Archives: January 2003
Sat Feb 01, 2003
If You Want Something Done Right...
I remember just after I graduated from college, and had returned to UCSC to do a year of grad school, someone wanted to start a "Women in Science" support group. Women science majors really needed something like that, and they could have really helped each other. But the group never really took off, because to be successful, women in science would have to had organized it, and they were too busy with their studies and doing 50% more than men to get fewer opportunities. Organizing the Staff Professionals is starting to feel similar. More...
[4] comments (767 views) | link
Fri Jan 31, 2003
Canine Translation
My dog thinks "Don't lick me on the lips" means "Thank you."
[1] comments (662 views) | link
Dog Torture
The neighbors got two lab puppies for Christmas, and an adult terrier has appeared in their side yard too. They leave them out all night, in all weathers. They share the yard with half-full paint buckets, rags, an stack of old miniblinds, some scrap wood. The terrier barks all night. It's not the noise, which we could call the police about, but the cruelty.
More...
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Thu Jan 30, 2003
News of My World
Today's Sentinel just had too much news in it. I'm overwelmed. More...
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Sign of Spring
Deep pink plum blossoms on Bay St. near California, and on High St, near Bay.
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Mon Jan 27, 2003
Life Is But a Scheme
I first heard about Stepham Wolfram's A New Kind of Science in a Wired article that says everything I could ever say in a blog entry. I was very curious about a book that promises to be about everything, but the price was a bit steep, so I thought I'd wait and buy it used as I do most books.
Wolfram is touring the nation giving public talks. I may go see him Feb 11, at San Jose State.
[5] comments (852 views) | link
Sun Jan 26, 2003
Where Parks and Universities Come From
Got my newsletter from the Land Trust of Santa Cruz county today. What an amazing organization. It seems to be both conservative and progressive. They have preserved the Davenport bluffs for public access, Coast Dairies coastline, Moore Creek, Antonelli Pond... How could anyone have a problem with a non-profit that buys land and easements so that what is left of the wildness in Santa Cruz county is left wild? Why would anyone develop their farm or ranch into houses if they could make money just leaving it alone? Well, I guess the Cowell Foundation, for one. More...
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Sat Jan 25, 2003
A Walk in the Country
We went to Quail Hollow Ranch County Park today. Quail Hollow was one of those "I've lived her twenty years but never been to" places. We went last week for the first time, because we read that it was a rural place to (legally) take dogs for a walk. They allow horses too, so I don't have to carry around the ridiculous plastic bag. My terrier always empties her bowels in each new place. I can understand the need, but I hate to keep the results in my pocket. Anyway, Quail Hollow is completely rustic, in that and other ways. More...
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Free Books about What Wants to be Free
Peter Wayner's "Free for All" is available for money in bookstores, or for free as a PDF download. It is a book about the open source economy, and therefore is itself, open and free. Actually, the blurb is "How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans."
I'm about halfway through, and love it. It reads much like a sequel to Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line which is also available for free download. I recommend both of these books to someone like me who isn't a software engineer or sysadmin, but certainly is user of open source tools. It is nice to read the story from the beginning.
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And Now for The Week to Come
Back in the mid-1980s, I was part of a radio collective at KZSC who presented one hour of feminist news. At :50 our astrologer, Judy Havey, would present the news of the upcoming week. I was extremely amused by this at first, but everyone else thought it was a good idea, and since I was new, I went along with it.
It wasn't long before I noticed that pretty much everything she said was true. Let's not try to explain why. Judy Havey posts her interpretations of the heavens monthly, and she'll be in Santa Cruz doing readings March through May.
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If They Can Suspend One Fraternity...
Last week two fraternities brawled in a San Jose Park, and yesterday a fraternity at UCSC was suspended. I am not surprised, and bewildered. More...
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Thu Jan 23, 2003
Not Carried by Shopper's Corner
Have you seen the Blue Whale skeleton at UCSC's Seymour Center? I was down there the other day for work and remembered my connection with it. When I was an undergraduate, I was a lab assistant at the Marine Analytical Lab where marine chemists and geologists put samples of animals and plants from the ocean through gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers. One day, my boss and I were going through the freezer looking for a sample of plankton, and a two-by-one-foot foil package was in our way. "Oh, yeah," he said, "that's the blue whale meat."
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Wed Jan 22, 2003
Try Not to Get Any On You
If you don't read Scientific American, and it is perfectly ok if you don't, then you probably don't know how reliably progressive its politics is. It's pretty much the place to find scientific evidence for all your progressive causes and legislations.
