The Torments of a Somewhat-Blind Man, Episode IV: The Escape

I am now officially moved, though I won't say completely settled. Last Friday, I returned the keys for my old apartment, and tonight I unpacked the last of my boxes. Alright, so I didn't actually unpack them. I'm actually not quite sure what happened. I had three full boxes, then I opened two and took a bunch of stuff out of them, and somehow I ended up with three full boxes still. It's like Elijah and the jar of oil, except with boxes of random junk. I gave up trying to empty them and just piled them in the closet.

As confused as I am though, this month has been much more confusing for the cats. After two weeks of watching everything in sight disappear into a pile of boxes, the actual move was the final straw. At the end of moving day, the cats were among the last few things left in the old apartment, and I think Pete had had enough. I walked into the bedroom to find him hiding behind the only thing he could find: a stack of about ten CD's — he refused to budge. Mason was no better: when I opened their cat carriers in the new apartment, the first thing he did was get out of his carrier and go straight into Pete's.

I am very pleased with my new apartment. In two weeks I have only found one thing about this apartment that is not better than the old apartment, but one of the benefits far outshines all of the others: for the first time in over a decade I can do my laundry without having to go outside. This is the life.

Psych is Officially Genius

At the end of last week's episode of Psych, a commercial came on that seemed like a pretty standard horror movie trailer. It started with a shot of the entrance to a kids' summer camp, Camp Tikihama. I thought, where do I recognize that name from? Ah yes, it's the name of the summer camp that Shawn and Gus made up in the "Bounty Hunter" episode a season and a half ago; this must be the commercial for the new episode of Psych (it was).

What is Psych? Psych is a comedy/mystery show that airs on USA Network about Shawn Spencer, who uses his finely honed skills of observation to pretend to be a psychic (with his partner Gus and his psychic detective agency called Psych) and help the Santa Barbara Police Department solve crimes. Psych's genius has never come from taking cliché and turning it on its head. On the contrary, Psych's genius has always come from taking cliché head on at full speed and looking you straight in the eye while they do it. That, and a taste for complete and utter ridiculousness. And their obscurely relevant pop-culture references. OK, I'll stop.

This week's episode, written by series star James Roday, was a spoof of the Friday the 13th movies, airing on Friday the 13th, and titled..."Tuesday the 17th". Does it bother me that the camp Shawn and Gus made up is now the setting for an episode which features in its soundtrack the camp song the fugitive made up on the fly? Not a bit — the circle of obscure references is now complete. Also undimmed this week was the characters' penchant for obsessing over irrelevant trivialities, as evidenced by the closing lines from this week's episode:

Gus: "I'm sorry I ditched you and made a piñata with Jason Cunningham."
[Long pause.]
Shawn: "Apology accepted."

Don't worry. It was funny in context. For a taste of Psych, watch some of the recent episodes on the USA Networks web site, search Psych on YouTube, or watch this video, made to advertise the premiere of season 3:

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In other news, I have been preparing for the second exam in my MCPD certification track. In working through the Microsoft study guide, it has been difficult for me not to set the book on fire. Repeatedly. It's not the major concepts that are being taught that I have a problem with, it's the examples they give of how to implement them. Here's one of the offending passages:

"When a user control is dropped onto a Web page, you always position it using some of the same techniques as you would use to position other controls using Flow Layout, such as placing the user control in an HTML table.

You'll soon find that you cannot position the user control using Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHTML) to set the absolute positioning using the Style property because the user control does not automatically add an outer tag for the contents of the control that could be assigned a Style. You can set the positioning using DHTML if you add a Panel control to the Web page and place the user control into the Panel. This allows the Panel and its contents to be positioned."

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-Based Client Development, pg. 398

Don't see the problems? Take a closer look. Certainly the ideas in this passage that are just wrong, wrong, wrong are not actually the concepts that are the main focus of the lesson, but if you're an expert writing a book, why recommend practices that are in no way even remotely "best"? What they recommend here is the equivalent of hanging up your shirt by nailing it to the bedroom door, when there is a perfectly good hook right there (or even if there isn't a hook, an acceptable second best could be hammering the nail into the door and then hanging the shirt on it). I dread the fact that someone somewhere (who will no doubt write code that I will have to see) could take the entire passage as best practice and then get a certification legitimizing his adherence to practices that are just wrong, wrong, wrong. Very wrong. And bad, very bad. So bad that I am reduced to a second grade vocabulary and filled with a desire to grab something hard and start hitting people with it. Or set the book on fire.

I'm just saying.

Addendum: Less and Less Charming as Time Goes By

In July I made this post about a leak in my apartment that caused a light fixture to fall out of the ceiling in my kitchen. A few hours ago, the glass cover for that same light fixture fell out of the ceiling once again, this time entirely and with such force that I found shards of glass in my bedroom.

End result, I just spent the entire morning cleaning up glass and cat blood.

