of these picked up through the years, and REI is a good source due to their variety, from kits meant for a day hike to those meant for a serious expedition. I know a couple of items on the CAP list are not found in any of mine (gloves, triangle bandage), and I will need to hit Walgreens to restock.

"Survival kit"
I am mystified as to why these things would need to be stored in a waterproof bag, but here we go. Light sticks can be bought from Amazon, or I hear you can get them cheap at drug and grocery stores right after Halloween. REI has a match case and matches that are better than waterproof -- they are rain-storm-proof.

Very strong general-purpose line can be picked up in REI's climbing section, though you want to get the thin utility cord shown below that is not suitable for climbing. I have also seen 1" webbing recommended in addition to cord.

Assuming you are carrying a tent, wrap your emergency duct tape around that section of pipe that is supplied with the tent for doing a pole repair -- it is light and round and you need to carry it with you anyway. A large "lawn and leaf" bag (and two more in the 72-hour bag) finishes up this kit.

Miscellaneous things
A spare set of socks. Toilet paper (a half-empty roll should work). Leather work gloves (in addition to any winter gloves). Cell phones (sealed inside the heavy-duty dry bags I mentioned in the previous post). Biodegradable surveyor's flagging tape. Small containers of insect repellent and sunscreen lotion. ChapStick with an SPF rating. Blank CAP interviewing forms (I cannot find a good link for this). Individually packaged moist towelettes. All of this zippered into resealable freezer bags.

Flashlight and spare
I mentioned in the last post this awesome Smith and Wesson flashlight. My backup flashlight is also a AAA-powered LED model, but not quite so bright or featured and picked up for free somewhere.

Meals
Civilian and some military MREs can be bought online and in surplus stores, or backpacker meals can be found at REI and other outdoors stores. Neither option is particularly cheap, but MREs usually contain their own heat source, more meal components and more calories. I haven't made up my mind here. I plan to carry my MSR Pocket Rocket and fuel canister, but only in my 72-hour gear, so perhaps MREs are the better choice for 24-hour gear.

Poncho
I am planning to pick up a military poncho and poncho liner at the surplus store. This is also to be a ground sheet for the tent carried in my 72-hour gear. Since I have to carry the weight of a poncho anyway, there is no sense carrying another special footprint for the tent.

Water
I like narrow-mouth Nalgeens, always have.

Other items that overlap with UDF gear
No need to address these again: compass, notepad, pencil, CAP ID and forms, watch, reflective vest, tissues and GTM handbook. See the UDF-gear post for details.

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72-hour pack
More out of convenience than design, I plan to use a Gregory Shasta internal-frame backpack, 1999 vintage, approximately 5000 cubic inches but highly cinchable for smaller loads. (The Gregory Palisade 80 shown below would be a comparable pack today.) A backpack rain cover is a necessity, in my opinion, even if everything inside is sealed in individual zippered bags. Whatever you find for a backpack, make sure it fits. If you must buy it online, go into the store first and get fitted for a backpack that can be carried all day while riding properly on your shoulders and hips.

Tent
This was a steal: the REI Crysalis UL solo tent, close-out special on REI-Outlet.com for just under $100 after a 20% coupon and bought just before they sold out of the last of them, to be replaced by the REI Quarter Dome T1 shown below. I set it up in the house last night: adequate room for me (at 5'10") and some gear. The backpack will probably have to stay in the vestibule, and it is not likely I will be sharing this tent with anyone, though another person would fit in an emergency. Best part about this tent: it packs down as small as a folded sleeping pad and it weighs in at 3.5 pounds with rainfly, poles, stakes and cinch sack.

Sleeping bag
Again out of convenience, I have a down bag for now. The newer synthetic fills have come a long way in price and performance, and when this one finally wears out (it has seen some periods of heavy use over the past twelve years) I will get a synthetic bag. REI and REI-Outlet.com usually have a good variety of on-sale and closeout bags, and who cares if you are buying last year's sleeping bag?

Sleeping pad
These do not have to be expensive, heavy or bulky, and they are absolutely essential to a good night's sleep in moderate and cold temperatures. The sleeping bag's fill when compressed against the ground provides almost no insulation, and a foam sleeping pad works wonders for keeping you warm and comfortable. I use an older version of this foldable one.

Spare clothes
A spare set of BDUs and three changes of socks and underwear go into zipped, resealable bags. I need to get another set of BDUs and have them sewn up with patches.

More meals
Same issues as above, but in the case of this 72-hour pack I am more inclined to substitute some backpacker meals for MREs, since a stove will allow for cooking. Of course, this means bringing along a cookset and utensils.

Toilet kit
Toothbrush, toothpaste, razor and soap are easy. For washcloths and towels, I use light, quick-drying backpacker towels like these from MSR.

Uniform care
A tin of shoe shine, a soft rag for shining boots, a little sewing kit from Walgreens or the surplus store, and a spare set of boot laces from wherever you got your boots -- another freezer bag should hold it.

Entrenching tool
I just have a little garden spade for now, but a folding shovel or similar product is probably a coming purchase.

Water purification tablets
Per CAP training, this is for emergency use only. Further, iodine-treated water should only be consumed for short durations, not for long trips or as a regular practice. However, the days of drinking yellow, nasty, iodine-tasting water are long, long gone. Buy a two-pack purification tablet system from Potable Aqua. Make sure it's the two-tablet treatment process! One tablet treats the water; the second, dropped in after the first has had time to work, treats the taste and color from the first. For emergency usage, this beats a filter system on weight, cost and effort, and the water tastes excellent.

Introductory knowledge
Along with Civil Air Patrol training and reference materials, it may be worth picking up a book about hiking, picking a campsite, cooking, survival and animals. One of the best is The Backpacker's Field Manual. Also, since CAP training mentions the ideals of Leave No Trace living, you may want to read more about that, and Leave No Trace: Minimum Impact Outdoor Recreation is a good place to start.

Civil Air Patrol UDF gear

2010-12-06T19:30:00.009-06:00

I joined the local Civil Air Patrol squadron a couple of months ago, and Saturday was my first day of ground-team training in preparation for a training exercise next month. (During the last exercise I attended, I did radio operator training.) With not enough time to put together a full ground-team-member (GTM) gear setup, I settled for putting together Urban Direction Finding (UDF) gear. Most of the UDF gear list items showed up last week, and here is what I have put together:

Uniform

I had already purchased BDUs at the local surplus store, Bates waterproof, insulated boots and a belt and name tapes from the CAP Vanguard store. I took the uniform with name tapes and flag decal taped in their proper places to the local dry cleaner and was pleasantly surprised to see they had apparently sewn everything correctly. In addition, I bought a CAP polo shirt from Vanguard and charcoal Taclite Pro tactical pants from 5-11 Tactical. I would like to be wearing the BDUs, but it is too cold around here to go without a jacket, and I still need to pick up the ECWCS Generation II parka in Woodland camo and Gen III fleece that I have my eye on. The polo and pants uniform works alright for now. More info on the ECWCS layers is here: www.adsinc.com/gen-iii.

CAP identification

The CAP ID card goes in my wallet, but I took my 101 card, ROA card and other cheat sheets to FedEx office and laminated them in the ID-card sheets that have a slot at the top. A simple ID-card clip that I got at a conference or somewhere clips them on my uniform. Next time I need a new 101 card laminated, I am going to do a small copy of my Form 60 (medical) as well.

Watch

I know this is required, but be careful if you are going to wear it on your wrist. Watches throw off compass readings pretty easily, at least in my experience.

Notepad

Waterproof notepads from Rite in the Rain seem to be most popular, but since I was in need of some fast Amazon shipping I went with this one.

Orange vest

There are plenty of ways to go here. You could buy one from the Grainger catalog or any number of sources. Again, since I need a quick ship on a lot of these items, I grabbed this one from Amazon. It has a velcro front, seems secure and strong enough.

UDF and GTM Task Guide

Buy it from Vanguard, print it yourself after downloading it here (PDF) and have FedEx Office bind it, or whatever. While we are on the topic, this supplemental Ground Team Reference Text (download PDF) fills in a lot of the blanks and is very helpful.

Compass

I bought an orienteering compass, which is the standard, open compass consisting of a flat piece of clear plastic with an inset, rotating face. The Suunto A-30L was recommended, and it is not a bad compass. It does have the requisite mark for every two degrees and a glowing face and needle, and it is very easy to use.

However, I will probably make this my backup soon and purchase a lensatic compass, such as the Brunton 8099 Eclipse. When shooting an azimuth, an orienteering compass has maybe five degrees error, and the lensatic two degrees -- both likely more in inexperienced hands. CAP requires a compass that can read in two-degree increments, but typical orienteering-compass error is higher than that. In addition to the increased accuracy of a lensatic compass, it would be beneficial to be able to read the degree of a slope occasionally.

Flashlight

I think I found a good item here: the Smith and Wesson Galaxy 28 LED flashlight. This model has 20 white LEDs, 4 red LEDs and 4 blue LEDs, so there is no need for colored filters, spare bulbs or storage thereof. All three colors seem adequately bright, and there are two separate switches to prevent accidental activation of the white LED when trying to preserve night vision: one controls the white LEDs only, and the other cycles from red to blue to off. The included holster includes battery storage and a Velcro strap. I am extremely satisfied with this purchase.

Map protractor

I'm not sure I have the right item here. Ranger Joe's might be a better source, but I did pick up this USGS-sourced UTM grid reader from REI, which includes a protractor.

Map case

I know you can use Ziploc or similar sealable plastic bags, but I picked up a four-pack of variously sized dry bags from REI -- the LOKSAK Aloksak. Along with the larger bag for a map, the smaller ones can be used for cell phones, wallet, etc.

Alcohol pens

I went wrong here. There are artsy, refillable alcohol pens and colored inks available on Amazon and elsewhere, but this four-pack of alcohol pens from Ranger Joe's is probably the way to go. I've also heard interpretations of this requirement being dry-erase markers or Sharpies, but these ones from Ranger Joe's seem more correct. As for an eraser, I have individual alcohol swabs, but Ranger Joe's also sells a proper alcohol-pen eraser.

Ruler

Plenty of options here, but I got this one from Amazon with a sliding clip/gauge. It is small, light and flexible.

Miscellaneous

Some things just need to be found in the house or picked up at the local store. Mechanical pencils, pens, packets of facial tissue, individual alcohol swabs (Walgreens) and snacks.

Other things that make sense

Of course, I am going to carry water on any mission -- even an "urban" one. A litre in a BPA-free Nalgene bottle works. Sunglasses (polarized Native Eyewear-brand from last year at REI Outlet) are good, and this time of year proper gloves, hat, etc., are essential. A flashlight is necessary, but a good headlamp with white and red modes is a definite future purchase. I picked up an (expired) airport directory set from another member, and that goes in the bag.

Packing

All of these items that took so much thought and effort barely start to fill even the smallest backpack, but that is where they live for now. My next step is to fill the remaining gaps in the 24-hour and 72-hour gear lists, and the above UDF-gear items will be combined with the 24-hour gear and moved to a gear vest.

A freeramblin' read

2010-11-14T18:20:00.001-06:00

A Freewheelin' Time, Suze Rotolo. In some ways, this book is great -- far better than it could have been given the author's involvement with Bob Dylan during his critical first years in New York City. Of course Rotolo writes about Dylan and takes the book's title and cover photo from the Dylan album cover on which she was pictured with him. There are some nuggets of information about Bob and his writing, leaving me with some fresh thoughts about the thinking behind Dylan's early songs, his attitude toward his career in those early years, the real struggles he and Rotolo and other friends had dealing with his skyrocketing fame, and just how damn young they all were throughout these years.

But the book is much more than a recounting of Rotolo's memories of Dylan. I would guess most of the audience for this book are Dylan fans, and none of them would read it if it were not for Rotolo being his girlfriend at the start of his career, but there is more to the author and more to this book than Dylan. This is her life, her story, and Bob is simply intertwined in a lot of it. Rotolo had plenty of amazing experiences of her own during the years described here, including publicly testing a newly enacted Cuba travel ban. Her struggle with life in a male-dominated world, no doubt made worse because of her relationship with a budding male rock star, is a recurring theme. Her recounting of life in Greenwich Village during the '60s is worth a read on its own merits.

However, the book suffers from a severe lack of focus. Time jumps around enough that I found it impossible to keep track of what happened when. Rotolo leads into the book stating it is more a recollection than a statement of known facts, but that does not excuse this huge problem with the book. Stories begin, are cut off, and then are picked up again and told in full. Wider topics come up several times throughout the book, little new being added each time. I want to imagine this is the result of an editor taking the manuscript, knowing it will sell to Dylan fans in any condition, running spell check and sending it to press. Rotolo's recollections deserve more attention and better presentation.

Okay, I give up

2010-11-13T08:43:00.001-06:00

I have been holding on to paper copies of books and avoiding moving to an e-reader of some variety for a few reasons:

I am waiting to see how the competition sorts out and avoiding first- and second-generation devices without the features that are sure to be added;
I am hoping the major players will give up on DRM or, at least, come to an agreement about file format for DRM and non-DRM e-books;
I love used bookstores; and
I hate that, with too few exceptions, there are no provisions for selling a used e-book or lending an e-book to a friend.

The first point is still somewhat valid. Sure, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have flipped out a few generations of their respective devices, but Amazon still doesn't have a book-lending feature or the ability to open ePub files without conversion, and Barnes & Noble is going away from E Ink with their new, color-screen version. One thing for which I am not waiting, however, is a bunch of features to be added: I want a lightweight e-book reader with an E Ink screen, not an iPad.

On the second point, I think everyone would prefer that the Kindle open ePub files. Also, everyone hates DRM, and the music industry has been down this road. Other than teenagers (who tend to pass their paper books around to their friends anyway) and possibly college students, people will purchase non-DRM materials for their own use. People that want free or non-DRM e-books already make use of the many online sources of cracked, free copies. However, I am not holding my breath for the publishing industry to be more forward-thinking than the music industry on this issue.

My third reason is loving used bookstores. There is something about wandering the stacks of musty books and buying something for which you were not looking. Despite Amazon's excellent website, it cannot replace used bookstores for the sheer pleasure of book shopping. But, I could use an e-reader for new or purpose-bought books and still visit my neighborhood used bookstore for random gems. Further, if used bookstores are going to fade away due to online shopping and e-books, my insistence on paper books isn't going to keep them alive.

Finally, I purchase paper books and keep them on my shelves for years after reading them because of my expectation that I will be able to grab one after a related conversation and hand it to someone to read. This does not happen. No one wants to read my damn books, so they pile up on my bookshelves and move around the city with me (requiring many boxes and great effort). Certainly, there are some books I keep because I will read or refer to them again, but that is the minority. If I haven't reopened a book five years after reading it, it is likely, given the number of unread books on my list, that the book will never be opened again. Even the used bookstore in the neighborhood doesn't want most of my books, despite my impeccable literary tastes.

I am left feeling that a recent, fairly well known book, whether in digital or paper format, is now an expendable item. The paper copy of a book has little or no value to anyone after I read it. The most sensible and sustainable way to read, then, is to buy e-books. The used bookstore market will be good for a long time for finding out-of-print books, but why would the Kindle version of a book ever go out of print?

Plus, how awesome would it be not to have to hold the pages open while reading in bed?

Fraud

2010-11-09T12:09:00.000-06:00

Fraud, David Rakoff. I try to read slowly. I occasionally remind myself to slow down, to appreciate the inflection, the word choice, something beyond the basic tenor of the story that I normally grasp as I tear through a book, reading interrupted regularly by people, television, the phone or sleep. But especially with this book -- thoughtful essays, written by someone to whose voice on CD I delightedly listened a few years ago as he read aloud a follow-up, Don't Get Too Comfortable -- I know the meter, the tone, the voice I should hear in my head as I read along.

But I can't do it, and writing like this is wasted on me for that reason. There are some delights among this collection of essays, and I recommend reading it. But for a real treat, check out any book-on-tape version you can find of Rakoff reading his own work.

The ongoing fascination with Chomolungma

2010-11-09T08:33:00.000-06:00

I am home from work again today, slightly feverish with a cold, so I hesitate to try to write anything, having my doubts as to whether or not it will be at all comprehensible or grammatically correct. However, I cannot sleep any longer, so I shall continue the backlog of completed reads.

Lost of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine, Peter Firstbrook, is the first book upon which I stumbled on the topic of the 1999 climbing expedition to the north side of Mount Everest in a successful bid to locate the body of George Mallory. Mallory, of course, is the English climber who disappeared while leading the less experienced Andrew Irvine in a 1924 attempt on Everest's summit. No one knows if they made it or not, because they did not return. Regardless, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to make it to the top and survive.

Firstbrook was the producer of the BBC documentary of the same name, which should set the tone for this read. He does a good job giving an overview of Mallory's climbing history as well as his obsession with reaching the summit of Everest. He recounts the 1921, 1922 and 1924 British expeditions and, to a lesser extent, the 1999 recovery expedition. Too little time is spent on the found evidence and various theories. And is a climb on Everest now so commonplace that the details of the trying, oxygen-starved efforts to get there are something to be passed over in favor of cutting the book short?

Lost on Everest is a good introduction to the topic, but it ends poorly, disintegrating into a confusing jumble of statements of fact about the various unknowns of the last days of Mallory and Irvine. Irritating comments such as the one Firstbrook repeats early and often about the climbers definitely being on their descent when they perished may play well in a succinct documentary, but they do not in black and white to a reader looking for proof.

I will watch the related documentary, but for a book on the topic I am now looking for The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest, by Conrad Anker and David Roberts. Anker is the one whose off-track searching found Mallory's body and whose free climb of the Second Step solved one big question. Roberts is a well established outdoors writer: True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna is among other books to his name. This is an amazing story, and I'm sure it can be told better than it is in Lost on Everest.