But you probably think SciAm contains five to seven feature articles, purportedly written by a research scientist in an area of science of interest to at least three disciplines, but everyone knows the articles are ghostwritten by one of the team of "editors" who is holding one of the few top science writer jobs in the country and you can skip the entire article if you read the graphics' captions. You would only be partially correct.
More...
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A Question for Canine Behavioral Specialist
My terrier sleeps on top of the bed when she is alone, and then crawls under the covers when we get into it. The daushunds crawl under the covers when they are alone, and then climb on to the pillows when we get into bed. Why is that?
[1] comments (709 views) | link
Closure
Two elementary schools: Gault and Natural Bridges. Gault is pretty enough to become something nice like the Louden Nelson Center. They were both built in the same year, 1928, and designed by the same architect. The buildings of Natural Bridges school, on the other hand, are a kind of antimatter to the beauty of Natural Bridges beach half a mile a way. We're probably lucky the westside hasn't exploded already. More...
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Labor Union News
Distilled from Work in Progress. Subscribe here.
Union membership in the U.S.:
New union members reported this week': 2,766
New members reported year to date: 7,940
More...
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Tue Jan 21, 2003
A Disappointment in Numerals
I remember being age five and learning how to spell the names of the numbers. Oh, how I loved "eleven" and "twelve." I also loved "eight." "Two" was interesting, because of the "w," but everyone knew it, and it was always hanging out with its friends "one" and "three." Even at age five I had a hard time liking the popular people. I liked "five." "Five" was friendly, a little odd because of the "e," but I never got to know it well. "Six" was aloof. Too short for its value. "Seven" was ok, but I'm afraid I passed it over in my excitment to get to my beloved "eight." "Nine" could have been a numeral to get to know, but it was too close to "ten" which was, like "one" and "two," just to popular. "Ten" was also a bit too smug and sure of itself. I didn't learn about "zero" until it was too late, and I had already grown up to age six. More...
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Mon Jan 20, 2003
Same As It Ever Was
I don't know about your town, but in Santa Cruz, local histories pretty much follow the following formula:
"Oh man, when I got here, Santa Cruz as PARADISE, but then [people who got here (before/after) me] ruined it when they [(built on/tore down)] the [ (natural/urban) treasure ] . Let me tell you how it was before they ruined Santa Cruz...."
I know my own local history writings have sounded that note, although my aim is to inspire future improvements. Santa Cruz *IS* ruined, and always will be, and nothing will ever make it as nice as it was before you got here. Three recent local history books have proven that again.
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Fix It Yourself
I'm a compulsive problem-solver. If something is broken, I immediately try to figure out what I can do to make it go again. This is a good trait in the computer networking business. It leads to frustration and sarcasm in the being-a-good-citizen business. (It's also not always a good trait in friendships. Sometimes people just need sympathy.)
However, the City of Santa Cruz provides two programs for people like me who want to fix those two annoyances of urban life: speeding cars and graffiti tagging.
More...
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Sun Jan 19, 2003
Absinthe Memories
After reading this great article about the history, practice, and personal experience of absinthe, I thought I'd have to try this stuff, even though some people say it tastes quite foul. I have always been curious about absinthe; there must be a past-life compulsion-- yeah, that's it. I was a teenaged fin-de-ciecle artist who lived fast and died young in Nice, never quite getting it together to go to Paris, but before dying in a tragic poorhouse fire, produced a small but impressive body of work consisting of provocative landscapes and unflattering portraits of local merchants. It would all come back to me in detail if I could just get drunk on absinthe, just once.
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Sat Jan 18, 2003
A Few Nice Features of This Life
In order that they come to mind:
1) Shoppers' Corner
2) Trader Joe's Artichoke Lemon Pesto
3) St Charles Gin and Tonic
4) Dave's Computer (the laptop had a loose CPU and Airport card, that's all.)
5) Clean Sheets
6) Driving our car
7) Tivo
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A History of Britain Parts 1, 2, and 3
It took a while to get used to how Simon Schama moves in his body, so if that put you off, you missed out on "A History of Britain." If you liked him on TV, the books are even better. I got all three at amazon.co.uk, but I checked out vol 1 and 2 at the library first. The BBC website is wonderful. I liked the quizzes.
