Christmas Means Carnage!

(Yes, I DID watch "Babe" this last week. How did you know?)

Okay, it wasn't on Christmas, but during my vacation last week. We have several bird and squirrel feeders in our back yard, and we're getting quite a variety of birds dropping by, including a small hawk or kestrel or something like that. Usually it just sits on the fence and behaves itself.

Last week it dropped by and sat a little closer to the house on one of our rock planter beds. We got out the binoculars and took advantage of the closer look. Then I noticed it had brought along some food. It took me a little while to figure out what it was. It didn't look much like what it once was anymore.

That turned my wife off immediately, and she scared it off. Fortunately it took its dinner with it. (Oh now look, Zazu! You made me lose my lunch!)

I went out later to clean up the area a bit, thinking the feathers would be a gruesome reminder my wife could do without when she went outside later to refill the feeders. There were a lot of feathers, and a few other surprising bits that I won't mention. Let's just say that today's title is apt enough, and I no longer disagree with my wife's declaration that it can do its feeding somewhere else. My "Respect For Nature" does not include turning my planter bed into a sacrificial alter.

It was a very striking, handsome bird, nonetheless. We'd be more than happy to admire it any time it wants to drop by. Just eat before you come, eh?

Fun Without Glasses!

What the bottle of shampoo said:
New! Richer lather!

What I (mis)read:
New! Richer father!

Partridge In A Big Pear Tree

It's got great harmonies! It's got great parodies! It's got good comedy(s)! It's Straight No Chaser doing "The Twelve Days of Christmas!"

Good stuff!

Christmas Vacation

As soon as I'm done with work today I'm on vacation for a week. I'd like to say I won't be back until next year, but I'll be back on New Year's Eve. That week counts as part of 2008 from the company's perspective, so if I take that monday off it'll come out of next year's vacation time. I'm trying to save up my time so we can take an extended vacation next year, so every day counts.

Today also happens to be my name day. Well, Tuomas' day, so it's close enough. Being the only one if the family without a Finnish name, we have to take what we can get. And what did I get? A nice, warm hat for my dancing, dining, and dog-walking pleasure. And with the winds we get around her sometimes, trust me, it'll be a pleasure. I don't care for cold ears.

We finally got some decent snow up on the mountains. It's still bare and brown down here in the valley, though. Since I won't have to go to work in it, I'd love nothing better than a good snowstorm sometime next week. Chances aren't particularly good, though. That's the trouble with living here. If this were California then you'd know not to expect snow. But here, there's always a chance. It could snow, and it could stick long enough to be worth something.

In fact my very first Christmas here it snowed six inches. It was beautiful! We've had nothing close to that ever since, and certainly not for Christmas. Oh well. On the bright side I shovel walks maybe twice a year. And considering that our house has sidewalks on two sides, plus a triple-size driveway, that's not a small bonus.

Anyway, in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Wait, no--Happy Holiday! Enjoy whatever time off you get!

More Fun With Headlines

On MSNBC.com:

"Nickelodeon considers teen pregnancy special"

Yes, I'm sure being a pregnant teen is special. Not desirable, probably, but special!

All-American Girl

My oldest son to his (blue-eyed) sister over breakfast this morning:
"Your eyes are red, white, and blue!"

Watching What You Eat

I don't usually get involved in animal testing issues. I'm not completely sure we can do without it in critical situations. But I have no problem denouncing the animal testing conducted by M&M/Mars. They're not doing it to ensure public safety. They're not doing it to meet government requirements. They're doing it...just to see what claims they can make about chocolate. Like people need more reasons to buy chocolate. I can easily live without M&Ms and Snickers, thanks.

Hershey's has already banned animal testing, by the way. Which is fortunate, because I really love Reese's and Kit Kat. Go Hersheys!

In other news, I'm reading "The DaVinci Code". Yes, at long last. I'm probably the last person in America.

I'm mixed. The story is interesting enough. I mainly just get irritated with the way the author tells the story. Any sense of suspense is created by telling you that one of the characters knows something important--and then not just failing to tell you what it is, but bending over backward not to tell you what it is.

