The Telephone Always Rings

My telephone is on TV! Well, a cousin of my telephone is on TV, featured in the new iPhone ad. The ad starts with a ringing telephone circa the mid-40s; I've a refurbished model of the same phone in my bedroom.

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The Telephone Always Rings	Song by Fun Boy Three

U-g-l-y, you ain't got no alibi, you're just ugly.

The new iPods? Fantastic! The new features in iTunes? Stupendous.

But WTF is up with the interface in iTunes v7? Seriously, the non-standard scroll bars, the atypical checkboxes, the abnormally dark selection bars...fugly. Just f-ing ugly.

For why hath these abominations been wrought upon us? What's wrong with the scroll bars in Mac OS X? Or the checkboxes? Nothing. Use them.

The new Cover Flow view is superb. (I like the similar UI in Omni Dazzle, too.) The reorganized Sources section? Genius. (I want that kind of categorization in Mail.) And iPod management within the application, instead of through Preferences? I wanna kiss someone.

But please, please, please, stop with the hideous scroll bars and lame checkboxes. They're just ugly.

And it appears I'm not the only one who thinks so.

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"U-g-l-y, you ain't got no alibi, you're just ugly."	Lyrics from Ugly by Fishbone

At Last

So now 54% of Americans think things in the United States are going either "pretty badly" or "very badly," according to a CNN poll conducted the last week of August 2006.

It's taken this long for a majority of Americans to realize things are going badly? Well, at least they've finally started paying attention.

The good news, though, is that they understand how to turn things around. According to the CNN report, that same poll found "[a] majority — 55 percent — said they are more likely to back a challenger in races on this year's ballot. Such anti-incumbent sentiment is higher than the 48 percent recorded as 'pro-challenger' in a similar survey in 1994, when the GOP took control of both houses of Congress."

So what's this mean for the Democrats? Again from the CNN report on 4 September 2006:

Democrats lead Republicans by a 10-point margin, 53 to 43 percent, among likely voters asked which party's congressional candidate they would support in November, and Democrats held a 56-40 lead on the same question among registered voters."

So perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train after all.

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At Last	Song by Etta James

Rip. Mix. Burning bush.

Even iTunes is prodding me into action, at least judging by how Party Shuffle put these two songs together.

With Gwen urging me on and Terry assuring me it's not "what" but "how," it certainly felt like a message. Guess one can find messages anywhere, should one look.

Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days

Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted here. If I thought there were any regular readers, I'd apologize.

I've been distracted remodeling my house, which is weird since I'm not doing any of the work.

But while I've been without TV (as I didn't bother to try moving the satellite dish to the apartment in which I'm staying) I've been reading more, and getting more fired up about the many things going wrong these days. So I'm going to start ranting here instead of at the dog, on the off chance it would do more good. We'll see.

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Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days	Song by Louis Prima

The Universe is a Spheroid Region 705 Meters in Diameter.

While I have been miserable at my current job for almost three years now, I have made faint effort to pursue other opportunities. A half-dozen inquiries about various positions, three actual interviews, but certainly not the significant effort you'd expect from someone so dispirited and bereft.

Similarly I'm not satisfied with several aspects of my personal life, including but not limited to, my fitness level, my housing stock, and various interpersonal relationships. Despite the obvious avenues of change for each of these elements, the last six years have seen little improvement. Not coincidentally, six years ago I started my current job, or (as I now realize) began ignoring my conscience and bartering my soul for money, stock options, and a 401(k).

In trying to figure out why I'm so slow to change, I've realized I am far too comfortable with facets of my current existence. The trappings of my job, free time in the evenings, the color of my walls...I've grown accustomed to these things. I've settled into a nice little world of familiarity.

I am the poster child for inertia.

But my growing distaste for some of the core elements of my little world is upsetting the balance in this control volume. So I'm developing a plan, starting with remodeling the house. Once that's done and I've assessed the financial impact, I can start looking seriously at a line of work that could provide some measure of personal reward, though likely less remuneration than my current soul-sucking career.

Yep, it's time to git 'er done.

Woo-hoo!

