"Speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon

I really enjoyed this book. Easy to read, it sucked me right in. Did not take long to finish it. Tells the story of a high-functioning autistic man with a special talent for working with computer models that is being utilized by a pharmaceutical company.

His description of himself and what he observes as compared to what normal people observe reminds me a great deal of myself and my wife. I count things and look for patterns in wallpaper and floor tiles. My wife is very much a people person.

I suspect I got burned out on people early on. I used to talk to all kinds of people, but I found that many of the people I talked to were not worth talking to. Angry, resentful, or just plain wacko. I got tired of it, and once I started discriminating against people who were just a waste of time, it became easier to cut off more people.

Update November 2015. Replaced missing picture.

Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino"

Thanks to my wife, we went to movies last night. Being a cheapsake and disliking crowds I tend to overlook new releases. They'll be available on DVD in six months and we can watch it for cheap. So we waffled for a bit, but she finally decided we should go, and I'm glad we did.

What a great film! Clint plays the curmudgeon to a T. Reminded us of my father. A lot. Not the swearing, or the racial epithets, but the whole attitude, the expressions on his face, the grunts and the growls. And boy is he (Clint) old, a lot like my father was. For dealing with some unpleasant issues, it was a surprisingly light hearted movie, with any number of howlingly funny bits. And then there's the fairy tale ending, well a sort of fairy tale. Great movie, but then I've always liked Clint.

In the film, Clint's character is a Polack, and as he bears some resemblence to my father, who was Polish, I wonder if maybe Clint is also Polish.

There was one thing that was notable for it's absence, and that was the predictable retort when someone tells Walt (Clint) that he should quit smoking. It happened a couple of times, and both times I expected Walt to reply, something to the effect, that he was so old that quitting now wouldn't make any difference. But he didn't say anything. I guess that goes with the curmudgeon aspect of his character. He had this exchange so many times there was no point in even acknowledging the comment.

Can you believe this is the best picture I could find of the car? I could only find one picture of the car from the movie, but this picture had Angeline Jolie standing in front of it! Waaaa? She wasn't even in the movie. Movie people are so stupid. I found one other picture of a green Gran Torino, and the background in this one was just trash. Found lots of pictures of the red and white one from "Starsky & Hutch".

Update December 2016 replaced missing image.

"Eat The Rich" by P. J. O'Rourke

Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics

Just finished reading this. A great book. He goes around the world trying to figure out why some places are successful and some aren't. Russia, Albania, Hong Kong are just a few of his stops. The book was written ten years ago, so some of the history is a little dated, but enlightening none-the-less. He gives you a man-on-the-ground perspective of what life is like in these places and tries to reconcile what he sees with what he knows about the government and published economic statistics. Sometimes his died-in-the-wool Republicanism shows through, but given what he's reporting, it's understandable. Laissez-faire economics works best, but you do need a certain amount of government. Tanzania is one example of an economic failure. To me it sounds fairly neglected, which may be the best an African country could hope for. However, over $20 billion has been pumped into this country, apparently without any result at all.

Update November 2017 let Blogger 'fix' the html, which lost the picture, which I replaced.

American Airline Torture, Part 2

Executive Summary It took us almost 13 hours from the time we left my inlaws house in Rockwell City, Iowa till we got home to Hillsboro, Oregon. Allow 45 minutes for driving and schlepping luggage at each end, and knock off half an hour because it wasn't quite 13 hours and I don't want to be accused of padding the numbers, means we were in the custody of the airlines for eleven hours. Total flight time comes to five and a half hours (5:30) which means we spent another five and half hours sitting in the airport or sitting in an airplane on the ground. Why is sitting and waiting on a plane so much worse than sitting inside the airport? Cramped seating perhaps? I don't mind when we are actually going somewhere, it's just when we are sitting on the ground. The absolutely worst part is when they have pulled up to the gate and door isn't open yet. This happened both times on the small hopper. We have landed and pulled up to the "gate", but now we have to wait for the ground crew to do something. Unload the luggage maybe? It wasn't long, maybe a couple three minutes, but it was really irritating. Same thing happened when the 757 landed in Seattle, though that could have been due to sitting in the back of the plane and it just takes forever for the 240 odd people in front of me to scurry out the one and only door. I think the TSA people were doing a better job than the last time I flew. Of course, there was virtually no line when I went through security either in Fort Dodge, which I expected, or in Portland, which I did not expect. The TSA folks have spiffy new uniforms, too, which helps their image. I had to pull my CPAP machine out of my backpack so they could run an additional test on it. I expected they were going to turn it on, make sure it was really what it was, but all they did was swab it for explosive residue. At least that appears to be what they did. Here's some photos.

