What fore?

For me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball.

Dave Barry

It's over a week ago now, as I was on vacation in New Hampshire (more on that, maybe later). Still, I figured I throw out my this little story of a rare event that happens now and then: me playing golf. My company has an annual customer shmooze-fest of a golf outing at an exclusive golf club in northwest NJ. Every now and then I get to go, usually because there's a customer I've been working with who's playing.

So this year I was out again, on a beautiful day in June, golfing. Or, at least something that remotely resembles golfing. I am not good. When I signed up for the outing, I was asked for my handicap. I have no idea what it is, but I'll bet it's a big number.

I do own clubs (the cheapest used clubs eBay had to offer), and a pair golf shoes, so I was marginally equipped. I managed to run afoul of the country club dress code because my shorts have pockets on the sides (e.g. cargo shorts). Mind you even shorts are a recent concession of the country club's owners. Luckily I ran into someone with a company card in the pro-shop, so I was able to score a free pair of compliant shorts.

I have to admit I had a lot of fun. Maybe it's the Scot in me. It helped that the game was low-key. The format of the tournament was a "scramble" where the foursome plays as one and uses the best shot from the team on each leg. I played with an easy-going group willing to offer helpful tips that actually improved my game. By the end, I managed to contribute a few good shots.

I'd prefer a course less saturated with lawn chemicals (after all, they didn't need them when the game was created). And is denim really so awful? I guess a private club means lots Judge Smails types (and there were plenty). You probably see less of that on public courses. However, I probably won't be playing again until the next company freebie. That, in itself, is a good thing, as golf balls aren't cheap (even the bottom-of-the-barrel ones I bought at Target), and I lost plenty of them....

Gotta post something...

Before this is over the Vice President may start going door to door asking if anyone wants to hear his story.
Keith Olbermann

Okay, if I want to stay out of Rob's crypt, I better post something. You can't go wrong with Olmermann's Worst Person in the World, and yesterday's was no exception, with runner-up Dick Cheney still, still beating the Iraq - al-Qaida link.

And yes, I got the 8 thinge meme going around, and yes, I'll get to it at some point.

Rediscovered: Black Crowes - Shake Your Money Maker

Clean as a whistle
Smellin' like a rose
The Black Crowes
"Twice as Hard"

Over a year ago I posted the first of what was to be a series of posts titled "Rediscovered!" These posts would be to highlight music I neglected for a long time that I've recently listened to again, recalling why I liked them so much. So today I am rediscovering the "Rediscovered!" series on my blog. A recent post on Jeri Smith-Ready's blog mentioned The Black Crowes' Shake Your Money Maker, an album I hadn't played in a year or more until last week. What a great album this is.

The first track is "Twice as Hard," whose openning guitar chords you cannot help but play loud. They set the tone for the entire albumn, informing the listenner that there will be no fancy effects, overdubbing, or digital magic. The guitar and drums are clean and tight, the vocals raw, and the only sound effect you'll find is a car crash at the beginning of "Thick and Thin."

The heart and soul of Shake Your Money Maker are the guitar/vocal combination of brothers Rich and Chris Robinson. The percussion is firm and precise - never over the top - and really comes through on songs like "Jealous Again" and their cover of the Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." Piano and organ riffs add some extra depth on tracks like "Sister Luck" and the stand-out "She Talks to Angels."

My last rediscovered album was a collection of b-sides and outtakes, and it maybe wasn't such a surprise that it sank below my RADAR and gathered some dust. Shake Your Money Maker is none of that, and I don't know why I left it alone so long.

The sin of time-out

But in the town it was well known
When they got home at night, their fat
And psychopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
Pink Floyd

I heard about this from a friend of mine. It's a news story about a church California instructing parents that spanking is God's will. Here are the actual instructions on the church's web site.

Basically, spanking is the only child discipline method created God. Not just any spanking will do, either. You need to use the rod, "flexible stick like a switch." The instructions note that you should never use your hand, a belt, a brush, a cord, or 2x4 (yes, that's on the list of "don't spank with" items). If you "withhold the rod" by, say, putting your child in time-out or speaking to them, you've sinned.

This bothers me on so many levels that it's hard to decide what to say. Here are a few thoughts:

It tells me I'm wrong or sinful because I don't beat my kids, and that I'm ruining them by withholding this punishment. Quotes from the Churh's paster take the rhetoric one step further. "We disagree with time-outs as a family," he says. "That's an attack on spanking." Here he's taking a page from the same-sex marriage debate. Not only is time-out wrong, but it's an attack. By framing the discussion in these terms, he suggests that we are out to get him and the other true believers.

