Corner Gas

Thanks to a Netflix recommendation I had the pleasure of viewing the Canadian TV series Corner Gas. I have trouble describing this sitcom - it has a feel kind of like Northern Exposure, but the setting could be a small town anywhere (USA or Canada). I'm sorry in a way that they are finished filming the last season of this fine series - but I think that there is a time for all good shows to bow out and allow something else to take over. Thankfully, since I just started viewing the series on DVD, it will be a while before I get to the final season!! Some people who have reviewed the series on Netflix found it to be boring. I found it to be refreshing - an alternative to the laugh-track-laden stuff that is currently on TV. I really enjoy the dynamic between Lacey and Brent in the first season, with there being an obvious attraction between the two characters, but (like what seems to happen with me) Brent either doesn't recognize what could be, or is somewhat oblivious to it.

When I watched Northern Exposure, I wondered what it would be like to live in Alaska. When I heard the now defunct "Cool Country, Rock, and Blues" station KICK-AM from Australia on the Internet, I wondered what it would be like to live in Sydney. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that as I was watching Corner Gas, I wondered what it would be like to live in Saskatchewan (or anywhere in Canada, for that matter). While I won't bore you all with the gory details of what I found and didn't find, I think I've come to the conclusion that while Canada is a fine country with a lot of positive attributes, I don't think that retiring to Canada (for me) is really practical. What I did find is that the U.S. has a fair amount to learn from our neighbor to the north. We should be as open to ideas from them as they have from us, over the years.

When looking at the potential to immigrate to Canada, I discovered that it isn't easy to become a resident of another country. It caused me to take pause about the current debate over illegal immigration to the United States by Mexican individuals. Let's stay on Canada for a few moments, and I invite you to take a look at Canada's Citizenship and Immigration web site as well, as it is quite enlightening.

If you want to buy a hunk of land in Canada and go there for vacations and stuff, then it's a fairly simple deal to do that. Really, as long as you can state your intent to visit Canada and your intent to leave Canada at some future time, you're in pretty good shape. Note that visiting Canada means that you are just visiting, and that you do not get most of the benefits that Canadian residents or citizens receive (and you shouldn't). In order to qualify to become a Canadian citizen, you first must become a permanent resident of Canada for a number of years. To become a permanent resident, you have to meet one of the following qualifications (simplified):

1. You have a relative in Canada that wishes to sponsor you (subject to some restrictions)
   
2. You have a job in Canada, and the employer wishes to sponsor you (likely subject to certain quotas)
   
3. You are a refugee from another country seeking asylum in Canada. Note that being a refugee means that, due to your political or other beliefs, your life is at risk in your home country.

Note that retiring to Canada doesn't meet any of the above three qualifications, so the chances of being able to take advantage of the privileges that come with being a Canadian citizen are near impossible. To put it in other terms, you cannot just decide you want to go to Canada and become part of their country. They have rules for citizenship, and rules for entry to and exit from their country.

The United States isn't any different in that regard. My father's parents were German immigrants who came to the U.S. just before Hitler took power in Germany. I never knew much of what my father meant when he said that his parents needed to be "sponsored" before they could come to the U.S., but now that is very clear. So when we're talking about illegal immigration to the United States, we're talking about people who are entering the country as a permanent resident without being able to satisfy one of the very basic qualifications for that privilege. There are reasons for these rules. The rights and privileges of citizenship of a country depend on those people fulfilling certain responsibilities - which include paying taxes and being able to effectively communicate with other citizens. People who enter the U.S. illegally should not expect to gain any of the privileges of U.S. citizenship. When my father's parents came to the United States, they were expected to learn English in order to maintain employment (and their sponsorship) in this country.

The United States was never an open country. While we did, at one time, welcome immigrants, we did so at a time when our country was prosperous, and even then immigrants were subject to the same conditions as those in other developed countries. It is time for people on both sides of the debate to carefully consider the rules and regulations, think about why they are in place, then consider why illegal immigrants from Mexico or any other country to the United States is a bad thing. It seems that other countries, including Canada, have rules too.