It's the adult literary version of that annoying girl in the third grade who would come up to you and say, "I've got a secret and I'm not tellin'! Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!"

Not a single bit of suspense comes from the plot itself. At no time are we all that concerned with what will happen. We are made to only care about what has already happened that we're just not being told. And the writer goes to great lengths to set these little "gems" up.

For example, at one point we're given a flashback episode between the hero and his editor as they discuss the draft of his latest book. The editor goes on and on about how controversial "this" is, yet manages to never come out and define "this." The scene comes off awkwardly, as any normal person would have have come right out and said it rather than the strained dance we get.

A little bit of this is fine. A lot of this is annoying. An entire third of a book (and no signs of slowing) of this is insulting--to both the reader AND the author. It's as if he doesn't trust in his plot enough to treat us as equals and lay it all out for us and trust us to come along willingly. "If you knew what I knew you'd stop reading, therefore I won't tell you."

Indeed, the plot itself seems contrived. When I last stopped the heroes had just escaped the police with the help of someone who would normally have no reason to help them, but just happened to be an old friend of one of them's father. He's willing to jeopardize his career and his life to defy the French equivalent of the FBI because...well, the girl said she was innocent.

I get the idea that the writer is either telling the wrong story or just doesn't know how to tell one at all. The back plot is more interesting than the main plot. His characters can be incredibly bright one moment and incredibly stupid the next. Not that I care at all for his characters, either. They're flat. The only one with any hope for depth is the murderous albino monk.

I'm only a third of the way in, so perhaps things will get better. But this constant diet of dangling and withholding is getting old. I'm listening to this in the car on the way to work, so it's not like I have something better to do with the time. I'm sure I'll finish it regardless, but I probably won't pick up another Dan Brown novel any time soon.

Don't Look, Marion! Don't Look!

I'm not familiar with Jennifer Love Hewitt or her work. I can't say if I find her attractive or not. But I can say this much: Good for her. Who says, assuming she's even fat at all and not just victim of a bad picture or has wide hips, that she's obligated to be skinny for the cameras? Who says she has to be subjected to ridicule if she's put on weight?

Obviously the real story is that people think she should be skinny and she's not. Pardon me if I fail to get excited. She hasn't punched anyway, swindled anyone, done drugs, called anyone a bad name, driven drunk...she's gained some weight (if she's even done that!).

Until that's a crime, shut up already.

They say that men are keeping women down. It's not men reading these magazines, ladies. You're doing it to yourselves.

Attack of the LOLCats

There are various sites out there for amusing pictures of cats and other animals. This is one of them:

moar funny pictures from I Can Has Cheezburger.com

Or this...

moar funny pictures

That's What It's All About

Actually, I don't know what it's all about. But I suspect carrying a tooth in a tissue in your suitcoat pocket all through church because your daughter lost it during Sacrament Meeting is included in there somewhere.

I'm also betting the Hokey-Pokey isn't even mentioned.

Web Game Festival Gate Bible Earth School

Today's title comes from some spam I just received. I'm not sure what they teach at the Web Game Festival Gate Bible Earth School, but I'm rather curious to find out. Not curious enough to open the email, though, I guess.

Am I alive? Yes. Do I have anything worth posting about? Not really. Does that bother you? Probably not.

One-Two-Three-And-Where's-Your-Breakfast!

Last night I pulled out my copy of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories" and tried reading it to the kids. Emma and Walter loved it, and it put Richard to sleep. I remember my mother reading us stories from the book when I was a kid, so it was fun to see the kids enjoy it too. The circle is now complete.

One of the most fun was "How the Leopard Got His Spots". That's the one that I most remember. The line "sit on his head 'til morning" found its way into the family canon and gets quoted frequently. Many other lines jumped out as forgotten favorites, such as "He who takes cakes that the Parsee-man bakes makes big mistakes!"

Emma liked the book so much she asked to take it to bed with her so she could read it. My job here is done!