Then there's there's the all to familiar tenant that the bible is the literal and infallible word of God. That's a popular sentiment, and it works great in these instructions. But I'm left wondering how he handles some of the stuff in Leviticus. I'll wager he's on board with killing men who sleep together, but what about eating pork and shellfish? I'll bet those passages don't come up much in these little discussions. Much better to go with the crowd favorites like denying evolution and climate change. In essence, it's simply cherry-picking pasages with little context. It's not just what you think any more, now you can say it's the word of God.

One final thought: in the face of literal interpretation of the Bible, I Googled "bible contradictions" and got plenty of results. I only checked out the first few results, all similar lists of verses that contradict one another in varying degrees. These lists reinforce my opinion that the bible is a mixed bag of ideas with varying degrees of merit. It strikes me that one can find within its pages justification for all manner acts both good and evil.

Click click click...

Don't care how
I want it now
Veruca Salt
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

So, are you a multiple clicker? If you're on a web page, do you start clicking a link over and over if it doesn't come up immediately on the first click? Do you engage in the online equivalent of pressing the elevator call button over and over, even though it's already lit? Just curious....

I encounter users like this now and then, usually when there is a problem in a program I wrote. I'm with the user trying to figure it out, and they just start clicking over and over. It's surprisingly frustrating. Here's my poor little program, struggling to do what's asked of it. Each click just adds to the load. I'm watching what's going on, maybe starting to see clues, tracing the path of the bullet if you will. Then "click click click click click" comes the virtual shotgun blast. Everything collapses and all clues are long gone.

Of course, my program should be able to handle it, and I've certainly done something wrong that needs to be fixed. That's probably why all those clicks infuriate me. They serve to further highlight the inadequacies of my creation. It's not like I don't do it, either. I've clicked away in frustration, fully aware that it does no good.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I was on a WebEx the other day, and the person driving the mouse kept doing it. I was reminded how much it bugs me, and figured it was something I could post. So there it is.

Priorities

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
Theodore Roosevelt

When I look at some people's priorities, I really start to wonder if we're not all just doomed.

The Center of NJ Life reported today on the abysmal turnout for school budget elections yesterday. Unfortunately, this is par for the course. As for the results, where do I start?

In 2005 I voiced my support of every person who votes, regardless of how they voted. I still hold to that sentiment. I applaud everyone who voted, really I do, but, they're not making it easy.

Yesterday voters in Hightstown and East Windsor voted down a budget item that would have hired some additional teachers for educational programs that would go beyond the core curriculum mandated by law. However, they voted to keep funding courtesy transportation - busing that goes beyond what is mandated by law.

More transportation. Less education. That's our priority.

What was that?

Sultan: What about the virgins?
Horatio Jackson: Sultan, forget about the virgins! We're out of virgins!
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

What made me think of this was a conference call I was on today, where I said the following:

So the first thing we need to do is solve the virgin entry problem.

I'll let y'all know when we figure that one out....

This is my wife...

They're pissin' me off. Friggin' wolves. Should've known better than to adopt wolves.
Sharon

This is my wife on Zoo Tycoon.

I guess I know which animal spirit she's not.

Teach my children how?

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.
Bill Cosby

Friday morning I was checking to make sure my oldest had her homework folder. I found the cover of her spelling workbook was crumpled and torn. When I asked her what happened, she told me it got that way in her desk. I understood precisely, and imediately I had a vision of those little grammer school desks stuffed with a mess of papers, pencils, and who knows what else, all in complete disarray.

You can probably guess that the desk I envisioned was not my daughter's, but my own desk in grammar school. I couldn't tell you which grade precisely because my desk always looked that way. So did my locker. So, for that matter, does my desk at work now.

You could call this a manifestation the parent's curse Bill Cosby refers to in the classic Himself - we are cursed by parents who wish our children will be just like us. I think it's also something we all privately wish for anyway - a sin of vanity we can't avoid but will come back to haunt us. Either way, we're doomed to see in our children not only our best qualities, but our worst. It's the latter that gets you.

I feel like trying to convice her to be more organized, more outgoing, less nit-picky, or maybe a little neater is an exercise in futility. Nothing parents, teachers, peers, or complete strangers did rid me of these bad habits. Nearly forty (ack!) years later, I still haven't shaken off such tendencies. My garage workbench is still a disaster, my holiday shopping is still last-minute, letting go of an argument is like severing a limb, and I'm still hanging out in the corner of the crowd trying not to make eye contact.

I guess, like everything else with parenting, I shouldn't worry too much. These are the things that make us human, me and her. She's a great kid, they both are, and nothing compares to the joy they bring. A messy desk is a small price to pay for that.