As of 00:01 this morning, I've officially broken my streak. That's right, for the entire month of March I did not receive a moving violation! Since November of last year I have received a moving violation each month, every month. A ticket a month for four months running, but March ended the madness.

However with the California Highway Patrol clearly now a revenue generation program for the state, I'm certainly not out of danger.

Unfortunately, despite the traffic in every urban area of California, the CHP seem unwilling or unable to enforce those parts of the Vehicle Code like §21654 (best summarized by the sign on every California highway: Slower Traffic Keep Right) that would help mitigate congestion. Instead they only pursue drivers who are attempting to alleviate traffic and free available highway capacity by quickly and efficiently proceeding to their destination. Not surprisingly, the fines for violation of speed-related sections like §22349 are significantly greater than those for violating other sections, such as the long-ignored §21654.

(Three guesses about who just recently completed eight hours of traffic school.)

Instead of using the current laws on the books to help clear traffic, the state can only suggest new, larger highways. But anyone who has even a glancing familiarity with computer networking knows that increased bandwidth isn't the only answer. More effective use of the throughput available can also result in greater capacity.

Look, right now most everyone accessing the Internet at home is doing so over copper wires. Many of us use the same copper wires that deliver our phone service. There was a time when those copper wires delivered data at 14.4 kilobits per second (Kbps). Right at this moment I'm getting 1.62 megabits per second (Mbps) over those same old, precariously hanging copper wires.

Remember, Kbps is a thousand bits per second while Mbps is a million bits per second. Without any new wiring to my house (no new highway, no greater bandwidth) I'm getting 112.5% more capacity. How? Better data transmission devices, better compression algorithms, more efficient data packet standards, in short: doing more with what we've got.

Applied to traffic, there are immediate corollaries. Where networking has seen better modems, travelers have available better cars, with faster acceleration, improved handling, and enhanced brakes. (At least for those motorists smart enough not to drive some clunky SUV.)

These modern vehicles allow us to motor more effectively, yet most people still drive as if they were behind the wheel of a 70s land yacht: leaving far too much space in front of them, reacting much too languidly to changes in traffic momentum, and braking much more often than required. So instead of driving efficiencies that correlate to better compression, we have inefficiencies that lead to congestion.

And while computer networks now rely on intelligent, optimized data packets that know their origin and destination and do nothing but strive to get from "A" to "B" in as little time as possible, highways are filled with drivers who are un-optimized, un-focused, and seemingly unwilling to make the effort to proceed.

In short, if we want to stop wasting time and money sitting in traffic, we should look to models of efficiency like computer networking and emulate those models as much as possible. We should stop penalizing those who are trying to optimize driving and start penalizing those who aren't.

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"Woo-hoo!"	Lyric from the song Song 2 by Blur

And blood did come forth out of the wine-press...

So now I've a new reason to hate Southwest Airlines.

Sure there's the usual litany: their steadfast refusal to assign seats, the cattle-drive loading process, a haphazard approach to cabin cleaning, the constant rough landings (which I've christened "The Southwest Slam"), et cetera, et cetera.

But on yesterday's flight I clearly saw their rabid anti-vegan streak. It starts with the seats, unnecessarily clad in leather. Then my three-hour flight came with a snack box: three items, each containing animal-based ingredients. And the topper, when I went to the restroom to wash the cabin filth off my hands, I'm confronted with lanolin in the soap. It's bad enough that I have to sit on dried bovine skin, and go hungry because Southwest can't bother to offer food without components of sentient beings in it, but now I can't even adequately clean my hands without soiling my karma.

What other gratuitous use of animal products can they find? Perhaps they'll start crushing puppies in the galley. You know, to add a little kick to the tomato juice.

Do Just Enough Evil.

As always a bit behind, I've been working on resolutions for 2006. First you need a theme for the year, then the resolutions follow. Thanks, then, to the folks at Google for helping me find the theme for 2006!

The company that says their motto is "do no evil" has found a way to support the wanton repression of the Chinese government. Leave it to the Googleplex geniuses to figure out how to attenuate evil.

“We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil,” said Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt.

Worse evil. Next they'll be working on a way to be a little pregnant. (Another innovation in service to the Chinese government, perhaps?)