How we deal with illegal immigration is still, to me, a bit of a bigger issue to address. Part of the problem is that our society is so obsessed with money that we're willing to hire illegal immigrants to work in order to increase our own profits. Likewise, there is a shortage of skilled laborers (who are citizens) in this country because, frankly, we're a bunch of greedy, lazy bastards. We also have developed a system by which the people who aren't lazy bastards and have learned a trade have a hard time earning a decent living. The current economy is not helping matters either. Even in this country's worst economic times, for the moment, we're still doing better than Mexico. So illegal immigration to the United States is a lucrative activity. For now. Do we kick out illegals? Do we arrest them? Do we fast-track them to citizenship? How about communication - should we be printing everything in Spanish in addition to English? Is that fair to our existing citizens? Is it fair that we have cities in the United States on the brink of collapse due to the downturn in the economy and yet there are people entering the country and taking jobs from these people? With that in mind, how can we justify allowing U.S. corporations to outsource major aspects of their business to foreign countries without some kind of intervention, if our own unemployment rate is so high? These are all questions that require some serious thought, and not just the knee-jerk reactions I've heard thrown about. In that thought should be the notion that we all have to adapt our lifestyles to the current economy. Just because you're doing well today doesn't mean that you'll be doing well tomorrow...

Keeping all this in mind, I have decided to post what I considered a controversial piece that I wrote several weeks ago and withdrew. I will re-date that piece as being written today, and will explain (at the beginning) why I decided to re-post.

Global Whining

The following piece was originally written on 11/21/09. I decided to withdraw this then because I thought, at the time, it was too controversial to publish, and would have offended too many people. However, a few things made me reconsider:

1. I was recently given a copy of Mother Earth News magazine by a neighbor, and they took on this exact subject, and I feel compelled to give my opinion.
2. I was moved by a 60 Minutes piece this weekend on how the economy has hurt people in the U.S.
3. There has been even more talk about global warming, CO2 emissions, and "carbon credits" that has made me cringe.

I apologize in advance to those I offend, and I apologize to everyone for it not being as upbeat as I would like. It isn't an upbeat topic...


I am a long-time user of The Weather Underground, a weather site that has been helpful to me since ... well, since my first personal Internet connection way back in 1993. While I do miss the good old telnet-based menu-driven interface, I have to admit that their web interface truly brings more information to the table (especially in times of severe weather). Dr. Jeff Masters was the person responsible for bringing that telnet weather interface to the world, and he's still active on The Weather Underground with weather commentary and other information.

Jeff Masters' discussion in his "WunderBlog" about an effort by a petroleum/coal industry-funded group to encourage the production of CO2 (titled, "Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?") got me thinking a bit more about the whole "global warming" issue. I've been careful not to discuss this topic here too much, for several reasons:

1. I'm far from an expert on the subject. The best I can do is repeat summaries of what I've heard, filtered through my own bullshit detector (which is not always right).
2. Global warming is an emotionally-charged issue (dare I say, "religious?"). When people discuss global warming, it is with enormous personal conviction (on both sides of the fence) where the fate of the Earth is in the spotlight.
3. Just as there are strong scientific studies indicating that there is a trend toward global warming, there are others that refute those studies, and there is widespread disagreement as to what may contribute to global climate change (if that is, indeed, happening) and the magnitude of that affect.
4. Discussions about global warming draw attention away from the real problems at hand.

The reason why Jeff Masters' article grabbed my attention was that he exposed a dramatic piece of disinformation being spread, and did an excellent job of discussing just why it is, indeed, disinformation. I also appreciate any article that uses Webster's dictionary to bring meaning to emotionally-charged statements, in this case "pollutant," and that he discusses unintended consequences in-depth.

I am still unsure where I stand on the issue of "global warming." In true scholarly discussion (not industry or activist-funded propaganda), there are very good discussions and evidence supporting and refuting the idea that the Earth is getting warmer, and many reasons indicating why it could be happening. I have seen one discussion hypothesizing that the melting of the polar ice caps is due, in part, to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. Many people don't realize the role that the Earth's magnetic field plays in protecting us from the various undesired emissions from the sun. Should "global warming" be a concern? Yes. The discussion should be ongoing, as in all scientific discussion.