DST Dumb-asses

I oppose the bill for two reasons. First, it contains a number of highly objectionable provisions. Second, it simply ignores several of our most pressing energy challenges, such as our dependence on foreign oil.
Senator Hillary Clinton
regarding the Energy Policy Act of 2005

Par for course from the do nothing Congress of years past. Highly objectionable? Let me just say that I have found this Daylight Savings Time change extremely questionable. What a bonehead maneuver that was. What, Y2K was too boring? No major glitches? We needed to create a new issue? It's even got its own acronym: Y2K7. What a bunch of knuckleheads.

After spending several hours patching all our servers last night, I'm willing to vote for Hillary solely on the basis of her opposition to this bill.

Death by Conference Call

To mute your line, press star-6...
Automated conference call voice

Lately it feels like that's the most useful think I've heard on a conference call. I am on more conference calls these days. I'm starting to feel like my phone headset has become some psychic vacuum sucking my productivity away. It's like the bridge line is some malevolent entity that feeds on my life force. I hang up from these calls feeling drained. I look at the clock and wonder where the last ninety minutes of my life just went.

"After the tone, please state your name." "*BEEP*" "Please, kill me now." "'Please, kill me now.' has joined the conference."

On Road House and the Guilty Pleasure of Bad Cinema

It may be the most peculiar recent movie ever except for "Road House," but then what can you say about "Road House"? Such movies defy all categories.
Roger Ebert
reviewing Black Snake Moan

Roger Ebert has been keeping to a light schedule, so it has lately been an unexpected treat when I find he's reviewed something. This week, he gave three stars to Black Snake Moan, a recent addition to my we-should-go-see-that-but-who-am-I-kidding-we'll-never-get-a-chance-until-it-comes-out-on-DVD list. I was glad to hear he liked the film, espeically Samuel L. Jackson's performance.

I was a little surprised, however, at the comparison to Road House. I wondered for a moment if Roger Ebert actually thought it was a good movie. He did not, of course, choosing to sum it up in this way:

Road House exists right on the edge between the "good-bad movie" and the merely bad. I hesitate to recommend it, because so much depends on the ironic vision of the viewer. This is not a good movie.

That's why I like Roger Ebert. He's not afraid to take joy in bad movies, and his reviews of them are some of my favorites (if you haven't read his review of The Core, you should). On his light schedule, Ebert is probably cherry-picking the better movies to review. I hope that as his health continues to improve, he'll choose to indulge in one of these guilty pleasures, in turn sharing with us all.

When you don't know the answer...

Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, "What the fuck."
Miles (Curtis Armstrong)
Risky Business

Someone forwarded these to me - the appear to be a collection of funny test answers. I have no idea if their for real, but I got a real kick out of them.

Clearly each of ehese answers represent a person giving up. This first one just comes out and says as much:

These next two just went the wacky non-sequiter route:

Then there's the idea that if you follow the instructions, no matter how you follow them, you must be right.

I love the found x. Heck, that was easy!
And finally, like Kirk with the Kobayashi Maru, if don't know the solution, change the problem.

Well of course. There's an elephant in the way. I'll have to remember that one.

Release the hounds!

Along about midnight when it's dark, dark, dark
There's a long, low whistle and a faraway bark
And then a high, high whistle only hounds can hear
To let them know the train, the dog train is near

"Dog Train"
performed by Blues Traveller
lyrics by Sandra Boynton

We're getting two new hounds! Tomorrow! Woo-hoo!

(We tried to warn the cats, but I don't think they understood. They will, oh yes, they will.)

Clearly it's Friday

Monday I have Friday on my mind

David Bowie

Okay, no posts in a long time. This is because I've been so busy at work, though the following photo of my trash seems evidence to the contrary:

In my defense I will only say that the Marlboros, Cokes, and three of the bottles are not from me.

Paging Mr. Murphy

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong
Murphy's Law

Let me first point out that I have configured and enabled the Microsoft Routing and Remote Access service multiple times. Each time the configuration worked perfectly, on the first try, with no adverse effects to the system or network. Why was I so successful? It had nothing to do with skill or knowledge, I assure you. There was only one reason: I was standing right in front of the server when I did it.

The most recent time I configured the Microsoft Routing and Remote Access service, the system I was working on was not right in front of me. It was not in a nearby room, not in the same building, not even the same state. It was, in fact, at a hosting provider in St. Louis, Missouri. It was also 8:30 PM on a Sunday night. Oh yeah, did I mention that this was on the database server behind our production web servers.