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What I'm Not Reading
I'm NOT reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. But I did buy my "adult edition" from amazon.co.uk this morning at 50% off. I bought all my Harry Potter at the uk amazon. I prefer to read in the original language, whenever possible.
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Fri Jan 17, 2003
"Conclusively, I strive for perfection."
If I ever get laid off, and I really hope I don't, the best way to prepare to "write your resume" is to read 150 resumes of people who want a job just like the one you want.
I'm on a hiring committee right now. After four hours, I am not quite half-way through a five-inch pile. If you want to get an interview with me, this is what you do.
Create a two-column table. On the left side list the SKA's from the job description. On the right side, list how you have that experience, to what degree of responsibility, and one accomplishment or conclusion.
It's just that simple. Do not write a cover letter with the sentence that I have quoted in the title. Do not make up words. Do not make up experience. We can tell.
[14] comments (1205 views) | link
Why We Need a War
Harpers recently reviewed a book that I can't remember the name of about the war of 1898, a war with many similarities to the war in the Middle East. The author of the review says that to end the depression of 1893, colonies that would buy US products were necessary. The alternative to war was to raise the wages of US citizens so that they would have the cash to support the local market. Big Business didn't choose that route, and colonized the Cuba, Puerto Rico, Asia, and the rest of the Pacific including Hawaii. If I read any of the books mentioned, I'll post my thoughts.
[3] comments (875 views) | link
Thu Jan 16, 2003
Dave Carter
I decided that I won't be able to go to see Tracy Grammer at the Kuumbwa this weekend because all I'd do is cry through the whole thing anyway. When Dave Carter died last summer I was so sad. Tracy's letter to us was exactly the level of truth and beauty and the best of life that we got from their muse. Now he's gone. Tracy will make great music on her own, or with others, I'm sure. But dang, he was one of the greats.
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No Land is Empty Land
In my life, Elkhorn Slough has always been a slough, always been a place to watch birds, go kayaking, take a long drive around. I had no idea of how close it came to becoming something terrible until I read this story in the Mercury by David Beck.
More...
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Music for the People
One of my many concerns with "malls" is that the street between the stores belongs to the merchants and they get to control who walks that street. As those who read history remember, the right to permit a "market" belongs to the sovereign, along with the location, products, participants, and taxes. Medieval governments knew it is a bad idea to let merchants make the rules, and control the market(place).
Santa Cruz doesn't have a mall. (Capitola-- 4 miles down the road-- does.)
In Santa Cruz, the street between the stores is owned by the people, and we therefore spend lots of time at the City Council resolving disputes between the people who play music (buskers) and the people who listen to music at work (I'll call them "businessers").
More...
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Free Vacation Rental, Some Restrictions Apply
Everyone knows how expensive housing is in Santa Cruz--we're usually in the top three cities, sharing the spotlight with San Francisco and Manhattan. Recently, however, the rental market has gone soft comparatively, and shared housing rates are holding steady or dropping to around $400 to $500 per bedroom. (Studios are starting at $800.)
This means there are more rentals available, and coupled with the downturn in tourism, there are more vacant "vacation rental" houses near the beach.
Locals have noticed that these houses are a nice place to spend the weekend. As long as you don't upset the neighbors, or haplessly choose a house with local owners, it is unlikely that your occupancy will be discovered.
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Wed Jan 15, 2003
Unpowered Book
My beautiful pismo powerbook is in the hospital and in critical condition. Although the "num lock" lights up, it doesn't power on. I won't be able to post very often for a week --or more, if it, if it.. well, if it is not coming back. I made the mistake of saying in front of it that I was thinking of buying a G4 upgrade and new HD. I should know better. I've owned a 1967 VW CombiKamper. Never mention spending money on new hardware in the presence of old hardware.
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Mon Jan 13, 2003
Cool Old Santa Cruz Photos
I frequently looked through eBay's Collectible's market, keyword "Santa Cruz." That's how I found zazzle. They sells a few beautiful panoramic photographs of Santa Cruz, and a very nice "Bird's Eye View" 1879, before anything had been built on the beach.
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Buffy: Addiction Is A *Disease*
I don't want to say outloud that Joss Whedon deserves to have Firefly cancelled because of how he abandoned Buffy, but I do think it. Buffy is just so horrible this year. More...
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Sat Jan 11, 2003
Eclectix is Dead, Long Live On-Line Shopping
The multi-vendor import store Eclectix closed last week. K went by while they were having their last sale, thinking that maybe we could now afford something in there besides incense, but no, all the prices were the same as they ever were. More...
