Letters From Home

It might seem a bit off the wall to start out a book review by talking about a TV show, but honestly, that’s the only way I can do it.

One of my all-time favorite series of episodes in one of my all-time favorite shows featured Dennis Dugan as Captain Freedom in “Hill Street Blues.” The Captain showed up in full goofball superhero costume one day and drove Bruce Weitz’ Mick Belker character bonkers for four of the best episodes ever aired on network TV.

The thing about the Captain, though, was that he would start a beautiful speech that had Mick (and the audience) believing, or having their heartstrings tugged, or sympathizing… and then he’d end it by going completely off the deep end without a break in the narrative.

The book Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara works the same way. On the one hand, it presents evidence for all kinds of shenanigans and coverups and deliberate misinformation of the general public by the space agency and its collaborators… and on the other hand it seems to be overloaded with over-the-top conspiracy theories that leave the reader shaking her head in utter disbelief.

But the reader did read the whole book, because even with all that it’s utterly fascinating.

I don’t really see what the authors see in a lot of the photographs they use to show artificial structures on the moon and Mars. But that’s inherent in the translation of photograph to printed page–you don’t see everything that’s in the original picture by a long shot, and that’s true of all photos reproduced in mass market books. I don’t know what to think about the authors’ insistence that a lot of information has been withheld from the public and hypnotized into oblivion in the minds of the astronauts who were there and might have seen things that Someone doesn’t want the rest of us to know about. I don’t know whether the supposedly much-more-detailed photos of that “Face on Mars” were doctored to make people think that the original was some trick of light and shadow.

The authors talk about all that and much more in detail and they go into detail about how and why things were done. They have documents and witnesses and a very big axe to grind. Some of what they say sounds plausible. Some sounds crazy. So are these a couple of Captain Freedoms at work, or the guys who really know what’s really out there?

Read the book. Let me know what you think. I still haven’t made up my mind.

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I am never particularly eager to embrace new technology.  However, having been lent a new computer running Vista Ultimate, I have ventured timidly into the latest iteration of Mr. Bill’s Brand.

Vista’s not as annoying as I thought it would be, but that’s largely due to my immediately dumping all the shiny-shiny stuff and optimizing for best performance rather than best appearance.  I also took back the classic menus and folder view.  After that, I just cruised right along.

It won’t let me create user accounts, though, no matter what I try.  Doesn’t surprise me, given that this came from a corporation that imaged it to their own specs, but it’s annoying.  But given how many other ways it could have annoyed me a lot more, that’s not so bad.

And tonight I figured that having Vista would actually be a good thing, for the first time ever.  Netflix won’t let me watch streaming video on my usual computer, because I run Windows 2000 on it and refuse to change that until the day it no longer does what I want it to do.  But the Netflix viewer will run on Vista, so I decided to try that out.

Well, there’s a hitch in the gitalong–it only works with IE and I only use IE when I’ve got no choice.  But I suppose experimenting with streaming video is worth it.  So I fired up the little blue E, installed the viewer…

….and now I can watch my favorite episode of “McCloud,” which was one of my favorite shows.  “The Night New York Turned Blue.”  Oh, the sacrifices I make for seeing Dennis Weaver and JD Cannon ride again.

photo credit: Digital Sextant.

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California weather is weird, as if anyone didn’t know that by now. Usually the months that are considered “summer” in other parts of the country aren’t all that summery around here, and we get killed by the heat in September and October.

There’s usually one big heat wave in May, too, and we’re “enjoying” that right now.  It’s been in the
102-104 range in the back yard for several days.

Our house is not air conditioned.  It was built in 1930.  Having a home of this vintage would not normally be a barrier to having air conditioning, except that some demented former owner took out most of the wood framed doublehung windows circa 1960 and replaced them with aluminum framed jalousies.  Maybe when these windows were new they fit tight and made sense, but at this late date…  fageddaboudit.

The house has thick walls, so if we pull cool air in all night with every fan we’ve got and then close the windows before it gets much past 70 the next morning, it stays reasonably cool inside.  And by the time the interior temperature starts edging up into the “uncomfortably warm” range, the exterior temperature is almost always on the way down.

I have to admit, though, that this year I wasn’t prepared for the hot weather to hit quite so early.  I did fine in the heat when I was a kid (in central Virginia a kid didn’t have much choice, and I had an air conditioned classroom only once in my entire educational career–one lonely college class).  But now that I am granny age I have less patience with and tolerance for hot weather.  I lack energy during the day and don’t sleep well at night.

All of which makes my desire to move to New Mexico or Arizona all the more quixotic, I suppose, but when we move out of here we can always choose an adequately heated and cooled house.

photo credit: Poppyseed Bandits

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I often joke that I’m The Queen of Yesterday’s Technology.  Oh, I keep my eye on what’s new and I pay attention to the gadgets I think it would be great to have.

Then I wait till a newer model comes out and everyone’s dumping the old ones.  That’s how I got my first laser printer (waited till Epson came out with a new model and then I bought their former top of the line) and my first Toshiba laptop (actually, in that case I waited six years to buy a formerly top of the line model) and my first iPod (a refurbished first-gen nano) and my second iPod (a “broken” 4th gen that I bought on eBay and fixed) and my third (a “broken” fifth-gen ditto).

