The Markives for 02008   

23 December 02008 (T - 28 days and counting): Christmas Creep, Differently Considered

Out here on the extreme eastern edge of "West Michigan"*, the Fox television station has announced that their televised "Christmas Yule Log" will air Thursday morning from...wait for it...4 to 7 AM.

Leaving out the question of whether three hours of televised fire serves any purpose, or whether anyone would watch this even if it were on when people are likely to be awake and celebrating Christmas, one has to wonder: Who's going to be tuned in** at that hour?

Answer: People who are still up at 4 AM, possibly viewing slides.  The folks I know who do that, however, don't have access to channel 17.  Apparently, they'll be able to pick up the Y-log at WGN America.  Just not at 4 AM.

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*--Possibly the extreme western edge of "East Michigan".  Exactly where the practical east/west line through Michigan is located is a question of some interest to me.  I tend to set the halfway mark at right around I-69 in metro Marshall.  That puts Albion on the east side of the state.  Nonetheless, our Fox outlet is out of Grand Rapids.

**--Or TiVoing/digitally recording/videotaping.

15 December 02008 (T - 36 days and counting): Editorial Commentary

A good President would have caught the second shoe thrown at him.

An adequate President would have had a clue why the shoes were being thrown.

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14 December 02008 (T - 37 days and counting): Plausibly Live Blogging

Herewith, a rundown of the events of yesterday, with an effort to describe them as they happened (all times approximate):

2:20 PM: Jif calls the home of The Markives with news that a birth might be imminent.  Word was that Mom and Dad were on their way to East Lansing to take Sarah for the duration of the events, as had been planned.  I was in my office at the time, working through final exam detritus.

Thus, for the third time, Laurie found out about the beginning of the arrival of the second child in a family before I did.  When Laura first went into labor with Kate in May 02001, I was giving an operations research final exam, and again, Laurie got the call.  It also happened with Jessica in November 02001, but since that's Laurie's side of the family, she was entitled to first notification.

So the countdown begins in earnest.

4:05 PM: The call comes in from Dan: "Anne's water has broken.  We're in the birthing room.  Now would be a good time to start live-blogging." (quote approximate).  Unfortunately for the I'net, Laurie and I were at that time in Flushing, MI for a combination late Thanksgiving/early birthday (Joey's) event.  We left Albion after getting the first phone call (from Jif), and briefly considered dropping in to the Bailey Street epicenter to observe the madness.  Discretion prevailed.

8:15 PM: We return from Flushing and get Dan's message.  On the drive through metro Lansing, we had once again considered dropping in, at the hospital.  One more time, discretion prevailed.

9:10 PM: It's a girl!  Finally, I'm home for a phone call, this one from Mom.  Megan Mott Bollman, weighing in at 9.375 pounds and measuring 22 inches tall.  Mother and daughter are doing well, and Dan was described as "coherent".  Which is certainly that which was to be hoped, at a minimum.

Fun fact 1: Megan actually falls into a minority: We learn from the folks at the Institute for Naming Children Humanely (who approve of her name, by the way) that "80% of all Megans have a sister named Molly."

Fun fact 2: Of our ten nephices, three of them were born on the 13th of something (April, October, and December).

Alas, no chance to mock Kristie Donohue this time.  In her defense, I wasn't in my office during this drama.

Welcome to the madness, Megan.

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21 November 02008 (T - 60 days and counting): Thoughts On The News

I was thinking about the ongoing debate about whether or not GM, Ford and Chrysler are worthy of a government bailout, and it occurred to me that this is typically abbreviated in the press as "bailing out Detroit".   Which led me to the following hypothesis:

If the American automobile industry were headquartered in a more politically popular city--

say, New Orleans, San Diego, or Miami (to name three)--there would be no real opposition to a government bailout.

I'm at least partially convinced--absent any evidence, of course*--that this is true.  Any talk that maybe New Orleans shouldn't have been rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina in 02005 was destined not to go far (I commented on this here.), largely due to a romantic notion of the city in question.  There's a list of cities that the American public could be counted on to rally around, and Detroit's just not on that list.

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*--Not that evidence can be collected to address this idea either way--it will have to live on as a perpetual Gedankenexperiment.

14 November 02008 (T - 67 days and counting): A Small Step Forward For Science And The English Language

I've been holding off on this one because I got burned by the last James Bond movie, but since things seem to be working out this time: It's good to see that Quantum of Solace is apparently using "quantum" to mean "very small amount".

That's the correct use.  A "quantum leap" is the smallest possible distance an electron can travel between orbitals, and is so small as to be virtually insignificant on its own.*  The pop culture use of the term to mean something big and significant is about as completely wrong as it's possible to get in this universe.

"Magnum leap" is what I think they're going for.

As to why I'm a bit gun-shy about things Bond: In conjunction with the 02006 release of Casino Royale, I taught one of my classes how to play baccarat.  The movie, of course, disgraced a lot of the JB legacy by having James play Texas Hold'em.  Which is just wrong.