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Fish Stories
So it wasn't those crazy, thoughtless sardine gluttons of the last century that killed the Monterey Sardine industry, whew. Could people really eat that much salt fish? Where did the sardine eaters go all those years? When the sardines returned, did they as well? More...
[3] comments (725 views) | link
How Not To Do Dickens
If you read that the latest film adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby is "Three Stars" or anything positive like that, you can be sure it's because they haven't read the book, nor seen the other (nine-hour) version, and are simply reacting to the genius of Dickens which shines through the crap.
And please don't take a Dickens newbie to this movie. You'll damage them, and possibly leave a scar.
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Yet Another Label
Take this quiz to see where you are at on the Political Compass via Rebecca Blood. Naturally, I am more libertarian and liberal than Ghandi. Way more.
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Henry Ford on the Five Day Week
Henry Ford on the Five Day Week via Rebecca Blood. And old idea now, that people need time to buy the stuff they make for industry. I think it is time for the four-day week, or the six hour day. Most people spend an hour a day dealing with spam anyway. Once effective filters for that are in place (and Apple's Jaguar mail client is almost there) then I should be able to leave at 4 pm.
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Hard Questions, Real News
Finally, a professional news source for real news and comment: Common Dreams. I'll be adding this to my frequent reading. More...
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Fri Jan 10, 2003
Almost a Hundred Years by Hulda Hoover McLean
Waddell Creek beach is the one just south of Ano Nuevo, with the sheer clift on one side, and the hang gliders on the other. Hulda Hoover McLean's father bought that beach, and 3000 acres of the Waddell valley behind it in 1914. In the middle of the century, Hulda and her family ranched it. When Hulda and her sisters were ready to retire, they sold most of their valley to the public, and now we can enjoy Rancho del Oso, a section of Big Basin State Park for free, forever. More...
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Thu Jan 09, 2003
I am a "Star Trek: Nemesis" blasphemer
I finally got around to seeing the last Star Trek. I loved it. I cried; I chuckled, just like you want to in a movie. I loved the part where Data snuck into the Super Powerful Romulan War Bird THROUGH AN OPEN WINDOW! Oh man. I really thought that was funny. Then the guy (who was also watching it alone) in front of me turned around and stared hard at me as if I was laughing in church.
[5] comments (559 views) | link
MacWorld notes: Bongo Ties
Bongo Ties what a great idea. A rubber band married to a garment frog. And made of natural rubber and wood. I am always wrapping up electrical cords in velcro and twisties and themselves. None of it works very well. I bought a ten pack of these, $5.
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MacWorld 2003 notes: keyboard accessories
Shipping next month is the completely overpriced ($50) heated wrist pad. I would have bought one when I worked at Kresge wherethe furnace didn't work for five years.
Contour Design was letting us play with a keyboard called "Roller Mouse Station." It's too hard to explain properly but I'll try. The mouse is a padded cylinder that slides from side to side on a axel. Under your thumbs are a variety of programmable buttons and a scroll wheel. I liked it, but I don't have a spare $200.
[5] comments (589 views) | link
MacWorld 2003 notes: Tivo for your Macintosh
Eye TV from El Gato software is a television tuner and analog video digitizer costing $200. It stores the files on your computer instead of its own HD like TiVo. El Gato doesn't charge a monthly fee for the television listings. Unlike TiVo, you can burn programs (one hour at a time) to a CD and save them, or share them. If I lived in a small room and didn't have a television, I'd buy this instead of a TiVo. I'd probably buy it if I didn't already have a TiVo just for the sharing, saving, and digitizing abilities.
More...
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Tue Jan 07, 2003
"There's yellow on the secondaries"
We drive up Laurel from King to Escalona every weekday on our way to work. On Monday, we noticed the birders--we didn't know they were birders at the time, we thought they were perverts. It wasn't dark enough for them to be astronomers. Then we remembered this story in the Sentinel about the Nutting’s Flycatcher which arrived last week with the storm.
Birders put my obsession collecting Santa Cruz postcards in deep perspective.
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Mon Jan 06, 2003
Storm Damage
When we had those big storms last month, I thought that I had never seen the wind blow as hard as it did. It blew the plum tree into the deck hard enough to smash the railing; that was unique.
Today I walked up to that draw at the top of Kresge College, almost to North Remote. At the bottom, near the car bridge, I saw that a tall Madrone had recently fallen. Redwood and madrone branches were tangled everywhere, still green and soft.
