The Mandelbear's Musings

I must be getting old: I just ran across an article in Wired with the title "New to Vinyl Records? Here’s What You Need to Know".

Didn't notice any hill, though.

Sometimes my body tells me things. Usually I listen to it, but sometimes the message isn't what I thought it was. Sometimes it's a little disturbing.

My left shoulder has been very tense and sore for the last couple of days. My original guess was that it had to do with manhandling a heavy suitcase on the trip home. That may still be what started things off.

But this morning I found it getting suddenly more tense and painful while reading this article about our latest local school bomber. (Warning: may be triggery.) WTF? The article's title is "Police: 'Techno-wizard' suspect fooled family" Oh.

The law enforcement source described the boy as a "techno-wizard," an assessment echoed by his grandmother. Shirley Youshock said the boy was skilled on the computer and had earned straight A's in school.

Youshock called him a quiet boy and said she knew of nothing that would have prompted Monday's attack.

Right. Me. I remember feeling somewhat the same way around Columbine. (I say "somewhat the same way" without being able to give a name to the feeling. Still.)

I honestly don't remember much about junior high and high school. I remember that I hated them. I remember getting a lot of teasing. Some of it was the anti-semitism that was prevalent at the time, though I didn't recognize it as such until years later. Some of it was the fact that I was fat, slow, clumsy, and shy -- a perfect target. I'm pretty sure my hatred of sports comes from this time; I was never particularly interested in sports, and always spectacularly bad at anything that involved running, or kicking, throwing, catching, hitting, or anything else with a ball. I don't think it was active hatred until sometime in junior high.

Junior high is when I went to a school dance, went home without having actually danced with anyone, and never went again. Junior high is when I and a couple of my equally-intelligent classmates were suspended for our "negative attitude" and had to get notes from our parents before we could come back to school. That's when, long before word processors, a social studies teacher made me write on graph paper to improve my handwriting. High school was when the US history teacher's only criterion for grading the term paper was whether you had enough references, and whether all your spelling and punctuation was correct.

Yeah, I was smart, I was quiet, I was shy... I don't think I had any thoughts of blowing up the school or killing all the teachers, but that may just be because it was another 40 years before anybody did it. I did have fantasies about the gigantic screws that held my junior high's exposed steel girders together...

I have no idea what other emotional baggage I've been dragging around for the last half-century, give or take. It seems to be pretty nasty stuff.

So,... yeah. Funny, my shoulder doesn't hurt quite as much now. But it still hurts.

Colleen was doing fairly well when I saw her this evening: bored, but getting resigned to a long stay. But now, it seems, they are getting ready to send her home with some kind of portable IV pump. WTF??!

Update: 11/22 2pm She'll be moving to a skilled nursing facility, no earlier than Monday or Tuesday, and will stay until it's safe for her to be at home with less than 24-hour care.

OK, I know it's possible, in theory. People do it -- I've seen people walking around with PICC lines, now that I know what to look for. BUT: she can't care for herself at home -- she isn't even able to walk the distance from the front door to the bedroom by herself at this point -- and there isn't going to be anyone home during the day to care for her. We're going to be gone during Thanksgiving weekend. The bed's too high for her to get in and out of safely. She needs a walker when she's this weak, and she can't handle both that and the IV pump.

And when something inevitably goes wrong, it's an ER visit.

They don't even know at this point whether it's going to start healing or whether she's going to need surgery. I have no idea how long this is likely to go on. Or what to look for to see whether anything is going wrong.

The last time they sent her home too early it was a freaking disaster. The time before that it was merely a nightmare.

NOT a happy Bear.

Update: Saturday 08:30 It looks as though they're going to send her home tomorrow. It's probably going to be impossible to fight it, so my plan now is to ensure that she can use a walker or a wheelchair without having to also deal with a pole full of IV crap, make sure it's safe for her to be home alone for most of the day. We'll either have to cancel LOSCON or arrange for someone to stay with her. She may have to stay in the sewing room for a while if the bed is too high.

It's been nearly three weeks since Terry Childs was arrested on four counts of computer tampering and sent to jail on $5 million bail. In those three weeks, this event has taken turns to the strange, and wound up firmly in the land of the absurd. From bombastic claims in the press to midnight visits by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to pages of functional usernames and passwords entered into the public record, this case has certainly proven engaging.