So is 2006 to be the year of just enough evil? Will that be how I finally get the remodel started? Perhaps. Will it be the Democrats' secret weapon to recover in the midterm elections? Not sure if just enough evil can prevail in the face of overwhelming evil. (Yes, modifying absolutes is addictive.)

Let's just hope this theme for the Year of the Dog doesn't bite us in the ass.

Faith is Not Commerce.

Deliberately misguided by reactionary political organizations, some Christians are demanding retailers post and sell signs proclaiming "Merry Christmas" and compel their staff to offer the same salutation, or suffer economic retaliation in the form of a boycott.

I say to you such demands are blasphemous based on the recorded tenets of the Christian religion. Christians, recall the actions of your savior as he drove the money changers from the temple (John 2:13-16). Read his exhortations against materialism (Mark 10:17-27, Luke 18:22). Clearly he defined faith to be removed from commercialism.

Don't let false teachings misguide you. Purchasing symbols or mouthing platitudes are not affirmations of faith. Simply believe in your own heart, and live your own life based on those beliefs. Do not sully your faith by associating it with commercial concerns, or allow it to be exploited by the craven political aims of others.

Well I Appreciate the Effort, Anyway.

As a vegan, naturally I've found there are some food items I've had to willfully shun. But there are many, many more that I have been able to reject without much of a second thought. As a hardcore fan of rich, dark chocolate, I can't say I've ever really missed milk chocolate since becoming vegan.

Last time I was at Trader Joe's, however, I noticed a new product: a vegan "milk" chocolate bar (or "chocolaty bar" as they call it, no doubt to comply with U.S. food label laws) made with rice milk. It's imported from Switzerland, a country that's known for some good chocolate, so I figured I'd give it a try. I've noticed TJ's has been aggressively labeling their non-animal-product items as vegan, including this chocolate bar, and I like to show my appreciation by buying said items. After all, they are a for-profit organization so I figure financial encouragement goes further than just standing in the middle of the store thinking good thoughts then putting items back on the shelf. Plus the bar was touted as a good source of calcium (achieved by adding calcium chloride to it), and adequate calcium intake is something about which all vegans should be mindful.

So I bought one, brought it home, and had at it.

It's not bad. It certainly has more of the creamy flavor of milk chocolate, but it's no Hershey bar. I'm probably not the best judge, though, given my fondness for dark chocolate. Can't say I'd buy it again. The chocolate flavor is nowhere near as strong as I'd like, the texture is too waxy, and the rice milk flavor is stronger than I thought it would be.

That said, if you're one of those unfathomable freaks who actually prefers milk chocolate over dark, yet are forgoing dairy for some reason, you might want to check out this product.

Oh, I suppose it's possible this bar might blend more easily into a liquid, say for making a vegan hot chocolate drink. Perhaps I'll try that with the remainder. But for chocolate indulgence, I'll be sticking with the sublime beauty that is the Scharffen Berger 60%, also available at Trader Joe's.

Doddering Shuffle.

Driving home from work last night I was listening to my iPod shuffle. Jake was sleeping; despite all his attributes he's rather indifferent to music it seems.

The shuffle is currently holding 280 ska songs. I leave it set on shuffle mode and let it wander through the range of first-, second-, and third-wave ska on-board. Sometimes it plays successive songs from the same artist or group, but last night it did something odd: it played the same song twice in a row.

First it played "Meat Dance" by Slow Gherkin off the split CD Invisible Tank. This caught my attention because it's a more up-tempo cut of the song, released in 1998, that I hadn't heard recently.

That was immediately followed by the original cut of "Meat Dance" off the 1995 comp This is Raj...and This is Ska. Weird. Out of 280 songs, what are the odds the shuffle would play two version of the same song, one right after the other.

Even stranger is that I randomly Autofill my shuffle from my ska library, currently holding 681 songs. (Raise your hand if you didn't thing there were that many ska tracks in the world. Now put your hand down; you look like a fool sitting in front of a computer with your hand raised.)

So out of the random Autofill where only a third of the songs will be selected, these two tracks made it into the shuffle, then while being played randomly, they end up back-to-back. (Well, technically back-to-front, but that's not the expression.)

If I didn't know better, I'd say the Universe is trying to tell me something.