More...
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New Tolkien Book Found but Don't Get Excited
An American scholar visiting Oxford found four bound volumes in a box containing a 1936 lecture manuscript at the Bodelian library and now we will at last have posthumous Tolkien material that hasn't been cobbed together by his son. Oh, but it's The Annotated Beowulf, not the Further Adventures of Aragorn and Arwyn. I don't know if they teach Beowulf in high school English classes anymore, but they taught it to me. It's about a guy who kills a monster, and then kills the mother of the monster. I didn't care for it so much. More...
[3] comments (537 views) | link
Sun Jan 05, 2003
Lesbians Making Babies
This BBC story about the two Dutch Lesbians who are the second Raelian couple who claim to have cloned a baby, got me thinking about all the Lesbian Utopian novels I've read. More...
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Sat Jan 04, 2003
Kay Gardner died; I'm still not over it.
I read about Kay Gardner's fatal heart attack Lesbian Connection last summer, but I still can't believe it. I'm just getting around to reading some of the tributes that have been posted. The Michygan dicussion board has many.
Her "Rainbow Path" is the ONLY meditation I have ever been able to do. Anything else I've tried was too Eastern and transcendental for an immanentist like me.
Many, many times in my life I thought "Just once I'd like to be able to...." and over and over again I have been able to experience those desires, effortlessly, and almost accidently. A long time ago I wished that I could someday hear "Castle in the Mist" played live, and once at Michigan I heard Kay Gardner herself play it, with an orchestra and angelic choir, shooting stars overhead, surrounded by friends.
[3] comments (741 views) | link
Fri Jan 03, 2003
Nineteenth-Century Blog
The Place on Laurel St. The Diary of Judge Edgar Spalsbury. This book has been out for a while, and I'm sure all the local historians have read it, hoping for the same thing I did, which was some cool picture of life in Santa Cruz in 1877. It's not though. It's the daily notes of a drug addict lawyer, who doesn't appear to actually work during the year of this diary, although the preface says that he had a thriving practice with many Chinese clients. He lived with this wife and her sister ; they both taught at Laurel School. I couldn't put it down. More...
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Now I know what Mrs. Weasley was always knitting!
86 words that mean very different things in English and American. via burnt toast
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They've gone about as far as they can go
I used to go to the fleamarket, and if I was lucky, I might see something sort of like one of these items. If I was unlucky, I'd be compelled to buy it to prove to my friends that it existed. Now we can all be creeped out for free.
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No, I'm not looking at porn; this is "work-related"
The latest Celebrity Interview from RouterGod is on Cisco 1900s. I learned a few things I didn't know before, as I always do. I can't wait to read Winona Ryder on Router Security.
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Ten Best Smoking Gun stories via Shift.com
The Smoking Gun--it's been around for more than five years and I just learned about it. Yet another wonderful contribution to civilization from the web. All these public files--and where could we have seen them before the web? For free?
[3] comments (548 views) | link
Bitchy British Typographer
When I was a young newspaper writer at City on a Hill, I was introduced to the art of typography by two of the best I've ever known, Marty Stevens and Mike Kay. I didn't know how talented they were until much later when I met so many who never were as brilliant. Although I never did much design myself, I have always loved to read design critique. Much like how I rather read well written movie reviews than actually watch movies.
Anyway, this is more of the same, with a British accent. via mimi smartypants.
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37,000 unwatched movies!
I've always been a "content producer" but never made much money at it. I thought copyright was on my side. I hadn't thought of copyright this way before. Copyright and patent is a method to encourage innovation , not to protect content. More...
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I laughed till my stomach hurt
Here's the story about the doxie that was swallowed by an alligator and ATE HER WAY OUT. Then I learned that my house is just like all the others with dachshunds, and I thought we were particularly afflicted.
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Resources for UPTE Staff Professional Campaign
The statewide page is at UPTE.org.
The local UC Santa Cruz page is at UPTE-UCSC.org
More...
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Yesterday's Date
Yesterday's date was "1-2-3." I remember the day 7-7-77, and vaguely 8-8-88. But I don't remember 9-9-99 at all.
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Finally got pmachine working under Jaguar
The November 2002 MacAddict had a "How to" article on running a weblog on OS X. I didn't really know what a blog was until I read it. After a few months of noodeling around with commercial and open source options, I went back to the blog package from the MacAddict article-- pmachine.
[3] comments (1886 views) | link