My philosophy is that just because something’s been replaced by a newer model doesn’t mean that the original is any less good.  The quality is still there.  It’s just that there’s a flashier one that attracts people’s attention, so the price of the old one finally goes down to where I feel it’s a good investment.

Now, I’ve been called Mesozoic and worse, by the gotta-have-it folks who think I’m forever burdening myself with second best.  But, like I said, I keep up with what’s good and what’s new and that includes keeping an eye on the whizbang stuff that turns out to be more like whizzfizzle.  So, when comes time for me to buy whatever-it-is, I know it’s already tried and true.

Plus there are lots of instructions out there on the web explaining how to get around idiosyncracies and hardware glitches and so forth.

What inspired this particular rumination?  Fixing the lid latch on my Titanium Powerbook G4 and then downloading an episode of “Rome” to be played on my newly fixed iPod.

Life is good.

photo credit: mrdavisdc

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(No, that’s not me in the picture, I just found it appropriate)

I always like to read the directions.  I’m weird that way.   To me, it’s a lot easier to use some new gizmo or
software if I’ve already read through the instructions before I begin.  This is why I love printed manuals and loathe help files.  If something I’m trying to learn only comes with a manual in electronic form, I almost always print it out so I can read it more efficiently.  Help files are rarely as helpful as they need to be.

But sometimes even the printed manual doesn’t tell you enough.

Yesterday I spotted something that I wanted to take a picture of, using my fairly-recently-acquired camera phone.  I duly pressed the button and looked at the screen and realized that if the picture was going to be useful at all, I would have to zoom in on the subject (which was across the street).  However, no way could I discover how to zoom in.  Grrr.

So I went home and dug out the manual, and lo and behold it didn’t tell me how to zoom in either!  It wasn’t till I got through a couple layers of FAQs on the manufacturer’s web site that I found out that you can’t zoom with the default resolution on the camera phone.  You have to switch to a lower resolution.

This is doubly annoying because the default settings disable a very useful feature AND the manual doesn’t tell you so.

I used to write software manuals that translated programmer-ese into English.  I think this is why I have little patience with instructions that are non-instructional.  Thbft.

photo credit: Stefaan Christopher

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So, the battery on my trusty Palm Zire 31 is slowly giving up the ghost.

I bought a new battery for it before I took it apart. If I’d taken it apart first I would have seen that the battery leads are soldered in. While I certainly have the skills to unsolder and resolder a battery, what I don’t have is any inclination to do it.

So I guess it is time for me to think seriously about replacing the Zire before the battery bites the dust for good (I get about 30 minutes out of it now). I want to stick with Palm, both for ease of use and for ease of data transfer. I don’t need a lot of bells and whistles (as is evidenced by my long-time satisfaction with the Zire 31 and the fact that the Palm Centro is the only smartphone that has ever gotten a second look from me). I’m sure there are PDA features that I don’t now have that I will love when I get them, but truthfully other than a larger screen I can’t think of any right now.

And, of course, I have the family budget to consider. As always.

So what should I be looking at?

Cross-posted with my LiveJournal to try to capture a wider audience.

photo credit: mtsofan

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Not that today’s politics aren’t parody-worthy, but I haven’t gotten around to dealing with the current crop of candidates yet.  While I mull over the many possibilities, here’s one from years gone by.  And it was written well before the man in question really did get “voted out in two,” so chalk up a good prediction. 

Newt’s Mama Speaks Out

to the tune of “Officer Kruppke” (West Side Story)

Dear kindly Mrs. Gingrich,
You talked to Connie Chung,
She caught you whisper-ing “bitch”
So now your boy gets hung.
Your precious cherub darling
Now screams that he’s been had;
Golly whiskers, Newtie Poo was mad.
But dear Mrs. Gingrich,
It’s really OK,
We wouldn’t want you saying things that Newt wouldn’t say.
But don’t let him tell you you misunderstood,
Just let him take the heat but good.
Take the heat but good, ’cause he’s bad, not good,
So let him take the heat but good.

Dear Mrs. Maury Povich,
Beware a Newt surprise.
Don’t let him tell you “no bitch,”
‘Cause if he does, he lies.
You know he can’t deny it,
His mama told you true,
Holy smokers, what’s a Newt to do?
But dear Mrs. Povich,
You’ve got it on tape,
So never mind the sights and sounds of Newt going ape.
And don’t let him tell you you misunderstood,
Just let him take the heat but good.
Take the heat but good, he deserves it good,
So let him take the heat but good.

Dear kindly Mrs. Clinton,
The Newt called you a name,
And now the Newt is hintin’
That Connie gets the blame.
He says it’s off the record,
He says his mom was tricked,
Whoopee cushions, Newtie Poo is ticked!
But dear Mrs. Clinton, hang onto your poise,
The country will learn soon enough that Newt’s fulla noise.
His contract is bogus,
His head’s full of glue,
And he’ll be voted out in two.
He’ll be out in two, voted out in two,
So let him rave and rant and stew.  (Out in two!)

Dear kindly Mrs. Gingrich,
We’ve come to realize,
Let’s put it into English,
Your family takes the prize.
You beat the Corleones,
It’s very plain to see,
Ewwie, gooey, what a family!
So dear Mrs. Gingrich, get out while you can.
The country doesn’t need the Gingrich family plan.
Forgive us for hoping
You guys are all through….
Please join us in saying:  Newt Who!

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