Lost in all the drama is what actually happened. How could a large city government apparently lose control of its network, and how could its own characterizations of the system be so questionable?

I was just noticing, this afternoon, how deeply, disturbingly weird it feels to be able to honestly answer "really well" when somebody asks me how I'm doing. I mean, really weird.

Not complaining, you understand. Just saying.

It occurred to me rather suddenly last night that here I am, a 61-year-old, notoriously reclusive and socially inept computer nerd, attempting to dispense avuncular advice on relationships, marriage, and psychology over the internet. And in person, I might add.

This strikes me as highly improbable, totally out of character, mildly amusing, and more than a little mind-boggling. I feel a little as though, after many years of playing an assortment of jesters and other fools, I have finally moved up to playing Polonius.

'Sex pest' seal attacks penguin (BBC).

An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin.

The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known.

The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology.

The bizarre event took place on a beach on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both fur seals and king penguins.

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.

Equally, it might be been an aggressive, predatory act; or even a playful one that turned sexual.

A commenter on wcg's post points out that the second paragraph needs to be edited to read "...most unusual case of non-human mammal mating behavior..."

Also noted recently in this post by snobahr and this post by thnidu (who has by far the better icon for it).

I couldn't possibly make this stuff up.

... to my very own Younger Daughter, super_star_girl!!!!!?! My little girl!!? Sweet Sixteen??! OMGWTFBBQ? Have a great one, Sweetie!

A couple of days ago, one of my CD customers asked me to confirm that it was OK for him to have put one of my tracks on a mix CD that he'd sent to 20 friends for Christmas. I assured him that it was perfectly OK, and told him, "fair use is free advertising." And besides, it's not even fair use, but explicitly authorized under the Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license , extracts of which are actually printed inside the jewel case.

It has come to my attention that the RIAA is now trying to claim that ripping songs from a CD and putting them on your hard drive is "unauthorized copying" and strongly imply that it's illegal. Here's another article. filkertom mentions it in this post -- he apparently got a similar query in email from a fan. He replied, in part,

I think the RIAA is full of shit on this. It's yet another avenue they're trying to close, another way they're treating customers like criminals.

My position is very simple: If you got the music from me (or an authorized dealer, e.g., Bill & Gretchen, Juanita, CD Baby, one of the digital distro sites that carry a few albums) legally, for your own use, you can do what you want.

I ask that you do not copy them and pass 'em around to people [...]. I insist that you do not copy them and sell them to people. I do not allow you to pass off my work as yours, or to sample it without permission for profit.

I go a little farther, because 20 friends with a copy of High Barratry on a mix CD are 20 more people who have my name and can easily figure out where they can buy my CD.

It's particularly appropriate that the song in question is about SCO, another company that had the brilliant idea of suing their customers when their business model started failing because of competition from free goods on the Internet. They're currently in Chapter 11, and their stock is now worth about a dime a share, on a good day. It's an open question whether they'll make it to 2009.

Computerworld's IT Blogwatch posting yesterday points to a prediction that the RIAA won't make it to 2009, either. BoingBoing points out that, like SCO (which used to be a Linux distributer called Caldera), the RIAA has changed its tune about the legality of fair-use copies. In any case, SCO and the RIAA appear to be headed down the same road, in matching handbaskets.

I have an idea: let's help. If you ever get a letter from the RIAA claiming that making personal copies of my CD, Coffee, Computers, and Song, is "unauthorized" or "illegal", send me a copy. Because I would just love an excuse to sue their ass for product disparagement, slander of title, unfair business practices, barratry, and anything else a clever lawyer can cook up.

Hey, super_star_girl! I understand you're trying to clear all of the Barbie dolls out of your room.

(From this post by wcg.)

I've seen this company's product around town several times. I think they're missing a revenue source.

(From Don Marti)

WhollyLove.co.uk: Products and Advice celebrating God's fantastic gift of sex within Christian marriage

Welcome to WhollyLove

Sex is a great gift from God -- we stock products to enhance your sex life with your spouse! All our products and images on this site are selected on two criteria: sex in marriage is based on wholly love (so we have not selected hurtful products), and the Biblical portrait of marital sex as a reflection of God's holy love for us (so we have avoided inappropriate images wherever possible).

(From The Register.)

God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers

Is it just me, or is Bush a dangerous religious fanatic?