What I don't like is the politicizing of global warming and the idea that we can mitigate the problem by voodoo methodologies. When global climate change is discussed in the political arena it is not really about the temperature of the Earth - it is about pollution. People are not concerned about the temperature of the Earth, they are worried about how pollution is negatively impacting the Earth's ecosystem. Carbon dioxide (CO2), that stuff that comes out your mouth, your cat's mouth, a cow's mouth, and your car's exhaust pipe, is not the real problem, it is the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere that is the problem. When you stop listening to the whining that is taking place on both sides of the issue and think about the entire issue in terms of pollution and balance, then the problem becomes much more clear. Unfortunately, people in general don't like to think, so terms like global warming, carbon footprint, and carbon credits get thrown about like we know how to control the atmosphere. We can no more easily control the atmosphere than we can control the weather. What we can control is how we impact the Earth's ecosystem as a whole, and that's where we come back to pollution.

Concern about pollution is not new. As a child of the 60s and 70s I heard the term thrown about like global warming is thrown about today. There were doomsday discussions about how the Earth would be uninhabitable by the year 2000 if we didn't control pollution. Well, here it is almost 2010 and we're all very much alive. That is actually the dilemma - that pollution was politicized and now that the doomsday threats never came to being nobody knows for sure whether all the EPA controls or simple misinformation was to blame. Pollution was and still is a real problem. There is not a practical way for people to live their lives without leaving some undesirable contaminants behind. Those who feel there is are doing so by leaving the word "practical" out of the equation (they may live some of their lives in a purely sustainable fashion, but they are utilizing technology that does adversely affect the planet). Those who are in favor of letting industry police themselves with regard to pollutants are foolish, stupid, and have a very short memory. The problem is really that people produce more pollutants than the Earth and atmosphere can absorb. The problem is with balance.

The real inconvenient truth is that people don't want to change the way they are living and to look at unintended consequences. The biggest problem with the Earth's ecosystem is that there are too many people. As a species we have advanced to the point where our mortality rate is low, we have learned how to fight-off disease better than we ever have (in part to medical advances, and in part to better communication), and our standard of living is overall excellent. In any species, like insects for example, when conditions are good, that species reproduces uncontrollably and ultimately experiences a catastrophe - their ecosystem collapses (pollution) and/or their food source disappears (excessive consumption). While human beings possess the thought processes to understand this cycle, they seem to feel they are somehow exempt from that specific protocol (or they simply refuse to use their brain). The economic collapse and fallout afterward that the western world has experienced recently is a testament to the result of imbalance. What do you get when you have more people than jobs to do? What do you get when your entire economy is based on the idea of people consuming more and more products? What happens when several seemingly insignificant events causes the consumption rate to drop? All of these are examples of imbalance in action. Instead of regulating our population rate as our lifestyle improved, we increased it at an exponential rate. Instead of understanding how excessive consumption affected our economic stability and the ecology of the planet, we continued to consume uncontrollably. And what do people do when they have no more disposable income and are bored (or if they buy-into some ridiculous religious belief)? They make babies. Brilliant.

I'm not advocating that we start killing-off the population (PLEASE do not do that). I am saying that if we only think about saving the planet by reducing our CO2 emissions, then we are missing the entire lesson. If people stop having so many babies, and we can carefully and gradually bring our population down to a reasonable level (in-line with our species' development), then the Earth's ecosystem (and our economy) will start to come into balance again. Should we start being smarter about our consumption and our impact on the environment? That would definitely help speed things along, for sure. The bad news: It will probably take as long for us to fix the problems as it did for us to create them...which for us is at least 200 years or so (assuming we start now). The worse news: I don't think anyone will commit to fixing the real problem, so I wouldn't worry about that. To me, the apocalypse is a self-fulfilling prophesy, and that both revelation and judgment day will be when we, as a species, understand that we have brought the whole thing upon ourselves.

Have a wonderful day.

PS: I am hereby making this a plea for people to participate in Buy Nothing Day on November 27...although that will, according to my analysis above, contribute to total economic collapse... Sigh...

Evil House Spirits

I somehow unleashed the evil house spirits over the last week or so.

Wednesday I came home from work and prepared to go and meet someone for dinner. When I went to open
the garage door, the opener would lift the door a few inches and stop. It didn't take too long to notice the broken spring on the rod above the door. I was able to get the garage door opener to work with a bit of a "manual assist." A garage door company was called the next day to come out and replace the springs...$240.00. Ka-ching.