Still, as long as we're on the subject, I thought this was pretty cool:

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*--Put enough together, and you can get visible light, so they're not useless.

5 November 02008 (T - 76 days and counting): Aftermath

1. Congratulations to Dave Burgess (a/k/a "Ridley"), who won a seat on the Comstock Township Board of Trustees last night.  Despite the fact that his easternmost yard sign was placed in my front yard, far from the actual township, I take no credit for this win.

2. As for the rest:

Word.

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28 October 02008 (T - 84 days and counting): ACME-5

The annual Christmas music entry comes early this year, for...Word on the street is that a new record in Christmas creep has been set in St. Louis.  Radio station WMVN flipped over to all-Christmas music on--get this--October 14.

Assuming they go through December 25, that's 73 days of the best and worst of Xmas tunes (counting both endpoints).  That's 1/5 of the year.

This record may come with an asterisk, since they're planning a format switch in the new year, and thus this could be thought of as extended stunting.*  I'd be more impressed if they did a Christmas marathon (shorter than 73 days, of course--perhaps closer to 73 hours) in mid-July to launch a new format, though.

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*--Those who remember the 01992-3 transition from WDFX to WOWF in Detroit know what I'm talking about.

27 October 02008 (T - 85 days and counting): Quote O' The Weekend

"See what not drinking does to your memory?"

Given that Laurie and I saw 8 of our 9 nephices last weekend, one might expect the best line to come from that generation.  Jif struck a blow for the Gen X contingent of the clan with this reaction to my way-too-detailed description of the last time gas in metro Detroit was selling for less than $2 a gallon.  (For those who are keeping track at home, it was Thanksgiving Friday 2005.  Jif's reaction was a comment on the details I pulled out of my mind to flesh out the date identification.)

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26 October 02008 (T - 86 days and counting): Where Have You Gone, John Anderson?

So as Election Day draws nearer, it appears more and more likely that an undistinguished first-term Senator will be the next President of the USA.  He'll rise to that level by defeating a former "maverick" who has sold out to the Christian right.

It's scarcely a proud day for America when this is the best we can do.*

And the minor candidates are just as marginal--Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, and Cynthia McKinney, to name the three that jump to mind the quickest.  Cindy is particularly noteworthy for doing more to squander whatever potential the Green Party may have had than even Ralph himself.  Looking at Bob and Cindy, taken together, makes one really wonder what's in the water in Georgia.

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*--The VP nominees of the major parties are no better.  On the one hand, we have a confirmed plagiarist, and on the other, we have--well, Sarah Palin.

20 October 02008 (T - 92 days and counting): Miriam Ululating

No, that title is not an Indigo Girls album.  Yet.

I was watching American Dad with the closed captioning on last night, and when the action on the screen involved a character named Miriam doing what is properly described as "ululating", well, that's what the caption said.

I question how useful a comment like this really is, beginning with the obscurity of that word (Although, to its credit, FrontPage recognizes it even in its gerund form, and isn't flagging it as a spelling error.).  If you're genuinely using the captioning as a source of information rather than an amusing diversion, how much does "ululating" really add to your understanding?  What does it successfully convey that "screaming" doesn't?  If the captioning folks are showing off, good on them, but how many people are going to appreciate their vocabulary?

Seems like there are better avenues for faux sophistication than this.

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15 September 02008* (T - 127 days and counting): Return Of The Flood Watch Returns

The rain has temporarily ended, and the floodwaters are receding.  Our backyard is once again completely above the river (yesterday afternoon saw about a foot of overlap), though the park remains somewhat flooded.

Downriver a bit, we hear that the Department of Human Services office in Kalamazoo is closed today due to flooding.  That water was probably in my backyard yesterday.

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*--The Large Hadron Collider is up and running in Europe, and the planet is still here.  Another source for up-to-the minute updates on the world is here.  (Read the URL for enlightenment.)

14 September 02008* (T - 128 days and counting): Return Of The Flood Watch

After about a day and a half of pretty consistent (and continuing as I type this) rain, the mill race is running very near full, and while the river hasn't overflown yet, the island is gone and the park on the far side is certainly close to flooding.

Things are still above the surface on the Linden Avenue side of things, though.

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*--The Large Hadron Collider is up and running in Europe, and the planet is still here.  For up-to-the minute updates on whether this situation has changed, click here.

10 September 02008 (T - 132 days and counting): Update On The Universe

The LHC is up and running in Europe, and the planet is still here.

How tragic that CNN's coverage is still giving exposure, and thus faint credibility, to the loons I mentioned yesterday.

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9 September 02008 (T - 133 days and counting): Just in Case, A Farewell Message To The Universe

Tomorrow morning, the Large Hadron Collider will start up at CERN*, and the largest particle accelerator on Earth will be up and running.  What a great day for science.

In the overactive imaginations of a bunch of 21^st -century fatalists (Who knew that Luddites had found the I'net?), though, this major milestone in the history of technology has the potential to generate miniature black holes that could lead to the end of the planet as we know it.  An overly hysterical assessment of "risk" seems to have led these people way too far over a cliff, and scientific reasoning has done nothing to convince them otherwise.  (No shocker, that one.)