What do you do with a broken suitcase?

This suitcase is several years old, it has served us faithfully. The body, zipper and handles are all still good, but a couple of what have become de rigueur gadgets have failed. On the last trip the pushbutton release for the pull-along handle broke. Taking the cover off the handle got around that problem, but this trip one of the wheels got broken off. A couple of weeks ago, I could have stuffed it in the trash can, but since two of the kids are away at school, we don't generate that much trash, so I switched to the smaller, cheaper, trash can. Suitcase won't go in, at least not easily. I could haul it to Goodwill. They might take it, but I doubt they want it. I could have it repaired, but it would probably be cheaper to buy a new one. I could abandon it by the side of the road, but that's tacky. I am beginning to think I am going to have to dissect it with a knife in order to get it in the trash can. What a pain.

Update: My wife has put it in the back of her car to hold bags of groceries so they won't tip over while she is driving. She's such a wild driver, ya' know.

American Airline Torture

(As opposed to Chinese Water Torture.) We flew back from Iowa yesterday and as usual it was a miserable experience. Nothing went really wrong, and the few things that could have been real problems seemed to work in our favor. So it wasn't really bad, like getting beaten with a baseball bat, it was more a death from a thousand cuts. In any case, today my body aches all over. We start with a flight from Ft. Dodge to Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP). It's 45 minutes late. We are there on time, but most of the other five or six passengers arrive AFTER the scheduled departure time. How did they know the plane was going to be late? We checked on the internet before we left the house in Rockwell City and at that time the plane was still "on time". I suspect collusion.

On the way to MSP we have to stop in Mason City. We had to stop in Mason City on the way from MSP. How often does this plane have to stop in Mason City? I suspect stupid routing.

When we get to MSP we find our flight to Seattle is delayed. This means we only have to spend an hour so hanging around the airport and not five or six days. Then they start calling people to board. This is a big plane, a Boeing 757 and holds about 250 people and they are all going in through one door. I don't like standing in line, so I start pacing the length of the local hall way. It takes ten minutes for the line to get through the boarding gate, so I've probably covered a half a mile with my pacing. Now we get to queue up inside the Jetway. It takes another 10 or 12 minutes to actually get inside the plane, where we have some kind of foul up blocking the aisle half way down. There is one stewardess in the thick of it. Another one gets on the PA and asks the dumbkoffs to stop blocking the aisle. It takes another 5 or 10 minutes to get to our seats.

Problem was there were two people assigned to the same seat. Well, we have two other empty seats, so one person moves and we are good to go. Right? Wrong. Some nitwit from the reservation desk has to figure out what happened before the plane can move. We sit there for another 15 or 20 minutes while "they" are supposedly sorting this out. Nothing actually changes inside the airplane. We just have to sit and wait.

Somewhere around in here the flight attendants stop calling it "Northwest Airlines" (NWA) and start calling it "Delta-Northwest Airlines" or some such. Did Delta and NWA merge during the five days we were in Iowa? Is that why we are having so many petty screw ups here?

The flight to Seattle is uneventful except for the threat of some turbulence on the last half of the trip. Nothing to see but clouds for most of the trip.

In Seattle we are late, again, but there are hoppers to Portland every hour or so, so getting home should not be a problem. The hopper terminal is at the other end of Terminal World from where we are so the first order of business is getting there. It's not too tough, take the escalator downstairs, and then downstairs some more to the subterranean automatic train. Which takes us to another train, and then another. We end up taking four trains before we get to our terminal. And when we get there, there is one single-person-wide escalator. No stairs. So everyone from the train has to queue up to get on this one stinking escalator.