After the kids went to bed I watched some more Babylon 5, followed by part of Ken Burns' "The War" on PBS. And interesting pairing, really. Both shows deal with the realities of war on both a macro and micro level. It's one thing to look back on WWII from sixty-plus years later and judge what happened by today's standards. It's another thing altogether to experience it from the perspect of those who were there.

Take the decision to use the A-bomb. It's easy to criticize now, looking back across decades of the Cold War, Mutually-Assured Destruction, and the current threat of rogue nukes and dirty bombs. But at the time the only alternative that they could see was an invasion of Japan itself at the cost of millions of lives.

None of the regular troops or the civilian population even knew the bomb existed at that point. When suddenly two of them were dropped and the Japanese surrendered I'm certain they felt immense relief at having avoided a fight that would have made everything that had gone before it seem like a barroom brawl. And what had gone before it hadn't been at all easy. Just taking a single island cost more lives than the entire Iraq War to date.

I can't imagine very many people then seeing the A-bomb as a bad thing. Of course they couldn't see what was coming. But while we're enjoying the blessing of hindsight, we should also consider that we survived the Cold War. In spite of our low opinions of ourselves and human nature, the A-bomb was the first and last nuke used in war. It saved many more lives than it took.

Anyway, what our nation achieved in WWII was nothing short of miraculous. That our men and women faced that trial, slogging through unimaginable horrors, and returned home to resume largely normal lives speaks volumes.

I've only seen bits and pieces of "The War". I'm not sure I want to see all of it.

But I probably should.

Odd Movies

I watched "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" last night. It's one of those movies that I've been meaning to watch for years but never quite got around to. Until I found my brother had it, that is. I borrowed it from him, and last night I finally had enough time to watch it.

I found it...vaguely disappointing. Visually it's a masterpiece reminiscent of Miyazaki. The design work is great. The acting is...well, better than you realize. Considering that most of the time the actors are reacting to stuff that isn't there, they do a superlative job.

But the characters themselves are flat and uninteresting. Gwyneth Paltrow looks great in retro clothing, just as I expected. Jude Law looks...well, let's just say I wouldn't turn down outfits like the ones he wore. But other than that, they just didn't do anything for me. I think I cared more about Lex than Joe or Polly--and I didn't care that much about him, either.

The writing and editing were bad. So bad, in fact, that I can't help but think it's done on purpose in homage to...something. And therein lies the problem. Homage only works if the audience if familiar with the genre being...homaged? Homagiated? I'd say it's probably homage to the old serials of the 1930's and 40's, but I've never seen them. And there is no way they could have even approached the EFX this movie has. If anything I think this may be homage to old radio plays, as a listener's imagination is the only medium that could have accommodated this kind of story.

The plot was little more than a shell, really. We were never given more than the briefest of exposition, and there were many, many places where more was needed--not just wanted, but needed.

All in all, the movie is comparable to the character Polly Perkins: Gorgeous, but not much substance. And I think that's why I struggle with this movie. It's not often that I simultaneously love and hate the same work of art.

I referenced Miyazaki (aren't I the cultural snob!) before, and in hindsight the reference is more apt than I realized. I've only seen one of his movies, "Howl's Moving Castle", and it was beautiful. But unlike in "Sky Captain", the characters were developed. There was a lot of background information glossed over, and not much exposition, but I think Miyazaki shows more skill at knowing what to explain and what to just let "be".

Visually, however, they have a lot in common--though I also rate Miyazaki higher for attention to detail. They both provide spectacle in the best sense of the word. The British flying aircraft carriers were impressive, and one of the best moments of geeky pleasure came when the British aircraft slipped their propellers from front to back to switch from airplane to submarine mode. It was...just...cool, okay?

So yeah. Good movie. Bad movie. Unsatisfying in that they did such a good job on some things that surely they could have done a better job on the rest of it. Oh well, it was worth everything I paid for it. (Thanks, Bro!)

Jinkies, Scooby!

I ran across this history quiz online today. I got a 90%! I guess I've retained more than I would have thought--though I admit that had it not been multiple choice I'd have gotten most of them wrong. Still, I didn't expect to do THAT well.