While I give not one iota of credence to these loons and their lawsuit-happy tactics, the following occurred to me:

1. The I'net is commonly transmitted wirelessly these days.

2. A lot of those wireless signals escape their intended receivers.

3. Said signals might someday be intercepted and translated by extraterrestrial life forms.

Ergo, it would be the utmost folly for me to pass up an opportunity to send a "Last Message" of sorts to anyone who's in a position to read this after tomorrow, whether here on Earth or elsewhere in the universe.  Just in case something infinitesimally possible actually happens tomorrow.

"Just before you received this message, you probably got hold of the first episode of Hole In The Wall.  We're sorry about that."

That having been said, see you tomorrow.  And the day after.

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*--In my fantasy world, they'd announce tomorrow morning that it's already been running for a week and the universe is still here.
 

2 September 02008 (T - 140 days and counting): By Request, Some Thoughts On Our Current Political Scene

Or: "Trig" Is 1/3 Of A Branch of Mathematics

You know the one.

Independent of any other considerations, naming your kids random nouns like "Track", "Bristol", and "Trig" should be enough evidence of substandard judgment that your fitness to serve in any capacity that requires more thought than "Small fries here, large fries there, and keep your paper hat on."* should be seriously questioned.

When it's all over, though, I suspect that we'll discover that "Palin" is Inuit for "Eagleton".

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*--Credit for that job description to Bobby Slayton, I think.

27 August 02008 (T - 146 days and counting): Olympic Aftermath

Having gotten through the Beijing Olympics intact, and having begun a 4-year fit of remorse over the fact that CBC lost the Canadian rights for both Vancouver and London to CTV-Rogers, which is not yet available on my cable system, there's one thought that comes to the surface, and I don't say this lightly:

Beach volleyball should not be in the Olympics.

Many folks, on and off the I'net, have been quite forthcoming this summer with their thoughts on events that should be dropped from the Games, and while I remain as steadfast as ever in my opposition to judged exhibitions masquerading as sports, this proposed additional deletion strikes me as a no-brainer.  In the Winter Camp world, we have a rule: Adding "Blind" or "Backwards" to an event does not make a new event.  "Beach" seems to me to be a minimal modifier of that same magnitude.  It might be a sport, but it's not a different sport from floor volleyball.

I realize, of course, that this will eliminate 25% of NBCs prime-time telecast material*.  I shed no tears for them.

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*--The remaining 3/4 being comprised of swimming, synchronized diving, and gymnastics.

13 August 02008 (T - 160 days and counting): I'm Living On A Golf Course

A disc golf course, that is.  And I didn't have to sell a hammer to the Pentagon to do so, either.

The Disc Golf World Championships have come to 9 courses in south central Michigan this week, and one of them is in Albion's Victory Park, which shares part of the Kalamazoo River with the home of The Markives.  Indeed, the "hole" closest to my backyard is rather close to the river itself.

This may be why the distribution of water between the mill race and river seems skewed this week--if the levels were high enough to revive the Flood Watch, I would note that the river is definitely running a lot higher than the race.  There's no danger of flooding, but I'm not unconvinced that this disparity is independent of the festivities in the park, whether for aesthetics or for disc-snaring*.  The island is still visible, and covered with waterfowl much of the time--again, I don't know if that's related to the golfers or not.

It's surely not on the level of hosting the PGA, but since we're Albion, the PDGA will have to suffice.

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*--At least one disc has been abandoned in the river, despite the reality that someone larger than a Chinese gymnast could easily walk out and retrieve it.

10 August 02008 (T - 163 days and counting): Olympic Lists

This set of reactions is based primarily on coverage of the opening ceremonies from Friday.

Things That CBC's Olympic Coverage Does Better Than NBC's

1. Televising things live.  Sitting on the opening ceremonies for as close to exactly 12 hours as possible, as NBC did (badly), was silly dumb.  It continued into Saturday.

2. Shutting up while interesting things are going on.

3. Focusing on events, rather than fluff--but that's neither a new development nor one that will change.

4. Pronouncing the name of the host city correctly--it's "Bei-jing", not "Bei-zhing".

Things That NBC's Olympic Coverage Does Better Than CBC's

1. They have the rights to Bugler's Dream.  Can't beat that for an Olympic tune.*

2. Fitting a small geography lesson into the Parade of Nations with their graphics package, and putting a "Coming up next" scroll on the screen.  With an unfamiliar order based on the number of strokes in the first Chinese character of each country's name, that was a nice and useful touch.

Thing That Both NBC and CBC Need To Work On

1. Not interrupting the Parade of Nations.  Someone should televise that without commercial interruption.  Tuvalu, Montenegro, and the Marshall Islands were making their Olympic debut on Friday, and should have gotten good live coverage.  Not to mention all of the other countries who aren't going to be seen (especially in the USA) for the rest of the next two weeks.