Tonight, I went out to take a look at Christmas lights like I do each year (more about that later). When I got home, I was going to make some rice pudding with the leftover milk from Thanksgiving (I don't usually drink milk). All of a sudden, the kitchen floor (tile) started making loud popping/cracking noises, and a few minutes later I noticed a section of tile that had buckled. Think of two tiles together, being pressed from the sides until they pop-up and form a tent-like structure. This is what happened. The picture shown is after I removed the buckled tiles, but you can see the amount of the floor that was affected. I had a similar problem a couple of years ago when it got really cold outside, and the floor made the loud popping noises without the tiles buckling.

Of course, I looked-up what may cause such a thing to happen, and the best theory I could find (and it supported what I originally thought) is that the floor was installed incorrectly (duh) -- that they (the tile contractor when the house was built) put down the floor AFTER the molding was installed, and they never left a gap for expansion. When it gets really cold outside, something must move in some way that there is a lot of pressure transmitted to the edges of the floor, causing the tiles to shift. This time, it went to the next level.

I have no idea how to fix this, if it even can be "fixed." If the whole floor has to be replaced, I shutter to think of the mess and expense to come. This isn't something I can do myself (I guess I could, but I don't really think I have the expertise to do it right). Argh.

This house is a perfect example of the declining quality of workmanship that has taken place over the years. Instead of craftsmen who learned a trade and took great pride in a job well-done, you have a bunch of people who try real hard, but with little actual skill, mass-producing these suburban tract homes. I'm finding it harder and harder to accept this kind of mentality, and it is causing me a great deal of anxiety.

I was also quite disappointed with the Christmas light displays this year. Most of the homes in the areas that usually have lots of lights and are creative didn't have much at all, and the displays were pretty run-of-the-mill. It's hard to tell why this is the case: The poor economy? Apathy? Trying to conserve energy? A little of all three? I'm not sure. Regardless of the reason, it was less than satisfying.

I'm starting to understand why one would want to take illicit drugs...y'know, the kind that people use to "get high." Real life starts to get really depressing, and escaping into a drug-enhanced world takes the edge off a bit - gets rid of the pain. Now I'm not saying I'm going to start experimenting with drugs - this is merely an examination of the situations and looking at how others may solve them. How much anxiety and depression can someone endure before life on drugs becomes a better alternative? I've already broached the topic of suicide as an escape from the pain...why not drugs? I look at therapy and what it seeks to do: To help one accept the world for how it is, and to integrate one's self into that world. Ignorance is bliss. Why take a cynical view of the world if it doesn't solve anything and makes one unhappy? I get it. What I don't get is how someone can consider a screwed-up world like this as acceptable. I'm going through life doing stuff I hope will improve the world and make a difference, but somehow it feels like a little drop of water in a big sea.

Oh, I was going to say something about relationships ... but I'm afraid this isn't a good time. The rice pudding is done, and it seems like a good time to go to sleep. That, too, is an escape...

It's Beginning To Smell A Lot Like Christmas

Tonight's feature presentation was Paper Heart, a romantic comedy...or was it a documentary...or was it a film about a fictional documentary. I don't know, or, at least, am not completely sure...which is the reason why I both liked this movie and didn't like it at the same time. Paper Heart is a movie about someone who isn't sure what love is trying to find out from others what it is. In the process, that person finds love. You kind of figure that out in the first 15 minutes of the movie. So, sit back and just enjoy the ride.

Caution...there are probably some spoilers in this here blog entry...

First, what I didn't like about this movie: I didn't like that it felt like a real documentary, and then once you get done and look at the "extras," you discover that it really isn't. You feel a betrayal of sorts. I think the ending was abrupt and didn't really bring together the true meaning of the film. I think way too much time was spent on Charlyne & Michael's romance. I also thought that Charlyne ("Chuck") Li seemed a lot cuter in the movie than she appears in person in the extras. In a work that's obviously fiction you can accept that, but it's more difficult when one feels like they're watching a documentary. It's not like Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich plays himself, but it's clearly a work of fiction.