The Torments of a Somewhat-Blind Man, Episode III: The Musical Christmas Episode About the Wookiees

If you want to understand the full history of this post, you should first make sure that you have read this earlier post. That post tells the story of how I discovered the true definition of "She credited you a little extra", straight from Webster's Dictionary of Unskilled Apartment Management: "She didn't actually credit you a little extra, I just didn't want to have to admit to having done the math wrong again."

I found out today that the new edition of Webster's DUAM contains a new alternate definition: "We know we didn't really credit you anything the first time, but as it turns out, we should have. Our bad." I got an email today from someone whose job title is "AR/Evictions" informing me that, while reviewing the ledger for my account, she had noticed a problem. Surprising as that may be — the noticing being the surprise, not the fact that there was a problem — it turns out that for the last six months (i.e., ever since the most recent time they evicted me for not being charged correctly by their accounting department), I have been overcharged $55.00 per month, hence they will be deducting $330.00 less from my bank account in the January billing. The writer of the email also informed me that she had left me a voicemail with the same information, and assured me that through "the remaining [sic] of your lease we will deducted [sic] the correct rent amount." If I remember correctly from my Greek six years ago, that particular conjugation of the verb "deduct" is the Future Almost Perfect tense.

All in all, despite this occurrence of a sixth accounting error making the occurrence of a seventh that much more likely, it's not such a bad thing to find out. However, I did discover a rather odd offer when I went to check my voicemail: "If this credit is a problem and you want us to deduct more, we can of course make an additional withdrawal on Monday. Just let us know if you want us to do this." Ridiculous as that sounds, it may not be such a bad idea; it's not entirely unlikely that six months from now after my lease has expired and I have moved out, they "will discovered" yet another mistake and try to evict me again for an "unpaid balance."

Family Secrets

Today at work someone promised to bring in fudge for all of us tomorrow. I was reminded of a similar promise made once, long ago, in a time that has now become (urban) legend. In honor of the season, I thought I would take a few minutes to share with you this heartwarming Christmas tale of yesteryear...



The tale begins around a lunch table, shortly after noon several years ago. Several of my coworkers and I were eating together, and the conversation turned to unique family recipes. It wasn't a competition, but had it been it would have instantly ended when one person shared with us the key ingredient in her family's traditional recipe for chocolate fudge. The inclusion of this particular ingredient in a recipe for chocolate fudge (or any variety of fudge, for that matter) was so, shall we say, unexpected that we quite simply did not believe her; nevertheless, she insisted it was so and, furthermore, insisted that the resulting fudge was not merely edible but good and, furthermore, promised to make a batch and bring it in so that we could try it. Time went by, and memories faded, but every now and then the lunch table conversation would return to this unusual chocolate fudge and its as-yet-unproven existence, and our coworker would renew her promise. Eventually, however, our coworker moved on to other employment, and we came to accept that the mystery would probably remain forever unsolved.

Several months later, Christmas came and brought yet another of our coworkers to the office where a friend and I were having a conversation (work related, of course). She bore news: our former coworker had at long last fulfilled her promise and sent with her a batch of the unusual fudge. My friend and I were to be the first to try it, she said — it was more of an imperative than an invitation. We journeyed with her to where the fudge awaited, in the mini-fridge in the corner conference room. Approaching the conference room, we caught a whiff of something evil; it did not bode well. Our coworker proceeded on and, powerless, we followed. Opening the mini-fridge introduced us to a truly malicious stench, the kind of reek one might expect if something had died in some undignified manner, lain somewhere and rotted for a week, and then gotten up and chosen the mini-fridge as the place to store its malodorousness while it went Christmas shopping; we were somewhat relieved to find that the stench originated from the fridge itself (which was empty except for the fudge) and not from the fudge. We retrieved the fudge and retreated to a safe distance — i.e., back to my friend's office — where we recovered from our ordeal.

To be fair to the fudge and its chef, I'd like to point out the fact that, as all cooks throughout history have discovered, sometimes things just don't come together exactly right no matter how good you are. This particular batch of fudge was an example of this unavoidable fact, being, as we found when we unwrapped it, not entirely solid (thus the reason it had to be kept in the fridge). However, procuring spoons, we proceeded with interest to taste it. Doing so, we found ourselves surprised: despite the uncommon makeup of the recipe, the fudge was actually rather good — except. Yes, in spite of its goodness, there was one final aspect of the experience that my friend and I decided it would simply take a lifetime to overcome, having not grown up with this recipe as our former coworker did. The exception was this: after having tasted the goodness of chocolate fudge and swallowed, we were left with the unmistakable tang of the secret ingredient. What, you ask, was the secret ingredient? I am tempted to make you guess, but since this is a Christmas story, I will end by telling you its name: Velveeta.

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Some of you might be interested in this video from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (co-creator, writers, and co-executive producers of Lost), in which they explain why Lost was canceled:



(I love that they went all out, as you can tell if you read their T-shirts.)

Coup

I've been watching political drama tonight, but it's not the election, it's The West Wing; not only that, but I'm about to start the last episode of the fourth season, one of my favorite episodes of the entire series.