Things That The IOC Needs To Work On Before Vancouver 02010 and London 02012

1. Put an end to the use of children in the ceremonies.  If they can set an age limit for competition, surely they can do something about the other festivities.

2. They'll never pull this off, but...I think that the athletes should be the focus of the opening ceremonies, and that getting them into the stadium should be the first item on the agenda, before all of the bizarre stuff.  But since "Salute To Paper"** needed the athletes' holding area, that wasn't going to happen this year.

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*--Incidentally, this year's Olympic-approved version of The Star-Spangled Banner seems to be less gauzy, and thus better, than the one used in Athens in 02004.  It's still not quite brassy enough for my tastes, but progress is progress.

**--Gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass--these were hailed as major Chinese inventions.  True--but what have they come up with in, say, the last 500 years?

5 August 02008 (T - 168 days and counting): Rarotonga Lost

Okay, we're back from the South Pacific, which turned out to be both an excellent vacation and one that was not as far-ranging as we had originally hoped.  The stories are many and varied, and will leak out over time, no doubt, but the tale of how we managed not to get to New Zealand and the Cook Islands is one worth recording here.

Very early on Thursday, 17 July (all times and dates here are local to Samoa, which is where the drama played out), we made our way to the Apia airport for a scheduled 5:30 AM flight to Nadi, Fiji, thence to connect with flights to Auckland, New Zealand and Avarua, Rarotonga, Cook Islands.*  As the flight time approached, we noticed two slightly disturbing developments:

1. No one from Air Pacific was present to handle check-in.

2. While the airport was housing about 30 people with way too much luggage, they all seemed to be waiting to fly to Pago Pago for the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts.  No one else was showing up for our flight.

As the flight time approached, we started investigating this puzzle.  The folks on airport security were quite sure that Air Pacific only flew out of Apia on Monday and Saturday--the fact that we had a confirmed reservation for a flight on a Thursday certainly confused them, though it didn't change the fact that there was no plane there.  Contacting the airline directly was out, as none of the three public telephones were working, all for different reasons.**

Certain that we wouldn't be flying out that morning, we flagged down a taxi and made our way to Aggie Grey's Resort and Spa, which was probably the closest establishment that might have been able to help us at 6 AMish.  There we encountered a number of people who didn't seem to understand the logistics of making a telephone call.  We were initially told that only the manager ("Smiley" by name--which is no name for anyone in a position of authority) had the code to make a long-distance call, and that she wouldn't be in until 8:30.

We did have a nice breakfast while waiting for Smiley.  And while she was able, after some telephone gymnastics, to reach the Air Pacific representative at the Apia airport, all that did for us was to confirm that we'd been rebooked on the corresponding Saturday morning flight.  (Most of the conversation was in Samoan, which left us somewhat in the dark while it was all going on.)

Two days stranded in Samoa.  Not a bad place to be stuck, but certainly not what we intended.

Once we got a room and unrestricted access to a telephone, things became clearer, although arguably not better.  It turned out, once I was able to reach an Air Pacific representative in Tucson***, that the flight had been cancelled in June, and that they claim to have tried to email me back then.  I have no record of any such email, but I'm willing to take them at their word for the time being.  I now have an email in to their customer service people in Australia--we'll see if that comes to anything.

My guess is that it won't.

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*--Part of my "5 countries [including the USA by way of American Samoa] in 4 days" plan that made a lot of sense when I was putting this itinerary together.

**--American cell phones only work in the South Pacific under very special and very limited circumstances, so if you're thinking "Mark-->, if you just gave in and got a cell phone..."--that wasn't an option.

***--In and around about ten other calls and an hour or so on the I'net canceling some plans and arranging others, including an unexpected return to Fiji.

28 June 02008 (T - 206 days and counting): On Hiatus

In the spirit of an ancient I'net tradition, I am posting the iconic Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup can as an indicator that I won't be posting here for quite some time now--my travels are taking me pretty much completely away from the I'net for almost 4 weeks.

By the time I say something new here, Jif's age will be a perfect square again.

Until we e-meet again,

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23 June 02008 (T - 211 days and counting): Tonight's Forecast--Dark

Back in the day*, there was at least one person who thought that I would surely be an English major in college, because of my fascination with words.  I don't deny that that fascination exists, but I have since confirmed several times that that's not enough to make a successful English major.  The fact is that I don't have a fascination with literature** (or with postmodern jargon designed to obscure).

Plus, I'm more fascinated by numbers.

This all came back to me this morning when I learned of George Carlin's death.  Amidst everything else that GC will be remembered for, he too had a fascination with the English language.  Read any of his three books, or listen to any of his 23 albums, and you'll see/hear that.

In and among the tributes on the I'net today, this one particularly struck me:

To borrow from Douglas Adams: The world will be a great deal less weird without you, George.

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*--01982, plus or minus.

**--For decades, I have resisted being told what to read.

17 June 02008 (T - 217 days and counting): Travels On US-34

Word on the street right now is that US-34, which runs through Iowa and Illinois (at least) could be under 10 feet of water by tomorrow.