Coal and anthropology

2010-11-08T20:40:00.009-06:00

Reckoning at Eagle Creek, Jeff Biggers, is the third of the books I have read over the past five years about the coal industry's less than positive contribution to our lives. I have yet to see a pro-coal book interesting enough to pick up, but what is there to learn? Coal is cheap and plentiful to one degree or another, and most of us do enjoy our electrically powered computers, appliances, climate control, etc.

This book is different from Big Coal and Lost Mountain because Biggers has a personal, ancestral connection to the area around Eagle Creek that has now been strip mined for coal. This book is as much a recounting of his search for the past as it is a treatise on the problems of coal mining and burning. Yet, it is not without its insights: notably, Biggers exposes the links between coal and legal or tolerated slavery in Illinois long after the state was declared "free," and he discusses with disdain the history of this idea of "clean coal" (FutureGen is not the first technology described as such).

Personally, I do not believe I will ever buy into the idea of clean coal. My love of mountains and the coal industry's love of removing mountaintops to get to the coal underneath in the least expensive way possible do not seem compatible, nor am I impressed when hiking around a strip mine "reclaimed" into a half-assed state park. Illinois coal is supposed to be pretty uncontroversial other than its high sulfur content (which FutureGen will supposedly solve), but Eagle Creek shows that coal mining does not need to involve mountaintop removal or carbon dioxide emissions to be disturbing and harmful.

Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. Where do I start? Read this book. Read this book, read this book, read this book.

Something is wrong with human romantic relationships as generally defined in the western world. We say one thing, but we do anything but that. Starting with the pair-bond myth, we justify the preeminence of institutionalized marriage, yet most marriages fail. That same myth leads some to say homosexual relationships cannot be natural. The idea that the pair bond is the earliest and therefore the truly internalized form of human sexual relationship is wrong.

Ryan and Jethá offer another explanation, one based on observations of earlier societies and closely related primates that have, in their opinion, been conveniently overlooked in favor of the standard myth. Though a good number of their references to anthropological research are ones I recall from early anthropology classes, the authors put their combined talents (Ryan a psychologist and Jethá a psychiatrist) to good use, compiling this body of sources into a flowing, readable progression to the inevitable conclusion: humans developed in groups, lived in groups, shared sexual partners within and among these groups, and raised the resultant children in groups. Anything else, including the pair bond, is a much more recent regression in response to the start of agriculture, the inevitable shortage of land and the new structures that developed in human society to support agricultural (and later industrial and post-industrial) life.

As I was reading, I had picked out a few parts of the book to quote here, but looking back I do not believe I can provide adequate context for any of them. The authors say something similar in the intro to Part III of the book. About to delve more deeply into anthropology and away from what may be more interesting to the casual reader, they state: "We hope readers primarily interested in sex will bear with us because what might at first seem a detour is in fact a shortcut to a clearer vision of the day-to-day lives of our ancestors, a vision that will help you make better sense of the material that follows, as well as of your own world." That sums up why, if you pick up this book on Dan Savage's recommendation and get bored halfway through, you should read the whole thing: you will better understand yourself and the world around you.

Sex at Dawn puts together a convincing picture, but what about it? If you subscribe to the book's very compelling conclusions, you learn that the myth inherent in society, government and religious norms and precepts regarding sexual relationships does not reflect the truth about the roots of human behavior as you were led to believe. But, living in a highly structured society -- with land ownership, accumulation of wealth and the practical importance of conclusive paternity -- what can or should be done about it?

My personal feeling: Not much can or should be done about it until more people know something other than the pair-bond myth. So, again, please read this book. It is completely fascinating.

Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee, Pamela Druckerman. This book has been on my shelf for the past couple of years, and I picked it up right after I finished Sex at Dawn. If that book describes in detail the roots of human behavior in this area, Lust in Translation describes the ways people express those behaviors in several societies. The books are on different planes and for different audiences, but I read them together.

This is an entertaining read, and there are some surprises here: the first is that Americans do not generally have fewer affairs than the French or Europe in general. One would assume so from our relatively Victorian reaction to an affair being made public, but the numbers do not lie. In that vein lies probably the most potentially instructive portion of Druckerman's writing: the two choices in response to an affair in America are a permanent severing of the relationship or a lifetime of distrust, therapy and support groups. This is fairly unique, and it sounds pretty ridiculous when contrasted with the reactions of cuckolded partners in other societies.

This is worth a read, and it has some insight to contribute to learning more about the world around us. However, if you are going to read one of these books, make it Sex at Dawn.

Not what I was expecting, this book

2010-08-02T22:04:00.001-05:00

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado with Vince Rause. I picked this, somewhat randomly, off the book shelf at REI on Saturday. I bought a pair of sunglasses off REI Outlet and had them shipped to the relatively new local store for pickup, so I took the opportunity to wander the aisles of the first floor -- so many fun things. Among all of the books -- the practical ones about hiking, climbing and backpacking and the stories about mountaineering -- this one stuck out a little, being the story of the survivors of a late-winter airline crash high in the mountains. It's also a departure from my recent "adventure" reading, since it is much more about surviving a disaster than about exploration.

Perhaps because of that, I started reading it wanting the facts of what happened, how they survived, how they got out and what the climbing and hiking were like on the various efforts to get out. This book does not try to offer all of that. In fact, it's in ghostwriter Rause's acknowledgments that we read that the intent from the beginning for this book, written 34 years after the events described, was to complement, rather than to duplicate, the more fact-laden Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, written 32 years prior.

That is not at all to imply that the authors got their facts wrong in this book. On the contrary, the facts seem well established, but the authors' focus here was elsewhere. In the ensuing three decades, Parrado had learned to speak to groups about the horrible experience, and this book captures his well developed personal narrative. It is the dashed hopes, lessening sanity, troubled faith and growing desperation of the group, and Parrado himself primarily, that are described most here. Knowing this, I can hear almost hear his voice describing the horrors then, humbly, their eventual, hard fought triumph and resultant reunions. It is clear that to hear him speak in person would not be easily forgotten.

Had I known this deliberate choice of perspective, I would have read Alive first, then this. However, for someone like myself that knew nothing of this story and had not seen the associated movie or documentary, reading the well regarded third-party book based on early interviews of the survivors would have been a better first step and left me a little more patient to appreciate Parrado's introspection. He deserves nothing less, and I would suggest you follow the course of reading the other book prior to this one.

Because this was written three decades later, the reader also gets the benefit of hearing how Parrado's life has shaped up (quite well, considering the thread by which it hung). The entire book is intensely personal storytelling, and I couldn't help but compare my life to that of Parrado -- not his struggle in the Andes but the stages of his life before and after the crash and escape. I can see why he can inspire an audience to reach for better than they have, stretch to be better than they are. I do not buy books looking for such reactions in myself but stumbled on a good one here.

The grizzly bear, my mostly imagined nemesis

2010-07-31T13:41:00.002-05:00

Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, Stephen Herrero. For a book that seems to be the most well regarded, practical, 250-page look at bear-human interactions for the person that is living in or visiting bear territory, this book is readable and, I hesitate to say, entertaining. Herrero's writing is matter-of-fact, including his recounting of dozens of black-, brown- and grizzly-bear attacks, but the subject requires no added drama or embellishment. The author is well qualified, having worked with bears in the field as an ecologist and lived in bear country, yet he writes with a humble appreciation for the unknown about bear behavior. In many cases, Herrero provides what is known of the history of a certain type of situation (bear actions, human actions, responses on both sides), presents his best recommendation for how to handle it based on the history, and leaves it up to the reader to decide which way to go if confronted with such a situation.

It may be that appreciation of this book is enhanced if the reader has already a mild fear of bears and some memory of how he felt being alone in bear country, not knowing if there were bears around or what the hell to do if one turned up. Reading this book, I found out that I should have been more prepared and more careful in most situations -- with pepper spray, some knowledge of bear sign, better clean-camp and food-hanging preparations. I definitely should have been noisier on the trail, especially in windy conditions. I should have been cautious in thick undergrowth and aware of the nearest trees to climb when in the open. And I should have felt at least a reasonable amount of caution toward the black bear; instead, most of my caution went out the window when I found out that the places I have frequented were not inhabited by the grizzly. (On a side note, back in Minnesota growing up we should have been much less tolerant of black bears getting into garbage and therefore hanging around the house. They do drag off small children occasionally, along with other aggressive actions.)

That said, though, this book isn't meant to scare the reader. Knowledge of this information and attention paid to situations that may involve bears would primarily free a person to enjoy the wilderness more, not create unreasonable fear. I think I have spent more time unnecessarily worrying about Big Bad Bears than enjoying the wilderness that is their home, and the hope in reading this book is to learn enough to know how to enjoy while being cautious. Bears are not out to get me or my food, but they will do both if encouraged by humans.

I highly recommend people read Herrero's book before heading into the outdoors wherever there are bears of any type. Those who live in areas where they and their neighbors regularly have experience the presence of bears have, of course, learned to deal with it; however, this book has some details and lessons to share for that type of situation as well. The first few chapters are mostly stories of bear-human interactions and their results; the latter half of the book talks more about bear behavior, diet and management; it is all worthwhile and important reading. I am keeping this one close with the intention of re-reading it just prior to my next trip.

Reading this book raised two additional points: First, I had to rewatch Grizzly Man, the Werner Herzog documentary about Tim Treadwell --bumped it to the top of the Netflix queue and finished it the same night I finished this book. I shall just state the obvious: Treadwell and Herrero have different perspectives on how people and bears should behave around each other. Also, I wish that some scenes were never included in that movie, such as most of the appearances of the Crazy Coroner Man. Yet other scenes make my heart race each time, like when the last reel of Treadwell's footage changes so much or when the Float Plane Pilot Man (as opposed to the Crazy Helicopter Pilot Many) sings at the end.

The second thought raised by reading this book (and by our recent trip to Montana) is that groups of people going to the wilderness together, whether to climb a mountain or just to hike around, need to be on the same page and need to be more prepared than our group was this last time around. With that in mind, I'm thinking I will not travel in the wilderness and in bear country with people again unless we have a certain common level of recent reading -- for starters, these books:

- The Backpacker's Field Manual (recommended by my sister Becky)
- Leave No Trace: Minimum Impact Outdoor Recreation or a similar book on LNT principles
- Bear Attacks
- The best guidebook available for the destination, if there is one

If someone was going on a guided trip with a qualified leader, this would be less necessary, nor would it be if it was a very small group or if everyone was experienced. But on a trip among equals with no formal leadership, I've realized that it is important to accumulate a shared foundation of knowledge and guidance. The use of group compacts, while it may sound overbearing or unnecessary, is also something I'm considering for future trips.

Summer reading

2010-07-10T16:00:00.001-05:00

As I watch the second-to-last match of the 2010 World Cup and look forward to tomorrow's win (hopefully) by the Dutch, it's time to wrap up the first part of summer reading. There is nothing ground-breaking here, nothing that a lot of people haven't already read, so here are brief summaries of each book:

Sin in the Second City, Karen Abbott, occupies the same shelf as Devil in the White City and Carl Smith's The Plan of Chicago, as all are very accessible and entertaining but non-fiction accounts of Chicago history around the turn of the century. The topic this time is madams, along with the politicians protecting them (for bribes, of course) and the puritans trying to shut them down. There's nothing left today of what was a raucous and successful Chicago vice district, nor of the Everleigh Club -- the world's most famous house of its kind and apparently the source of the term getting "laid" ("I'm going to get Everleighed tonight," was the original). Quite entertaining and a good look at the ancient art of corruption in Chicago.

Radio On: A Listener's Diary, Sarah Vowell. This book, read fifteen years after it was written, was quite a flash back to my days of listening to Rush Limbaugh (yeah, I did). Vowell listened to the radio at almost every opportunity for an entire year and muses about it in this delightful and memory-inducing book. NPR features heavily, and she recounts, among other things, an early taping of Ira Glass' This American Life. Rush was in the height of his popularity, having found a great foil in President Clinton, and Vowell recounts quite a bit of the political discourse of the time. It's amazing how much of it is virtually identical to the discourse of today -- especially amusing to me was rediscovering the thought that the '90s were to be the "end of liberalism," that "liberalism has failed" in governance, given that the same things are being said today following the failure of the government the other side elected. I read this too late, probably, but it worked out in a nostalgic way. I'd recommend it if you want a look back at 1995 along with some radio and social criticism.

Dexter in the Dark, Jeff Lindsay. Anyone remember Frank Peretti's psycho-christian-thriller series? And have you watched Showtime's Dexter series? Combine the TV show and This Present Darkness, and you have the third in Lindsay's series. Somewhat suddenly, we learn that Dexter's inner "dark passenger" is not his intuition or a metaphor for a part of his psyche; instead, the dark passenger has personhood. It's a demon, and it has raised the ire of the more mainstream of its demonic extended family. This, of course, gets Dexter into no end of trouble, and -- unlike the first two books -- the trouble is not limited to flesh-and-blood serial killers. Not a bad way to take the series, I suppose, and I'm looking forward to grabbing the fourth book of my shelf soon.

Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut. This is an excellent book, though strangely disappointing. I had no idea whether the book would be good or not, and I read the first two thirds quickly, not giving it the time and attention it deserved. Then, in the last third, things moved so quickly and it was over. I need to read it again and take more time with it. It's great. The ending, while refusing to satisfy the reader with neat tie-ups and happy resolutions, must be perfect because it amazed me. The last page leaves a haunting desire for more story. Like I said, I'll read it again.

The Dark Side of the Pyramid, Patrick J. Smith, including a reprint of Fake It Til You Make It by Philip Kerns. Smith's book itself is too general in scope and almost disdainfully common-sense to be of much interest. It's not hard to see the lunacy behind most small pyramid-style companies, and Smith spends most of his time there. On the other hand, the reprint of the hard-to-find Kerns book is worth the cost of the book with its recounting of a serious effort in one of the Amway-associated organizations. This and similar books are widely criticized and sometimes hard to find, but with all of the written and audio materials published on the other side as part of "the System," what little balance this type of writing can provide is invaluable. Merchants of Deception by Eric Scheibeler is a similar, but more detailed, more recent and more heartbreaking, story of one couple's experiences. It predictably hard to find, though there are some copies on Amazon (for up to $269!) and PDFs available online (with the author's blessing) if you look hard enough.

The Official Rules of Hockey, James Duplacey. This was an entertaining and educational book but, damn, I am tired of hockey -- what a long (though fun and successful) season. Right after the Hawks parade and rally downtown I pushed through the last few pages, and I resolve not to think of hockey again until the pre-season starts in a couple of months. Growing up skating in Minnesota and playing hockey (mostly in our boots), I knew the basics, but I was a bit unclear on some of the more obscure rules. This book is an informative look at the rules and some of the stories behind them. If you like the second-most beautiful game in the world, it is worth learning some of this history and hearing the the old stories. However, if you insist upon the latest rules verbatim from the NHL rulebook, buy the latest season's version of Official Rules of the NHL instead.

Up next in my summer queue are grizzly bear attacks, Dylanology, cultural views on sex and relationships and coal mining in Illinois.

Mountain rant revisited

2010-05-23T08:50:00.000-05:00

There is something beautiful in a mountain existing, reaching for the sky and standing as solid as anything can stand. There is an appeal to those heights, and some are fascinated enough to try to reach them. There is the triumph of a skilled, hard working mountaineer reaching the top of one of the world's great peaks -- this should, considering the number of serious high-altitude climbers in the world, be a rare occurrence. There is also the real risk that a climber that has overestimated himself or his partners or that has failed to recognize the unattainability of the route or peak will die on its slopes.

Everest belongs somewhere, perhaps but not necessarily, even, on a list of significant climbs by a significant climber, not on the resume of high-paying amateur. Everest and other prestigious mountains should be climbed by those respectful of the mountain and, as much as is possible with such a mountain, worthy of it, not by someone who thinks of it as the ultimate challenge to enliven their boring life as a salesman, banker, CEO, teacher or factory worker.

If you don't believe me -- if you are thinking maybe you'd try it someday if you could find the money and get yourself into good enough physical shape to satisfy a guide -- read about what the experience does to people who save $30,000 and put it in the hands of a guide they believe will drag them to the top, one way or another. Read about the effect of summit fever on those involved in the 1996 disaster as detailed in Krakauer's Into Thin Air. Know what caliber of person is attracted to the lawless, wealthy expanse of camps on both sides of the mountain.

Then, grab a backpack, the right equipment and some training, and choose your own adventure on one of the millions of miles of trail, hundreds of thousands of campsites and thousands of nameless and distinctly non-famous peaks, valleys, walls and pillars found the world over. Because I am tired of hearing about how you rocked out the big one -- or died trying to be the 38th person in one week to top it.

Book backlog

2010-05-15T22:05:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in a Tweet the other day, I have a pile of books to comment on here. The higher the stack gets, the harder it is to sit down and do this. However, the to-read shelf in the living room is down to twenty-three serious entries, plus the four in-progress reads. That include a few really, really light reads such as the remaining Dexter books, which I just need to knock out during a proper trip, one where I'm lacking in time to concentrate on anything more complicated. Anyway, here we go, with the help of Blogger's new Amazon plug-in.

The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan, Bill Greer. This is a fictionalized portion of the already engaging story presented in The Island at the Center of the World, a book I first listened to on tape several years ago, enjoyed very much and mentioned here. I'm fascinated by the portion of our country's history contributed by the Dutch of New Amsterdam prior to the relatively un-justified takeover of Manhattan by New England and the English military in 1674. Everyone should know more about that period in our history.

Annapurna: A Woman's Place, Arlene Blum. Generally acknowledged, from what I can tell, to have been a significant contributor both to the field of climbing writing and to the acceptance of women as climbing teams members and leaders, this was a refreshing read. Some of the more personal tone and less we're-going-to-kick-this-mountain's-ass bravado as exhibited here are now found in recent mountain writing, but I'm guessing it was partially this book's movement in that direction that gave us that. The team climbed Annapurna, itself an incredible feat, and did so while fighting for their own place in the field. Read most of this one on the Megabus back from Cincinnati back in February.

Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough-and-Tumble Adventures..., Craig Murray. Excellent. The guy is an ass, but if you can read Tucker Max and find it funny you can read this and find it educational, disturbing and also funny. Uzbekistan is a mess made more so by the West's single-minded focus on pursuing its "War on Terror," and our support of their regime during Murray's time there as British Ambassador censored horrible stories of torture and oppression. Murray, despite his faults, did what he could to expose it all. Very highly recommended book.

Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters, James M. Tabor. This book focuses entirely on one unfortunate and likely preventable episode on Denali in 1967. The disaster left seven dead, and the surviving leaders of the group returned to blame, infighting and guilt from which they never recovered. Much like the deaths that occurred during the South Canyon Fire, about which I read and blogged recently, the causes and blame for what occurred were not settled conclusively, leaving too much in doubt to allow the story to die. Good book if you want to revisit for hundreds of pages the fatal events. Tabor did a great job researching the book from all available angles, though his guesses as to the final events in the expiring lives of the dead are only as good as anyone else's.

2010 Official Rules of the NHL, National Hockey League. Included here for completeness, and to say this: hockey is my second-favorite sport to watch and play, but there are some rules it is just impossible to figure out by watching and playing it. This was informative, but I'm working my way through a more annotated but similar book now and would probably recommend that instead.

Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan's Minnesota, Toby Thompson. Chapter two of Positively Main Street is a rush and the best description of a Midwestern road trip I've ever read. The entire book is...wow...I cannot believe I had not read this already. It's like a less-assholey-Tom-Wolfe took off his white suit, focused on my favorite singer and went as far as having a fling with Dylan's high-school girlfriend. It's almost too crazy to be true and certainly is the earliest example of such detailed Dylanology, but written in the New Journalism style and is, as such, far from academic. It's a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Dearly Devoted Dexter, Jeff Lindsay. Second of four books in the series, so far. I like the premise, and the books at least match the TV series in holding my interest.

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas For Millions, Ben Mezrich. This was an accident, but I'm glad I read it. I arrived at the Vegas airport an hour and a half before my flight back to Chicago, and everything went to hell. As soon as I started to check in, the computer showed an hour and a half delay that hadn't appeared on the internet when I checked before leaving the Rio. Then, the United ticket counter area for people that had already checked in electronically but needed to check a bag was not working well; instead of using the Aztec bar code you can get on your phone, they made me print out boarding passes. Then they took me back to the front of the line to weigh my bag; the scale was in kilograms, which screwed them all up and I had to help them switch it to pounds. As a result of all this mess, I neglected to open the front pocket of my bag to retrieve my iPod and book for the now even lengthier afternoon, evening and night of traveling.

However, there are few things I enjoy more than hitting an airport bookstore. Yes, they primarily carry cheesy bestsellers and local-interest books -- and Hudson appears to have been cutting back even on those things in favor of more junk they can sell for snacks and last-minute souvenirs -- but I can always find something, sometimes even a new mountain-climbing story. But this time, being in Vegas and having just broken my table-gaming cherry (unsuccessfully, and on roulette), Bringing Down the House seemed more appropriate than the other choices.

It's a great story, and it seems most people have either seen the movie version 21 or the documentary version on Discovery or History or whatever basic-cable channel was running it. It's been a while since I saw the documentary and never saw the movie, but I can tell you the book is pretty good. It's a really quick read and pretty exciting considering it's the adventures of MIT students. Some of it occurs in the Rio, where I've stayed on both of my little visits, and some at the casino in Elgin, Illinois, a little west of here. I wish Mezrich had been able to get the other side of the MIT story from the casinos or their detective agency, but it seems like he probably got as deep into that world as is possible given their secrecy. Worth reading, but bring it on your flight to Vegas rather than the way back.

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And, with that, the blog is caught up -- at least until a few days from now. The Amazon Associates plug-in for Blogger is really awesome -- saved me a lot of multi-tab searching, copying and pasting to make all of the links happen.

Vegan nacho bake

2010-05-15T20:11:00.000-05:00

Ingredients:
One 15.5-oz can of black beans
One 10-oz. package Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet Cheese Alternative - Nacho flavor
14-oz. container of salsa
Approximately half of a medium-sized bag of tortilla chips
One large or two medium tomatoes
Tofutti (or similar) vegan sour-cream alternative

Directions:
Lightly oil the sides and bottom of a 9"x13" cake pan. Pre-heat oven to 325-F.

Cover the bottom of the pan with a single layer of tortilla chips, breaking any curved chips as necessary to make a flat layer. Slice the "cheese" as thinly as possible. Cover the layer of chips fully with strips of cheese, using approximately one third of the cheese.

Add another full layer of tortilla chips. On top of this, spread most of the salsa (as desired). Use the watery part of the salsa -- do not strain it to use only the larger chunks.

Drain and rinse the black beans. Add three tablespoons of water and heat til bubbly. Stir the beans and water roughly with a fork to form a sauce that is not as dry as refried beans. It is not necessary to fully blend all of the beans. Spread the beans on top of the salsa and add a second layer of cheese.

Cover this with a last layer of tortilla chips and a third layer of cheese. Slice the tomatoes thinly and spread these slices on top of the cheese.

Cover and bake for 15 minutes at 325-F. Increase heat to 500-F for an additional ten minutes, or just until cheese is melted. Remove, uncover and allow to cool before serving. Cut into squares and serve with "sour cream."

Can also be made in a 9"x9" pan by reducing quantities by a third.

Astronauts, a ballsy explorer and firefighters

2010-02-22T21:05:00.000-06:00

The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe. Reading this book was a belated fulfillment of my commitment to the "One Book, One Chicago" program of Chicago Public Library. I grabbed a copy at one of their events in Grant Park a year and a half ago but just now got around to reading it. Good book, probably my favorite by the smug man in the white suit. Quite frankly, I learned a lot. I know it's fiction, but well researched, and the relationship between the test-pilot programs with rocket planes and the space program was never really discussed in school.

Wolfe talks about some of the indignity of being an astronaut, with little control over one's destiny and adoration from the public but not from one's test-pilot peers. It was much cleaner than I think he would have written if he were talking about, say, anonymous college students instead of national heroes; given the rampant derision employed in his other books, it's a shame he held back here. Maybe he was just getting his literary wings under him.

On the other hand, Wolfe writes with the same curiosity and "that could be me" spirit that most people have when they look at astronauts and jet pilots. For those who, at some point while growing up, wanted to fly to space, this is going to be an engaging and thrilling read.

The Places In Between, Rory Stewart. Speaking of people who bring out the jealousy in me, who wouldn't want to be this man? Well educated, well reasoned, well traveled, with less than the usual complement of fear and having something to show for all of it is Rory Stewart, a Brit who, among other things, has walked across most of southern and south-east Asia. (I'm waiting for a book about his exploits in Nepal, but I would guess he has moved on to other things by now.) There is seemingly nowhere Stewart will not go in search of first-hand knowledge.

In this case, he walks across Afghanistan six months after the US invasion. In case you can't remember back that far, it's pretty rough. His lack of an American accent and command of several pertinent languages certainly helped, but he still narrowly slipped through more than a couple of rough spots. That aside, he is lucky and to be commended for making the journey through some potentially fatal weather. In doing, he gained (and later applied) a first-hand perspective on the people of central Afghanistan, their interactions with each other, the Taliban and the invading Western forces.

The book is an engaging story and a series of keen observations, not an overt message about the Afghan people. There are some nuggets of policy and political criticism, such as the comments about Bush mishandling the Koran or the entire chapter about Blair misusing the Koran in his very Western way -- something that went over well with the UK and US, but not so much in the Muslim world. However, the majority of the book seeks to share some of the stories, beliefs and experiences of the Afghan people that show a little bit of who they are. If you are going to read it, read it with that in mind and hope to understand a little more about the people that make up a country we still occupy.

Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire, John N. Maclean. I think it helps to work for a government agency and sit through a few NIMS classes before you read this book. But, really, it's not necessary. The story is tragic, as Maclean outlines organizational and individual errors that, uncorrected, lead to the death of 14 firefighters who could have done very little, short of having better luck, to prevent their own deaths. For me, take the smokey afternoons and evenings spent starting and then controlling planned burns in the field out back as a kid, add some steep, off-trail mountain trekking and a good bit of being handed a situation for which you were understaffed and less than fully informed, and I could feel some of the terror of being there.

As important as the story is the fact that Maclean, like his father before him (John N. Maclean helped to publish his father Norman's Young Men and Fire after Norman's death), wants to ensure that lessons are learned from these unfortunate and preventable deaths. When the tendency is to button everything up quickly, blame the most convenient targets, present a good story to the media and hope everyone moves on, very often the more proper course is to deliberately investigate the details until lessons can be compiled and widely disseminated. This book, or the technical report issued in the late '90s that highlights the same themes, should be required reading for those who may find themselves in similar situations or overseeing those who are.

In an urban exercise or event, the personnel problem may not be too few people but rather how to allocate the multitude; the intelligence problem may not be too little information but too much. But on a wildfire on top of a ridged, "inaccessible" mountain, the problem is too little information; it is too few people; and in this case, it was too little command-and-control structure and too little investment of necessary resources. Good people died, and it was really easy while reading to put together the string of seemingly unimportant mistakes that brought things to that unfortunate level.

Required reading. I really think this should be required reading. After a couple of NIMS classes. There are probably other books that are just as important, including others by Maclean or his father. But this is the first I've read of its type, and I found it valuable.

Ironically (or perhaps this was a result of my Amazon.com browsing habits), the book I just picked from the stack and began yesterday features a review on its back cover claiming the book is similar to Maclean's father's book -- but about a mountain climb instead of a forest fire. And inside that mountain book, the introductory pages mention Maclean Sr.'s forest-fire book. I hope it is as important and engaging a story as this was.

Transplant for my Roomba

2010-02-22T19:59:00.000-06:00

I just installed my Roomba's third battery pack. Roomby wasn't stepped on or anything, like DJ Roomba, but the first pack lost its capacity after a year or so, and a cell replacement didn't even last that long. I'm hoping that a lithium-ion upgrade is the solution. Unfortunately, the only Li-Ion battery packs offered by iRobot seem to be for their industrial (security, etc.) robots, not for the home models.

Protech Robotics sells a bunch of Roomba supplies, one of which is this lithium battery pack for the Discovery series Roomba. It isn't cheap, especially compared to the NiMH cell replacement packs that are sold for installation inside the stock battery case. But the amp hours are higher, and these cells should, in theory, hold up through more charge-discharge cycles.

My only concern is the fact that I'm using the stock iRobot fast charger and Roomby himself to charge this new pack. From everything I hear on the automotive side, lithium-cobalt battery packs (which I assume these are, though I'm not entirely sure) need to get past the issues of cell balancing and thermal stability. In this pack, each cell has its own circuit to prevent overcharge, excessive discharge and short circuits -- according to the website -- which should prevent most thermal issues. But I'm guessing there is no cell balancing happening, since it uses the dumb NiMH charger, so how long can this last? And how do I treat the pack to extend its life as much as possible?

So far, Roomby keeps on kicking for longer cleaning periods than I've been able to get from fresh battery packs in the past. The pack looks the same, but it is shockingly lighter than NiMH packs. I hope this helps keep him from getting bogged down on thick rugs during the humid summer months. I'll post an update after a few months of use.

The shadow of death

2010-01-09T14:56:00.002-06:00

In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley, Jonathan Waterman. The book is appropriately titled, because -- while it is not overly morbid -- this is not a story of triumph or achievement.

Waterman tells the story of Denali (McKinley, in the more recent, American nomenclature) over the past century or so, mainly concentrating on the '70s and early '80s. The early history of the peak is the story of exploration, first ascents via various routes and struggling through rough terrain and poor weather. The later history, unfortunately, is as commercial as that of Everest.

Waterman defends the Alaskan way of life, the traditional name for the mountain and preservation of natural areas large enough for bears and other wildlife to thrive away from human settlement. The main stories, however, paint pictures of various colorful and tragic characters as they deal with Denali in their own ways. These characters, including Waterman himself, fall into one of two camps. At their best, Denali is an obsession. This includes Waterman, many of the talented climbers and lovers of the mountain for its own sake. At humans' worst, Denali is just a trophy. For these people, Waterman quotes longtime Alaska guide Brian Okonek as saying, it's not about climbing, but having climbed, "then moving on to something else."

Whether one is obsessed with Denali or attempts to take it as a trophy, it seems death is a constant possibility. For the longtime lovers of the peak, death may come as a fitting end to a life spent haunting the peak and its surrounding landscape. For those less noble, who seek to experience the mountain before going home, death may come much more quickly (unless it is prevented by needless and costly rescues). Either way, life spent around Denali is full of death, and Waterman seems resigned to that fact.

Recent classics in music and mountains

2010-01-02T15:28:00.003-06:00

No Direction Home: The Life And Music Of Bob Dylan, Robert Shelton. The first of two well known and respected books I've finished in the past week took me quite a while, as I had posted earlier. Shelton thinks very highly of Dylan, and his generally good treatment of Bob in previous writings allowed him to get close enough to make this an authorized biography from an artist who spent hours toying with and lying to a press corp that annoyed the hell out of him through much of his early career. That said, though, it isn't a biography Dylan would write himself; such topics as drugs, the big divorce and the Christian conversion are treated gently but openly. The book makes Dylan human and likable -- nothing wrong with that.

The reason it took so long to get through it is simply that it covers a lot of material -- approximately 25 years of the professional life of a prolific songwriter and tirelessly touring performer means there are innumerable recording sessions, concerts and interviews, many of which are traded widely and on my bookshelf. Despite having all of these recordings and having listened to most of them, there was a lot to learn from this book. The one example I've been telling non-Dylan fans is this: The song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (written and recorded by Dylan, then covered by Eric Clapton, G&R and many others) wasn't just made up out of Bob's imagination; it actually fits into the script of the movie Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Check the soundtrack, watch the movie -- it will make a lot more sense when you actually see a sheriff dying as the guitar starts in on the simple chord progression. You'll also get to check out Dylan's acting skills. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I did not know that, nor the significance and feel of the 1974 tour as compared with the sensational RTR of 1975-6, nor the controversy behind the Isle of Wight show, or even as much as Shelton explained of Dylan's experiences in the Vineyard church during and following his conversion to Christianity.

The book isn't complete: Obviously, Bob Dylan is still going strong, and Shelton's narrative stops in 1985 after speeding through the most recent 10 years or so. That can be forgiven, because the real treat is the early history, the '60s, with Bob fighting for fame, then fighting his way through fame. Shelton was right there for all of it, or close enough to get a good sense for what was happening, and that experience makes his account of Dylan's early professional years the best. I doubt we'll see a story this detailed of Dylan's later years, but someone will try.

There is a reason this book has been through three successive paperbook printings since its original release in 1986. I bought mine used, and you will have to, too, but it's worth it.

Lost Mountains: Climbs in the Himalaya, Stephen Venables. Here is another classic, only available from used bookstores, also published in 1986 and reprinted. I never would have found this if Emily hadn't bought it for me for Christmas.

The primary thing that hit me about halfway through this book was how pure it is. Think of the accounts of the first summit on Annapurna I, then reduce the size of the expedition and take away the militaristic approach to the mountain. You're left with pure adventure and exploration by skilled climbers who know little about where in particular they are going and how they are going to reach the summit of whichever peak the choose. No one has ever been there before them, as far as history knows. And things never go quite according to plan, but they love it anyway.

Venables, in what I believe was his first book of several, tells two stories, each of one or more first ascents in relatively unexplored portions of Kashmir in northern India. The first is a success on a climb with just him and his climbing partner; the second is a mixed bag of failure and success with a larger expedition assisted by the Indian army. In neither is there the greed or summit fever found in many of the popular accounts of Everest, for example. These are largely the stories of the mountains themselves, along with details of what the climbers had to do to make their way through and up the peaks.

This is fine writing from a respected English climber with many accomplishments to his name. It is well worth reading if you care to keep the freedom and spirit of the hills alive in your mind until the next time you can be there yourself.

14 months of boredom

2009-12-30T20:23:00.002-06:00

The Hopeful Skeptic: Revisiting Christianity from the Outside, Nick Fiedler. I wanted to review this book because it came up in a search for upcoming publications about Nepal. The exploring-my-faith topic seemed close enough to home (at least, the home of a few years back). It seemed the combination may yield a bit of a Christian On the Road or watered-down Zen and the Art of.... That much wasn't true, and I didn't even see mention of Nepal in its pages, but the book isn't altogether without merit.

First, the disappointment: travel wasn't the theme of this book. The author seems to have spent his fourteen months of overseas living and working (not so much backpacking) in boredom. Maybe the idea was that he spent those months in thought, forming and reforming his beliefs, but surely something interesting happened in all that time? Granted, he relates a couple of experiences from that time, but most of the stories in the book are from his work in churches or with his podcast, all right at home prior to the big trip.

In fact, there wasn't a theme that was dominant enough to pull this thing together. The beginning was a rush of randomness. The end was a reasonable attempt to tie things together, but I was left wondering which of the innumerable strings planted earlier would be used to do so. The best chapters were topical, focused, and sandwiched in the middle, not beginning until fully halfway through the book.

During these topical chapters -- which in turn discuss the inerrancy of the Bible, the truth about who Jesus was, civil disobedience, traditional church structure and the efficacy of prayer -- you start to see what this book is all about. If travel wasn't to be the theme, perhaps it should have been the sorting of traditional beliefs into "keep" and "discard" boxes, as Fiedler mentions late. These chapters form a modern-day Credo, written by and for my generation of kids who grew up in church, then went to college and learned to poke gaping holes in things they had been taught were unshakable.