I've taken a break from watching though to hit refresh on the CNN home page and to attempt to write down something I have been thinking about today. I'm not really worried about who wins tonight; I certainly disagree with one of the candidates on some issues that are important to me (so I voted for the other one), but I believe that God has a plan for whoever he has chosen to put in office-elect tonight. So the thought that has kept coming back to my mind today isn't who is going to win, but rather something that I heard, or read, or saw somewhere sometime that I can't quite remember exactly. I'm leaning toward it being from a movie or a TV series, and it's a story told by a guy about the time he took his kids (or his father took him?) to stand outside the White House on election night so he could talk to them about how the most powerful man in the land was on that night going to watch someone else be named to his office and do nothing to stop it. A coup was taking place at the highest levels of government, and they were perfectly safe to stand on the street where it was happening because not a single shot would be fired.

Tonight, dozens of the most powerful officers across the land will simply be replaced, and in the midst of this massive governmental upheaval the biggest problem most citizens are worried about is whether or not it will start raining before their part of the line gets inside the polling place. We have a system that works, and, despite its problems, works better than any other system in the world. That's something to appreciate and be grateful for, no matter which candidate wins.

Surveys, a History of Film, a Survey of Film History (Parts XII-XIX), and Oh Yeah, People Can't Seem to Stop Stealing My Cable.

So I went and voted yesterday. On the way in, I was given a survey to keep me entertained while I waited in line; the survey was supposed to tell me what my political leanings are. That's the opposite of what I would have expected, but if you're curious you can take the same quiz online. There was also a guy there who was running for Congress by standing one foot outside the line beyond which no campaigning is allowed (X feet from the polling location) and handing out fliers that said essentially nothing about him. It was a moot point, because as it turns out he is a Democrat and I live two blocks outside his district.

Also this week I had the joy once again of being robbed of services legally mine by right of purchase. There is something about the apartment upstairs that drives people to patch into my cable. The first of my neighbors did it twice, necessitating two visits from a cable technician to restore my service (both times he removed a splitter from my line, which was later replaced with a new one "accidentally"). The new residents also found it more convenient to put a splitter on my line than to pay for service of their own. A technician once again removed a splitter from the line four weeks ago. Most recently, I removed another splitter from the line myself earlier this week, hoping to avoid the three day wait for a technician to come out. No such luck, because as it turns out, this was no ordinary piracy. This time, the thieves upstairs moved out (it's interesting to note that with less than four weeks remaining in the apartment, they still felt the need to resume stealing my cable) and, having decided they were done stealing from me, somehow managed to have a cable technician come out and disconnect my service altogether. That, at least, is what the technician found when he came out three days later to check out the problem. So the irony is that at the exact moment I noticed my service go out, there was a technician 100 feet away actively disconnecting it.

Finally, over the past couple of months I have managed to make further progress in my survey of film history (via my Blockbuster queue), but that same progress will likely be soon undone. I say that because on the second to last day of my vacation, it rained for 12 hours. Coincidentally, that same day the owner of the B&B I was staying at, knowing I am interested in film, had brought me a book she had run across at the local library. It was a 300-and-something page coffee table book, American Cinema: One Hundred Years of Filmmaking, by Jeanine Basinger; I read the entire book. It began with an analysis of the aspect of filmed storytelling that fascinates me most, the use of the "invisible" technical aspects of filming to manipulate the audience and further the story, but pulled a bait-and-switch and became a detailed history of the development of the film industry and the Hollywood studio system. Still very interesting, but not quite as interesting as listening to someone agree with me for 12 hours. The author said many things in the first two chapters that I agree with, and I'm still wishing I could have read the book that should have followed them. In any case, thanks to that book I may now be adding as many as 16 new movies to my queue. Movies seen since the last update:

Two very similar movies in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), starring Gregory Peck, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), starring Jimmy Stewart. Taken on face value, these two movies may not seem that similar; Gentleman's Agreement is about a reporter who goes "undercover" as a Jew to write a story about anti-semitism, while Mr. Smith is the much-loved classic about a Boy Scout leader appointed to congress; however, both tell the story of a passionate individual encountering corruption and fighting to stop it. Where the two films diverge the most is in my opinion of them: Gentleman's Agreement was spectacular; Mr. Smith was barely mediocre. The reason, I think, is that Mr. Smith is a wide-eyed, golly-gee love poem to a hyper-idealized version of the founding fathers and American democracy; it's more of an over-dramatized PSA than a story. Gentleman's Agreement on the other hand takes a (comparatively) realistic and very human perspective on a very human problem; it very much deserved its three Oscar wins (including Best Picture) and its five additional nominations.

I also surprised myself by very much liking Casablanca (1942); I honestly didn't expect to.

The Philadelphia Story (1940), starring Kathryn Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart. Entertaining and well-made; recommended.

Also viewed: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Brief Encounter (1945), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941). These movies were all good, but not particularly outstanding.

A Survey of Film History, Parts V-XI; Also, Enthusiasm for Points and Points for Enthusiasm

The ghosts of cinema past haven't finished making their point yet:

Stage Door (1937) - has charm, a good performance by Kathryn Hepburn and the unexpected (by me) bonus of Lucille Ball in a supporting role.