Three hours later everthing was fixed, but I'm left pondering the often quoted, more often ignored Murphy's Law. I decided to check out its origins at (where else?) the Murphy's Law Wiki Page. It turns out Murphy's Law is named after Maj. Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an aerospace engineer who worked on experimental rocket sleds in the 1950s. He is rumored to have uttered the adage after a subordinate miswired a bunch of sensors resulting in useless test results.

There are actually conflicting accounts around this event. Some stories suggest it was really Murphy's fault for poor planning, and that term was a less-than-subtle dig at Murphy. Others suggest that it was just a quip of Murphy's that became the team's way expressing the pragmatic doctrine of always expecting the worst. That is certainly what the expression became as it was popularized by Murphy's friend and next-door neighbor John Paul Stapp.

Stapp was known as the "fastest man on earth" for his runs on the rocket sled. He was also a collector of expressions and adages, writing them down in a notebook he kept. At a press conference he was asked how such a dangerous program as the rocket sled experiments could have so few injuries. Stapp replied that they always considered Murphy's Law and explained what that meant.

Which is why I can blame Murphy now, instead of my own carelessness.

The End of Summer

The summer wind, came blowin in - from across the sea
It lingered there, so warm and fair - to walk with me

Summer Wind
lyrics by Henry Mayer

You've probably read Sharon's post. Today we lost our greyhound, Summer. Earlier this week she began vomiting. What the vet initially thought was pancreatitis turned out to be acute renal failure. Her kidneys stopped working. We don't know why; they will do tests to see. The answer won't help much, but our neighbors have dogs and sometime maybe so will we. We need to them to be safe.

When it came time, the vet began to explain the procedure, and we kind of cut him off. We already knew, we told him. We had gone through this only six months ago with her "sister" Toasty. That one came quickly, too. At the time, I remember thinking it may not be too long for Summer. She'd lost a leg to cancer, and there was every chance it would show up in her lungs or elsewhere. When they X-rayed her, it turned out she was clear. We never got a chance to take joy in this news.

On the drive to the vet, my one hope was that Summer would perk up, just a little, when we arrived. I wanted her to have some last bit of joy or relief. Just before the vet administered the drugs, we got her collar down. This was Sharon's idea; Summer was always overjoyed when the opportunity for a hop came up. It was possibly her favorite part of the day. She did perk up a bit. Her eyes openned wider, and her ears went up. I couldn't see her tail under the blanket, but maybe it thumped a little. I hope so.

There will be other dogs, and I expect they will be as dear to us as Summer. But there will only be one Summer Storm, and like we always told her, she was a good girl doggie.

Thirty-two days later

I can have a complete conversation on my own, and you know to stay out of it. You're in your own anyway....
Sharon

It has been a long conversation with myself. Here are a few of the things I would have blogged if I wasn't totally lame:

• 7 November: C'mon baby! C'mon! Daddy needs a new goverment! C'mon!
• 8 November: Woo-hoo!
• 9 November: Now what?
• Details of converting old Christmas tapes to digital format because the cars don't have tape players anymore.
• A post about a new contractor hired for a project I'm leading at work, and the... um... spirited debates we've been having about how stuff should be built.
• Several fun podcasts, including "How to Succedd in Evil."
• A paragraph dancing around the ugly fact that our cats have destroyed the floor in our office. A paragraph describing the 2-3 day project of replacing floor boards and cleaning the carpet. A paragraph (or two) on how I had to replace the door, and the frame, and the sub-floor. A paragraph cursing my home's previous owner and the fact they didn't use caulk.
• How I put the Pythagorean Theorem to practical use.

That's all I can come up with for a synopsis. I'm a little foggy right now from all the carpet cleaning chemicals. I will endeavor to post something more substantial soon, perhaps elaborating on the Pythagorean Theorem bit.

P.S. I'm listenning George Carlin's When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? and I'm wondering if the funniest part is the title. I'm a little dissappointed there.

Hubble Rescue Greenlighted

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill

NASA gave the green light to a final Hubble servicing mission!

"Big Fat Idiot" Ain't the Half of It!

You absolute horror of a human being.
Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear)
As Good as It Gets

Rush Limbaugh sought new depths to sink to yesterday when he accused Michael J. Fox of faking Parkinson's disease. The Washington Post story by reporter David Montgomery begins this way:

Possibly worse than making fun of someone's disability is saying that it's imaginary. That is not to mock someone's body, but to challenge a person's guts, integrity, sanity.

That showed some pretty impressive restraint. I guess, "Could Limbaugh be any more of an asshole?" wouldn't have made it past the editor.

Update: My hero Keith Olbermann voted Rush Monday's Worst Person in the World.