That said, here's what I did like: The interviews with the "real people" were priceless. I identified with the Charlyne "character" a lot. These interviews were essentially asking "What is love?" questions to people who obviously got it right. The answers are equally priceless, and are what makes this movie the gem that it is. My other favorite part was when Charlyne was at the Los Angeles Zoo and Michael showed-up (this is before Charlyne and Michael were an item). Michael asks Charlyne to "eat and watch a movie" during the coming weekend, and "Nick" teases Charlyne about her and Michael going on a date ("That's awesome! You're going on a date!"). To which Charlyne says, "No, it's not a date, we're just going to hang-out, and eat." I seem to know this conversation as it is the same one I've had with my friends, repeatedly. My question is still, "What is a date?" (see also, "It's A Date!" on February 6, 2008, and the definition from Enchanted quoted in "The Inevitable" on April 27, 2008) More precisely, the question is, "When is it just a couple of friends hanging out and when is it a date?" I still don't have the answer to that question. Anyway, then there's Charlyne's song about Michael (he "smells just like Christmas")...y'know, you can look at this as a silly childish song, or you can see how when you really start to feel "it" for someone this is how you really feel, silly as it may seem to everyone else.

Despite the negatives I already mentioned, I thought Paper Heart was one of those movies that kind of leaves you with a good feeling when you're done. The biggest problem is that I had this unrealistic hope that it would answer all my questions about love, and it didn't.

Please, someone tell me that I am not the only one who realized that Michael's gift to Charlyne is really known as Demetri Martin's "pointless bells." (chuckle)

I'm hoping that I'll have an opportunity and the presence of mind to actually share some of my thoughts about love and relationships that have come from the last several weeks of soul-searching and having some conversations with a friend about it.

Giving Thanks

I've been watching my neighbor's cat (and house) while they went away for a couple of days to celebrate Thanksgiving with their family. They don't watch a lot of TV so there's an abundance of reading material hanging around to look at while I'm there (I try to spend some time with the cat, not just feed her).

One of the things to read was a powerpoint slide presentation about boosting the immune system naturally. Like most of these things, some of it seemed more pseud0-science...but, the overall message was good. A good summary of the finer points in here (and the ones that tend to be more "science fact") are:

1. Reduce stress - use the stress we have for constructive purposes. Get organized, eliminate clutter, simplify choices, and treat yourself well (like you would your best friend or pet).
2. Eat right - Drink enough water, eat foods with fewer chemicals, be sure your diet is well-balanced and contains enough (varied) vitamins for your body's typical activity. Avoid foods that contain high fructose corn syrup. Don't over-eat.
   
3. Reduce alcohol usage - No more than 21oz/wk for women, 28oz/wk for men.
4. Don't smoke or inhale other chemical fumes
5. Get enough sleep
6. Exercise
   
7. Get outside a little every day (sunshine is a natural source of vitamin D)

This is what we've been told for years. There's more in the presentation, but what isn't expanding upon the points above tends to be way too new-agey (ie. pseudo-scientific) for my tastes (eliminating red meat and pork completely, stop computer use after 7pm, don't get metal fillings, etc.). While some this "other stuff" may have some merit, it doesn't tend to be very practical and, in some cases, I doubt that it is something that truly affects the body's immune system.

If I look at the list above, there are definite areas for my improvement - mostly in the one I listed first: stress. One way the presentation identified to reduce unnecessary stress was to look backward and locate the root of the stressor. While I generally talk about this in other areas, I am not so good at putting the idea into practice when I get angry and stressed-out. Reduction of clutter doesn't just mean stuff - it also means reducing mental clutter as well. In general, what is being suggested in the area of stress reduction is to take time to smell the roses, and get rid of those things that tend to keep us in a constant state of stress. Another specific idea from the presentation was to get news from online sources rather than watch the news on TV. While this may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, the goal here is to identify those items that are really news, read it, and set aside the sensationalism and exaggeration that examplifies the typical TV news report.

So with it being "black Friday" today and my desire to be no part of it, here are some thoughts I had about what I should be thankful for:

1. I have a job - actually, it is a job that I mostly think is a good one too. I need to take time to put it into the correct perspective sometimes (not over-work or become overly concerned about it).
2. My finances are stable - In a time where some people are having trouble paying the bills, or who don't know how to budget when money is tight, I continue to make a good living and have a good sense of how to budget for all situations. I need to put some extra money in the budget to take care of myself, when I figure out what that is...
3. I have good friends - While I don't see many of them as much as I probably should, there are many who stand ready to remind me that I'm not the dreadful person I sometimes see myself as. As I sit here typing this in my neighbor's house with their cat on my lap purring, that reminder is most definitely appropriate.
4. I have common sense - I wish that I didn't have to include this one, but given what I see and read I need to be thankful every day that I can think for myself. Common sense isn't common anymore, and people are increasingly looking for ways to explain-away problems using supernatural magic or through illogical reasoning, or simply by ignoring them outright. This is not to say that every decision I make is perfect or well thought-out, but I at least put forth the effort.