The Thief of Baghdad (1924) - the earliest film on my list, and the second of only two silent films. It made number 9 on AFI's list of the Top 10 Fantasy movies. Overall, a good movie, and the special effects are impressive for the time. However, it lacks the skill of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - a thriller starring Humphrey Bogart. It made #31 on AFI's top 100 films of all time, and #6 on their Top 10 Mysteries. It didn't turn out to be exactly what I was expecting, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie.

Woman of the Year (1942), Holiday (1938) - two more Kathryn Hepburn movies; it's not a coincidence, she's the one actor I looked up by name when building this list. Woman of the Year was fairly good (with an extremely funny kitchen scene) but the ending lacked; of the two, I enjoyed Holiday much more. There are two categories of stage-to-screen adaptations: those directed like stage plays, and those directed like movies; Holiday falls into the former category, but doesn't really suffer for it.

It Happened One Night (1934) - starring Clark Gable, it made AFI's Top 10 Romantic Comedies (#3), Top 100 romances (#38) and Top 100 Movies (#46), and was also the first movie to win all of the five major Oscars: Best Movie, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. I divide romances into three categories, in descending order: Films, Chick Flicks and Girl Movies. To list examples would be to admit that I have seen movies that fall into the Girl Movie category; I'll simply say that It Happened One Night is a Film. Recommended. Clark Gable also starred in the next movie on my list:

Gone With the Wind (1939) - although nearly four hours long, I found this movie surprisingly short. The historical aspects were interesting, some of the plot points less so. Of the ending, I will simply say: weak, very weak. On a scale from "Girl Movie" to "Recommended", this movie gets a "Worth Watching Once".

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I surprised myself this week by getting very interested in the Olympics. The first hour of the opening ceremony was supreme artistry (watch the entire hour here), and on a couple of occasions I found myself involuntarily talking to the TV: first, during Alexander Artemev's pommel horse routine in the men's Gymnastics prelims (view the same routine from a different night here, at about 4:17) when he kept the US team in the running for a team medal — not once, but twice — and second, during the last few seconds of Michael Phelps' seventh gold medal race — the one he won by 0.01 seconds (view coverage here; watch the whole first four minutes of the video, including his mother's reaction). Sadly, NBC's obsession with Michael Phelps was also one of the low points of their Olympic coverage, as they insisted on asking every US gold medal swimmer how they felt about Phelps' performance, and even characterized the relay team's gold medal performace as being "for Michael" — to their faces.

Not quite so Olympian were the feats of advertising that went on in between the interesting stuff, the most outstanding example of which was a commercial for a certain electric company. The commercial featured a spokesperson who "loves to read" — an admirable trait to be sure, but she listed her three favorite genres as follows: "fiction, non-fiction, and autobiographies about people."

That reminds me: I'd like to point out that my favorite things to eat are food, beverages, and pineapples that are fruit. And if I can contrive to eat them while reading an autobiography about a pineapple, all the better.

Convenience

As I was getting ready for work this morning, I heard my cats making the noises they only make when there is something to chase. Upon investigating, I discovered that what they were so interested in was the two inch long cockroach that had crawled in under the front door. Taking advantage of the distraction I provided, it ran and hid — under the heel of a shoe.

Problem solved.

"You know, that's actually a misconception," replied the voice of experience, "the third time is actually not the charm."

Yeah, it happened again. Apparently the word "fix" acquires a more liberal definition within a thirty foot radius of my apartment.

On the other hand, the fact that there is water all over my kitchen and office means that those caked-on footprints have had plenty of time to soak.





There are hard water stains on the light bulbs in my ceiling fan.

Even if the third time is the charm, I'd rather not find out.

Take a moment to look at the Before & After image above. Now, imagine a light fixture exactly like the "Before", except filled with tea-colored water and soggy chunks of drywall, and swinging on a three foot long wire below the "After", distributing the aforementioned water and chunks in wide arcs all across my kitchen. The sound of that event beginning is what woke me up this morning five minutes before my alarm went off.

In order to explain, I will have to back up. At about 1:45 this morning, I was roused from my bed by an all too familiar sound: rain. Coming out of the ceiling fan above my desk. Yes, again. I rescued my chair and my computer (again), distributed buckets and towels (again) and proceeded to call the emergency maintenance line (again). There was no one upstairs, so I couldn't turn off whatever was leaking until the maintenance guy showed up. The recording said I would be called in an hour, so I waited, and while waiting, fell asleep. I woke several times, but no call.

Eventually, one of the light fixtures in the kitchen gave up the ghost and fell out of the ceiling. I went out into the kitchen/office/living room and found that not only was there dirty water and fragments of drywall everywhere in the kitchen, but every single drywall seam in the ceiling was highlighted by a water stain, and water was dripping from two additional places in the ceiling as well as forming a six inch diameter bubble behind the paint on the wall. (I also found out later that water was leaking out of the bottom of the wall in my closet, and that my closet door is now unwilling to open when closed and equally unwilling to close again once opened.)

