Disorderly Content

Believe it or not, some marketing guy (at least I hope it was a guy) was at work when he came up with the idea of The Armpit Orchestra. Wouldn't you have killed to be at that pitch meeting?

Okay, not really. Not even tragedy averted; just a major inconvenience that turned into a minor one. Let me 'splain:

I spent most of last week in Chicago, doing some customer training. We finished up early on Thursday, so I headed over to O'Hare, turned in my car, got my boarding pass and went through security and over to my gate. I had about four hours to kill, so I settled into a seat near an outlet (one of a very few), connected to the airport's not-overpriced WiFi and got caught up. And once I'd run out of work-related email and work-unrelated surfing, I pulled out my iPod and started listening to podcasts.

I kept waiting for the display at the gate to show flight information. And began to get nervous, since gate changes in Chicago are about as common as indicted politicians. So when it got to an hour and a half before the flight, I thought I'd better investigate. That's when I got my first indication that something was wrong: the departure screens didn't have my flight listed. Not delayed; not cancelled; not there at all.

An in-transit flight attendant looked up the flight and confirmed what I'd feared: it'd been cancelled, presumably due to bad weather somewhere. Why they hadn't announced it, I didn't know. But what I did know was that I was in trouble. That was the only flight to San Jose. Or it would have been, had it still existed.

Next stop was to call American's AAdvantage desk. Which found me a flight the next morning by way of Orange County. It seems with all the overbooked flights and all the cancelled flights and the stranded passengers, I was lucky to get that. And of course figuring out where to go for the next fourteen hours was my problem. The agent's only other suggestion was that I try to find an actual person to talk to, something that's damn near impossible in these days of reduced service.

But I lucked out; I walked through the terminal until I found a gate with an agent and not too long a line. She found me the last seat on a flight to San Francisco, a mere thirty miles from where my car was parked. I raced to the gate for that flight, got on ahead of the hordes (a benefit of having flown a lot of miles on American over the years, which also explained how I beat out a bunch of other stranded passengers for that seat) and settled in. We had to wait a long time to take off, but eventually got airborne. And spent the next four hours wishing I'd eaten something at O'Hare; turns out that even the overpriced and unappetizing food available on the flight had run out several rows before they got to me.

Still, could have been worse. I got to SFO only a half hour later than my original San Jose flight was supposed to arrive, hit an ATM for a large wad of cash and then took a long and very expensive taxi ride down the Peninsula to pick up my car. (Turns out they're doing construction on the highway at night, which played havoc with traffic.) I walked in the door at 11:30, a mere twenty hours after I'd gotten up that morning. And thought that it could have been a whole lot worse. Heck, for a lot of travelers that day, it was.

It must be true; I read it on the Internet!

The following is allegedly being sent around the net in email. I saw it on an online forum:

A class of primary children started a class project to make a plant pot to take home.

The teacher wanted to have a plant in it that was easy to take care of, so it was decided to use cactus plants.

The children were given green ware pottery in the style of a clown plant pot.

They painted them with glaze and had them professionally fired at a class outing so they could see the process.

It was great fun. They planted the cactus seeds in the finished planters and they grew nicely.

Unfortunately, however, they were not allowed to take them home.

The cactus plants were removed, replaced with a small ivy plant, and the children were then allowed to take them home.

The teacher said cactus "seemed like a good idea at the time"...

Take a look at the included photo and try not to laugh. Go on, I dare you.

I have a little vacation trip coming up in a couple of months. That means pictures, and lots of them. So my meagre 4GB memory card just isn't gonna cut it. After all, how am I supposed to last three weeks in Australia and New Zealand on 750 or so pictures?

That'll be enough with the snickering, thank you very much. But anyway, you see my dilemma. Which is why I've been stopping by the memory section at my local Fry's every couple of weeks, wondering when prices on 8GB Compact Flash cards will take a nosedive. I'd already seen them drop from $160 to $130, where they'd stabilized. So you can imagine my surprise to see that they had one brand on sale for just $79.99!

Of course, there's always the question of availability. So I had the salescritter check stock. And the first thing that came up was a card for $159.99, minus a $70 rebate. No thanks, thinks I. But no, that was the wrong card. Plugging in the right part number got me the $80 card, which the computer claimed was in stock. Still, you can't believe computers. (At least not their computers.) So a call to the cage confirmed that there were indeed cards available for sale.

So now my quest for memory has ended. I figure that between my 8GB card and my 4GB, I have room for over 2000 photos. That should just about do it.

One good podcast deserves another. At least I hope it does, because I've taken on a role in a dramatic podcast, something to offset the goofy character I play on the Tralk Talk segments of The ScapeCast. Turns out one of my fellow ScapeCasters is an unpublished novelist, who's decided to take a great leap into the unknown and turn his SF novel into a radio play. And who should answer his casting call but yours truly?

(Do you end a question with a question mark if the question is purely rhetorical? How about a question about a question? Or is this all too meta?)

Anyway, back to the story. It's called Sweet Sorrow, and the prologue is available for your aural delectation. It's short, and it'll give you a hint to whether it's your kind of thing or not. Or you could just throw caution to the wind and point your podcatcher at the RSS feed; that'll get every episode as we get them done. Me, I can't wait to see if I live or die. Which, come to think about it, is way too much like real life.