Some clutter that needs to be dealt with is:

1. Cable TV - Time Warner continues to have problems delivering a consistent TV signal to my neighborhood (possibly all of Austin). I have tried repeatedly to contact them recently about this, and they are generally unwilling to return my e-mails and phone calls, nor are they showing any progress on identifying and fixing the trouble. While I understand the complexity of delivering cable service (really, I know more than most people do, being a network guy and reading lots of Cisco/Scientific Atlanta literature), Time Warner, with their money and expertise, can't seem to get it right. Maybe the best thing to do is to just get rid of cable. Dealing with the cable company is overly-stressful and much of the programming on TV is of questionable quality anyway.
2. Computers - While this is my area of expertise, I'm finding that I'm sitting in a sea of computer equipment without any real purpose. My personal computer projects are becoming less satisfying - partly because my workload (at work) has increased and partly because the effort required to complete the projects is more than the anticipated satisfaction resulting from their completion.
3. Aggravation over Austin - Specifically what they call growth and I feel is more a destruction of the flavor and fabric of the city. I need to set my sights on leaving and finding a simpler and less populated place to live. I can't do that right away, because of my job (and pension), so the best I can do is to try my best to find some oasis inside the desert of ideas instead of hoping that the people here will get a clue. They won't.

I'm sure there's more, but my laptop battery is getting low and I need to spend some time with my own cat, and find something to do that doesn't involve shopping. There's certainly enough turkey and fixin's hanging around for lunch and dinner, so there's no way I'll be hungry. Sick of turkey, maybe...

Chinese Water Torture

It has been a while since the last posting and I'm not sure if anyone is actually reading this anymore. Two of my favorite Blogger blogs (you know who you are :-) have had an eerie silence for the last few months. Several things have happened since I last wrote, keeping me away from writing here.

Mom & Dad's Visit & Home Improvement

My parents came to visit for a week a couple of weeks ago. I always look forward to seeing them - being 2,000 miles away means we only get a chance to see each other in person about once a year. They have a dog and I have a geriatric cat that has special needs, so we both have a bit of a problem coordinating visits. Since I live alone, having people in the house is always a little challenging because I'm used to my own schedule, interests, TV viewing habits, etc. On the other hand they're low maintenance, and I get a chance to show them all the neat places around here to eat, and they get a chance to take a break from all the chores of their own house (mostly).

My father and I replaced the exhaust fan in my master bathroom, and that was overly-complex like everything in this house is to fix. I learned about a new problem with the latest thinking in making houses air-tight for energy efficiency purposes. The term is called negative pressure, and it is what happens when you try to suck air from a space without providing some air coming in to replace it. My house was made very energy efficient, and by that I mean they made the living area pretty much air-tight. There is actually plastic sheeting behind the sheet rock on the outer walls. What contributed to the bathroom fan going bad and not working properly is the lack of any air coming in from outside to replace the air the fan was trying to suck out of the bathroom and blow outside. This also explains why the kitchen exhaust fan never seems to sufficiently pull cooking odors from the house. There is no easy fix, and with the city mandating even more "energy efficiency updates" it is likely that the problem will get worse. This, again, is an example of unintended consequences. Why are people all of a sudden having problems with mold, radon, and outgassing of construction materials? Here's your answer, and the fix doesn't come cheap. It also underscores why all these chemical perfumes in air fresheners, cleaners, and other products are so irritating to those sensitive to them (like me).

The other thing my father did (since he was involved in water distribution for a while) was take a peek at my water meter, and like when he did last visit he discovered I had a water leak. It didn't take long to find it (it took a while to convince Dad though) - the culprit was the cold water faucet in the master bathroom tub that Smokey likes to drink from. There was a slow drip that is leaking about a quart of water a day (not horrible, but it is staining the tub and is just plain wasteful). So we try to fix the faucet, which should be as simple as replacing a plastic cartridge valve stem ("should be," being the important phrase here). Don't believe Moen's lifetime warranty for a second. Why? Well, nothing that comes in contact with water that contains a lot of calcium/mineral deposits lasts forever. The other thing is that Moen has so many exclusions in their warranty that it renders the warranty practically useless. I digress, though. What I found first is that removing the cartridge from the tub valve requires a special tool, and while Home Depot and Lowe's carry the cartridges in the store, one can only obtain the $3.50 tool online. The tool arrived the day after my parents left, and I went to the store, bought what I thought was the correct cartridge, and proceeded to do the fix. I then discovered that the cartridge for this Moen two-valve set is slightly larger than the ones available at the store. I need to purchase the new cartridge online, of course. Dad recommended trying to replace the O-rings to see if that's where the leak was happening, but as I figured the problem was mineral deposits scoring the plastic surface in contact with the valve stem, so the cartridge is just bad. So for now, my faucet continues to drip...drip...drip. Thankfully I don't think I made anything worse than it originally was.