I called the maintenance line (again). Finally, after six hours the maintenance guy showed up only to reveal that the line to the ice machine in the refrigerator upstairs had broken (again). Yes, the same one they "fixed" before. I was delighted to see a six foot diameter puddle patiently waiting to proceed downstairs into my apartment. Maintenance guy leaves, maintenance guy returns half an hour later with a shop vac and cleans up the puddle, maintenance guy cuts down the light fixture in the kitchen, maintenance guy leaves. His parting words? "Some one will come on Monday to paint."

If anybody needs me, I'll be spending tomorrow in my apartment cleaning up the boot-shaped patches of drywall that are everywhere in my apartment.

The Torments of a Somewhat-Blind Man, Episode II: The Landlord Strikes Back; Or, Adventures in Property Management

I got evicted this weekend. It's OK though, because I went and knocked over all their bikes and said, "You better take it back!" and they did.

Alright, so that's not exactly how it happened. Read on.

I got home from work at about 6:20 on Friday and found a letter in my mailbox from the property managment company that owns my building. The letter was written mostly in capital letters and said that because I had an upaid balance of $406.00, I was required to vacate the premises within three days. This was rather surprising, given the fact that sometime last year they required all of their residents to sign up for automatic debits, thus taking me out of the loop altogether. The note held out one ray of hope: "HOWEVER, IF YOU WISH TO DISCUSS REINSTATEMENT OF YOUR RIGHT TO CONTINUE LIVING IN THE DWELLING, PLEASE CONTACT US." Contact them I did, only to find that anyone remotely important went home at 6:00. When would they be back? "Maybe Saturday. If not, then definitely Monday."

I proceeded to leave voicemail messages for several different people demanding (alright, requesting) an explanation, and sending an email to another, making a point of noting in each message that the first I had heard of any problem was an eviction notice. I repeated the process on Saturday, only to find that the person who sent me the letter on Wednesday was no longer employed there on Saturday. As my friend and I both said, "Hmmm, that's telling."

Cut to Monday morning at 9:30. My fourth attempt to get ahold of someone led to the following conversation:

Landlord's Employee #1: "It looks like they just charged you some month-to-month fees when they shouldn't have. I'll take those off and send you a copy of the ledger showing a zero balance."
Me, very doubtful: "Zero? Are you sure?"
Landlord's Employee #1: "Yes, I'm sure."
Me: "Any idea why no one contacted me earlier about this problem? The first I heard of it was the eviction notice."
Landlord's Employee #1: "Yeah, we don't have a 'friendly' letter. The one you got is the only one we send out."

Imagine my shock to find that the all-caps (paraphrasing) "GET OUT OR WE'LL BUTCHER YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE" note wasn't the "friendly" letter. Think that's the end of it? No? I guess the "#1" gave it away. Well, five minutes later, one of the people I had left a voicemail for called me back, and we had the following conversation:

Landlord's Employee #2: "Well, since you never signed a new lease, you have to pay a $100.00 month-to-month fee."
Me, not very surprised to be having this conversation: "Actually, I did sign a new lease in February, and I have a copy. In fact, when I signed it and turned it in in February, I gave it to you."
Landlord's Employee #2: "Oh really? Well, let me look then." [Pause while she did the research she evidently didn't do before.] "Yeah, here it is. OK, then it looks like they just charged you some month-to-month fees when they shouldn't have. I'll take those off, and then you'll have a balance of $6.00."
Me, very doubtful (again): "$6.00?"
Landlord's Employee #2: "Yes, $6.00."
Me, playing along: "OK, where is the $6.00 coming from?"
Landlord's Employee #2: "Let me see. When you signed your new lease your rent went up and your utilities went up so, yeah, that's where the $103.00 is coming from."
Me, tasting bittersweet vindication: "Wait, $103.00?"
Landlord's Employee #2: "Yes, $103.00. They billed you incorrectly in May and June."
Me: "How about I drive over to your office and we can take care of this there?"

I had anticipated this outcome over the weekend, so I had two blank checks with me (sorry, you're too late, you should have mugged me sooner). Twenty minutes later, after I finished filling out a new auto-debit form, Landlord's Employee #2 and I had the following conversation:

Me: "So, how much do I need to write the check for?"
Landlord's Employee #2: "$96.00."
Me, no longer even slightly surprised: "You're sure?" (The last thing I wanted was to get evicted again in August for having a $7.00 balance.)
Landlord's Employee #2: "Yes, $96.00. She credited you a little extra."

For future reference, judging from the copy of the ledger they sent over later, "She credited you a little extra" is apparently property manager code for, "She didn't actually credit you a little extra, I just didn't want to have to admit to having done the math wrong again."

And, scene.

In case you were wondering, no, my ex-optometrist Dr. ______ still hasn't gotten me my new glasses.

The Torments of a Somewhat-Blind Man; Also, Adventures in Formatting. And Spelling. And Punctuation. And...