Ghost Town

It would appear I'm the only one on my team in the office this morning. We did a big, nasty upgrade to our system over the weekend. Or I should really say "they". I'm not a technical person, so there wasn't much I could do

Our system was supposed to be online by start of business this morning. We made it, but only with about three hours to spare. The original schedule was to be done by noon yesterday.

IT is an odd business. It seems we're always dealing with complex systems that we don't fully understand and can't predict. We give optimistic estimates, then kill ourselves to beat the deadline.

Part of the problem is the nature of business. We simply can't be without important systems for more than couple days. We were already soliciting grumbles when we took the system down on a Thursday. If we'd asked for a few more days to make sure we did it all right we'd have been lynched. If we'd not have made the deadline this morning we'd have been lynched. And if we'd decided to bail out and go back to the old system it would be a month at the earliest before we'd get another chance.

So...here I sit like a nerd in the wilderness, waiting for the others to come. And praying nothing major goes wrong this morning before everyone else regains consciousness.

Which Is It?

My local paper is predicting economic doom and gloom. Meanwhile, this article is pointing to our solid GDP figures and near-record unemployment as signs that everything is just fine.

I know which one I prefer to believe.

And not to make light of the mortgage woes right now, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for either side. The mortgage companies shouldn't have been offering easy money on confusing terms. The consumers should have been paying more attention. To bail either side out only encourages more of the same. People sometimes need to get hit over the head with something to learn their lesson.

So pardon me if I'm not jumping at the chance to have the government spend my taxes to bail out someone who should have known better. I live below my means. I was careful about the terms of my mortgage when we moved two years ago. We bought less of a house than the mortgage company told us we could afford because I asked questions, did my own thinking, and knew my financial limits.

Perhaps I'm just weird. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned. Perhaps I'm hopelessly out of touch. I think I need some government money to help me get back into touch. ;-)

Age of Enlightenment

I love Babylon 5. It's great sci-fi. And sometimes it's just great story-telling, period. Like the episode I watched last night, "Passing Through Gethsemane."

The premise of the story is that in the future (2260 AD) the human race has found a better alternative to capital punishment. Convicted murderers are sentenced to a "death of personality" wherein telepaths wipe your memories and personality and then reconstruct a new identity and personality for you, along with a strong desire to serve humanity in some way. You're then started over as an entirely different person in a new life somewhere away from those who might know your victim(s). No one has to kill the killer, they pay their debt by service to society, and you don't have to worry about rehabilitation--they're no longer a threat to anyone.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think this solution is actually worse than capital punishment--for the criminal. Think about it. What if the standard punishment for murder today was not only your death, but your body would be harvested for organs, your body preserved via taxidermy, loaded with surveillance gear (camera eyes, microphone ears, and a transmitter) and then rigged to be used as a pose-able mannequin. They'd dress you in a police uniform and stand you in various places for crowd control while some desk jockey monitors the situation via remote feed. Or, if the technology is good enough, use you for a remote control bomb robot.

I think people would be screaming "cruel and unusual punishment" in no time.

But that's essentially what they're suggesting in this futuristic scenario. The criminal as they were known would be dead, even though their body would still be alive. What made them "them" would be gone forever. Meanwhile, they place an artificial "soul" in the body and turn it loose to serve society in some manner. Sure, the new personality may be likable, life-like, creative, funny, whatever, but the reality is that it's only purpose for existing is to serve. They're going to both kill you and make you an unwitting slave at the same time.

It reminds me of the old joke about the cannibal that captures three friends and tells each of them "I'm going to cut your throat, eat your meat, and use your skin for my canoe." Killing them isn't good enough. They have to keep paying and paying.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound terribly enlightened to me.

What cracks me up, however, is the brief exchange between the chief of security and an alien ambassador early in the show. The security chief suggests that a mass murderer should be executed, and admits that he's an "eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth kind of guy." The alien ambassador replies with the lame and predictable "But that would leave everyone blind and toothless".