I told Dad he was not allowed to look at my water meter the next time he was here! :-)

Sick Again

In return for my comments about not getting paranoid about germs, I came down with a nasty cold a couple of days before my parents left last week. That has completely taken me out-of-service for the last several days. This is one of those upper respiratory things where your head hurts and the post nasal drip on your throat causes a hacking cough. I stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday and am now only now (on Sunday, of course) feeling well enough to handle my usual workload. This bug was particularly weird. I woke up Friday morning with blood all over my face that had dripped down onto my pillow case. I didn't realize it until I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I looked like a scene from CSI. I never get nosebleeds. A less dramatic version of the same thing happened last night, and the only thing I can figure is that the airflow from my CPAP irritated my nasal passages enough to cause bleeding. Last night I started coughing after I went to bed (after a whole evening of feeling pretty good), and that's when I noticed I had a bloody nose again. So I think that I'll need to be a bit careful tonight. Here's hoping all is back to normal finally. I haven't died yet, although I didn't get much sleep last night.

Learning About Subversion

I'm not a good patient when it comes to getting sick. I feel I need to always be doing something, so I spent a lot of Thursday, Friday, and the weekend (during periods of lucidity) learning the finer points of the Subversion version control system for work. In particular, I have been trying to find a more elegant way to track the custom changes we make to the Asterisk PBX software in our environment, while still leaving us a way to upgrade as newer releases come out.

It turns out that the feature we're looking for is called "vendor drops," and is explained in the very helpful online book, Version Control With Subversion. The way I set-up the repository was like this (click on image to get a more readable version):

What I was trying to accomplish here was to load branch versions of Asterisk (from the open source project) as needed into asterisk->vendor->current and then tag that release and put it under "vendor." That version would get merged back to "trunk" that would be used for development of our internal changes and releases. When we release a version to be put into production, we tag the current "trunk" into "tags" with an internal revision number tacked onto the original Asterisk version number (in case we needed to make several internal releases from that revision). The same thing will be done to libpri, dahdi, and asterisk-addons in the same manner. I have the last 4 internal releases we have done put into Subversion so far, and it looks to be working. Since the phone system is running Gentoo Linux, I'm creating an ebuild for all the components each time there is an internal release to be made (that will likely be tracked under trunk and moved into our portage overlay).

Ultimately I am shooting for putting the entire phone system development tree into Subversion as it should be (right now it is only in RCS). There an extensive amount of dialplan & configuration files, MySQL database table/trigger/function definitions, perl scripts, and a bunch of other stuff (including some sound files) that really need to be tied together in a more cohesive fashion.

As an aside, I'd like to add that Blogger doesn't have a nice way to add diagrams or preformatted text of any kind without simply adding them as an image. This is one of the reasons why I hesitate to put more technical information in here.

Political Rants?

I am going to refrain from Blatant Stupidity, political or religious rants for the time being. Not that there isn't an abundance of frustrations on my mind - in fact, enough to really make me wonder about human beings in general - I just can't see where writing it all down right now is going to be constructive.

Bulls#!t

Listening to the news the last couple of days reminded me that I hadn't seen the last few seasons of Penn & Teller's series called "Bullshit!" While I didn't always agree with what they said, watching it was part of listening to different sides of the issue. Their take on the Prius, for example, was a bit exaggerated and unnecessarily negatively biased. However, I do believe that the people who worship the Prius (and there are many) are equally misinformed. I like my car, but I know its (many) limitations. It saves me on gas when I take my long drives out into the country, and my hopes are that my purchase helped give the auto manufacturers a market by which they can improve the technology. It isn't a Corvette, and it isn't a pick-up truck, but it gets me around pretty well.