My glasses passed away on Wednesday. I was cleaning them, and — twang. I super-glued them with super-glue that turned out not to be such super glue after all: it fell apart. They are now held together with electrical tape, but sit at a slight angle so that it is uncomfortable to look through them for long periods of time. And they cause people to burst into sudden fits of laughter when I am seen wearing them. To make a long story short, I took a long lunch today and visited an optometrist.

My last visit to the optometrist involved a glaucoma test that required me to remain still while a javelin-like device approached and made physical contact with my cornea, but thankfully today's glaucoma test was of the much less Olympian air-puff variety. The eye exam commenced with me being handed a spatula and asked to cover my left eye and read the writing on the wall; unsure of which blurry white block I was supposed to be reading, I simply replied that I couldn't read any of it. The optometrist informed me that I was looking in the wrong place and made an adjustment, but still nothing. We repeated the process several times with growing consternation on his part until finally he said, "I'm sorry, you're supposed to be wearing your glasses for this test." We continued on through an explanation of why he considered it good business to ask personal questions of his patients and advice on budget-conscious menu selections at Maggiano's Little Italy. As we began determining my new prescription he asked, "Can you read that?" and, once again, I had to reply, "No." "No?" he asked, surprised. "No," I replied, "I'm sorry, but your head is in the way." It all worked out well in the end, and I should have my new glasses in 7-10 days.

As if all of this wasn't excitement enough, the optometrist's office also introduced me today to a document so spectacular that I cannot help but wonder at its origins. It is the optometrist's Notice of Privacy Practices, and each and every fascinating line of it so fills me with wonderment that I actually kept and read it. Oh, you doubting Thomases, must you see to believe? Very well, here it is, "de-identified" (click for a larger view):

What, you ask, are the particular spectacularities this document has to offer? I give you a brief selection:

• On the third line begins a sentence that reads in full: "THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAYBE [sic] USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION." I dare you to find all of it. I double-dare you not to laugh.
• The entire document is so completely centered that it actually serves to emphasize the only element on the page that isn't: the web address.
• I point this out separately because I had no idea it was even possible: the second set of bullet points is both centered and justified (each point at different widths), and at least two paragraphs are centered, justified and first-line-indented.
• The apparent disdain on the part of the author for the period, and a compensating affection for the comma, even at the end of paragraphs.
• Even excluding the words following the rejected periods, the apparent randomness of capitalization almost makes me want to pull out all of the capitalized letters to see if they spell out a secret message. Included (mid-sentence) are a number of instances of the words "You", "Your" and "We", at least one instance each of the words "To", "And/or" and "For", and the following phrase used as a complete sentence: "For Public health Purposes."
• Some typos that may actually introduce legal problems, for instance in the following sentence: "We respect your legal obligation to keep health information that identifies you private." Speaking from five years of experience in the medical insurance field, I am not sure that HIPAA would agree with the substitution of the word "your" for "our".
• The misspelling in one instance of "Notice of Privacy Practices" as "Notice or Privacy, Practice".
• A pretty jim-dandy use of the word "fur".

On a side note, please let me know which you prefer: one of my new designs, or this (not designed by me). Make sure you have your speakers on when you pull it up. As the site says, view it in Internet Explorer for full effect.

Textual Criticism

The textual critic seeks to determine the original text of a document or a collection of documents, which the critic believes to come as close as possible to a lost original (called the archetype), or some other version of a text as it existed—or was intended to exist—in the past.

— Wikipedia, Textual criticism

If you have been wondering why my posting has decreased from 2-3 posts per week to 2-3 posts per month over the past several months, perhaps the following may pass for something resembling an explanation.

The meaningful part of my title at work is "Programmer Analyst." People who have asked me that before often follow up with, "Oh. What's that?" The "programmer" part is easy: I build "stuff". ("Stuff" varies, and may be anything from database queries to web pages.) The "analyst" part is somewhat more complicated.

One of our major projects at work over the past few months has been a complete redesign/refurbishment of our account management website. What that basically means is that in 5-6 months we are trying to rearrange, update and in some cases completely rebuild hundreds of thousands of lines of code that are the result of seven years of continuous development by several dozen programmers. That's where the analysis comes in. In order to rearrange, update and rebuild without misplacing or breaking functionality along the way, we first have to determine what exactly the existing code does when and why, as well as what it is supposed to do (in rare cases those are two different things). Determining every last detail of what the code is intended to do gets exceedingly complex when dealing with code that has been worked on by a number of different programmers with different styles, different goals and different levels of familiarity with the languages involved. So, for instance, the process I started rebuilding a week ago started out as about 4-5,000 lines of code, became 10-15 pages of handwritten notes and a carefully drawn, labeled and color-coded whiteboard diagram and, hopefully, will in the end become 500-1,000 lines of brand new C#.

It doesn't happen without a lot of work though, and that leaves little time for much of anything that might inspire a post. On the other hand, all of the above is exactly the part of my job I enjoy most; I'm not obsessive, I'm Analytical Analytical.*


*Never heard of Wilson Social Styles? This guy I don't know apparently falls into the same category as me, and has a pretty good explanation on his blog. The usual disclaimer for these situations applies: I take no responsibility and make no promises for any other content that may be on his blog beyond the page I linked to.