It's lame enough by itself, but this is coming from a Minbari. This is the alien race that, when their leader is killed by humans in a misunderstanding, declares a war of extinction against Earth (declared by this same ambassador, incidentally). This is the race that tries several times during the series to kill or provoke a war with a human officer who managed to destroy their flagship during the resulting war. This is the same ambassador who later on, when an alien race attempts to ambush her fleet, flees out of reach and then turn around and destroys the enemy fleet to teach them a lesson.

Superior Minbari morality? I'm just not seeing it. Sorry. Can the lectures, lady.

In spite of all this I love the episode. The heart of the show centers around a serial killer who has suffered the "death of personality" and been rebuilt as a benedictine-ish monk with no memory of his former life. He is loved and respected on the space station where he now lives, and has befriended the station's commander.

But the families of his victims don't feel that the "death of personality" is punishment enough for what he did. They manage to track him down, get a telepath to restore his memories, and then corner and kill him (well, one of them does--the rest lose their nerve). His killer is then taken, tried, and suffers his own "death of personality." The station's commander finds himself at the end of the episode having to decide whether he can forgive the person who killed his friend--a person who killed his friend because he himself could not forgive.

It's neat little piece circular moral logic, and an amazingly deep story beyond what I've related. The ex-murder-monk is played by the well-cast Brad Dourif. It's an amazing piece of writing, and a great stand-alone story in its own right. There are so many facets to the story that it can leave a person thinking for a good, long time.

Heavy Fog

We're having the outside of our house painted. The painter got started yesterday and prepped half the house. We now have plastic over the windows on two sides, which takes some getting used to. It's like living in a fogbank.

When it's done the house will look...well, the same, only better. We liked the color scheme before, but the paint was wearing thin in places.

Fortunately the weather is cooperating so far. Yesterday was in the 60's, and today may hit the 70's.

Our painter is from Ukraine and is a rather likable fellow. His kids ride the same bus as our oldest (which is how we found out about him--his son deserves a commission), so they all live just up the street from us. After school his kids come over and play with our kids while they all watch dad at work. We wouldn't mind building a friendship out of this, really. His kids are well-behaved, and they seem like a nice family.

Volunteerism Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris

Well, my homeowners association meeting is over. I spent the better part of the day yesterday either getting ready for it or holding it. The turnout was somewhat disappointing. I'd hoped to at least get 30-40 people, but we had around 15. For all the advertising we did I had really hoped for more. Oh well, more cookies for us.

On the other hand, it was a more positive meeting than some previous meetings have been. Those who came seemed genuinely pleased with my efforts so far and feel that my newsletters have been making a difference. I even got several volunteers to be on the architectural committee. Many of the suggestions that came up were positive and do-able. And for a cold, rainy day in October, getting that many people was probably a good effort.

But considering the impact on our day, I'm not sure I'm in a big hurry to hold another meeting.

I did a little research on homeowners associations today. The Wikipedia entry really brought out some of the bad points. I'd like to think I'm a good choice for HOA president, as many of the abuses by presidents and boards it listed would never have occurred to me. I'd like to think I have a genuine interest in making the neighborhood a better place for everyone. I'm certainly not doing this for some sort of power-trip.

Anyway, I think we're making progress. If I can do a good job of marketing and publicity I think many of the problems will take care of themselves.

Hardly Working

I've got a new project at work, and I think it's stressing me out. It's big--really big. And of enterprise proportions. And it requires me to call a lot of people I've never spoken to--many of them fairly high level. It's enough to put an introvert like me into a psychosomatic tizzy.

At the same time, I have to admit it's been a lot of fun. I'm learning lots of information about how our company works and how it's structured. I'm learning that the business problem we're trying to solve is both more simple and more complicated than I originally thought.

This project scares me. It's also pretty exciting stuff. I'm also very ready for a weekend.

Too bad the weekend includes me running a homeowners association meeting. The weather is not going to cooperate. I don't know whether to wish for no one to show up or for record numbers. I think I mainly just wish it were over.