"Bullshit!" is a neat series. It isn't enough to get me to order Showtime on cable, but being able to see it on Netflix was pretty cool.

However, the show "Bullshit!" doesn't come close to two things I heard on the news over the past couple of days. Prepare for another installment of Blatant Stupidity.

The first news story I heard today, but I didn't take careful notes and am too lazy to look it all up, so I'll paraphrase: The gist was that kids need to forego their Halloween trick-or-treat festivities because the chance of getting the "deadly swine flu" is way too risky. The "expert" who was consulted said that the flu could be passed from kid-to-candy-wrapper-to-kid and, "to attempt to sterilize each item would render the product unsatisfactory." That means that killing the flu virus on the wrapper of the candy bar would mean destroying the candy bar in the process. They went on to suggest not to let children take candy from the bowl, but the candy should be handed-out, and that "hand sanitizer is a must." First, any flu virus is potentially deadly. This is flu season. Flu happens. It sucks, but it happens. Most people don't die, they just have a hell of a bad time for a week or two. The swine flu thing is being blown way out of proportion to its risk. That being said, second point is that whether swine flu is around or not, a virus can pass between candy wrappers at any time. It can also pass on doorknobs, faucet handles, the push-button on the hand sanitizer or the container itself, and so on. The world isn't sterile.

The moral of my story is that kids should stop listening to douchebag paranoid germophobes, go out trick-or-treating, and have a great time, unless you're already sick of course. You'll encounter germs and virii wherever you go, and life isn't worth much if you're going to worry about everything you touch.

The second news story comes from the "They should make a law against that" department. Apparently a divorced mother of two kids (8 and 9 years old) in Amarillo, Texas is having a hissy-fit because their father allegedly forced their two kids, while in his custody, to watch a pornographic Internet video. The mother said, "He took away their innocence. I thought, surely, there must be a law against that." Well, in Texas, the law states that sex education is at a parent's discretion, and that showing this material to the children by their parent(s) is not against the law.

I'll refrain from judgement of the father since I don't know what really happened here. Was this some kind of perverted hick who wanted to screw around with his kids' heads? Possibly, but I'm going to say not likely. What probably happened here is that either (1) his kids asked a question about sex and he felt this would be a good way to answer their question, or (2) the kids were exploring some site and he felt it would be better if he could put the visuals in context. Kind of like the kid who is caught smoking is forced to smoke the whole pack in front of Dad so he'll never do it again. I'd say that the father's real crime here is an absence of good judgement, which seems to be epidemic in society today. If he really is a sick pervert, though, then definitely throw him in jail (usually these kind of perverts have a history of abuse).

My "blatant stupidity" award, though, goes to the mother, and to anyone else who's outraged at the law in this case. I'm close to several families where the parents are divorced and there's kids in the mix. The parents use the kids as pawns in their battle with each other, and the kids have "selective memory" about events in order to manipulate their parents. This sounds more like two parents bickering about parenting philosophy and a counselor over-reacting to a certain situation than a perverted father who forces his kids to watch Internet porn. Seriously, does that even make any sense? The problem is that there is no definitive way to raise children, and kids don't come with an instruction manual. The law allowing parents to show this material was specifically enacted so that the parents could show sexually-oriented material to their kids for the purpose of teaching them about sex. How a parent chooses to teach their child makes an excellent topic for debate, but I'm not sure that the legal system is the place to debate that subject. The time to debate that subject is before the parents have intercourse and pop-out the little tykes. Should the mother be concerned? Absolutely. Should the mother or state start pressing charges against the father? That is a very good question. Was this sex education, kids lying to their counselor (maybe because they watched the videos on their own and didn't want to fess-up to it), a sick and perverted father, or something else? The news story didn't say, and we have no right to judge based on that story. As for the kids "losing their innocence" ... I doubt that even if they were forced to watch Internet porn that the kids would be scarred for life. Save that sentiment for children who are really sexually abused. There are really cases of that, and they need to throw the sick bastards who do that in the slammer and throw away the key.

Maybe if the mother and father of these children had better parenting and sex education themselves, then they would have known better about choosing a mate and what happens nine months after intercourse. I feel bad for these children - not because they saw Internet porn, but because their parents are initiating a legal battle that is taking away from real parenting, and sending a message to the kids that sex is horrible and dirty and bad. I think that this will do far more harm than the Internet porn...