Recommended Usage Level: Moderate (3-5 hours daily)

I bought a new chair today. For some of you that will come as a terrible but not unwelcome shock; the rest of you will have no idea what the big deal is. To the latter, let me explain what distinguishes you from the former: you have never at any point in your life found yourself clinging for dear life to the desk in my apartment while trying to figure out how to disentangle yourself in a dignified manner from a chair that was apparently strongly disinclined to be sat upon. To the former, let me offer you this comfort, such as it is: you weren't the only one it happened to.

For myself, I would just like to say that it wasn't entirely my fault. The three wheels broke entirely of their own accord (one completely off, two only partially), and I am so used to it by now that I completely forget to warn guests. The fact that the chair broke in June, 2005 is completely irrelevant. I tried twice in those two and a half years to replace the chair, and I blame OfficeMax, Office Depot and Target for my failure to find a suitable replacement.

Today, however, I drove past the new Office Depot by my apartment, saw that they had finally opened for business, and decided to give them one last chance. As I looked at each of the chairs I noticed that each of them had in their attached list of features a line for "Recommended Usage Level." The majority were marked "Moderate (3-5 hours daily)", and all of the chairs over $500 were marked "Intensive (6+ hours daily)". Thinking that surely the rating couldn't be based on price alone, but on some determination of ergonomic comfort, I became increasingly curious to see what sort of chair would rate below "Moderate." I understood when finally I found it, the lone example, a poor pathetic thing diplomatically rated "Casual (0-3 hours daily)". I did not actually sit in it (a usage level that apparently falls within the manufacturer's recommended range), but I will describe it for you: it was copper. Half copper vinyl, half glittery copper-colored nylon mesh, with copper-colored metal accents and supports. I tried not to stare.

Much like shopping for baby toys, it didn't take me long after that to narrow down the set of chairs to the two (both rated "Moderate") that had any hope at all of being purchased, and I knew I had a winner when I sat in the second and apparently sat for so long without realizing it that a salesperson came and offered his help. I am pleased to say that twice tonight I have sat in this chair without unconsciously searching with my foot to rotate the missing wheel to the front. I definitely should have thought of this sooner.

Confessions of the Lame Uncle

Barely more than six months, and already I have made myself a liar. I have already broken the commitment I set forth in this previous post: I bought an electronic toy that says "I love you." Can I consider it a mitigating factor that I at least bought the abomination for someone else's child, not my own? Or is that worse? Please, put away the millstones; I'll try not to let it happen again. That's what I get for not playing with the toy enough in the store.

Here comes the "Lame Uncle" part: I buy educational toys as gifts. Worse, I have an established methodology for doing so. I go to the toy section and find the educational toys; the ones that teach the most stuff (no, I'm not kidding) get a 5 second auditon. If I can turn on the toy and listen to it for more than 5 seconds without experiencing feelings of emptiness and despair or a desire to flee or wash my hands repeatedly, the toy goes on the "Toys I Might Consider Buying for a Child of Someone I Like" list. That's usually a pretty short list; in case I ever end up with two items on that list, I'm sure eenie-meenie-minie-moe will suffice. (Thus my as yet not entirely proven Forest's First Law of Inanimate Objects: "No two electronic baby toys are not abominations.")

What helps out a lot however, is that apparently education is such a big thing now that nearly every toy attempts to market itself as educational and has a list on its package of things it can teach your child. Some of my favorite examples of toys that just plain try too hard to be educational (the names of the brands and toys have been indecipherably altered to protect innocent children from receiving these toys as gifts):

• The Tadpole Laugh'n'Learn Electronic Telephone: it teaches your child letters, numbers and "Wacky Sounds". (Really, what child do you know of who needs to be taught to make or recognize wacky sounds?)


• The Tiny Tots Farmer Brown Farm Set: it teaches your child "Imagination". (I actually have nothing against molded plastic livestock as long as Bessie isn't programmed to express undying affection for me, but a plain brown cardboard box rates higher in the "Teaches Imagination" category. Cue the "When I was young, all we had were rocks with the word 'cow' written on them in chalk..." speech.)


• The B-Tech Abomination Puppy: this plush atrocity teaches your child "friendship by asking for hugs and expressing affection". And it says "I love you."

I think I now know what I'm getting my nephew this year: a rock, a piece of chalk, a cardboard box, a raspberry, and "I love you."


On a side note, here is proof, taken from a letter accompanying an application to be a Student Athletic Trainer, that two wrongs do make a right (almost):

"To be apart of the ______ High School Athletic Program is to be apart of something greater!"

Unexpected Ways

Scattered showers, turning into light drizzle later in the morning. Possibility of lightning early on. Use caution when boating.

I prayed last night that God would give me an opportunity to talk to my upstairs neighbor. I think I should have been a little more specific, or at the very least I should have watched the weather forecast. I woke up this morning to the sound of rain. Proceeding out of my bedroom to investigate, I found that it was indeed raining — streams of water were pouring out of the ceiling fan directly onto my office chair. It was also raining in the kitchen.