At this, Fiedler succeeds. I got over my disappointment with how unlike On the Road this book is when it started reading like Thomas Paine. (The author does mention Kerouac in one of the more pompous portions of the book, in case the reader had missed any similarities.) The Age of Reason was very much brought to mind when Fiedler started discussing the problems with believing what people tell you to believe despite the glaring inaccuracies on which those beliefs are based. The difference, I suppose, is that when Paine tore apart the Bible he ended up a Deist, but when Fiedler does a little of the same he ends up a "hopeful skeptic" and still a born-again Christian -- though, one imagines, one that attends a non-traditional sort of church.

I followed Tom Paine through his skepticism and out of the church; Fiedler couldn't convince me to follow him back to what does seem an honest and open understanding of what for many is a dogmatic and closed-minded faith. However, I admire his ability to stand on the edge as he does on the issues so many hold tightly, without question. If you are looking for a little more honesty in your Christianity while remaining attached to it, this Credo may seem more true than most. If you want stories about wandering the world with a backpack, look elsewhere.

Note: I accepted a reviewer's copy of this book but no other consideration from the publisher and am under no obligation to write a positive review. I write what I think and believe, nothing else, and the publisher has no effect on nor responsibility for what I write about this book. I request and write about books that appear interesting to me, and you should know when I get them for free.

Slow reading

2009-12-20T14:31:00.000-06:00

I've been working on my current reading selection for a while now. No Direction Home: The Life And Music Of Bob Dylan is taking me a long time: even though it's lengthy, it runs through Dylan's body of work pretty fast. I have a bunch of Dylan bootleg recordings, along with his albums, and it's nice to stop and listen to a recording of an event from the book. Even at my current speed I've just skipped through the bootlegs...I could spend a year doing this.

Anyway, almost done, and I'll blog more about it when finished.

Coupl'a books

2009-11-29T12:38:00.000-06:00

There is nothing very new or exciting out of these, but here are three good books I've finished recently:

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, Eric Schlosser. Again, this is not a new book, but it is well worth the read. Much has been said about the futility of America's "war" on drugs, but equally as fascinating are Schlosser's investigations into California's migrant fruit pickers and his history of the U.S. pornography trade.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeff Lindsay. I've enjoyed the first three seasons of the Showtime program "Dexter" on DVD over the past couple of months. The series is based on four (so far) books by Lindsay. Due to the relative simplicity of this book and the fact that it became not a movie but a lengthy season of TV, the book and the first season of the show are more similar than in most book-to-screen adaptations. In fact, this is one of the rare instances in which I'd recommend you watch the show first, so as not to spoil the suspense by reading the story. It's worth a quick read.

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, Richard A. Clarke. The best of the lot of my recent reading. Clarke comes across as earnest, not vindictive or bitter. He makes it very clear that his retelling is simply that and not a treatise on each of the important topics discussed. More can be said about these issues, including the rise of the recent Islamic fundamentalism, the impact of U.S. actions overseas on terrorist recruiting and actions, the necessary steps taken by the U.S. on homeland security and the future policy direction of the U.S. as it concerns the Muslim world in general. However, his brief history and explanation of these topics shows how correct some on the more left side of the pre- and post-9/11 world really were (and continue to be), how Clinton did more to address the issue of terrorism than previous Reagan or either Bush (despite his actions being labeled as Wag the Dog in nature at the time) and how much needs to be done to continue to address the serious problem the U.S. faces due to terrorism. I count myself among those who saw through the post-9/11 patriotism to see the real problems facing us -- not Iraq -- as well understood the pre-9/11 reality that our actions overseas were needlessly creating enemies. It was hard to sit through years of homeland security being run for the purpose of consolidating power and getting reelected and put in the hands of loyal politicians rather than competent managers. It's gratifying to see it in print from someone as well qualified and well informed as Clarke.

The Cider House Rules, the book

2009-11-04T20:10:00.001-06:00

The Cider House Rules, John Irving. If you’ve seen the movie, wait a while and forget it before you read this book. Otherwise, I think you will lack patience for the way things develop. It’s 200 pages, for example, before Homer Wells meets the two people who will take him away from the orphanage for the first time and become major forces in his life. It’s a beautiful ride, though, filled with character detail, ethical dilemmas, abuse, drug use, love, illicit love and general, unsure fumbling around as the characters make their own paths. One present but beautifully understated theme is the characters’ struggle with abortion; Irving is clearly on one side, but he accurately captures the real-world (as opposed to some self-righteous prick’s words from a pulpit) ethical debate from both sides.

I don’t want to say much about this book. I feel more with this book than with others that if I say too much, your experience of reading it will be degraded. Further, Irving (in the later pages, which I do not want to discuss for the latter reason) delves deeply into human emotion and need in a heartbreaking way – I simply do not want to write about it here.

One minor bit of criticism: the whole “Rules” concept – that portion of the title and its application throughout Homer’s life, again in the later pages of the book – that concept felt forced and amateurish. Perhaps it was because of title. Just as with a song, choosing a title that reinforces a concept from the text can overpower the impact of that concept within the text itself. I believe that is true in this case. (I do not believe it is to the point where, as is so obvious with some songs, the writer cannot express himself through the lyrics and makes an overt play at fixing everything by choosing a strong title to influence the listener’s perspective on the lyrics.) The rules narrative came together at the end, but before then, in the mid-to-late stages of the book, the reader was forced to make too much of a minor sub-text. I don’t want to blame it all on the title choice: the way it was written about was a little overbearing as well, but it’s partially just Irving’s tendency to avoid subtlety.

That said, though, I loved this book. I’ve loved everything of Irving’s that I have read so far (Hotel New Hampshire and The World According to Garp). They take me time to get through, much more than other books. There is usually a point maybe two thirds of the way through where I can no longer put it down. This is a twenty-five-year-old book, and I’m behind the times, but if you have not read it I’d encourage you to do so.

One more bit of discussion: I'm not here to review the related movie. However, I hadn't seen it in a while, so I re-watched it right after I finished the book. It may have won awards, but an Irving novel it is not. The complicated relationships of the book became a single, stale, typically Hollywood love-and-rejection tale. The less-than-normal sexuality that is a staple of the Irving novels I've read was almost completely excised (more on that in a second). The searching the book's characters do to find their way on the morality of abortion, the theme throughout that leads the reader to think it through for themselves given the situations portrayed? This was simplified into a blatant, unpalatable pro-abortion message that, I'd imagine, would only serve to reinforce what people already feel about abortion. In fact, the only screwed-up sexual situation that remained in the movie version was one that was necessary to force the abortion issue. I'd never watch the movie again, if I were you. Just read the damn book.

Surviving the end of the world, again.

2009-10-04T14:24:00.000-05:00

The Great Depression: A Diary, Benjamin Roth; edited by James Ledbetter and son Daniel B. Roth.

When the current two-years-old crisis came to an initial head in September of last year, I was of a pessimistic bent. I did not see a quick recovery or an easy or prosperous time for us over the next few years. While it's certainly possible that actions by government, industry and individuals may end up preventing a depression, our economy began collapsing from heights it had reached only due to speculation and greed. This is a cycle that repeats itself semi-regularly, to greater or lesser extents depending the heights reached and the level of government regulation in force at the time. While human greed and willingness to gamble for a piece of record profits will never change, it is shameful that, the lessons of the past forgotten, a significant part of the blame for the current crisis can be placed on 1990s-era deregulation.

What makes this book important is its clear similarities to the events of today. (While the editors admit to the release of the book being spurred by the current economic crisis, the cyclical nature of this type of event means the book would actually have been just as important in 1999 or 2006 as it is today.) In fact, it's hard to read the book and not get the two eras a little confused. Bank closings? Check. Recovery Act bills and government spending? Check. Bankruptcy? Check. Foreclosures and federal foreclosure prevention programs? Check. Partial and full takeovers of industry? Check. Smaller paychecks every year? Yep.

Beginning in June 1931, Benjamin Roth recorded in a series of notebooks his observations on the events in Youngstown, Ohio. Highlighted are the sad state of his legal practice throughout the depression years, bank closings and reopenings, steel production levels, growth in the ranks of the unemployed, and extreme deflation in the early years of the depression. Though having no investments of his own, Roth recorded stock prices and dividend payments, and much of the discussion surrounds the best way to have invested if he had been able. Roth worries most about a period of strong inflation spurred by the policies of the Roosevelt administration and about middle-class professionals such as him being bypassed by the growing recovery, but also about the anti-Semitism of the campaign by Republican Alfred M. Landon in the 1936 presidential election, Hitler's takeover of Europe, government control, socialism, losing the gold standard and the rise of organized labor, especially when it led to strikes and violent confrontation in Youngstown. He worries, too, about collecting what is due his practice without causing hardship.

I know little about investing, but Roth's progression through the years of the depression is evident. At first, he believes that government bonds would have been the only safe strategy; later fears of inflation push him toward stocks, preferred and common. When the recovery stumbled greatly in mid 1937, he comes to believe that only having a pot of cash available and shifting among different strategies the follow the curve of boom and bust is prudent. In the end, he aligns himself somewhere between the speculators who he blames for the crash and the long-term, bonds-only investor he would have been earlier in the crisis.

Roth's theorizing about investment strategy is nothing more, because he is too short on cash to do anything with his ideas. (While the book offers few details, the late 1940s and following decades were more profitable for Roth and his law office, which is still in operation with his son and editor at the helm. Roth and his wife also left behind the Benjamin W. and Marion B. Roth Foundation, a charitable organization.) What he offers in addition to his hypothetical musings on where to allocate non-existent savings is a picture of depression-era concern and struggle among the middle, professional class -- not the union workers, not the migrant fruit pickers and not the stockbrokers driven to despair by losing everything. It is an important perspective.

The parallels to today are rampant, despite the obvious changes over the years. I find it hard to sympathize when Roth complains that only the working class is getting the benefits of the recovery, this due to federal requirements for shorter work days, increased pay and recognition of unions; it's more likely that our own, forthcoming recovery will be felt first and most profoundly by the wealthiest 1% of our population, yet the middle class will still be bypassed as were Roth and his peers. The fear of socialism because of government spending I do not share, but many do today; bold government spending is what ended the Great Depression, though only when war gave the administration full license to do so. What I do share with Roth is resentment of those who play with the market as speculators, not as investors. He makes that distinction clear, and the blame is just as evident. Along with deregulation, those speculating in real estate, bad real estate loans and petroleum futures share a great deal of the responsibility for the fact that millions of us now make less money than we did two years ago, and that college graduates cannot find jobs, and that many formerly employed no longer have any job or are working well beneath their abilities. Yet he leaves room in his view of the market for a person not to hide his savings away but to invest it in growing business and government bonds, putting it to work while reaping the benefits -- but in a way that is both responsible and prudent.

I read this book in 24 hours. The format of short diary entries combined with the thrill of following the ups and downs of Roth's community and the country in light of today's situation made it easy. I'd recommend you pick it up and do the same.

Leave Everest alone

2009-08-13T20:29:00.003-05:00

High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed, Michael Kodas.

Kodas is a journalist with a long career at the Hartford Courant, and I occasionally sensed his journalistic need to hold back, to be even-handed and two-sided about events in which he was personally involved. However, this book's theme is one of personal angst, a vendetta against people who had wronged him and wronged those with whom he was allied. This theme was woven through an otherwise well researched, hard-hitting look at the catastrophe that is commercial mountain climbing.

Commercial mountain climbing expeditions make the worst of their chosen mountains. There is something beautiful in a mountain existing, reaching for the sky and standing as solid as anything can stand. There is an appeal to those heights, and some are fascinated enough to try to reach them. There is the triumph of a skilled, hard working mountaineer reaching the top of one of the world's great peaks -- this should, considering the number of serious high-altitude climbers in the world, be a rare occurrence. There is also the real risk that a climber that has overestimated himself or his partners or who has failed to recognize the unattainability of the route or the peak will die on its slopes.

There's no similar beauty or pure triumph for me in the thought of a non-serious climber, even one that has experience on lesser peaks, paying someone to guide them to the top of a great peak that they otherwise have no hope of reaching. There's no glory in simply taking step after step up and down a mountain on well trodden roads that have been prepared for you as the client; eating food transported and prepared for you; staying in tents that are set up and broken for you; breathing bottled oxygen for as much of the climb as possible to keep your body alive and your mind clear, but still having not to think but simply to follow. To treat base camp as a party, wasting away your time there unconcerned about anything other than staying in one spot because you have no work to do, no thought to put into the climb and when and how it will occur. Climbing the highest mountains in the world is not a vacation, it's not a party and it should never be simply a matter of paying someone else to fix your ropes, set your ladders in place, handle all the details, then pull you to the top. With so much taken care of, with so great a chance of attaining the summit promised and so little risk of death explained, there can be no respect for the mountain. This attitude cheapens the mountain and makes it into a cruel, unforgiving and unregulated tourist trap.

This is the sum of the book: turn mountaineering into a cash sport, and it will attract scavengers looking to make a dime or fund their own climbing on other people's money; the scavengers will, depending on their role on the mountain, steal your supplies, sell you unsafe supplies, count on you for assistance when they have trouble or trudge past you as you die.

While Kodas focuses too much on his own experiences on Everest, and considering there is no lack of controversy surrounding the past two decades of commercial climbing expeditions to Everest, he does well to broaden the issue, following it around the Himalaya and other ranges in other continents. He shows the tendency of Everest and its well funded patrons to attract the least principled of the field of climbers around the world.

Kodas also discusses the more respected operators on Everest, primarily Russell Brice. (Brice has, of course, faced his own army of critics during his years on the mountain, especially since the televised 1996 abandonment of David Sharp, who was largely unguided on the mountain, but who was left alone, dying, while climbers from several commercial expeditions nearly stepped over him on their way to the summit. Russell's crew filmed the dying Sharp with their Discovery Channel cameras, thus drawing much of the blame his way.) Brice takes good care of his clients and staff and has a good safety record. However, commercial, guided climbs are the problem, regardless of their behavior. The mountain and its ascent are not something to be purchased. Brice is part of the problem, whether or not he would admit it.

Everest belongs somewhere, perhaps but not necessarily, even, on a list of significant climbs by a significant climber, not on the resume of high-paying amateur. Everest and other prestigious mountains should be climbed by those respectful of the mountain and, as much as is possible with such a mountain, worthy of it, not by someone who thinks of it as the ultimate challenge to enliven their boring life as a salesman, banker, CEO, teacher or factory worker.

If you don't believe me -- if you are thinking maybe you'd try it someday if you could find the money and get yourself into good enough physical shape to satisfy a guide -- read this book and see what the experience does to people who save $30,000 and put it in the hands of a guide they believe will drag them to the top, one way or another. Read about the effect of summit fever on those involved in the 1996 disaster as detailed in Krakauer's Into Thin Air. Know what caliber of person is attracted to the lawless, wealthy expanse of camps on both sides of the mountain. Then, leave Chomolungma alone.

Another view of Annapurna

2009-07-26T09:47:00.006-05:00

Annapurna: 50 Years of Expeditions in the Death Zone, Reinhold Messner.

Having recently discovered Annapurna I lurking in the overexposed sky of an early-morning shot I took ten years ago from Pokhara, Nepal, I've spent some time with Emily in her darkroom trying to come up with a decent print of it (below is just a rough attempt to fix the contrast using Paint.NET). We are still working on that, but in the meantime I finished Messner's book, which had been sitting on my to-read pile for a few months.

Annapurna I is at the far left over the shoulder of Sarangkot, as seen from Pokhara.

The dedication reads, "For Maurice Herzog," and the book ends, "[C]ongratulations, M[onsieur] Annapurna" (referring to Herzog). Annapurna is, surprisingly, in great measure a defense, fifty years later, of the actions taken by Maurice Herzog in leading the first successful climb of Annapurna -- at that time, of course, the only 8000-meter peak to be successfully climbed. Messner's is a well informed perspective, having the benefit of climbing hundreds of peaks of the course of a career as what many would consider the finest mountaineer, living or dead. He climbs without many of the expected modern conveniences, such as bottled oxygen, and thus has a better grasp than most on what an 8000-meter climb in 1950 must have looked like to those involved.

Further, his defense of Herzog's behavior in 1950 and following is informed by the similarities between his own experiences and Herzog's. Both have dealt with a high volume of criticism: Herzog for demanding complete loyalty, insanely pushing for the top without regard for safety and censorship following the expedition; Messner for pushing ahead without regard for his less prepared brother Günther during their successful 1970 ascent of the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, during which Günther was killed on the descent. Both have parlayed their fame into both political and literary success, both of which escape most of their peers.

Still, this book is not what I had expected: the consummate mountaineer (Messner) spending paragraph after paragraph extolling the virtues, drive and leadership of someone who is more commonly believed to have arrived at his success somewhat illegitimately, not as an accomplished climber or mountaineer at all prior to the Annapurna expedition but as a top-down choice by a militaristic French Alpine Club. (To be fair, it was the trend in those days to take a militaristic approach and large, well organized expeditions in attempts on high peaks.) His language is too grandiose, too obsequious, too kiss-ass to be taken seriously. I tended to give the more outrageous portions ("congratulations, M. Annapurna!", for example) a little credit for being written in German then translated to English, but the worshipful tone is definitely over the top.

After 80 pages, Messner turns to other ascents of Annapurna, including his own successful 1985 expedition that led to the first successful ascent of the Northwest Face, an enormous, 3000-meter wall of ice and rock. This was climbed in his usual way, with a relatively small group of climbers, each with a hand in advancing the climb. In total, though it had been fifty years from the French ascent to the time of this book's writing in 2000, 120 expeditions had put 106 people on top of Annapurna, while over 50 had lost their lives. It's not a long history, and Annapurna is no Everest, no tourist mountain for high-paying thrill-seekers or TV shows. But what a beautiful area, a lovely set of peaks rising from the Kali Gandaki where so many Nepalis live and so many tourists walk.