I was there yesterday.

That wasn't my original plan.  Certainly, when I woke up in Kansas City* yesterday morning, I wasn't thinking "Since today is the 16th anniversary of the day I picked up my Escort, I think I'll celebrate by driving it through numerous very small towns in Midwestern farm country."  My thoughts were more along the lines of "Time to get home.  As quickly as possible."

"AQAP" turned out to be 14.5 hours of driving time, for a trip that should have taken about 11 if the freeways had all been open.

I was working my way up I-35 near Osceola, IA when word reached me, in the form of a light-up highway sign, that I-80 was closed at Iowa City and that US-34 was the recommended alternate route.  Fair enough, and good to know far in advance.  So to the east I drove.  Not quickly--US-34 serves as "Main Street" in a lot of cities, and the speed limit ranged anywhere from 65 down to 25 through the day.

Osceola, where this detour started, is the home of Terrible's Lakeside Casino--and not a lot else, it would seem.  Just up the road in Ottumwa was the first real evidence of flooding that I saw.  There were certainly patches of standing water here and there along the drive, but as I'm not from Iowa, I don't know if that was flood-related or just normal accumulation**.  The Des Moines River was definitely running higher through town than a river should be expected to.

I soon passed through Fairfield, home of Maharishi University of Management, which stands on the former Parsons College campus.  Parsons went through a major flameout in the late 01960's that has some unnerving parallels to a place where I worked in the mid 01990's, which explains my interest in the story.  However, The Patanjali Golden Dome of Pure Knowledge wasn't there when Parsons was crashing so spectacularly.  Those two facts may or may not be connected.

Flood-wise, Burlington, IA was a different matter entirely.  That city is right on the Mississippi River under normal circumstances.  Given the recent water activity, replace "on" by "in" and you'll get a decent sense of how things are yesterday and today.

And then I reached Kewanee, IL, which may well replace Hamlet, NC in the "dumb driving" pantheon.  Here in the home of The Markives, we use Hamlet as the quintessential example of bad drivers, which dates back to a 01999 incident where we spent considerable time stopped at a green light while the drivers passing through town tried to...I don't know, figure out what that meant, perhaps.  Kewanee may beat that, all due to one driver of a flatbed truck loaded with bricks.  He was stopped on 34, which at that point was a two-lane road with less-than-ideal visibility for passing, for no apparent reason.  I stopped behind him and waited for him to move, which he soon did.

Backward.

By that time, there were several cars lined up behind me, so I had limited room to back up myself.  After a bit of horn honking, he seemed to catch on the the idea that he had nowhere to go, and we all were eventually able to back out of his way and find other ways to leave town.  I don't know what was going on.

I pulled into a gas station in Sheffield, IL, with my trip odometer reading 400.2 miles, indicating that I had traveled that far since my last fill-up, that morning in North Kansas City, MO.  Not bad for a vehicle that is itself old enough to drive.  As I was leaving, the brick truck pulled up outside the station and stopped in the road again.  I chose to exit out the driveway in front of him.

On then to Princeton, IL, and a chance to reconnect with I-80.  The rest of the trip was pretty much incident-free, albeit considerably less interesting.

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*--This year's AP Calculus reading host.  Better than Louisville last year, but still not up the the standard set by Colorado State University.  I don't think a convention center will ever rise to that level.

**--One patch was definitely marshland, and was labeled as such.

13 May 02008 (T - 252 days and counting): Mail Flooding--A Trend That Must Be Stopped

Back in the days before the I'net assumed its role as the driving force behind the spread of illogical rumors, there would occasionally appear in the collective semi-wisdom of the universe an urban legend about a terminally ill child who wanted to land in the Guinness Book of World Records* for receiving the most postcards.  Never minding the fact that Guinness has no such category, this would frequently be followed by a flood of postcards being sent to some unsuspecting city, and a new contender for the also-nonexistent record of "Person who handled the biggest volume of useless mail".

By the way, the kid never existed.

We have a similar "mail flood" trend coming on strong this year.  It started last year, with outraged fans of Jericho sending lots and lots of nuts to CBS headquarters in an effort to get the show uncanceled.  The first problem with this campaign is that it succeeded**, and its precedent has now inspired lots of copycat madness this cancellation season:

    1. Fans of Las Vegas were inundating NBC with baby booties, which had something to do with an unresolved relationship in  the last episode.

    2. One of the stars of Reaper has released a call to send lots of socks to the head honchos at the CW.

    3. And in today's news, Back To You fans are starting to send bottled water to CBS in an effort to encourage them to pick up the canceled Fox sitcom.  (Personal note: I'd like to see this show live on, but I'd prefer it if they went back to the original actress playing the 10-year-old.  That may just be me, though, and it's not going to happen.)

Like it or not, TV viewers, you are not the networks' customers.  Advertisers are, and television programming is nothing more than a mechanism to deliver your eyeballs to the ads.  Give the postal and parcel shipment workers of this land a break.