My first thought, like any sensible person, was, "It shouldn't be doing that." My second thought — again, like any sensible person — was, "Move the computer to high ground." With the computer safely relocated to the living room, I shut off the electricity in my apartment (I'm pretty sure there's a warning label on my ceiling fan that states, "Do not use in shower."), called the emergency maintenance line — "fire or flood" as they say — and was told it would be an hour wait. I proceeded upstairs to investigate (broken pipe), and my neighbor and I had a good hour and a half conversation.

All in all, a pretty good morning.

Fire, Ice and Rhapsody

Today was my day off. More than that, it was the middle of my four-day weekend, and I had nowhere to be, which is why I purposely did not set my alarm. And yet still I was woken up this morning a little after 8 a.m. by the loud, insistent, piercing beep...of my smoke detector. Don't worry, I'm O.K. It was just the battery dying, but is it insensitive of me to wonder why after three years of my living in this apartment, if it's going to die, can't it do so at a decent hour on a day when I hadn't gotten up my hopes of sleeping in? Because after I got out of the warmth of my thrice-blanketed bed into the cold of my forgot-to-turn-the-heat-on-last-night apartment, pulled the thing off the wall and turned on the light to figure out how to open the secret compartment on the back to remove the criminally self-centered attention-seeking battery in question...well, by that time I'm already up, so I might as well go check my email. And get the temperature above 50.

Not that cold is a bad thing. Brace yourselves: I went to a hockey game this week. Free tickets, good company, never been to one before — none of these were reasons to say no, so I said yes. Turns out I actually enjoyed it. The seats were high enough that I could see what was going on and close enough that I didn't need binoculars, and the game moved at a pace that wouldn't cause a snail named Ennui to die (very slowly, of course) of boredom. There was also air-conditioning. Any sport that comes with air conditioning has at least one thing going for it. (See? Football, no air-conditioning — definitely evil.)

This week was Thanksgiving, for those of you who didn't know, and so I spent some time thinking about the things I am thankful for. My church — never before have I met, let alone had the opportunity to be a part of, such a loving and giving group of people. My job — it's fun...what more can I say? But the one that takes the takes the marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes at the moment I didn't even think of until tonight: I thank God for giving me the ability to be moved by music. Tonight, I went to see August Rush. The movie is about a boy gifted beyond words with musical ability, trying to write the music that will help him find his parents. It plays out like a modern day fable about the power of music. It is deft in its simplicity, and absolutely gorgeous in its portrayal and use of music. August Rush is easily the best movie I have seen this year (yes, even better than The Bourne Ultimatum and Ratatouille); I highly recommend it.

Illegal Proceedings

From a Swiffer commercial:

Woman on the witness stand: "I came in and the evidence was all over the floor."

Prosecutor: "Could you please point to the defendant?"

Woman: "He's right over there."

If you don't see the objection coming a courtroom away, ask me later.


I encountered a rather perplexing situation this week. My internet was barely functional for 8 days. (By "barely" I mean that I could get to most sites very, very slowly, except for the sites I actually wanted to get to, which I could not get to at all.) It turns out that part of the problem was my upstairs neighbor, who had attached a splitter to my line and was, to be blunt, pirating my cable. Making this situation even more disappointing was the cross attached to his front door with the word "Believe" written on it.

Here comes the perplexing part: after the cable repairman left, my neighbor put the splitter back on. How do you approach someone who professes to be a Christian and ask them to stop stealing from you again? His excuse: he wanted to watch the game.

Maybe football is evil after all.

A Long Awaited Party

My moment of triumph came at last tonight. Let me explain: my DVD player has a "Position Memory" feature by which, through the means of holding down a button for a period of one or two seconds, it is able to store in its memory your current position on the DVD you are watching. You can then turn the player off and when you play the disc again later, it will resume where you left off. In fact, the player can store a position for up to five discs at a time. Where the problem comes in is that in addition to turning off the DVD player and resuming again later, you can actually remove the disc entirely from the player, and still pick up where you left off when you put it back in. Apparently I have on at least three occasions stored a position for a disc, taken it out of the player and never put it back in again, with the result that I have had three stored positions on my player with no simple way to clear them other than to find the disc they pertain to and reinsert it. As you can imagine, it has been a source of great torment for me, and has been such for a period measured in years.

Well, a few days ago I managed to clear one of the three by a process of deliberately overloading the memory. Tonight, a further triumph was accomplished: I discovered (no pun intended) the identity of one of the two remaining mystery discs. It was the theatrical edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I am crossing my fingers that the remaining mystery disc is one of the six discs of the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings. Otherwise, it is a movie that I started and never finished, and haven't watched since I moved to Dallas. Given the current size of my collection and the number of movies I have sold back over the past couple of years, I am tending toward despair.

This all leads me to a bad theological joke my friend Jonathan would probably highly appreciate: this immovable yellow dot on my position memory menu is evidence of a movie unseen.