We find the flight desk for the hoppers to Portland International Airport (PDX) and talk to the clerk there. She sorts us out and issues new boarding passes. I don't know what see is doing on her computer, but it's like she's writing a novel. I wouldn't be surprised if it took her a thousand keystrokes to sort this out. It's as bad as the computer system at my local Mom & Pop video rental store. I can understand that kind of clumsy system at a small operation, but I really don't understand why the airlines can't get a handle on it. Too busy paying bonuses to dumbkoffs, I imagine.

The next plane is somewhat delayed, and then delayed some more. Getting on is not too bad, though when we start boarding there is no plane in sight and I wonder if they are herding us all to buses that will take us to the Gulag where they ship all the surplus passengers. Turns out it's about 100 yards down the stairs, down the hall and around the corner to a very fancy airplane with twin six-bladed turboprops. Holds 160 (not 80 as previously reported) passengers, and they have two (!) doors for entering. The marked path (on the ground) to the rear door is blocked by the baggage cart, which may explain why most people went in the front door which left the rear door wide open, for those who could find their way there.


The Q400 aircraft has 40 rows of four seats each, long and narrow. Headrests were non-existent. Leaning my head back left me looking at the ceiling. Shorter people would probably do better.

So the plane is loaded, doors are closed, we are ready to go, but we aren't. Some kind of maintenance problem. Paperwork has to be signed. So we wait for another indefinite time. I've given up trying to keep track, and I can't get my notepad out of my pocket easily while my seatbelt is buckled.

We finally get going and here comes the drink cart. Beer, wine, apple juice or water. The stewards haul the cart from the rear to the front of the plane (one big male pushing, one slight female pulling and bellowing warnings to the passengers to keep their friggin' elbows out of the aisle. Most intelligent thing I have heard all day.). The cart is heavy, the plane is climbing, the guy pushing the cart is really leaning into his work. We are sitting in the very back of the plane, so it takes forever for the drink cart to get to us. They hand out little bags of crunchy stuff along with the drinks. No sooner are they done passing out the drinks then they are collecting the trash. They make a second pass and times up, chug-a-lug, we are landing in five minutes.

We can see the lights of Portland out the window. At least we think it's Portland. Maybe it's Vancouver. Then I notice the dark areas are clouds, not really just dark. So that was a little confusing. We have a left turn and then a right and now it starts to look recognizable. We are down and off the plane. We go inside through non-automatic doors that open outward and don't stay open into a part of the airport we have never seen before. A six mile hike takes us back to familiar territory and on to the baggage claim area. Bags start showing up immediately, but it takes ten or fifteen minutes before our bags show up, but show up they do, which is pretty darn good, considering all the changes we've been through.

Call Park 'N Fly and they send a shuttle over. PDX has a couple of people out patrolling the shuttle bus islands and directing people. I thought I remembered the instructions from the parking lot, but I must have got them wrong, because it took two course corrections from these official good citizens to get us to the right spot. From there it was only a couple of minutes till the bus showed. The driver loaded and unloaded our bags, and helped load them into the car. I tipped him five dollars because I was so glad to finally be away from airplanes and airports. Was that too generous?

It took almost 13 hours door to door to cover 1500 miles. That is an average speed of 115 MPH. With no traffic (and no speed limits), theoretically I could have driven it. 120 MPH should not be a problem on our Interstate highway system. However, I am only good for about 500 miles of driving before I need a serious break.

Nobody else in my family seemed to suffer any adverse effects from this trip. Ross was not able to sleep on the plane, but the girls were invigorated. Go figure.

Anesthetics

Local Anesthetics - Benny Lin

The summer my before my father died, he underwent surgery three times. First in June he had a stent installed in an artery. After he fell, they put him under in order to relax his muscles to make relocating his hip joint easier. When that didn't work they put him under a third time for surgery to try and repair his hip joint. The joint repair worked, but it took him six weeks to flush all the anesthetics out of his system. A younger person would recover faster, but my father was 86 years old.

Only after I had been going to the hospital for a few weeks did one of the nurses volunteer that "general anesthetic is not your friend".

Update June 2024 replaced missing image.