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*--At a time when that volume was the collected repository of genuine accomplishment.  Nowanights***, it just seems like that stuff has been overrun by a collection of decidedly odd stunts along the lines of "No one else ever thought to do this before".

**--The second is that after the show returned, few watched it in the second season, either.

***--If we have "nowadays", why not "nowanights"?  It's a nice anagram for "Washington", too.

30 April 02008 (T - 265 days and counting): 333,333.333333...

The elusive first third* million was reached last Monday, 21 April, at about 9:45 PM on southbound I-275/I-96 near the Grand River Blvd overpass.

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*--Said that way, it makes the whole thing sound like a bank.

17 April 02008 (T - 278 days and counting): Stalled By A Dirty Thermostat

Or: Spoke Too Soon

In the history of cars, the number of cars that have had to have a dirty thermostat repaired is surely not large.  My Escort is now on that list, and as a result, I didn't reach 333,333.3333... miles today as I had hoped.

I've been having some cooling system trouble off and on for awhile now, but it having just been winter, driving with the heater blowing at full force wasn't a major imposition and served a useful function besides drawing heat away from the engine.  That comfort level has changed with the recent late arrival of something resembling spring.  So when my engine demonstrated, once again, just how far past the end of the gauge it's possible to send the temperature needle, it was back to the good folks at Albion Ford for assistance.  (In a different world, I would have preferred to try another Ford repair center to see if the folks at AF were just overlooking something, but that wasn't practical.)

After ruling out all the usual causes of this kind of behavior, they diagnosed a dirty thermostat that was sending flawed readings to the control center.  (Also a slightly-plugged radiator, but since they installed it [the third radiator this car has had in almost 16 years], and since I've never put any stop-leak concoction in there, I blame them for that one.)  I may have been panicking for nothing.

A quick repair, and the car is back in my hands, running far cooler, and back on track for 1,000,000/3.

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15 April 02008 (T - 280 days and counting): What's Up In Albion

Flood Watch Part 7: The island remains submerged, although the banks are not currently threatened.  Nonetheless, the river runs high.

Odometer Check: I rolled over mile 333,000 this past weekend, thus locking in the first three digits of the first third-million miles.  Thursday might be the day that rare milestone is reached.

Now to the main point o' the day: In the voice of Alex Rocco and the words of Roger Myers Jr., in the Simpsons episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show": "You kids don't know what you want!  That's why you're still kids!." 

That was my initial reaction to news* from Crayola Central that they were adding yet another batch of eight new colors, and that the names for these were chosen by a vote of 20,000 kids.

Bad move.  "Awesome" isn't a color.  Nor yet "super happy", "famous", "happy ever after", or any of the other really bad color names.  The actual colors aren't offenses against good sense, but this New Age-y silliness needed to be shut down somewhere after the votes had been counted and before the crayons hit the streets.  (Hey, at least "wild blue yonder", to pick a color I've bashed in this forum previously, suggests what the color is.  "Best friends" doesn't do that.)

The Raw Umber and Maize Preservation Society had the right idea the first time Crayola tried this culling and replacing.  Who shall stand to defend green-yellow?

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*--Tip o' the visor to Jif for the email alert.
 

22 March 02008 (T - 304 days and counting): Flood Watch, Part 6

I had just about put the FW on the shelf for the time being.  Then we got around 6-8 inches of new snow yesterday.

So much for that idea--the river's back up.  Up enough to keep an eye on things (the island is submerged again, after a week or so when it looked like it'd break to the surface again), not so much for alarm.

As I was walking into the office today, I passed a neighbor who opined that the reason for this spring snow is that NASA's been running so many space shots.  I'm not sure I buy into that theory.

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22 March 02008 (T - 304 days and counting): Sign O' The Times 2K8

Throughout western Michigan today, Easter egg hunts are being postponed until well after Easter, owing to the cold reality that 6-12 inches of new snow makes the eggs a bit tough to track down.

In an unusual display of flexibility for organized religion, a number of Good Friday services have also been rescheduled, for today--which would, of course, be a Saturday.

This probably isn't something that marks the start of a trend, but surely the weather-related confusion can be ascribed, at least in part, to the quirky calendar manipulations that set the date of Easter each year.  Given the animosity of the early church to the winter solstice, I find it amusing that they have the vernal equinox so closely tied to what is arguably their biggest holiday.

So here's a suggestion: Assuming we can get the various Christian denominations to agree on this*, would it not be a lot more convenient for everyone if, say, Good Friday was permanently set as the first Friday in April?  The calendar becomes completely predictable, and the chance of massive snowfall affecting the proceedings**--both non-secular and secular--is diminished.

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*--Not likely, I know.

**--The archdiocese covering Barrow, Alaska will still have to contend with snow.

10 March 02008 (T - 316 days and counting): Don't Blame Me, I Live In Michigan

I see the title of this post as a worthy bumper sticker about this time next year, pretty much independent of who is occupying the White House.  Of course, there could also be a Florida version.