Smoked Spicy Fruit.

If you're at Trader Joe's or New Leaf and you see the Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard's 2000 Syrah, get a bottle. You won't regret it.

Made from Livermore Valley grapes, this isn't one of the more popular or well-known products of SCMV. They seem to prefer promoting their wines made from grapes grown within our Santa Cruz Mountains appellation, and I can't blame them, but the 2000 Livermore Valley Syrah is a fantastic wine nonetheless.

There's smoke and spice — pepper, anise — followed by jam-like blackberry and raspberry flavors.

And I'm certainly no expert, but it seems to me this wine could cellar for at least five more years and just keep getting better and better.

Warning: this wine throws sediment.

A Fine Summertime Snack.

So, I arrive home from work feeling a bit peckish. The house is hot and stuffy from being closed up all day in the Summer heat.

First, open up the windows to let in the breeze; the fog will roll in shortly and cool down the place. Next, pour a nice cold glass of Big House Pink. Finally, tuck into my newest favorite snack: organic baby carrots generously slathered in Miya's Green Goddess tofu spread and dip.

This sumptuous spread is loaded with fresh herbs and the tang of lemon; it's low in fat and low in carbs, but loaded with flavor. I get it at New Leaf Community Market, in the deli section next to the hummus and salsas. Unless you have the taste buds of a cat, you will love it, too.

Made in China.

The house rebelled recently.

I came home after a not-so-great day at work, and while I was changing I noticed the sound of running water in the bathroom, which was odd as I don't normally just leave water running all day. Investigating revealed the toilet was no longer shutting off when the tank filled, and the excess water was pouring out the overflow valve. The shut-off mechanism appeared to have simply failed at some point while I was at work.

Wanting more light to inspect the innards of the toilet tank, I pulled (in retrospect perhaps a bit too vigorously) on the chain of the ancient wall-mounted light fixture in the bathroom. The light snapped on with a fascinating new sound which, it turns out, indicated it will never turn off again. So now my bathroom featured never-ending water and light. Great.

I cut the water to the toilet and, with the aid of a potholder, removed the light bulb from the fixture. At least things were stable until I could get parts. I went into the kitchen to make dinner and enjoy some Big House Pink. It was a complex recipe: open can, pour soup into Pirex, cover with cling wrap, poke holes in wrap, put in microwave. The oven light came on, but that was the only normal thing it did. The soup wasn't rotating in the chamber, and the oven made an ominous low rumble and grind. I quickly pressed Stop, then tried again. Same ominous low rumble, and by now I could feel the radiation pouring out of the appliance and metastasizing every abnormality in my body.

That was it. Clearly I needed to wander the house, shouting obscenities at everything that wasn't working. Oddly enough, that didn't fix anything, but it did convince Jake to go hide on the bed until I was done.

Thus it was I headed to Crapitola the following weekend to get what I needed to put the household back in reasonable working order. First stop was OSH, where I learned the part I needed for the toilet has the rather improbable name of "ballcock." (I assume it was an old plumber's joke gone wrong.) Then I searched for new bathroom wall fixtures, but couldn't find any suitable. So I tracked down a pull chain switch so I could attempt to fix the existing fixture. It was about then I noticed that both the ballcock and pull chain switch, along with every light fixture I'd looked at, were made in China. Curious, I wandered OSH and found a surprising number of items for sale were also made in China.

Then it was across the street to Sears for a microwave oven. They had a nice, basic, little oven on sale for $49. Sure enough, made in China. As was every other microwave oven they offered.

My friend Mark had tried, several years ago, to avoid buying anything made in China based on his concern over their apparent disregard for human rights. But he'd eventually given up because, it seemed, some things were just no longer made outside of China. Judging from my experience shopping the other weekend, nowadays most things aren't made outside of China.

Now I've never been a protectionist, but I'm starting to wonder about just what, in fact, America does for a living. And I'm not the only one. Even globalization fanboy Thomas Friedman is noticing a disturbing imbalance in U.S.-China trade, as he said in his column of 20 July:

"So many U.S. dollars and jobs are flowing to China, it is becoming politically and economically unsustainable for the Bush team."

For a man who thinks unfettered global trade is the bee's knees, he's certainly worried about one specific trade deficit. Beyond the sheer financial implications, Mr. Friedman acknowledges a point that many have been making lately, and that I tried to make to my friend Todd just last week:

"While we have been focused on 9/11 and Iraq, China and America have become, in economic terms, Siamese twins."

But why would this be an issue? Why would the current regime be waiving their Iraq hand in our faces while their China hand is up a sleeve, out of sight? The August issue of The Progressive postulates an answer in their editorial 'The Bush Plunge:'

"[Bush] and Cheney and Rumsfeld understand that the world economy runs on oil, that Saudi Arabia's supplies are peaking, that the House of Saud is unstable, and so Iraq, with the second largest oil reserves in the world, is 'vital.' By controlling Iraq's oil, the United States also can have more leverage over the Pentagon's enemy on the horizon, China, which now desperately needs to import oil to keep its economy chugging."

While it's tempting to dismiss this idea as liberal folderol, do note how similar it is to the "Tiananmen-Texas Bargain" Mr. Friedman attributes to Steven Weber of the Institute of International Studies in Berkeley, to wit: China offered their middle class steady economic growth in exchange for voting rights, growth fueled by the U.S. trade imbalance that allows China to underwrite vast amounts of our debt.

So, what can save the United States, besides a dubious and costly war in the Middle East? Lately many talking heads, including Mr. Friedman, have opined that China needs to revalue their currency, the yuan. And that's exactly what they did last Thursday. No longer pegged at a fixed rate against the U.S. dollar, the yuan will now "float against a basket of currencies," as the BBC said in their indubitably British way.

So now it's all good? Everything's going to be OK? Well let's not forget the concerns about human rights that had my buddy Mark checking labels a few years back. And the fears of environmental damage spurred by China's breakneck industrial growth. However, recent events in China suggest the very large and ever-more-informed populace is deciding they won't be sacrificed to their government's economic dreams. Riots are said to be sweeping the nation as the Chinese seem to be less willing to tolerate government indifference and corruption.

But where are we on buying Chinese goods? Listen, if I had all the answers, I wouldn't be penning a blog, Lone Gunmen-style, at almost Midnight on a work night. Besides, I need to fix my toilet.

No Wonder the Market's Irrationally Exuberant!

Listening to Bloomberg TV this morning, I heard some talking head say Treasury yields are at four-twenty. And that he expected them to be higher. No doubt. Sounds like a classic case of Chronic Underachievement to me.

In Praise of Warm Vans.

Watered the plants this morning. The tomato plants need daily watering; I guess I used too small a pot. I pulled on the pair of worn, black, classic Vans that were sitting on the back step so I could traverse the patch of overgrown grass and dog poop to get to the spigot.

The insteps of the shoes had long ago conformed to my feet, the foam rubber compressed by pressure at ball and heel, the canvas atop the foam scrunched forward by my unique gait. The hard rubber half-moon that holds the shape of the back of the shoe has long since broken down, as happens with old Vans. You learn to turn the shoe upside-down and shake to dislodge the latest bits of rubber that have come loose, as well as any creepy crawlers who've decided my Vans are an available backyard condo.

The shoes were lying in the morning light, the black canvas body absorbing the heat, so when I pulled them on they were the perfect warmth for my bare feet. Supple from the sun, the Vans settled right on me as if they were an extension of my own body, delighted to be back in their proper place. As I tied each one the canvas top embraced my foot, my pinkie toe coming to rest in the crook that forms where the shoe front flexes. (I've never been able to decide if the hole that invariably forms in the canvas at that point is caused by the flexing or the toe.)

At that moment, there was no more perfect feeling than the warm Vans on my feet.

The shoes are at the peak of comfort; as time goes on the instep covers will become too loose and bunch in the arch, the back heels will degrade and spew ever larger chunks of rubber, and the holes at the front will grow so large my pinkie toe will pop out when walking.

But right now those Vans have the perfect level of decay, or experience if you prefer. And they wait patiently on the back step for my half-hearted yard maintenance. As I thought about the delight they brought me this morning, I realized I should hold onto that happiness and carry it as far forward into the day as I can.