(What's a podcatcher? It's a program that retrieves new podcast episodes for you. iTunes is my podcatcher of choice; your mileage may vary.)

If you've been trying to make sense of the Department of Justice, both in their handling of the US Attorney purge and in general, there's an article on Law.com that goes a long way to explaining how we got to where we are. Daniel Metcalfe, a senior DOJ attorney who retired a few months ago, explains how the Bushies and the career attorneys work together, and how they don't. It's a cautionary tale for a whole bunch of reasons, not least as a lesson in what happens when you put children in charge of adults.

Ronald Reagan asked the question. Well, Fredric March asked it first, in The Bridges at Toko-Ri, but I won't quibble. Given the antics (for lack of a more venomous word) of the Bush Administration, one can only ask that same question, albeit with a difference in tone. But now we have an answer, at least as applies to the Department of Justice. Where do we find such men? We find them at Regent University, Pat Robertson's response to a legal education establishment that values competence and legal orthodoxy over... well... orthodoxy. Yes, it's true; the Bush Administration has hired 150 graduates from Pat Robertson's concept of law and justice. 'Splains a lot, don't it?

But read Bill Maher on the subject. He's both wittier and much, much angrier about this rewarding of loyalty over ability (to say nothing of morality) than I could ever be over one more proof point that if you aren't heartsick, you just aren't paying attention.

If it weren't so sad, it'd be funny. No, I lie; it's both! I refer here to a report of documents that cause Microsoft Word 2007 to toss its cookies. Which is bad, but not as bad as Microsoft's response: that crashing on a bad document is the right thing to do. Here's a Computerworld article about the original problem, here's Microsoft's reasoned (according to them) response, and here's Computerworld's nyu-uh! response to the response.

(Just one more example of why I still read Slashdot.)

Kurt Vonnegut died today at 84. So it goes.

I like to think I'm both a reasonably savvy traveler and an accepting one. I don't demand that everything be the way it is at home; I mean, what would be the point? And I don't expect people to go out of their way for me either. My best tourist experiences are generally the ones where I get to experience real life. (Preferably somebody else's real life. Again, what would be the point otherwise?)

Anyway, I was moderately interested when I read about this new Skywalk that had just opened at Grand Canyon West. I've been to the South Rim twice now, both times for very short visits. I'd like to see the other parts of the canyon, so both the difference in views and the specifics of the Skywalk sounded like a big deal. Alas, it appears that reality is both less and more than my expectations. Read about one visitor's experience at this new tourist site, and be grateful it wasn't you who traveled all that way.

I wonder how much of the problem relates to the Native American connection, and their desire to take tourist dollars while giving back as little as possible. I've been disappointed by visits to Native lands in the past, particularly by high fees to take pictures (that being a big part of my tourist experience) and an insistance that I not do anything commercial with the pictures I take. We're talking rocks and buttes here, not people or their artifacts, understand. So all in all, I'd rather go somewhere with a little more freedom to spend my hardly earned dollars.

As for the Grand Canyon, I guess I'll stick to the South Rim. And maybe try the North Rim if I can get time off during the right part of the year.

I just spent the weekend with a couple of my Scaper friends, one of whom flew all the way from Vermont to bask in the warmth of my company. Okay, the lack of rotten weather on the left coast might have been a factor, but I think I figured in there somewhere. Anyway, here we were in Concord, halfway between Silicon Valley (my side) and Sacramento (your side). And we needed to come up with something fun to do. But what?

So it was a bunch of Hank's Greatest Hits. We started one day by driving up to Napa, specifically to the V. Sattui Winery in St. Helena. I like V. Sattui for a couple of reasons, beyond the quality of their wines. One is that they're among a very few wineries that offer free tastings. And another is that they have a great deli, which made for a nice impromptu picnic lunch before said tasting.

After that we drove around Wine Country for a bit, before heading over toward the coast to give our visitor her first view of the Golden Gate. We stopped in Marin Headlands for a few photo ops, and then went over the bridge and into San Francisco. Finding ourselves on Lombard Street, I knew what our next stop had to be. (If you've not been, well, suffice it to say that it has these unusual features. My car's navigation system almost gave the surprise away. Fortunately, when asked about the zigzaggy line on the display, I explained that it was just resistance. Which led to the not unexpected "Resistance is futile" reference. Such is what you get when you're around SF fans.

Finally getting through San Francisco, we got halfway across the Bay Bridge and had to make a stop at Treasure Island for the views. And then eventually back to the hotel in hope of some sleep before a big Scaper get-together for day two.

Which left us with a dilemma for day three, our last day together. What do we do now? Fortunately, I got the idea to head across the bridge to Fairfield and the Jelly Belly factory. They have a tour, which would be better during the week when there's production going on but is still kind of fun on the weekend. Besides, you get free samples at the end. And then there's the sample bar, where you can try before you buy. I tried a Bertie Bott's bacon flavored (or would that be flavoured?) bean. Strangely enough, I didn't buy any. Although I did get some jalapeno beans, and some roasted garlic, along with a few more orthodox flavors.

After that we went over to the Western Railway Museum, where we could ride a hundred year old electric train and explore a bunch of rolling stock that was old before I was new.

And then it was time to say au revoir. Which sucks. But that's the problem with having friends all over the place, something Farscape fandom has done to me. Still, when we do get together it's worth it. And not just because I get to show off some of my favorite places.