Seriously, though: If the Democratic Party really wants to spit in the face of two rather pivotal states, that should be their choice.  And if they wish not to spit--also their choice.  But if it's to be the latter, they pick up the tab for it all.

My sentiment is that the rules for Florida and Michigan were clearly in place when their primaries were held, which to me says that either the results stand as voted in January, or the delegates therefrom aren't seated.  And I have no patience for the argument whining from the acolytes of Obamaland that their candidate wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.

Remind me: Why was that again?  Oh yeah.  Because he took his name off.

Actions have consequences.  Anyone running for President should know that.*  As I've said here before, the right to make a decision--even a bad one--and live with the consequences should belong to each of us.  But there's no going in halfway there.

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*--As should anyone actually holding the office, but the past 7+ years have dimmed my resolve that that's true.

1 March 02008 (T - 325 days and counting): Adventures In Spookiness

This showed up in my mailbox recently:

You have to appreciate an ad campaign that is sufficiently flush with cash that it can afford to produce personalized envelopes for each target.  That's a satellite photo of my neighborhood in Albion, and while the arrow doesn't point to 422 Linden, it's pretty darn close.  (For those scoring at home, the home of The Markives is the big white blob directly under the first period in the ellipsis.  The mill race and Kalamazoo River can be clearly seen.)

Interestingly, this comes from the good folks at Reason magazine, a libertarian bunch with whom I actually agree on some (not all) issues.  I don't think their campaign to bring me on board as a subscriber will succeed, but I'm impressed with their determination.

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29 February 02008 (T - 326 days and counting): Milestones On Leap Day

Birthday wishes: Information is somewhat scant, but it would appear that actor Dennis Farina is the clubhouse leader in the "Most Famous Person Born On February 29" sweepstakes.  Two of the seven "celebrities" heralded in this news post are serial killers, which is an amusing, if unsettling, coincidence.*

R.I.P. Netscape Navigator: AOL is ending its support for this Adam of I'net browsers at midnight tonight.  A sad day for us all, even though less than 1% of I'net users (myself included, and I'll still be surfing with it tomorrow) still use it.  Of those of us who were on the Web in the 01990's, many got our introduction to browsers through the big N.

Flood Watch, Part 5: The watch is temporarily suspended as the waters have receded further.  On the other hand, with the day's snowfall, the water cycle is poised to refill the riverbed, so we're not hanging it up entirely.

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*--Incidentally, I'm not sure if it's "news" that someone is "only" one quarter their real age due to a 29 February birthday.

15 February 02008 (T - 340 days and counting): Super Bowl Aftermath--High Times In Chicago

What a great day Super Bowl XLII Sunday was for Chicago.  With the New England Patriots losing, some attention was rightly paid to the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears teams, who predated the Patriots' loss as the first two teams in NFL history to run the table in the regular season before honking in the championship game and thus falling short of a perfect season.

Despite what some of the Patriots' sharpest critics are saying, that's still an accomplishment.

Despite what some of the Patriots' apologists are saying, 18-1 is not just as good, nor in any way better than, 17-0.  Comparative strength of schedule doesn't matter here.  (If this were college football, an argument that SoS matters might have some traction, but it's not.)

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14 February 02008 (T - 341 days and counting): Life And Times Updates

1. Flood Watch, Part 4: The river had subsided for a few days, but it's back up close to the edge on the west (non-house) side.  Taken together with the foot or so of snow on the ground, I suspect we're not at the end of flood threat season just yet.

2. A word that's making the rounds of the corner of the I'net that I frequent today is the collective noun "parenthesis".  As in "a parenthesis of cellists".

I didn't know that one either.  Given current developments in the home of The Markives, though, it's particularly relevant.  As I am strictly a recreational etymologist, I make no effort to explain it.  Truth be told, it's not readily apparent to me why cellists need their own collective noun, but I shall not dwell on that point.

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21 January 02008 (T - 365 days and counting): Flood Watch, Part 3

The floodwaters have receded nicely.  No shock there.  The mill race is actually low enough that it's starting to freeze in places.  That bears watching, as it might affect the distribution pattern between it and the river.

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21 January 02008 (T - 365 days and counting): This Is CNN...

...where "C" clearly doesn't stand for "Compassionate".  (Not that it should, of course.)

In watching the returns from Saturday's political activity, I was struck by the running tally on CNN from the Nevada caucuses.  Reading way down the list of vote information, there was the following line:

Dennis Kucinich    4

That's 4 votes, not 4 delegates, nor yet 4%.  4 votes.  It did rise to 5 by the end of the evening.

That's only 5 more votes than I got, and I wasn't even on the ballot in Nevada.*

And they kept it running over and over.  I support accuracy, of course, but this was almost painful to watch.  MSNBC was reporting out by percentages, which gave Kucinich a 0%, but that can mean enough different things that it probably wasn't as alarming.  (Fox Noise went with the vote count, but the notion that they'd be compassionate toward a Democrat is pretty far removed from reality.)