The book also includes many excellent pictures of the mountain and the region -- far better than what you see above, these are very good examples of mountaineering photography.

Reading again

2009-07-13T13:30:00.020-05:00

After a pretty long literary dry spell, I started completing books again back in April on a trip to a work conference in Florida. It was a good book and a pretty boring trip, so I actually finished something. Now I'm on a roll, so here are the most recent reads:

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, Sudhir Venkatesh. The Robert Taylor Homes housing project is no longer a huge part of Chicago's south side, and they are tearing down the remaining projects under federal supervision right now. Regardless, this book illustrates vividly a part of life in the city I would not otherwise see. It's not a broad, high-level research book, though Venkatesh knows his facts especially pertaining to the underground economy; instead, it is a personal account of life with one of the gangs that controlled not just the drug trade, but the Homes' microeconomy as a whole. The futility of the drug wars, evidenced by the amount of reliance that the gangs have on their income from that part of their business, shines through, as does the respectable and sad struggle of the majority of the Homes' residents.

Bad Sex: We Did It, so You Won't Have To by the writers of Nerve.com. Add another book to the list of things I read some might find mildly disturbing or unnecessary, but this was worth it. It's hilarious at times, hot at other times but mainly just plain disturbing. Everyone has had bad sex, I suppose, and some of these writers have had the worst of the worst. Inappropriate but convenient partners, vampirish cutters, insane partners and a mean-spirited marathon are just some of the stories. It's a good and fun read.

The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes, Deborah Nelson. This is a rundown and analysis of boxes full of files, released by the Pentagon after decades of being classified, that detail the (usually minimal and unsatisfactory) results of U.S. government investigations into scores of Vietnam war-crime allegations. My Lai was the tip of the iceberg, and Nelson visits the memorial sites in Vietnam where residents still remember the horrors. I didn't see the book as anti-veteran at all; it's more anti-cover-up, and allows, in a lot of cases, some veterans to speak up about things they'd needed to express for decades. I'm not expert on the war, but Nelson and the reports on which the book is based seem to have added an important piece to our understanding of those years.

The Royal Ghosts: Stories, Samrat Upadhyay. Well written short stories about Nepali life, by a Nepali. The final story concerns the murders of the royal family by one of their own in 2001 -- not the murders, but the reaction to it by regular people. That sums up the book: life in Nepal, relationships, family and jobs, under the monarchy, with the Maoist uprising's ebbs and flows, as lived by the people of the beautiful country. I love Nepal's terrain, love the people's easygoing attitude about life and the way it fits their religions and have worried for the past ten years about the future of the country. This book shows how the people deal with and embrace the life they have.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, Tucker Max. Wow, just wow. This is the first book in a while to have me laughing out loud -- in bed, on the beach, in the car, wherever I read it. It's disgusting, but mainly just because he is brutally honest. Worth reading, just so you can see how base the dating scene can be, I guess, and definitely worth reading for the laughs.

The Outfit, Gus Russo. I'm no expert on the Chicago Outfit or any other part of the mob in America. Hell, I haven't even seen the Godfather series or made it past season two of The Sopranos. But I wanted to know more about how this city grew up, but this is a major part of it. Sure, it concerns the rise of Vegas, the development of Hollywood and countless other national and international institutions. But the base was here, and the main heirs of Al Capone were here as they schemed. It had what I was looking for: history of the various mayors and their interactions with the Outfit, along with the aldermen, police officers and ward bosses that were made or otherwise in the Outfit's pocket. But it explained so much more, as well, such as the continuous takeover of underworld schemes by the upperworld (Vegas, offtrack betting, lottery, etc.), which kept the Outfit on its toes looking for new sources of income (parallels to a good solution to the misguided, expensive "war on drugs" and gang violence, anyone?). Russo does a masterful job of sticking mainly to the facts; I've seen some reviews question his use of single, unnamed sources and hearsay, but the book seems to be respected as one of the most factual on the topic. His only obvious diversion is one that comes up often: he holds law enforcement and the legal system in general in low esteem for their focus on Italians when, first, the other waves of immigrants had done much the same things to survive initially in this land, and, second, the upperworld capitalist bosses went unpunished and unpursued for what would be considered greater crimes against humanity.

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America, James Green. This is another bit of Chicago history I needed to have filled in. It fits somewhere between Sinclair's The Jungle and the various books I read a couple of years ago about the Weather Underground, which blew up the statue commemorating the police version of the Haymarket tragedy a couple of times during the late '60s and early '70s. Maybe it is needless to say this, but the book is sad: the "police riot" at the 1968 convention is better remembered, but, hell, there were like 6 or 8 in the years detailed in this book. The event in question, which ended with police officers shooting people (including their own in their tight formation) at random, leads to the tragic hanging for murder of four men who were leaders in the labor-rights movement but who had nothing to do with a bomb that was thrown (by a person never determined and therefore never charged) and were, as stated by later Illinois Governor Altgeld when he pardoned the remaining defendants following the hanging, railroaded by a partial judge who acted more like a prosecutor, a lying prosecution, a police department which violated the rights of thousands of labor agitators with false arrests and beatings, a jury containing none of their peers and controlled by powerful capitalists and a press -- local and national -- that predetermined guilt and advocated for premature sentences of death. And their death was on charges of murder, yet they were judged purely as conspirators for the radical ideas they preached in response to violent suppression of strikes and other workplace actions. It was pure bullshit, as Green tells it, from a "democratic" country that had just pardoned the leaders of the breakaway South following the Civil War: in this case, the men in question had verbally challenged the capitalists, and that was somehow less acceptable than Jeff Davis' statements AND actions that led to the deaths of >600,000. At the time, and during the years following the state-sponsored murder of these four men, the point was made that abolitionists all over the country should have been strung up for murder charges based on the legal reasoning used to convict in this case. Where was free speech, what happened to freedom of the press and what of the free thinking we supposedly value so much? It's amazing how many times various parts of this country and various contingencies in commerce and government have dragged us so close to the brink of being a true police state, and yet we let it happen again and again whenever overly cautious and unthinking citizens get the shit scared out of them by a group of businesses, a CPD Inspector Bonfield, Senator McCarthy or Dick Cheney. What's a little repression, as long as it makes us feel comfortable? Fucking asshats.

And, finally, who doesn't like a good Hardy Boys book? Yesterday I had, in a flash of boredom, the thought of looking online for some Hardy Boys e-books, assuming that some of the copyrights surely had expired. This was not hard to find: www.goanwap.com/ebook-0-0-0.html. Take a look -- they have Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and some others. It is by no means complete, but without collecting all of the books how else would you get a chance to read both the original and the revised version of thirty-some old books that are only published now in a sometimes significantly revised form? I'm most of the way through one now -- Dead on Target, the first in the Casefiles series. I used to have a bunch of the books, original, Digests and Casefiles, but now I only take these three from apartment to apartment with me:

The Missing Chums, printed sometime between 1932 and 1951; The Hidden
Harbor Mystery, printed between 1959 and 1962; Detective Handbook, revised
1972 edition from 1990 printing.

Spotify signups are back, new U2 album

2009-02-25T14:50:00.004-06:00

Well, apparently I was wrong to think there was no way to get a new Spotify account from the US (or other countries where it is not allowed) without having someone do it for you from outside the country. There is a way to do it, using access to two VPNs in different countries to get past the blocks on Spotify's website. I figured it out while signing up one friend, and promptly signed up another. If anyone wants an account let me know -- quickly.

It's a few steps beyond what was required before, but still very doable -- hell, I figured it out this time, instead of relying on tips from the interwebs. And you don't even need an invitation code, though I still have plenty of codes if anyone really needs one.

I'm at home, sick, today, and keeping up with my emails and calls but also laying in bed and listening to music. I'm part-way through the new, unreleased U2 album, No Line On the Horizon. It doesn't appear in Spotify when you search for it, but users registered in the UK and some other Spotify countries can listen by clicking the direct album link: spotify:album:5yqMA7IvahYJc53ewRAMnP.

I am a fan of early U2, not so much the last two albums. Also, listening to Live In Paris yesterday, I got so annoyed with Bono constantly shouting phrases and the names of each song before and after performing it that I turned it off. But I'm giving this a chance. So far, I'm not a fan of the up-front, droning whole notes in "Moment of Surrender" and some of that same feel, different sound, in "No Line on the Horizon." But the music does seem like a good step for them, overall.

No more new Spotify accounts

2009-02-14T16:23:00.004-06:00

The second workaround for accessing Spotify from the US was apparently closed off right after I used it. It isn't causing me any practical problems right now, but I went back to create accounts for friends and wasn't able to.

That workaround was using the free trial of Ivacy's subscription-based VPN service, which has a server in the UK that was perfect for Spotify. I didn't come up with that on my own, and apparently a lot of people read the same thing I did and used it. I should have figured that would happen and did everything I needed to do right away when I found out about it.

I have this to say to the Spotify staff: Stop trying so hard to shut us down! You have to be very appreciative of the fact that so many people the world over are going through all sorts of steps to get around your geo-ip blocking system. That means people love what you have created and want to use it! Of course, you have license agreements and you have to follow them to maintain your reputation, to continue your operation and to expand it further. But you could make a show of that while allowing these workarounds to function for longer periods of time before you shut them down. I think it's possible to keep this out of the mainstream (preserving your license agreements) while allowing it to grow underground in prohibited countries (ensuring you have a ready market in those countries when licenses, marketing and ad sales can be expanded).

Spotify workaround

2009-02-02T14:24:00.003-06:00

EDIT: See the next post. This workaround is no longer functional.

If you were lucky enough to get a Spotify invite during the period when it was really easy to go through a proxy in the UK to invite yourself, only to find that the program started to realize you weren't where you claimed to be, don't give up.

And if you didn't get an invite during that weekend, there's still hope.

Short story, I'm back. It doesn't even take that much technical knowledge...just occasional access to a VPN in the country where you live. And by "live," I mean "live." VPN access can be quite cheap for the few bytes that need to be exchanged to make this happen.

I love this service, and I can't wait until they can fill out their catalogue a bit more (they say they have millions more songs under agreement awaiting the processing required to add them to the database). And I can't wait until they really open it up to listeners in the US. This is going to be huge...really huge.

Windows 7 update

2009-02-02T13:51:00.003-06:00

A few thoughts on my experiences so far with the Windows 7 Beta that's been running on my laptop (my main computer) for a few weeks now:

- Speed is good, except when coming back from hibernation. Recovery from hibernation takes approximately twice as long as it did under Vista. It's exceedingly annoying, because I rely on this feature daily, almost never shutting down. Even a non-techy friend who occasionally uses the laptop noticed immediately.

- 2 gb of memory is good, but for typical internet and office tasks it doesn't seem to have improved much over the minimum 1 gb recommended by Microsoft for both Vista and Windows 7. If you're running Vista, I would try running 7 without any upgrades -- it should be fine.

- Since I don't restart much, I've had the little red X box from the corner of a long-forgotten dialog box floating on top of everything in the middle of my screen for about a week now. It's almost annoying enough to make me restart...tho maybe I'll just name him instead. "Closeybox" is in the lead for names right now.

- The release date needs to be moved up. This OS is in much better shape in beta than Vista was when it shipped. Because spinning hard drives are so last-millennium, I want to put an SSD in this thing, and I want to time that to the ship date of Windows 7 so I can start fresh with the final release rather than a three- or four-step upgrade (Vista, 7 Beta, 7 RC1, 7). Another year is too long to wait for that.

Anyway, I'm happy overall, and I'd encourage you to try it. At this point you may need to find someone that downloaded it already, because I think the beta window is closed.

Toilet paper

2009-01-13T21:54:00.005-06:00

We go through a lot paper products in this country. All sorts of things are available in "disposable" versions to save time, work, mess, whatever. Some of those I try to avoid -- paper plates and cups, baking pans, plastic bags and especially anything styrofoam. I still use a lot of paper though, because some things just don't work well if they're made from anything else.

Toilet paper is one of those. It may work to use leaves or the fingernails of one's left hand, but I'm pretty certain that I will stick with paper on this one. So, I bought some green toilet paper. Not green-colored, but recycled.

This stuff is 100% recycled, 80% post-consumer, whitened without chlorine, dye-free, safe for septic systems (so plenty safe for municipal treatment systems) and made by a company, Seventh Generation, that has a good reputation for making environmentally friendly but usable products.

You can take a look at the TP on Amazon. Buying it in bulk there saves me trips to the store, ensures a good supply so I won't substitute normal paper, and makes it relatively inexpensive. Plus, I love shopping for weird things on the interwebs.

We're still on our first roll of the stuff here, and it's been a week and a half, I think. The rolls last forever. The two-ply version is strong and effective. It does not fall apart, nor does it disintegrate like some of the really soft, normal paper. It's not "quilted Charmin," but it seems far softer than the bulk-supplied stuff used in most commercial buildings -- this may be because of its relative thickness. In short, I really like it and am not at all disappointed to have 47 more rolls to use up.

I know it seems weird, but consider it. Widespread usage of this stuff will save trees, reduce landfill waste and reduce water usage -- each by incredible amounts.

Windows 7, insane calendar syncing

2009-01-11T16:08:00.003-06:00

This morning I installed the beta of Windows 7 that M$ made available last week. Looks good, for the most part. It seems slightly slower than Vista -- just my general impression. However, I'm a little short on RAM, only 1 gig, and I'm hoping it's better when I install the 2 gigs I bought off Cody's Christmas gift card. I think when Windows 7 is actually released I shall start with a fresh install on a solid-state disk and get rid of this slow laptop hard drive. That should make it run insanely fast, at least for this aging computer.

No real hardware or software problems to speak of. Audio didn't work at first, but I ran through the "update driver" process, which told me my driver was already updated but made me restart, then it worked. This is on a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop with AMD. All of my apps seem to work fine, though every title bar gets a link to send feedback to M$ -- unnecessary and prone to accidental clicks, but I guess feedback from a couple million users is at least part of the reason for this beta.

I love the pop-up list of available wireless networks. That saves a few clicks, it's fast and such a no-brainer that I wonder why it hasn't been a part of previous OSs and of the tray utilities shipped by wifi device manufacturers. The combined quick-start and task bar is an interesting change. Not bad, I think. It seems to have the benefit of keeping your commonly used apps in the same order on your taskbar all the time, regardless of which was opened first.

The laptop had shipped with Vista Home Basic, so just having the Aero interface again is nice (the Beta is the Ultimate version). I'm not a big fan of desktop widgets...I went through a phase, but now I find them a waste of my time and CPU cycles. I no longer use Outlook and have been relying on Windows Mail for the past couple of years. That's gone, but the free Windows Live Mail is better: more full-featured, including a Calendar. It took me more than a couple of minutes, though, to get Live Mail's interface switched around to something more of my liking.

Speaking of calendars, my work appointments now show up on my home computer. It's not exactly necessary -- I did it because I can. But it's automated and fucking cool: Email and calendar at work are in (don't get me started) Groupwise 7. The Blackberry server does two-way syncing of calendar, contacts and email with my work phone. Gmail's Blackberry sync application runs on my phone and does two-way syncing of my calendar and contacts with my Gmail account. Using Gmail's private calendar-publishing address, that calendar is imported (one-way only) into Windows Live Calendar (calendar.live.com). Windows Live Calendar, in turn, syncs with the calendar portion of Live Mail on my laptop. That's two-way syncing, but it doesn't matter because the jump from Gmail to Windows Live breaks the two-way chain. I think that's four hops, and my nerdy self loves it.

As an added bonus, every time I reserve an IGO car (Chicago non-profit car-sharing service), they send the reservation to my Gmail calendar, meaning it shows up everywhere else. I'm on the lookout for more things like that. For instance, my $99 Chicago Fire season ticket ($6.60 per game!) should put itself on my calendar automatically.

In other news, Spotify updated itself and now knows that I'm "traveling" in the US, not logging on from the UK, where I "live." Dammit! I'd hate to try to push all of that streaming music through a UK proxy just to get around it. They need to open up the trial to the US soon.

Palin's handle on things

2008-09-27T22:42:00.001-05:00

I love this interview excerpt from McCain's well prepared pick for VPOTUS:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Her answer is simply inane jabber, a collection of unrelated thoughts she obviously has left over in her mind from what I assume are constant sessions with campaign advisers in attempt to teach her things that someone in her situation is supposed to know already. More from the always level-headed Fareed Zakaria here.

Idiocy

2008-09-07T07:58:00.004-05:00

Amount Cheney offered to Georgia to rebuild (mostly militarily, I'd guess) after a war provoked by a president overconfident in his own potential and the West's support: $1 BILLION, accompanied by continued, bumbling efforts to control Georgia and the region's energy supply while refusing to cooperate with Russia.

Amount offered to Cuba to rebuild after a hurricane that caused billions of dollars of damage: $100,000, far offset by our misguided policy of embargo that only hurts the people of Cuba and will never bear positive results.

Pushing Cuba back into the arms of an expanding Russian influence while we pretend that influence is still dead will definitely work the second time around. Fucking morons.

Latest books

2008-04-20T15:48:00.004-05:00

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass). 930 pages or so, but only took a couple of weeks once I started it. I'm not much for anything that rings of science fiction, I didn't get into Harry Potter and I haven't read Tolkien since I was a kid (and didn't care about the movies when they came out). But this was really enjoyable to read. Imaginative and very engrossing, but there were times when some details seemed slightly inconsistent. However, I read fast and am not above skimming, so maybe I just missed some facts that would have made it all make more sense. Lots of names, as is typical for this kind of thing, but for once I seemed to remember characters throughout the series -- I'm not sure if that's due to something different about Pullman's writing or just my attention to it.

Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, Alexandra Robbins. Similar to My Freshman Year, this is a sort of amateur anthropology about college life. Definitely more realistic and less voyeuristic than anything on MTV or rumored in popular culture on this topic. The author's approach seemed valid (though her IM "away message" monitoring and her use of those messages throughout the book seemed stupid to me), and what she writes is informative and interesting.

While we're on the topic of college life, boink: College Sex by the People Having It, edited by the editors of Boston University's boink magazine. The magazine made big news when it started, and it's lasted longer than a couple issues despite the scrutiny and opposition, so I figured it was worth buying the book. It's not material from the magazine -- I believe it's all new, just for the book. They have done a good job with the magazine, I guess (never seen a copy), and the book is similar, simultaneously lighthearted and serious, shying away from being sensational or shocking.

Tibet

2008-03-18T18:46:00.003-05:00

My own country has a history that shows it's not above taking what it wants regardless of the wishes of the people who previously were in possession of what's being taken. China taking Tibet in 1951 is the latest major chapter in a story of various conquests and dynasties in Tibet; though I personally think China's claim is tenuous and that Tibet should be independent of China if its people want it to be, I'm not much upset about that specific issue at this point.

The bigger issue is the cultural and religious war China has waged against the Tibetan people. Forced assimilation through injecting ethnic Chinese residents into Tibet is a very deliberate action intended to dilute the strength of the Tibetan society. Also, overt interference in Tibetan Buddhism by China's atheist government isn't just a lack of church-state separation or restriction on personal freedoms; it is worse, part of China's attempt to keep Tibetans from being Tibetans. Tibetans don't practice the American form of Tibetan Buddhism, nor is their religion a separate part of life similar to even the more devout of American Christians. Religion is life, intertwined on ever level through thought, practice and ceremony.

China hopes that if Tibetans are diluted, and if their religion, so intertwined with their life and culture, is restricted, with practice restricted and religious leaders handed down by the Party, the Tibetan hope for independence can be quelled. It's possible that they might make that work for a while, maybe as long as they are around, but it's reprehensible. And such repression leads to events like those of this past week, which leads the Chinese government to shut things down, through violence when they feel it's necessary.

Brings me back to the beginning...worse things have been done, but China's actions in Tibet for the past six decades have been horrible, and I refuse to go along with China's newfound legitimacy and respectability on the world stage. Since the Olympics are the most recent and public representation of that respectability, I won't be watching them. I have nothing against the athletes that risk their lungs in China's polluted air to compete; nor, in particular, do I have a problem with the broadcast networks and their advertisers. But I do have a couple TiVos that record viewer statistics that get used now in some measure to determine ratings, and I'm not adding positive viewing hours to those ratings -- especially during the opening ceremony.

One more thing before I forget -- shutting down Everest? Who the hell do they think they are, shutting down their side of the mountain and then bribing Nepal to do the same on their side, for weeks during prime climbing season, to protect their fucking image against any possible protests? Granted, it'll mostly impact rich tourist-climbers, but still. It annoys me when George W Bush insulates himself, using guards paid out of my tax money, from all possible opportunities for someone, one of us, to disagree with him; but to shut down the highest mountain in the world for weeks to prevent negative publicity? They think that will work? Idiots.

So, if you want to join me, at least skip the opening ceremony. You want to watch a bunch of world leaders sitting in their boxes next to President Hu and his Party? Skip it. And if you're not into sports, make a point of skipping the whole damn thing. It'll be back in four years (two if you like skiing). In Canada. Canada is nice. They even stand up to the US once in a while (most appreciated lately when they didn't give in on various issues related to this administration's propensity to torture humans).

I should probably end by saying, "Free Tibet."

Books..

2008-01-03T13:45:00.002-06:00

I've been reading a lot more over the past few months due to getting stuck in airports (because of O'Hare delays). I might be missing a few, but I remember these:

Himalayan Odyssey, Parker Antin with Phyllis Wachob Weiss. Story of a mostly illegal (at the time) trek, poorly supplied, with little in the way of accurate maps, through western and central Nepal. Interesting especially when he got to the area of the country with which I'm somewhat familiar.

The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris. Never saw the movie, unlike everyone else in the western world, so this was new to me. Good, obviously.

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. Saw the movie several times first, and that followed the book pretty closely. That pretty much ruined it for me, but this was an enjoyable, quick read. The ending of the book is better, more ambiguous. The "deep" sections of the book may have been quoted by the narrator in the film, but they have a little more impact when you can read and reread them.

High Fidelity, Nick Nornby. Movies, to me, reduce a story to its basics -- people and events. This book is actually about something, and I'm sure the movie must be, too, though I missed that. I loved it and read it in just a few days. The movie seemed to have stayed pretty close to the book, so that helped make it a quick read. But I really read it, and I loved some parts of it, some paragraphs about sex, life, relationships.

Robust cell service

2008-01-03T13:20:00.001-06:00

At midnight on New Year's, texting stopped. At least on US Cellular. For two hours, nothing would go through in either direction on various phones, various towers.

There's a small possibility the carrier had millennium problems 8 years later than expected, but I'm guessing the system got overloaded with congratulatory messages, such as my own broadcast message of "happy fuckimng [sic] new years!" This on a night with no electric outages, no disasters, natural or otherwise, no riots and no terrorist attacks.

(I hate to even mention that like I'm raising the specter of terrorism to make this problem seem bigger than it is, a la Giuliani, but you would have thought it anyway.)

I think it's a problem when your infrastructure is all up and running, and you can't handle an infusion of messages. Or calls, or any content. There's not a chance in hell that our cell-phone systems could be of any use to us in the case of a bigger, more important event. The New Year's midnight crowd is a small subset of the population, limited in age and desire to deal with amateur night just to watch a countdown. When 100% of the population is trying to call or text, with infrastructure that may be inoperable, NOTHING is going to get through.

Police, fire and emergency management have radios to rely on, even if their Nextels get knocked out. Some of us have ham radios, thank god. But most of us have only cell phones (unless you're in your home with a working phone on the wall), and broad user-agreement language that forces us to accept crappy service shouldn't be an excuse for companies to skimp on the reliability and spare capacity of their cell systems.

A few new books...

2007-10-07T18:43:00.002-05:00

I sorta fell behind on this:

A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby. It's good...really interesting idea (the stories of a few unrelated people that planned to kill themselves but didn't, all on the same night at the same location, told alternately through each of their voices). I can't say much about what I liked and didn't like without ruining the book. This is the same author that wrote High Fidelity, which apparently was a book before a movie (filmed right down the street from my apartment, actually).

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini. Really, really sad. Geez. You learn a few things about the history behind what the hell is going on with our little war over in Afghanistan, though it's a novel so probably not the best source. And it's just sad. I held off on reading this for a year or so after it was first recommended because it sounded like it would be either boring or too American in its perspective, too intent on justifying US action there or something. But really, it's neither of those, and I see why it's been so popular. I read it really quickly -- couldn't put it down.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini. Good follow-up to the previous book. It's not a sequel. It's not the same story, though the setting and multi-decade format are similar. Given, though, that it is similar at its base, it's a completely different book, and it's not the poor follow-up you might expect from a second novel. Very good, and I read this one even more quickly than the first one due to some airline troubles at O'Hare and LGA last weekend.

Diary of a Sex Fiend: Girl With a One-track Mind, Abby Lee. One year of entries from a blogger that remained anonymous until like three days after this book came out, at which point things kinda went to hell for her. It's really not as scandalous as it sounds, and it's not without its own bit of redemption towards the end. Nothing about her life is all that over the top -- it's mostly different just because it's honest. Quick, fun read.

Also, I'm re-reading The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto, which I had listened to as a book on tape a few years ago. After finally visiting Manhattan a week ago, the book makes a lot more sense...not that I'm now an expert on NYC from a day wandering there, but having seen the river and the island helps understand the book. And it's such a good story, as I think I mentioned here before; this country owes a lot of its identity to the Dutch of New Amsterdam, not the English that came later.

Moved

2007-09-15T12:07:00.000-05:00

I moved the hosting for this blog back to Blogger. It was cool to have it on my own hosting account just for backup purposes so that Google/Blogger wouldn't own my whole life. But the new layout features the Blogger has been adding are cool, and you can only use them if the site is hosted by them (I'm not sure why that is, but that's the deal). For instance, the new way of laying out the archive (look over on the left there) is much improved.

blog.mattandkaristewart.com and www.mattandkaristewart.com/blog redirect here now.

Laundry detergent

2007-08-25T13:38:00.001-05:00

This may seem like a stupid thing to blog about, but I've finally switched laundry detergents. I'm tired of buying something that, while it works well, is known to contain a bunch of chemicals that are harmful to the environment both during production and when released into the wastewater stream (or septic system, for some of you).

Here's a page that has some fairly basic info about the common ingredients of standard detergents: http://www.laundry-alternative.com/detergentsinfo.htm. And here is EPA's summary of some of them: http://www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/laundry/techfact/keychar.htm. Other than the obvious concerns about the toxins created during production of these chemicals and the low degradation of some of these materials once released into the environment, there's also the issue of chemicals infusing our clean clothes and constantly rubbing against our skin. Some sensitive persons are even allergic to clothes washed with standard laundry detergent.

So I resolved to buy something better for the environment and for all of us, but not too expensive and at least similar in cleaning performance. And I've started using this Amazon.com scheduled delivery thing (mainly because I love drinking Slim Fast strawberry shakes for breakfast, and that powder is expensive and sometimes hard to find locally). So I settled on this product from Seventh Generation. Actually, I bought the lavender-scented variety, but that's currently unavailable from Amazon.

A case of four bottles showed up a few days later via UPS. We've used it a few times so far this week, and it seems good. It definitely smells better -- a very light, natural lavender scent replaces the chemical smell of Tide or whatever. It seems to clean well. From what I can tell by poking around online, the company has done a reasonably good job of developing this product with a good balance of price, performance and sustainability. As one reviewer pointed out, a couple of the ingredients are mined, so it's not all plants and good feeling. But this looks pretty damn good in comparison to what we were using before.

One note from the label on the bottle: typical detergents use petroleum based-ingredients. I haven't seen a well-to-water-treatment-plant comparison on these things, but assuming transportation and other petroleum impacts of production and distribution are equal, using a non-petroleum-based detergent could save a lot of oil. It seems that every portion of the political spectrum in this country gives lip service, at least, to saving oil -- for various reasons. So try some of this stuff.

Love the city...

2007-07-17T17:08:00.000-05:00

And this site tells you exactly how much you can love a given part of the city: www.walkscore.com.

For example, here is an intersection close to our new apartment with the same score as our new place: 82 out of 100, not bad. Here's what we would have if we actually lived at the Happy Village.

And here's where I grew up, in drive-everywhere land.

You have to love Chicago's mail service

2007-07-11T17:50:00.000-05:00

You know your mail service is awesome when an envelope mailed First Class from Portland, OR, to Chicago takes exactly one month. That's incredible service. They must be using only the fastest horses nowadays.

The reason it takes so long is that this envelope is large and yellow and padded. That means, to the local post office here (I won't say which branch or zip code), that it's not mail -- it's a package! And, as we all know, delivery of packages is optional. Even FIRST CLASS packages.

Normal mail shows up here every day. It's even usually at the same time every day, not too late. Unless we get the one carrier that seems to do poor work, the mail isn't usually stuffed into our box or damaged in any other way.

But packages -- now, they get delivered once a month on the random days when no one from the post office is on vacation or calls in sick.

About two weeks ago I was waiting for a package. I had tracking information for it, because it was from Amazon and they put delivery confirmation on their packages. So I saw it come to Chicago (took two days or so), and I saw it get dropped at our local post office. There it sat. Nothing changed for two weeks. During that time, I called the post office four times. One time I spoke with someone who said they would find and deliver it (that didn't happen). The other three times I sat on hold for twenty-plus minutes, then gave up.

I emailed the national USPS customer support department, which was very responsive and promised to have the local post office call me to resolve this. They promised that four times. Finally, one morning I received a call from a supervisor at the post office. She was polite and explained they were going to be catching up on packages that day. Sure enough, it was delivered that day after two weeks at the post office.

The next thing I ordered came via UPS. I thought that was great. If they refuse to leave it without a signature, I have it redirected to the local UPS store and get it the next day. But this wasn't real UPS shipping -- it was some sort of cheap-ass UPS service where the USPS does the last mile of the delivery. Guess what? The package made its way to the local post office very quickly courtesy of UPS -- then it sat there for almost a week before I got it.

And today a package arrived for Kari. It was shipped on June 11th from Portland. It's July 11th. First Class postage was paid, and the envelope is cleared stamped "First Class Mail." Judging by their performance on the last few packages, I would bet this also was the local post office's fault.

It's not the carriers. The one that I ran into one day while waiting for the Amazon package searched his truck while I waited -- it wasn't on there. It doesn't appear that the people at this post office are ruder than most or care any less about getting the packages delivered -- at least judging by the few I've spoken to on the phone.

According to newspapers and USPS personnel, it's a lack of funding and staffing. How hard can it be to fix this problem?! They send the truck out here every day, but they don't have someone to go around sorting packages? USPS is supposedly a business like any other (operationally), but they fall back on the government thing that allows them to live up to the general expectation of poor service. And don't get me started on their ridiculous monopoly on letter carrying and mailbox access.

If they're going to keep collecting revenue off each package, they need to spend it in a way that ensures that I get timely delivery, which is all we pay them to do.

Flickr page

2007-07-01T16:38:00.000-05:00

I finally started posting pictures to my Flickr account: www.flickr.com/photos/stewie81. I've started to put a couple of sets up, but they're mostly pictures that were already part of the albums on this site. I needed to start somewhere to get the hang of it.

I should have done this a long time ago... say, before I spent a lot of time making dedicated photo album pages. Flickr was certainly around when I did that, and it was already huge. But I didn't really buy into Web 2.0 stuff -- tagging and all that. I still don't know if I do. Even with this simple example of tagged photos at Flickr, the tagging is too inconsistent, and the amount of information that has to be waded through to find relevant pictures is too great. I still like search engines and static, unrelated websites for finding things, including pictures. I'm sure someone's working on how to improve that, and I'll be proven wrong at some point.

There are benefits to doing this, obviously. It's much easier to upload pictures to Flickr and add titles, descriptions and tags than it is to make a dedicated album page, resize the pictures, and upload it to my web server. There's the use of comments/feedback, which is good until strangers start drawing those little highlight boxes around parts of pictures. And there's the relational aspect, which lets you know when people post additional pictures.

Frankly, though, Flickr has in some ways a very confusing interface. The handoffs between groups, sets, "photos tagged with...", and "public photos tagged with..." could be handled much better. I'm not sure why they haven't substantially changed that. One other complaint is that I like things in albums (sets) -- both my pictures and others'. Flickr's emphasis is on individual pictures, and tghe list of sets always occupies a sidebar, not the main focus.

I can see advantages to where this is headed, such as this demonstration of an amazing piece of software called Photosynth, used in the demo for coordinating (I guess that starts to describe what it does, though describes it poorly) thousands of related pictures: www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129 (video). If you haven't seen that, take a look, because it is the most amazing piece of software you will see for a while. The entire, short video is good, but look for the Notre Dame demonstration about halfway through.

Anyway, the Flickr page is up, and I won't be posting any additional photo pages on this website.

Vista install nightmare

2007-05-24T17:55:00.000-05:00

One would think that if he had successfully used the beta and release candidate versions of a new OS on a given set of hardware, he would not have a problem installing the stable, retail release version of the OS. But this is Microsoft.

RC1 expires next week, so I went and bought a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium months ago. On Sunday afternoon, I moved all of our backup files to the second drive that I use for data, then I ran Vista install. Of course, RC1 was Vista Ultimate; this is Vista Home Premium, so no upgrade is possible. I did, however, try to run a clean install from within RC1. That's supposedly required, since I bought an upgrade version.

That install crashed almost immediately. So I booted from the install DVD, formatted the primary hard drive, and reinstalled. It worked up until it tried to reboot for the first time after copying and expanding the OS files. Then it BSOD'ed and restarted. That went on for three nights.

In the meantime, I bought a new motherboard, thinking that this was a conflict with my firmware. I pretty much had to stick with NVidia though, because I have a pretty new AMD Socket AM2 CPU and I didn't want to pay to replace that, too. But I switched from a Asus M2NPV-VM to an MSI K9N4-SLI. I wanted Biostar, but Micro Center apparently doesn't carry them. Anyway, none of this worked. The thing kept rebooting, no matter what I disabled in the bios; no matter which components I physically unplugged; no matter how many times I reinstalled.

When I started in Safe Mode, the last file to load was always crcdisk.sys. (It turns out that this file just happens to be the last file in the list to load, ever... and once it shows up the list it's already loaded successfully. I tried the solution suggested on the web to rename any mention of pcmcia.sys -- that didn't do anything.)

By reading a few things on the web, I guessed that the problem might be my use of an IDE hard drive for the installation. My primary drive is IDE; secondary is SATA. So I unplugged the IDE drive and tried to install on the SATA drive, but no matter how many SATA drivers I loaded, the damn drive would not show up in the list of drives to choose from for installation. It was just missing from the list. But when I clicked "install driver" from that "where do you want to install Windows?" screen, then clicked "browse" to find a driver, my SATA drive showed up and I could browse it!!!

So on Tuesday night I gave in and called Microsoft installation support. I've never done that before. I figured I had two defined problems: first, the reboot after loading crcdisk.sys; second, the disappearance of my SATA drive from the installation disk list. Spent a couple hours on the line with a tech who had never heard of crcdisk.sys until that night, but there had apparently been a rash of these calls that night, so they were all learning about it. They had no solution to the SATA problem, except that I might need to install more SATA drivers. He did say, though, that if the drive was formatted wrong, it would still show up in the list, it just would require a format before installation started.

That's not true, as I found out. The IDE drive, as it was formatted for Beta2 and RC1, had an unpartitioned space at the end of it. I had seen a hint on the web that suggested that that space might be causing the problem, so I tried FDISK. Apparently, there is no longer an fdisk.exe -- when did that go away? It's been replaced by diskpart.exe, which is more powerful but less easy to use. I deleted the partition on the IDE drive, then created a new one. The new one defaulted to a Dynamic drive, and I rebooted and started install. But now the IDE drive disappeared from the list of drives to which I could install this damn thing!

So I figured it's the Dynamic disk thing. Sure enough, it is. I've read since then that Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium do NOT support dynamic drives. WTF!?!? Why drop a feature like that? If that was published as a difference between the multitude of Vista versions, I didn't see it. It's even more stupid because parts of the install (the ones that also apply to Ultimate and Business) clearly recognize the drive and let you browse it. But once you select Vista Home Premium, no dynamic drive access.

So I changed the IDE partition to Basic. Sure enough, repartitioning from a Basic partition with that extra space at the end to a Basic partition encompassing the entire drive fixed the install and stopped the BSOD lockups/reboots. And changing the SATA drive to Basic (after I copied everything to the IDE drive to back it up, using the DVD's repair command prompt and XCOPY) made that drive show up in Windows.

Now I just have to reinstall this thing over this copy that I'm using to write this. Microsoft was dumb enough to take away the ability to do an upgrade by inserting an install disk from an earlier version of Windows (using 3.11 to install XP was great). But then they left the door open to install an upgrade without even having an earlier install disk! You just have to install it twice.

UPDATE: Another way to avert the potential loss of data from any dynamic drives you might have was suggested here. Just install Vista Ultimate from the installation DVD (if you don't enter your cd key, you can pick any version of Vista to install and run for up to 30 days). Run Ultimate long enough to transfer your data elsewhere and change the drive to Basic, then reinstall whatever other version of Vista you have. Again, how stupid that M$ would deliberately cut a feature like Dynamic drives out of the lower-priced versions of Vista just to add value to the ungodly expensive versions. And XP Home supported Dynamic drives!

So I never really knew what Patagonia was...

2007-05-19T19:04:00.001-05:00

Enduring Patagonia, Gregory Crouch. Before I read this book, I had this vague concept of Patagonia as an icy desert wasteland, and I knew people went there for backpacking or something. I didn't know there were mountains, which seem to consist of tall but relatively steep and skinny peaks. And I didn't know it was such a stormy place, where chances to summit these peaks via the many unclimbed faces and routes were so limited by weather.

Crouch is a climber who decided he'd had enough of working crappy jobs to make enough money to get back to Patagonia for more climbing, so he started writing. The book was kind of a choppy read, maybe partially because I read it in spurts but mostly, I think, because of his tendency to jump around. It could have been refined a bit, but the descriptions of Patagonia, the history of climbing there, the tales of the growth of an alpine climber, and the reports of classic routes and first ascents make this book worth reading.

They make Pat Buchanan look reasonable...

2007-05-18T05:44:00.001-05:00

Read this: http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10984.

Why did it take five and a half years (since 9/11) before someone was be able to say this -- "We do not excuse – but we must understand [the reasoning behind violence against the U.S.]" -- without fear of being called unpatriotic? As a comment pointed out on reddit.com, one sign of how irrational this country has become regarding the "war on terror" and individual freedom is that Pat Buchanan is the voice of reason on this issue and John Ashcroft is the protector of our freedoms against the administration. What a mess.

To expand on the above earlier note I posted before work the other day: The column by Pat Buchanan was a response to an exchange between Republican '08 presidential candidates Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani. Ron Paul is apparently the hero of too many people that post on digg.com and reddit.com. Giuliani -- who waffles so much on other mainstream Republican-type issues that his sole attraction is his authoritarian response to the 9/11 disaster in his city at the time -- attacked Paul for stating during the recent Republican debate that 9/11 and, I think, other terrorist acts against the U.S. by Muslim extremists are a response to our interference in things Middle-Eastern.

That's a fairly basic and reasonable explanation. Only a very ethnocentric or moronically patriotic individual would believe the CW that has floated around for the past few years that extremists are unreasonable (in the strictest sense of the word), possibly insane individuals confused about the way the world has overtaken their way of life and lashing out irrationally. On the contrary, while the above describes many people on both sides, the overarching thought behind attacks against the U.S. is rational and sane. I'm not espousing the actions taken by any group or country against any this or any other country or its citizens, but as rational human beings aware of the differences in cultural understandings around the world we must be able to see even our enemies as rational, given their unique set of understandings. We cannot ever hope to fully understand even our closest friends, much less individuals or groups with ideas much different than our own; however, we must strive to understand the basic motivations and thought processes that stand behind their actions, especially when we are the target of their actions.

So, of course Ron Paul was correct. This country's actions over the past decades and centuries has given many a reason to hate us and to strike back at us -- it's not unpatriotic to say so. Saying that doesn't mean one wants to capitulate to anyone's demands or bring down this country. It simply means that one understands the motivations of one's enemies and brings an awareness of the complex laws of cause and effect that work in the world. We may act unilaterally and without any sense of morality; but that doesn't mean no one will hate us for it and respond to it in a way that hurts us, and we need -- AT LEAST -- to be able to understand a piece of that.

As for the Ashcroft reference, please, please, please read the rather attention-grabbing testimony of one James Comey, loyal Republican and Bush-administration member who somehow maintained some sense of a higher loyalty to the Constitution and the good of this country just a little higher than his loyalty for King George the Slow -- he was joined by Ashcroft and Robert Mueller. It's great reading.

The Other Face of "Annapurna"

2007-05-12T15:25:00.002-05:00

True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna, David Roberts. Despite the tone of the subtitle, this book isn't a revolutionary, revisionist look at Herzog's Annapurna. By the time this book was written, the revisionism had very convincingly disrupted the long-standing story of the first ascent of an 8000-meter peak, when notable accounts of two of the professional alpine guides that were high on the mountain that day were finally published. One was the unedited diaries of Louis Lachenal (who summited along with Herzog), the other the biography of Gaston Rebuffat. Both accounts, and other information that began to come out in the 1990s, contradicted the exhilarated tenor of the official, original account and Herzog's heroic account of his own performance as leader. An account of the expedition by Lionel Terray -- who, as the third professional guide on the peak, supported the summit push then gave up his own summit bid along with Rebuffat to save the lives of Lachenal and Herzog -- had been published in the late '50s but did little to cause a stir.

Roberts drew upon these accounts, interviews with the climbers' wives, an interview with Herzog and interviews with others familiar with the varying perspectives on that day. His book recollects the information that shatters the too-pure-to-be-true Annapurna account. The story is tied together by the fact that Roberts, as a climber a generation behind those who summited Annapurna, read the writings of these climbers as a boy and young climber and idolized them -- especially the celebrated team of Lachenal and Terray and Annapurna itself. The personal story of his following of Lachenal and Terray keeps this book from being an academic compilation and comparison of the various accounts.

Annapurna is the thrilling, inspiring story of this climb. True Summit can't come close to that, because Roberts is much more truthful than Herzog. However, this is a good look at what really happened in 1950 and it introduces the reader to the other main climbers (who were really outstanding, professional climbers, unlike Herzog) that were overlooked for a half century.

Another one for the Christian Right, from the Christian Right

2007-05-03T20:21:00.000-05:00

Why is it so hard for conservative churchgoers, such as those around whom I grew up, to see that their clumsy involvement in government (i.e., voting for anyone who opposes abortion and increased LGBT freedom) is being used for political gain by others? You can't vote one or two issues, isolated from a complete understanding of the policy that will be espoused by your candidate, and expect things to work out.

Here is some backup for what I'm trying to say, written by someone whose online bio brags about his Christian and Religious Right credentials. Obviously, I don't agree with anything else this ideologue says, but his point is something I've been trying to get across for years: "...[B]oth houses of Congress and the White House were controlled by 'pro-life' Republicans from 2001 through 2006, and nothing was done to end abortion on demand. ... At the end of the day, I wonder if we are really as concerned about ending abortion on demand as we are about raising money and promoting a political agenda?"

Yeah, that's it. I don't know who his audience is supposed to be, but the ones concerned about promoting this political agenda are not the stupid people sitting in their pews and voting for candidates that seem most likely to stop the gays, baby killers and A-rabs. Those people are just slow in the head and unnecessarily alarmed by the people provoking their fears. The ones benefiting are not the pastors in their pulpits reinforcing the alarmism. They're not even, mainly, fucking James Dobson and the like, preaching their family values. The people profiting here are the political level above them, using "family values" to get votes, so they can bring in a bunch of Pat Robertson-educated, second-class lawyers and run the world the way they see fit.

So, wake up, people. Quit letting yourselves be used and, in the process, skewing elections in favor of your morality that will never be encoded into law. Vote for candidates with a comprehensively supportable platform. Maybe you didn't intend to make the rich richer and the middle and poor poorer, support hellish regimes around the world, kill thousands of innocent people due to uncalled-for war and its effects, and let your president pretend he's a goddamn king -- but that's what you've done, and much more, in your futile attempt to enforce your moral code on the rest of us. Fucking think next time around.

Fine print in our email

2007-04-25T19:48:00.000-05:00

These stupid things have become one of the most annoying things about email, especially at work:

ELECTRONIC MAIL CONFIDENTIALITY PROVISION
This communication constitutes an electronic communication within the meaning of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act,18 U.S.C. 2510 et. seq., and any unauthorized interception of this communication is strictly prohibited by law. Disclosure of this communication is strictly limited to the recipient intended by the sender of this message. This communication may contain confidential and privileged material for the exclusive use of the intended recipient and receipt by anyone other than the intended recipient does not constitute a loss of the confidential or privileged nature of the communication. Any review or distribution by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by return electronic mail.

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The information contained in this communication is confidential, private, proprietary, or otherwise privileged and is intended only for the use of the addressee. Unauthorized use, disclosure, distribution or copying is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately at (***)***-**** in Illinois; (***)***-**** in New Mexico; (***)***-**** in Oklahoma; or (***)***-**** in Texas.

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The information contained in the e-mail and any attachments are intended for the named recipient(s) only. It may also be privileged and confidential. If you are not an intended recipient, you must take no action as a result of receiving it, including, but not limited to copying, distributing and amending it. If the communication has been sent to you in error, please contact us immediately and do not show the communication to any other party.

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Please Note: The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addresses and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.

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This e-mail and any of its attachments may contain ************ proprietary information, which is privileged, confidential, or subject to copyright belonging to the *************. This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout. Thank You.

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This communication is intended ONLY for the use of the person or entity named above and may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient named above or a person responsible for delivering messages or communications to the intended recipient, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that any use, distribution, or copying of this communication or any of the information contained in it is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by telephone and then destroy or delete this communication, or return it to us by mail if requested by us. ************* thanks you for your attention and co-operation.

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This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the Intended recipient of this e-mail (or the person responsible for delivering this document to the intended recipient), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, printing or copying of this e-mail, and any attachment thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please respond to the individual sending the message, and permanently delete the original and any copy of any e-mail and printout thereof.

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This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version.

First of all, I've never seen one of these at the top of the message -- they're usually in the form of a footer. By the time you get to reading the footer, if this was truly ground-breaking, confidential, proprietary information, it's too damn late. You've already read it.

Even worse, I don't even read that far. There's no freaking law that says you have to scroll all the way down, and I don't. Once I get to the person's name, address, phone number, fax number, cell number, Nextel number, and email address (as if that weren't in the "From" field), I'm done. I stop there. (I do the same thing with voicemail, so if someone remembers something they had forgotten and continues speaking after things start to wind down, I miss it.) So if I want to forward this message, I'm going to do that before I scroll down to see if I might have missed your petty little fine print.

Second reason I hate this things: they are almost NEVER attached to any email with confidential information. In the same vein, they are almost ALWAYS sent with the shared understanding that I need to forward them to other people in my organization. Yet, even when that is the understanding or when that is explicitly stated in the original message, it still comes with this stupid prohibition against doing just that. You can't just attach this damn thing to every message, even when it doesn't apply, and expect it to enhance your legal position when called upon. It's moronic. And there's no consent here -- it's not a signed non-disclosure agreement -- and if you compare what people are trying to do with these emails to how snail mail or other hard-copy non-disclosure agreements work, these email footers seem ludicrous.

Third reason, which isn't too much different from the previous one: what if I want to respond, but I want to include someone else in the response? That's one of the best things about email -- the ability to CC: others, for advisement purposes or to elicit a response, in an existing conversation. Am I supposed to respond without including the original message and let the newcomers to the thread guess about what was said before. Or should I say, "Jim's email says I can't send it to anyone else, but I'd like to CC: you on my response to his email, so I'll summarize his original email in my own words." Hell, that's probably prohibited, too.

Fourth: People include these footers on messages they send to public email lists. 'Nuff said.

Fifth: Truly confidential information shouldn't be emailed anyway, at least not in any unencrypted form. It's simply not secure.

Sixth: It's pointless. Besides being seemingly legally ineffectual, these warnings/notices/disclosures are ignored by almost everyone. Most people have some amount of common sense and know if what they are forwarding seems like it should be kept confidential. Whether or not they are right, they will forward or not forward based on that common sense. Obviously a request for confidentiality written from scratch by the email author and included in the email body immediately before or after the information to be kept confidential works for more reasonable people. Remember, anyone with whom you are exchanging sensitive information in a business setting is likely to be someone with whom you have some sort of relationship entailing the exchange of a combination of verbal, email and hard-copy information. Either all of this information acquired as part of the business relationship is confidential (protected by a NDA or by an information understanding between the parties) or it's not. Email is nothing special in this way.

So, not that this blog has a huge audience or anything, but does anyone know, from a legal standpoint, if these annoying things are actually good for anything? How have they held up in court?

Shades

2007-04-24T18:49:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting blog entry making the rounds of Digg and Reddit that shows some gray where people see black and white. And then make the black and white issue a political matter -- one of law enforcement, even. Then they elect a president in hopes of influencing this issue only. People just generally act like morons.

She's Come Undone

2007-04-22T15:18:00.001-05:00

She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb. Oddly written by a man, this book is one long, depressing story of a girl's life from childhood through middle adulthood. It was described to me as "disturbing" -- I didn't think disturbing as much as plain sad. It's not entirely a downer, though -- without ruining the book for anyone else, I think I can say the conclusion of Dolores' story shows some amount of achievement against long odds.

However, though there are some brief moments in the book when it seemed like things were starting to look up, they didn't last long. It was an easy, engaging read, so it didn't take long to finish it.

Hotel New Hampshire

2007-04-05T20:10:00.001-05:00

The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving. I like this author. I actually bought these two books (see last entry) at once, just on a whim, from Amazon. I read this one quickly because I had some downtime traveling to and from a conference this week.

Like Garp, this one also has its share of weird sexual stuff. Garp had a strange conception practice, a horribly descriptive rape scene in a book-within-the-book, and hookers; this time it's hookers (again), a less descriptive but just as horrible rape (this time within the main storyline), torture of the gay family member, and a long-running incest theme woven throughout most of the book. And I'm probably forgetting a few such things from each book. One doesn't get the impression that Irving is including these things to shock his readers. Rather, these somewhat deviant themes flow quite naturally; in the same way that Steven King's books seem to bare his psyche for all to read, Irving seems to have some issues. Makes for interesting reading, though.

Between these more notable portions of the book is a fun but tragic story. It's extremely humorous at points. More than that, though, it takes a fairly direct stab at explaining life -- through the narrator's voice and through the quoted sayings of the rest of the family members. The description of the job of a good (literary) agent towards the end seemed especially apt to me; not that I have an agent, but I agree with what he explains is the end result of living without fear. Indirectly, too, Irving says a lot about life -- such as the attractive notion that the best way to get beyond a forbidden desire is to overindulge in it.

Like Garp, I had to plow through the very end, but not as much this time. And the fact that the bear-in-a-hotel theme is in both books makes me think I picked two good ones to read in sequence.

The World According to Garp

2007-03-25T13:02:00.001-05:00

The World According to Garp, John Irving. I couldn't put this down, at least until I got to about the last hundred pages, which I had to plow through. It's horrifying, and it's funny, and it's shocking at times and mundane at others. By mundane, I refer only to the details of everyday life included in a book that otherwise is imaginative beyond anything I've ever read. For something that purports to be about events taking place to humans in the west in the last half of the last century, this is an extreme. Completely crazy, and well done.

Nepal trek story

2007-02-24T18:25:00.000-06:00

I think about Nepal all the time -- the good times, the relaxing places to hang out in Kathmandu, the flat rooftops, having few responsibilities, the people, but especially the mountains. I've wanted to type up the story of my trip there from the journal I kept... mostly just to remember it and preserve it in case I lose the journal somehow. But that'd be a huge project, so I didn't get very far.

But after blogging last week about the day trip we took from Jomsom, I decided just to put together the portion of the story from the time we were trekking in the mountains. So I posted that, with some updated pictures, at this page. Enjoy, or if it's too long and boring, don't enjoy. Har.

Annapurna, Tilicho

2007-02-17T10:05:00.001-06:00

So, I just finished a couple of books:

Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, Clinton Heylin. This is only cool if you're into Bob and want to know how each of his albums came about (not including the most recent few albums). Condescending and insulting at times, but I found those parts amusing. It was good to read through it once, but I ordered it from Amazon now (I read a copy borrowed from my favorite Dylan-playing bartender, who makes good drinks but also plays a lot of Dylan from his iPod). It's too many facts to absorb at once and is the kind of book you want to have around when you listen to a full album straight through, maybe dig out some of the bootleg outtakes and read the chapter about that album.

Annapurna, Maurice Herzog. From the perspective of the leader of the expedition, an account of the first summit of an 8000-meter peak, Annapurna I in Nepal. Very apparently reflective of one person's account only, and that of the leader no less, but still thrilling.

I'm planning to read a little more about the different perspectives of the climb soon. Though the actual climb went quickly in the book, both people to summit lost fingers and toes and the rest of the party then turned back. Annapurna I has a pretty bad survival rate, according to Wikipedia, and it hasn't been climbed all that much. In fact, the second and third successful summit attempts came 20 years after this first one.

Anyway, the part of the book that interested me more than the summit attempt was the exploration of the area betweeen Annapurna and Dhaulagiri (two 8000-meter peaks that face each other across the Kali Gandaki river gorge, the deepest in the world because of the two peaks). Their base for the exploration was the village of Tukuche, which sits along the Gandaki. The route they took up the Gandaki to Tukuche partially overlaps the Annapurna Circuit route, which our group followed, in that direction, during my one trip to Nepal in 1999. Some members of the French expedition also went as far as Muktinath to see the sacred temples there -- Muktinath was the far point of our trek.

Even more interesting to me was their initial search for Annapurna (after giving up on Dhaulagiri) took them on a quest for the pass they knew as Tilicho. Earlier expeditions in the area had incorrectly sited this pass that lies to the north of Annapurna. Instead of a route through the Annapurna massif and directly at the foot of the mountain itself as noted on the existing map, the route actually lays to the north of the massif. But they eventually found it, and they went over one pass, found Tilicho Lake (their Great Ice Lake), then went over another pass and down to the villages of Khangsar and Manang on the northeastern side of the Annapurna Circuit.

This is a trip I convinced some of my fellow trekkers to attempt on a day when we were stranded in Jomsom waiting for clear weather so we could get a flight back to civilization. Obviously we weren't going to make it all the way across the mountain range in a day (we started at around 8:00 AM and gave ourselves until 2:00 PM before turning back), but my map showed a dotted-line running east out of Jomsom to a high pass and a huge lake. We were traveling light, and our group was usually pretty quick on the trail. Disappointed to not reach Thorang La ("pass") two days previous in the time we had allotted at Muktinath, we decided to spend our free day getting as close as possible to Mesokanto La (not as high as Thorang La but still over 5000 meters and higher than all but three peaks in the US, all of them in Alaska) and Tilicho Lake. None of us had any idea of the problems people have had finding the pass or that the lake was one of the most beautiful places in the world with snow-covered peaks towering right over it (Tilicho Peak and the Grande Barriere of the French expedition). We were just bored, and after a couple weeks carrying our full packs at 12,000 to 14,000 feet we were feeling pretty good about a day trip with light packs.

Now here's the problem: fifty years after Herzog in Annapurna detailed just such a trip, no available map accurately describes the route. We're indebted to Per Löwdin for putting some effort into detailing the route from east to west, and Andrées de Ruiter for finding a second western pass and giving more details including maps, but our group didn't have access to any of those. So we wandered in the general direction of the pass. The map seemed to show the route following very closely the Longpoghyun Khola, but higher and to the north, so we started to traverse the ridge that stretches toward Jomsom from the east. Somehow we ended up off-route, surrounded by scree with no way up the ridge or forward to the east. The valley floor was wide open on both sides of the Longpoghyun, so we slid down the scree (quite fearfully, as I recall) and made our way to the bottom.

It was a wide open valley at first. Then we took the first tributary to branch off on the left, and we soon ended up bouldering our way along the side of a cliff. The trail wasn't that way, so we headed back to the confluence and took another turn. Eventually we found a trail leading straight up the ridge between two forks of the Longpoghyun. It was on the south side of the drainage rather than the north side as the map indicated, but it was clearly a trail with switchbacks and everything. We climbed a bit and followed the trail.

We saw Kaisang from a little distance. Then we came to a sign announcing that we had come to a closed Nepali Army area. Everyone in the world seems to know about this area now, but we didn't at the time. It was way too late in the day to go back and try to find our way to the trail on the opposite ridge. The sad thing was that we could see the contour of the trail on that ridge. We were watching it for quite a while before we got to the closed area. But it was beyond our reach at that point. The next day the weather was clear and we flew back to Pokhara early.

Someday I want to go back there. Fuck the Annapurna Circuit and Thorang La. I just want to make it to Tilicho Lake and walk among the massive mountains of the Annapurna Himal.

(Hmm...pulled out my journal entry from that day and added some facts to the above. Like seeing Kaisang... I didn't remember that and still can't picture it. I was pretty adamant in the journal about seeing the trail on the opposite ridge, whereas I had doubted that in initially writing this. The journal also says I got sunburned but was not disappointed at all about getting lost, because we had a good time anyway -- that was before I saw pictures of Tilicho and heard of its near-mythic status as a hard-to-find destination from the western approach.

I went through my pictures again looking for any from that day -- besides the one of the five of us in our underwear, which is in the Nepal gallery. I guess I had my camera with me, but didn't take any others.)

EDIT: Actually, we had decided in Jomsom before we went to Muktinath to forget about trying to make the Thorung La. My journal doesn't say why, but we decided at that time to try for Mesokanto on the way back. Then our group leaders decided to fly to Pokhara from Jomsom, and gave up on the Mesokanto side trip. I didn't come up with the idea from looking at my map during the flight-delay day -- I just revived it. And now I see that the whole episode with the scree slope actually happened the day before our attempt to reach the pass. The reason we ended up on the valley floor looking for the trail was because Jeremy and I saw people walking down there the day before. I remember incorrectly until reading some earlier journal entries.

New pics, more books

2007-02-10T12:57:00.001-06:00

Sheryl and Jim have both requested blogging, pictures, etc. -- some signs of life. So here goes. New pics, just some general stuff from the past few months since we moved into the city, are here. And I've managed to complete a few books lately, so here are the recaps:

The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost. It's really not at all as exciting as the title makes it sound. It's basically this guy Troost rambling about his year spent on some tiny island-nation in the South Pacific. He was a writer bumming around before he went, so he just decided to write about life there, without putting too much effort into it, slap a risque title on it and make some dough. However, it's an enjoyable read and I like his brand of humor. Getting Stoned with Savages is a follow-up, which I imagine is much the same.

The Plan of Chicago, Carl Smith. Not being from here originally, I have very little sense of the history of the city, not to mention having no idea why parks and streets are named after people I've never heard of. This book was a good start, as it discussed the World's Fair and the Plan of Chicago, mainly focusing on Daniel Burnham. Concurrently with that, I read...

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Erik Larson. Really interesting to read, especially living in this city. It's about a serial killer that set up shop in Chicago during the World's Fair and the story of how many people disappeared before the police and those around him even started to put it together.

Evasion, anonymous (originally a zine, then published by the CrimethInc. group, but for some reason available from Amazon.com, which is where I bought it). Fun reading, challenges our lifestyle in general but especially our low regard for trash. Also promotes shoplifting, homelessness, veganism, squatting, music that is way beyond my mainstream knowledge and hopping freight trains.

Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs. If my childhood was that f_ed up, I'd write a book too.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt. Engaging. It's been a while since I read a book that was this engrossing without its main subject being a detective, a spy or Jack Ryan. It's really, really good. It started off with some tedious parts about ancient Greece, and I was afraid it was turning into another Motorcycle Maintenance, its storyline subjected to heavy doses of philosophy. However, those parts passed quickly, and they were actually integral to the story.

Some books that I'm in the middle of or just added to the pile:

Annapurna, Maurice Herzog

Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, Clinton Heylin

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Common Sense, Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings. Thomas Paine

The Freedom Writers Diary, a bunch of students of Erin Gruwell

Getting Stones With Savages, J. Maarten Troost

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

No Surrender: Writings from an anti-imperialist political prisoner, David Gilbert

Revolution for the Hell of It, Abbie Hoffman

Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf, Oliver Sacks

Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving

O'Reilly's Bush interview

2006-10-18T17:53:00.001-05:00

From http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,221975,00.html:

O'REILLY: Now Brian Ross of ABC said — reported the CIA water boarded Mohammed. That is dunked him in water, tied him down and then that broke him. Is that true?

BUSH: We don't talk about techniques. And the reason we don't talk about techniques is because we don't want the enemy to be able to adjust. We're in a war.

O'REILLY: Is water boarding torture?

BUSH: I don't want to talk about techniques. And — but I do share the American people that we were within the law. And we don't torture. We — I've said all along to the American people we won't torture, but we need to be in a position where we can interrogate these people.

O'REILLY: But if the public doesn't know what torture is or is not, as defined by the Bush administration, how can the public make a decision on whether your policy is right or wrong?

BUSH: Well, one thing is that you can rest assured we're not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don't want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield.

But what the American people need to know is we've got a program in place that is able to get intelligence from these people. And we've used it to stop attacks.

The intelligence community believes strongly that the information we got from the detainee questioning program yielded information that made America safer, that we stopped attacks.

Secondly, the courts. Yes, I believe that it was necessary to have military tribunals because I ultimately want these people to be tried. And it took a while to get these tribunals in place.

The Supreme Court ruled that the president didn't have the authority to set up these courts on his own, that he needed to work with Congress to do so. And we did.

What's interesting about these votes that took place in the Congress is the number of Democrats that opposed questioning people we've picked up on the battlefield. And I think that's an issue that they're going to have to explain to the American people.

People voted for this fascist fool that talks down to them like they are all idiots?

Comcast stole my modem and won't give it back

2006-10-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

That pretty much sums it up. I've had a Comcast cable tv and internet account continuously since around 2003 (used satellite a little bit, but kept the cable internet the whole time). All that time I've been using this Motorola 5100 (?) modem. It's a pretty nice unit, never failed me at all. You could log into it and check status and connection quality, but that was rarely needed because it just didn't have problems.

So when Kari and I moved from the suburbs to Chicago back in August, we brought the trusty modem with us. I hooked it up to the cable line, and it worked right away. Apparently the previous resident still had an active account. So we used that for a week or two while we waited for the Comcast appointment. It worked great. Quick speeds, no interruptions.

Then the stupid cable guy showed up. I've dealt with quite a few satellite and cable installers, and most have been really cool. Some of them really know their stuff and will make things as easy as possible for you. However, this one couldn't figure out how to get the internet working. I'm serious. I had the internet working immediately using a modem I unplugged in Bolingbrook and plugged into the line while someone else's account was active. And this idiot couldn't get it to work. (He couldn't get the cable tv working either, which is why I feel safe calling him an idiot. Installing these two services was seriously like a 20-minute job, no wiring, and he was here for three hours.)

Part of the problem was that I wasn't here. Thinking that since everything was already working the guy wouldn't need my help, I went to mow the grass in the suburbs or whatever, and Kari stayed to let him in. So I couldn't really see his ineptitude firsthand. However, he did two stupid things just before he left.

Number 1, he swapped digital cable boxes at the last minute because he couldn't get one working. When he did that, he neglected to reregister the second box instead of the first. So all the channels were screwed up when I got home, and it took me a couple of hours to figure out that the box he left was still programmed for another region of the city. I called tech support and suggested that they make sure the number on this box matched the number the idiot registered -- it didn't. Stupid waste of my time.

Number 2, he stole my cable modem. That's right, the Comcast installer took my property, my cable modem. This modem I'd bought years ago that had served me well, and that I had working already for the past week, this moron couldn't register it on the Comcast system or something. So he took my nice, quality modem and left me a cheap Comcast one. It seems to be more unreliable -- either that or they screwed up the system in this area recently. It goes down all the time, just for a minute or so. MY MODEM never did that.

About a month later the internet went down for like three days in a row. I called to check on that, and while I was on the line I asked about my modem. Not only did I now have this piece of junk modem instead of my nice one, COMCAST IS CHARGING ME TO RENT THIS MODEM. Yes, Comcast will steal your modem, then charge you to rent the one that they graciously leave in its place.

So I filed a customer service ticket requesting they sort this out, refund my money and give me my fricking modem back. I heard nothing for a few weeks. Then yesterday I called to take advantage of a cable tv deal, and I asked about my ticket. Nothing had been done, so the person handling my call escalated it. That got them to call me back at least. Today I got a voicemail telling me I needed to provide proof of purchase for a modem I purchased years ago.

Now I'm not a fricking genius, but I have years of invoices from Comcast themselves showing me that I was subscribing to cable internet but wasn't renting a modem. Therefore, they knew I owned a modem. Also, these modems are supposedly registered in their system before they work, so they also know the numbers that identify that specific modem that I was NOT RENTING.

Anyway, I'm going to call them back and see what I can do, then I'll post more. Also, I should probably start publicizing this -- that always seems to work with big, stupid, brainless corporations. So spread it around.

Country mice

2006-10-14T13:20:00.000-05:00

Jim and Melissa, my brother and youngest sister, finally made their way down from Minnesota to visit us last weekend. Jim has been down here a few times this summer, but Lissa has always been busy with one or more of the following: 1) Acting in plays/musicals, 2) Playing volleyball, or 3) Reading cheesy Christian historical fiction books. Just kidding about the last one; I think she outgrew that.

Anyway, here's a picture of them on the footbridge over LSD on our way to the beach:

We were on our way to the Chicago Historical Society, but we never made it. Instead, we walked out on this breakwater:

That's my knee -- it was really bright and I couldn't see the screen on the camera. Out there, Jim decided to jump off the thing, which freaked out the people sitting at the end. He went up to them and asked, "Do you know how deep is it here?" The guy said, "No, sorry." So Jim was like "Okay" and just jumped off. He swam around and treaded water to show off his mad SEAL skills. He'll be down at GLNTC next month to start his formal killing-for-hire career training.

(This Blogger picture uploading thing sucks.)

After the great cold-water adventure, we walked to Michigan Avenue to see all the fancy-ass rich people on their shopping expeditions. Also, we stopped at a bookstore, which is a bad thing. I started this book-buying spree, and now I have too many to read. The next day we went to an awesome used bookstore in Bucktown/Wicker Park. Then my Amazon order showed up (we buy everything with this credit card that gives us free Amazon gift certificates -- it rocks). So I have to read all of these now:

- Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks (1/4-way done)
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt
- The Island of the Colour-blind and Cycad Island, Sacks again
- The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
- Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
- The Plan of Chicago, Carl Smith (1/2-way done)
- Essential Writings, Thomas Paine
- The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine (almost done, great book)
- Stranger and Friend, Hortense Powdermaker (read this a few years ago, but great book)
- Getting Stoned with Savages, J. Maarten Troost
- The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Troost again (I'm a few pages into this one)

Plus I'm 100 pages into Catch-22, and I was just about to finish re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I do this once a year or so -- start too many books, then take months to catch up. It's a problem, but I can't pass up buying a book that looks good, and I can't buy it and just let it sit on a shelf without at least starting it to see if it's good.

Anyway, I was trying to leave you with a stitched-together view of the Chicago skyline from the breakwater, but this picture-uploading thing doesn't work, sorry. Well, here's a link to it: Click here .

More books

2006-09-17T17:29:00.001-05:00

I missed a few books during the main post a couple days ago. I noticed there was a huge gap in time from The Fountainhead, which I read in June out in Montana, and The Jungle, which I just finished last week. Here are the five missing books:

Lost Mountain: A Year In the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Applachia, Erik Reece. The only bad thing about this book (other than the mining it describes, I guess) is the pictures: small, black-and-white photos of a mountaintop make it hard to see the progressive removal of the mountain. Otherwise, excellent book. Worth reading, along with this next one.

Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, Jeff Goodell. I bought both of these coal books because the good people at Border's left them on those "new arrivals" racks just inside the door -- no other reason. But they ended up being, together, an enlightening look at what our electricity consumption is doing to our country. Being in the alternative-fuel vehicle business for the past few years, I've seen plug-in hybrids and other electric cars as a good step forward, even preparing the way for the mythical hydrogen economy. However, we're going to have to develop some significant new energy sources for that to become a good path. We cannot run our vehicles on electricity (whether we use the storage medium of batteries, hydrogen or something else) when we are running most of our power plants on coal.

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown. Nothing new -- I was probably the last to read this. I did manage to read this before I, Kari and Shif saw the movie at the Brew and View -- that's better than other recent book/movie experiences.

Will You Die With Me?, Flores A. Forbes. This is the only book I've ever read about the Black Panther Party (another one courtesy of the Border's "new arrivals" table). Good, engrossing read. Everyone should read histories of the Panthers, the Weathermen and other recent radical groups. Though they made have gone too far in the reader's eyes (and usually in the author's eyes by the time they get around to writing the books), they had good reasons for what they did. It's important to see what our country has come through to avoid making the same mistakes again, forcing new generations to rise up against our government. That said, I don't know much else about the Panthers, so I can't comment on the author's perspective.

Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich. This book is a good example of why anthropology is a formal study, because Ehrenreich screws that part of her research up royally. It's still a good read, interesting and seemingly effective in highlighting the difficulties of making a living as a member of the US working poor class. Though the fieldwork should have been done by an anthropologist, it remains the only book I've read like this that attempts to show the plight of the working poor from someone working along with them.

Getting settled

2006-09-15T18:38:00.000-05:00

Here's a couple pics of the new place. These are from a couple weeks ago:

Dining room

Living Room

Kitchen

We're starting to find our way around the neighorhood. So far, we have:

- A cafe, good breakfast and lunch sandwiches, very close to us.
- A good coffee shop about 3 blocks away.
- A Tastee Freeze about 2 blocks away.
- A breakfast place -- pancakes and such -- about 2 blocks away. Also serves lunch.
- A church similar to the one we used to attend in the suburbs about 3/4 of a mile away.
- A neighborhood bar about 3 blocks away -- haven't been there yet, but supposed to have decent food, too.
- A couple of 24-hour Mexican restaurants about 1/2 mile away. Good food and large horchatas.
- A UPS store a block away, which can receive packages for $5 each -- necessary for the pesky people who ship things requiring a signature.
- A bunch of other restaurants (open later than the ones close to us), bars, etc., that are within long walk or train distance.