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*--Credit to Dennis Miller's The Off-White Album for that comparison.  Credit the arcane Democratic caucus rules for the weak showing.

13 January 02008: Another Progress Report From Red Arrow Photography

Here are the 1568 prints* of pictures I took at Jif & Dave's wedding, ready for sorting.

As the tape measure itself measures 3½ inches, that's roughly 13 11/16 inches of photo paper.  They have since been sorted and numbered for easy reference.

For those of you living in area codes 734 and 517, your copies should be going in the mail tomorrow morning.  313 folks will get theirs hand-delivered on Tuesday (I have to be in that corner o' the world anyway.).

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*--There were also about 7 "extreme duplicates"--copies of pictures beyond the 4 I ordered.  They're not included in this pile.

13 January 02008: A Name To Watch For

Matthew Sanders.

This kid is either going places in a hurry, will be the biggest example of "early career burnout" in recorded history, or has the stage mother to end all stage mothers.  Possibly more than one.

Who is he?  He played--get this--"Ultrasound baby" in the movie Juno.

The kid wasn't even born yet, and he already had a film credit on his resumé.  It appears, by the way, that his Bacon number is 3.

To quote Tom Lehrer, "It's people like these who make you realize how little you've accomplished."

Score one for watching movie credits all the way to the end--I usually do that just to see who the production accountant was, but goofy factoids like this are a nice secondary benefit.

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10 January 02008: Flood Watch, Part 2

The resistance on the east (backyard) side of the river has been breached.  In only one place, though.  For those of you familiar with the official backyard of The Markives, the river water has overflown the banks down on the southern edge, where there appears to be a low point on the wall.  Down there, there's already been serious erosion damage between the retaining wall and the land.  Actually, "underflown" may describe the situation better.

Which, come to think of it, may explain why that damage exists.

I take considerable solace in two things: 1. The flooding on the west (park) side of the river is even greater.  2. My basement appears, so far, unaffected.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

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9 January 02008: Flood Watch

Thanks to the rain hereabouts last night, the Kalamazoo River is now flooding, ever so slightly, into Rieger Park in Albion in a couple of isolated spots.

It is not, however, flooding my backyard--all that excess water is heading over the opposite bank.  Score one for intelligent design--and by that, I mean intelligent human design, and by that I mean intelligent design by humans, not intelligent design of humans.

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8 January 02008: This Crazy Year Week

One week ago today, there was about a foot of new snow in my front yard.

Today--nothing.  It's gone.

On the other hand, the mill race in front of my house is running rather high, and the Kalamazoo River in my backyard is close to flooding the park on the other side, exactly as the retaining walls have been engineered to do.  For those of you who know what I'm talking about, the island out back is completely submerged, and the current is clearly in a hurry to get somewhere.

Never a dull moment.

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6 January 02008: Sign O' The Times 2K8

When you walk into a camera store and say "I have 22 rolls of prints to pick up," it turns out that they don't need to ask your name.

On the other hand, I am already pretty well-known at the Battle Creek Ritz Camera outlet, and am probably a contender for their best film customer even when I'm not working a wedding, so this may not generalize completely.

Anyhow, here's what the prints from Jif & Dave's wedding look like:

The numbers on the boxes represent the Ritz staff's collective success (thanks, guys!) at keeping the 16 rolls of film I shot over those 1.25 days* in chronological order.  (I put the red stickers on the film cartridges; they took it from there.)  This is why I work with these people--the local Kmart probably wouldn't have done that for me.

Assuming Albion still had a local Kmart, that is.

For those of you interested in seeing what's inside the boxes, I recommend patience.  There are approximately 1600 prints in there (quadruple prints run the numbers up), and it'll take me some time to sort through them all.  The CD's to the left may get some I'net exposure sooner.  Or maybe not--part of me thinks that fundamental fairness requires that the bride and groom get to see their wedding pictures before, oh, the rest of the world does.** 

Having run through the boxes once, my first axiom of photography, "Take enough pictures, and you'll get some good ones," has been confirmed again.  And once again, we find that it's difficult to take a bad picture of Jif.  (The "mawage***" pair of pictures is particularly striking, in the photographer's opinion.  I hadn't known that was coming last Saturday, but I think I caught it well.)

More to follow.

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*--The remaining 6 rolls cover Christmas and Winter Camp.

**--That's probably another 2K8 sign o' the times.

***--#6 on the JFI list of movie quotes, incidentally.

4 January 02008: Political Commentary #1--Preparing To Repeat, Alas

One of the things I find interesting about the media play regarding last night's Iowa Presidential caucuses* is that the results are being trumpeted as a victory for "change over experience".

Pardon my memory, but isn't that basically what we (okay, the Supreme Court) went with in 02000?

How'd that work out, anyway?

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*--That involved about .06% of the American electorate, but had a massively disproportionate and undemocratic effect on the free world.  Pointing that out seems to be a common theme this political season, and I have no reservations about being on that bandwagon.

Previous editions of The Markives: