How to Shovel Manure - book review

There are lots of lessons in life and Gwen Petersen has set out to teach us several in her book How to Shovel Manure and other Life Lessons for the Country Women. Naturally, she is a Country Woman and has learned many of these lessons straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. You'd like to think this is a put-on but with what little country knowledge that I've picked up from my in-laws and their friends, I believe it is all serious, useful information. In this book you'll learn about the four seasons and how each one has it's advantages and blessings as well as it's responsibilities and curses. You'll learn how to deal with out of control pigs and out of control hired hands. You can read about what has to be done to chickens between the henhouse and the kitchen table. But most of all you'll learn that the country life is hard but rewarding. Ms. Petersen has even included a half dozen recipes that are essential in a country woman's life, such as: chocolate cake, chokeberry syrup, sourdough pancakes, rose-hip syrup, and country biscuits.

After seeing just how valuable this book is, you may just wish to buy your own copy to place on your reading shelf next to the Farmer's Almanac or on the back of the toilet for more frequent reading.

"With a Little Help for My Stems..." part 2

A week ago I described the technique that Carolyn used to prop up some heavy-headed tulips for display at the church. This week our garden was again blessed with beautiful tulips. But instead of the flaming reds and yellows of last week, they were restful white and lavender blossoms.


Equally as beautiful in their own way, these flowers shared the same problem of heavy blossoms and stems that just weren't quite up to the task of holding those blossoms. This time my clever wife had another trick up her sleeve. On all but one of two of the tulip stems she slipped a stiff drinking straw!

She used green straws on some and lavender straws on others. Both seemed to work equally as well. The eye doesn't seem to distinguish and question a purple stem when it is the blossom which should be that color.

Reggie suggests Laughter on 23rd Street

Carolyn, my REGgie (Random Event Generator), surprised me again last night. We were discussing going out for dinner and not wanting the usual. The sky was dark with threatening clouds although the sun continued to peek through every once in a while. Did we really want to get caught in the rain?

The Carolyn suggested taking in the play "Laughter on 23rd floor", playing now at the Davis Musical Theater Company. "A play?", you say. "But the DMTC puts on musicals, not plays. That USED to be true but the DMTC is trying out some different ways, thinking outside the box(office).

Everyone should be warned that this isn't your usual DMTC fare in more ways than the fact that there's no band on site. The language is what you'd expect in a room full of men who haven't been taught that profanity cheapens speech. There speech is therefore about as cheap as it gets. But they're not speakers, they're writers and their show is threatened by budget cuts and changing public perceptions. So they tear into each other in frustration spouting comedy lines faster than their secretary can get down on paper.

The set time of the play is also interesting - March through December 1953, the period which includes some of Senator McCarthy's worst abuses and his eventual downfall in the public eye. Niel Simon uses the main character Max as his vehicle for saying how wrong he sees McCarthy's pogroms or "death by insinuation". Careers are trashed, friendships demolished, suicides subtly encouraged by this witch hunt, and Max, even while eating into his own paycheck to pay for his writers, finds place in his emotional world to rail against the totalitarianism that keeps raising its ugly head.

There a plots and subplots keeping the play moving all the way to the end. We thought the show was well worth the $10 tickets. It is not one of the regular shows in the season so attendance has been poor - a real shame for such an excellent performance.

Quantico - book review

Quantico by Greg Bear is one of those science fiction thrillers that is set in the near future, near enough that you're not sure whether or not it really is science fiction. Political situations described are not that different from today's world, e.g. infighting between FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security; Middle East ready to explode at any time, a woman president. Add that to our current rapid progress in DNA sequencing and synthesis and you have the makings of a thriller where the world could come to an end through bio-terrorism not through atomic bombs. We're all afraid of anthrax but could it be something much more benign, something that doesn't kill, just disables.

Bear sets up his characters and scenarios so they are believable, three dimensional. He moves the story by shifting the narrative from place to place and you hate it because you're really invested in what is going on at a certain place and don't want to leave it when he does.

It's nice to see a Sci-Fi Thriller like this that doesn't need or use profanity, blood and gore, or shock except in very limited amounts appropriate to the story. I would give this five stars.

Government e-Payments

It looks like this year I'll need to pay estimated taxes for my pension and social security income or ask Cal-PERS and Social Security to withhold an amount for estimated taxes. Paying it directly seemed to make more sense than trying to make the change through these two huge bureaucracies. TurboTax even helped me by printing out the necessary forms to send with my checks. Then I got to thinking -- since I've been able to pay almost all our bills by direct bank payments, maybe the IRS and the State Franchise Tax Board (California's IRS) will accept electronic payments. What I found surprised me.

I first tried California's Franchise Tax Board by going to http://ftb.ca.gov/online/webpay/index.asp , In about the same time as it takes me to order a book from Amazon.com, we had a Web Payment account and in two or three minutes more, I entered the data necessary to pay advance payments that I need to make over the next twelve months.

Of course I had to know my bank's routing number and my Taxpayer ID Number. I also had to dig up last year's return so I could supply a certain total from that return when told to do so. But otherwise the process was easy and complete.

The Feds, on the other hand, seemed to have taken the most careful route they could. First you go to this link http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=97400,00.html and enter some basic information about yourself and your bank numbers. You are then told to expect TWO Mailings! with further information. There is no way to sit down with the intent to send money to Uncle Sam that day. And it could take weeks before you complete the process.

Unlike ethe FTB, IRS has decided to use another government agency to process the payments. Like the FTB, the IRS has decided to complicate your life as much as it will simplify it. For example, these two mailings are indeed important but if you get only one you're out of luck. One of them gives you a PIN number while the other tells you how to use it. With the PIN number and a transaction number you are finally able to choose a password. Here's where the state and feds differ again. You prove to the state who you are by knowing your taxpayer ID number and what the number was last year. The Feds want you to construct a password is 8 to 12 characters in length, and must have UPPER case letters, lower case letters, and ^&*$%# two numbers or special characters.

I would think that security concerns would be about the same for California as the Feds but it sure didn't look like in this process. Have you ever had similar questions about the way the state government operates vs the Feds?

Not true but still fun

For about the last 5 years one of my favorite on-line sites and stores has been Despair.Inc.. They're the company that puts out corporate wall-art mimicking inspirational inspirational art such as the ones put out by All Posters. I've never had a wall that needed decorating more than it already was so I never bought a Despair poster.


When I saw this t-shirt in the Despair, Inc. online catalog and especially on sale for $9.99 I had to have it. Of course there was a time when the message was completely valid but now, thanks to all you kind visitors out there, it is no longer true. I would have to put on quite a show to collect an audience for the t-shirt larger than that of my blog.

Thank you all for checking in.

A companion for our TV

You may recall that the last time we talked about our new flat screen TV, we had the video equipment sitting on a folding table as a temporary solution to what to do with that equipment. We were also glad that the TV is actually fastened securely to the wall since sitting on that folding table just may not be the steadiest base for the TV.


Well, Carolyn and I spent our date night (Friday evening) walking through IKEA and looking for a solution that would be practical, work well with the other furniture in our bedroom, and be reasonably priced. We also went to IKEA because their cafeteria serves good food at reasonable prices. It took the whole evening but we came home with two large, heavy boxes. The employees at IKEA were all anxious to help us lift the boxes onto the carts and from the carts into our van.


As with our other experiences with items from IKEA, everything had to be put together and everything went together well. At first I wanted to do the whole job by myself because I really like putting together kits that are well designed.


But then I realized that Carolyn probably wanted to enjoy some of that fun as well. Besides, I don't move up and down as well as I used to so it was helpful to have another set of legs, arms, eyes, and fingers. It would have taken me much more than twice as much time to complete the project.


Here, Carolyn is putting the final touches on the drawers, little plastic pads to soften the noise of the drawers firmly settling into their IN position.


We're still not sure how the TIVO, VCR, and cable box are going to sit on the top of the chest of drawers but in any case they look a lot more stable than sitting on the folding table.


While at IKEA we bought some drawer organizers for CD's on the right and DVD's on the left. We don't have much of a collection of DVD's but at least now we have a place for them.

Expansion telephone numbers

I guess I've been fascinated with telephone numbers since joining Ma Bell as a janitor while I was still in high school. I discovered how machines were used to translate rotary and then push button impulses from the originating phone set to a bank of switches which eventually connected that set with the desired destination set. It fascinated me that people in Springville could call our house by dialing 489-4569 or just 9-4569. Most small towns in Utah had similar shortcuts for local calls.

There were, to my knowledge, no shortcuts for long distance calls or even calls to other exchanges. But at least you didn't have to dial the area code for calls within your own area code. In fact, you had to dial a 1 first to indicate you intended the next three digits to be an area code rather than a local exchange. That convention is still prevalent for land based phones but is obsolete for cell phones (although it's allowed for compatibility purposes.)

I was fascinated when phone numbers went from alphanumeric to wholly numeric numbers. There's still something nostalgic about the number HUnter 9-4569 or FRanklin 3-4553 or ACademy 5-3421 all numbers that would have made sense to me when I was in high school.

But I've gotten so used to our standard 10 digit telephone numbers that I was a little shocked to hear a speaker on a Podcast announce that their station had just gotten one of the new "expansion area codes". "Whoa," I immediately thought and re-listened to that segment. The announcer didn't explain the system very well but enough that I had to do some research.

It turns out that there were two proposals on the table but that may not be true if the announcer was correctly identifying their number as an expansion number. The first of two proposals would insert a 9 as the second digit of every current area code (801-489-4569 becomes 8901-489-4569). Initially this would add no additional capacity but since no area code currently has 9 for a second digit, this would allow a period of time for all the equipment to be upgraded for the new 11 digit number. After that period of time, 11 digits would be required. Then the 9 could be replaced with any digit 0 - 8 essentially increasing the available area codes by 9 times or 900%. An extension of this plan would require insertion of another digit before the 7-digit local number at the same time the 9 is inserted into the area code creating a 12 digit number (801-489-4569 might become 8901-1489-4569). Again, this digit would be ignored during the transition period. After the transition period, you have the option of using digits 0-9 for another increase of 10 times or 1000%.

A second proposal suggests adding 00 or 11 between the area code and the exchange (801-489-4569 might become 8010-0489-4569, for example). Since no 10-digit number has a fourth digit of 0 (or 1), this would signal to the equipment that it is dealing with an expansion number. A non-zero would be processed as an older number. After the transition period, all combinations of two digits could be used instead of the 00 giving an increase of potential numbers of 100 times.

If the Podcast announcer was correct, the first method has been approved and we can all start thinking in terms of a 12 digit phone number with 3 groups of 4 digits. Now you can't say you weren't warned.

With a little help for my stems...

Carolyn's flowers are so brilliantly beautiful this year, especially the tulips. They're the kind that have been bred so the blossoms burst out rather than staying in a nice cup-like shape. They're also striped and almost florescent in color. They looked so beautiful that Carolyn volunteered to provide arrangements for the women's group pulpit in church this morning.

Now wanting to be perfectly prepared she cut the flowers yesterday afternoon and even purchased some marbles so that they'd work better with the vases we have. The arrangements looked absolutely gorgeous last night as we turned out the lights.

So you can imagine her chagrin this morning when she walked into the kitchen to find all the tulips bent over the edge of the vases, their heavy heads just too much for their stems. Did she panic? She did not. My bride of 40 years doesn't let a little thing like droopy tulips both her.


Let's look a little closer at this beautiful flower arrangement. You'll notice a pile of what we used to call pipe cleaners next to the vase. But they're much too flimsy to hold up a flower.


Moving in even closer you can see that Carolyn has wound a pipe cleaner around each stem along with a straight ball point pen. It looks like she's been able to find mostly green pens but even the white one in the back doesn't really stand out.

Needless to say, Carolyn received rave reviews about her flowers this morning.

Spring means Daffodil Hill

.... and vice versa. At least it has come to mean that for us. I think since we were introduced to Daffodil Hill five years ago we haven't missed going up there sometime during the Spring although I think once we were too late and another year we went too early and had to come back a week or two later.

According to their brochure, Daffodil Hill usually opens as soon as 25% o f the flowers are in bloom and closes when there is less than 25% still in bloom. So although there doesn't seem to be many daffodils in the picture above, just imagine four times as many blossoms.

There, that's better. And some areas looked even more populated with daffodils.

This year we had planned on going up the second weekend that Daffodil Hill was opened. Turned out they had snow there last week so we really were there the first weekend it opened. As you can see there really are a lot of flowers in bloom but they're not all close to the bottom of the ranch. It seemed that the higher we went up the hill, the more dense the flowers.


Carolyn is still trying to organize places to go and things to do for our church's women's group and anyone else who wants to tag along. Because it is so "laid back" she doesn't mind if only two people show up or twenty.

This picture includes all but 3 men taking the picture and one looking on but too far away to join. As you can see, the group also included several young people. I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

The 3 Wedding Rings

We had only been married three years when Carolyn and I left the comfort of Utah and our family there to come to California where, we had heard, Mormons were being persecuted almost as bad as they had been in Nauvoo. The reason for the persecution this time was ostensibly the church's position regarding blacks and the priesthood. We had even been told we should take our Utah license plates off our car to prevent vandalism.

Not only did we not encounter persecution, we encountered warm and friendly folks and strong and growing Mormon congregations. At work I was not only able to pick up where I had left the previous summer, but soon had an offer for a position as hospital controller. It completely shocked me but that's another story.

The winter following my promotion to Controller and Vice President, Finance, the executive staff traveled up the mountains to a small conference center close to Twin Peaks and Lake Arrowhead for the purpose of an administrative retreat. The center was named Monte Corona and was interestingly designed with all the guest rooms forming a large circle with the dining room, kitchen, large meeting rooms and other common areas in the center of the circle. That made it very convenient to visit other guests as well as find your way to breakfast in the morning. The food was served cafeteria style.

It was our practice at the hospital to invite the spouses along on retreats so they could join us for the meals and social activities. And while we were in meetings, they could find places to go, visit with each other, or sit in their rooms and read. I think Carolyn did all three and, in addition, stuffed a toy giraffe - probably for Jessica.

The second or third day into the retreat Carolyn realized that her wedding/engagement ring combination was missing. She turned our room upside down trying to find it, grilled the maid, and talked to the front desk. She and I even retraced where she had walked around the conference center grounds thinking it might have been in her coat pocket and been ejected when she pulled out her gloves. But there was snow on the ground and more snow falling. It would be spring before we could find it on the ground.

After we had looked everywhere we could, we decided there was a chance it had slipped off her finger while she was stuffing the giraffe. After we returned from the retreat we hustled the giraffe into the X-Ray department and had them do a full body x-ray on the giraffe. By now we were convinced it really was there but didn't want to pull all the stuffing out if the ring were in the head, for instance. Once we localized the ring's location, we could minimize the mess in taking him apart.

Much to our disappointment, however, the x-ray came back negative, totally negative. Carolyn was indeed ringless.

Since Carolyn had expressed concern that her engagement ring stuck up so high that it caught on too many things. So I looked around and found a small, low profile ring that has teeny, tiny diamonds around it. I sprang it on Carolyn completely by surprise while we were at a drive-in theater watching Charlotte's Web. We've always loved that story and the music from that movie. This just made it all the more meaningful to us.

Several months later we were window shopping at the Cerritos Mall and happened to look at the diamond ring display at Sears. We just hadn't seen any ring that even resembled Carolyn's first ring and I was beginning to think I'd have to find an excuse to visit some of the jewelers in Salt Lake City where I had found the first ring. Thus, we were really surprised to see the ring pictured next. This ring is almost identical to Carolyn's first ring except that it has 6 pins holding the diamond in the setting whereas the first one only had 4 pins. That's actually one of the reasons I bought that one - it was unusual. Of course they might have discontinued the other model because of a problem with settings.


So we traded her second wedding ring for a wedding/engagement ring set that looked to most people like the original rings. (Actually she kept the second ring so she could use it as a temporary ring when the other might snag on or damage things.)

Happy Vernal (Spring) Equinox

As I mentioned in yesterday's post: "Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox which is March 20." So you don't need a calculator to determine when the Spring Equinox occurs although because a solar year isn't exactly equal to a calendar year (hence the need for leap years) the equinox does fluctuate around March 20. A friend of ours sent the following pieces which I'm going to pass on whole:

Spring equinox is today!

What is it?

The 2008 spring equinox in the northern hemisphere occurs Tuesday, March 19, at 10:49pm PDT; 05:49 UT 3/20, when the Sun enters Aries. It is one of the two days of the year that the Sun moves across the celestial equator, the imaginary line among the stars that lies directly above the Earth's equator circling from east to west. The Sun's crossing of the celestial equator occurs one other time on the autumn equinox.

http://www.souledout.org/nightsky/springequinox/springequinox.html

Why the early date?

In fact it is only after a complete leap-year cycle of four centuries that these dates will be repeated. In the present century the times of the equinoxes have ranged between the latest dates - March 21 at 19h and September 24 at 06h (in 1903) - to the earliest dates - March 20 at 08h and September 22 at 17h (in 2000).

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.3843

How is the equinox related to Easter, and to eggs, rabbits, flowers?

The Spring or Vernal Equinox marks the point when day and night are of the same length - 12 hours.
After the Winter Solstice the days lengthen and the nights shorten, and 'Equinox' means equal night and 'Vernal' comes from the Latin word for 'bloom', as in the northern hemisphere the Spring equinox marks the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring….This equinox is also known as Ostara or Eostre - and is celebrated as a festival of new growth, renewal, a re-balancing of energies and the return of longer days. …..
Ostara…was the pagan goddess of fertility and Spring, and the Christian festival of Easter derives its name from her. Easter is calculated by the moon, and occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox…

The egg symbolized Eostre's wholeness and fertility - the female hormone oestrogen is named after her - and is offered at this equinox as a symbol of fertility and new life. …..Decorated eggs, egg rolling and egg hunts originate from pagan fertility rites dedicated to Eostre - symbolising fertility and re-birth, eggs are offered to the earth to ensure a fecund future harvest.
The hare was regarded as the sacred animal of the lunar goddess, because of its fertility and activity at this time. Now rabbits have become one of the symbols of Easter - they are these days more prolific and common than the graceful hare.

http://www.new-age.co.uk/spring-equinox.htm

What about Passover?

When the early English Christians wanted others to accept Christianity, they decided to use the name Easter for this holiday so that it would match the name of the old spring celebration. …The early Christians, many of them being brought up in Jewish tradition, regarded Easter as a new feature of the Pascha (Passover). It was observed in memory of the advent of the Messiah, as foretold by the prophets. ….
…., churches in the West observe it on the first day of the full moon that occurs on or following the Spring equinox on March 21., it became a movable feast between March 21 and April 25.

http://www.theholidayspot.com/easter/history/easter_history.htm

What about Persian New Year, Nowruz?

The arrival of the spring equinox … will cue Persians to party….The equilibrium of day and night marks the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year…..On the last Tuesday night of the old year, Persians typically gather around bonfires to celebrate Chahar Shanbeh Suri, a celebratory ritual of the quest for enlightenment, health, and happiness in the year ahead. Celebrants jump over fires as they chant the Persian phrase, "Give me your beautiful red color/Take back my sickly pallor."

"This ritual is supposed to clean the body of illness, bad feelings, or unhealthy things that might be in the body—getting rid of that and picking up the warmth, the glow, of the fire," Afkhami, the Foundation for Iranian Studies director, said. On the first day of spring, Nowruz day, families gather around a table set with the Haft seen arrangement of seven items. Each item begins with the letter s in Persian and symbolizes the hoped for happiness, abundance, and health in the New Year. For example, there is an apple, the Persian word for which is seeb. The fruit symbolizes health and robustness. Garlic (seer) is said to ward off evil and illness. Sprouts of wheat (samanoo) symbolize good crops of growth and plenty, Afkhami said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0317_050317_nowruz.html

Maybe we should try jumping over a fire and substituting apples, garlic, and wheat for chocolate eggs during the coming days! (she said, surrounded by chocolate….) J

Recreational math and Easter date calculation

My 6th grade Algebra text (which also happened to be the one that 9th graders used) had a piece of recreational math at the end of every chapter as a sort of entertainment and incentive to finish the chapter. I can't remember all of them but one that I do remember was one that claimed to be a mathematical computation for the date of Easter given any year between 1800 and 4000. I was fascinated enough with the computation rules (we call that an algorithm) that I ran the numbers for every year for which I could find the date of Easter. (Have I told you I was a little crazy about math?)

I've long since lost that algebra book (darn it) but recently found an algorithm that looks very much like the one in that text book. Ready...

This algorithm uses a mathematical operation called "mod" which results in a REMAINDER in a division operation NOT the quotient. With our modern calculators we sometimes forget what a remainder is. It works like this: x mod y = the remainder of x divided by y a whole number of times. That is, 10 mod 5 = 0 and 10 mod 3 = 1. 10 divided by 5 equals 2 with a 0 remainder. And 10 divided by 3 equals 3 with a remainder of 1. With the mod operation we don't care how many times y goes into x just the remainder after it goes a whole number of times.

Now here's the algorithm I promised:

Let Y = the year for which we want to know the date of Easter. Calculate
A = Y mod 4
B = Y mod 7
C = Y mod 19
D = (19C + 24) mod 30
E = (2A + 4B + 6D +5) mod 7
If (D + E) > 9 then Easter is the (D+E-9)th of April otherwise it is the (22 + D + E)th of March.

Let's try this with 2008
A = 2008 mod 4 = 0 (4 goes into 2008 502 time with a remainder of 0)
B = 2008 mod 7 = 6 (7 goes into 2008 286 times with a remainder of 6)
C = 2008 mod 19 = 13 (19 goes into 2008 .... oh, you get the idea)
D = (19 x 13 + 24) mod 30 = 271 mod 30 = 1
E = (2 x 0 + 4 x 6 + 6 x 1 + 5) mod 7 = 35 mod 7 = 0
D + E = 1 so Easter is the 22 + 1 + 0 or the 23rd of March.

If you have Microsoft Excel on your computer you can find an Excel version of this algorithm at

http://home.surewest.net/arnoldvl/resources/easter.xls

Here are some facts about when Easter occurs.

Easter this year will be on March 23, 2008. As you may know, Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox which is March 20.

This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar. Here are a couple of facts which may interest you.

Based on the above, Easter can actually be one day earlier (March 22) but that is rare. This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives. Only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or more). None of us has ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier.

Here are the facts:

The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 , 220 years from now. The last time it was this early was 1913. So if you're 95 or older, you are the only ones who were around for that. The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 , 277 years from now. The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no one alive today has ever or will ever see it any earlier than this year, March 23, 2008.

Easter Tradition

What would you do if you opened your refrigerator one morning to find two bring, strange items on one of the shelves?

Taking a closer look, you see a pair of "insects" which have a sort of resemblance to brightly colored Easter eggs. One looks like a ladybug and the other sort of like a bumble bee. But I've never see eggs with legs before.


I didn't panic, of course, since I had been in on the activity from the beginning. While Carolyn and I were shopping at Safeway's I spotted this egg coloring kit that featured little plastic legs for the colored eggs, sort of like a Mr. Potato. The kit was much more expensive than it needed to be and there were really only enough parts for 5 eggs. But, hey, Easter only comes around once a year, right?



The dye tablets sort of fizzed as we dropped them into the cups of water with 3 Tbsp of vinegar in each. Except for the red cup which we were warned should NOT have vinegar in it. After we were done, Edward dumped it out before I got a chance to experiment on the red color.


We were impressed with the bright colors, much brighter than we get with regular food colors in vinegar water. There were several warnings about "Warning: These are real dyes and will permanently stain fabric".

With the colors, wings, and stickers for the eyes, nose, and mouth, it was almost impossible to create an eggs that wasn't cute and colorful. This was Tim's "Mariposa" egg, mariposa being Spanish for butterfly.


I can't remember what this egg was named. But suffice it to say that both boys had a great time dying 12 hard boiled and 10 raw eggs.

Handyman Arnold

I'm not nearly as handy around the house as I used to be 20 or 30 years ago. I don't have the strength and agility required. But there are still hundreds of things that I can do without even thinking that we need to hire a handyman for.

I thought about that this morning when I was on the ground reinstalling the threshold flashing on the bottom of Cherril's front screen door. For once I had brought all the right tools and she had saved all the important hardware so the job was really a snap: Remove the old screws; Drill new holes in the flashing for the old screws; Place the flashing where it barely skims the outside welcome mat; Drill pilot holes for each of the three screws; Screw in each of the old screws; Try out the replaced flashing. Everything went exactly as I would have wished so it looked like I knew what I was doing.

I'm guessing Cherril is probably in her high 60's or maybe 70 but she is very active in volunteer organizations. But she had no idea how she would fix the door and was on the verge of calling a handyman when I volunteered. When she saw the tools I brought she was impressed. I felt a little embarrassed since they really were just common garden variety tools.

I wonder if I would feel the same uneasiness about cooking or washing a particularly difficult piece of clothing. I know I don't feel comfortable working on a car's engine, transmission, etc. where my brother Woody wouldn't think twice about taking a whole car apart. I guess we're all handy in our own way.

Spring tip toes into Sacramento

When Carolyn got home yesterday after almost a week on the road, she walked out into the front yard and exclaimed, "Spring came while I was gone!" She was right. Almost like overnight, her flowers burst into colorful blooms and the "something" tree burst into bright purple blossoms as well.

Database of books read

The way I praise the Sacramento Public Library you'd think I owned it instead of just volunteering for it. But I really am impressed with the products they offer and the way they continue to look for opportunities to serve their public.

My topic today regards keeping track of books you've read or at least checked out. This is a human rights hot button because many people are not tickled with the idea that some cop or FBI agent could come to the library, flash a badge, and be able to look at the records to see who checked out the books that were critical of Bush or our American way or some Supreme Court decision. Most libraries have taken care of that concern by eliminating all long-term records of book loans. Obviously they need to track who has borrowed a book and when, but once the book is back in the library's possession, the record is deleted. Usage data such as the book was loaned on such a day for so many days may be kept for circulation decisions but the library no longer needs to know who checked out the book. And civil libertarians will agree that the FBI or police don't need to know either.

But what about the other side of the coin? Suppose I want to know which books I've checked out in the past month or year. I could keep my own database. This has the advantage that it's not easy for the police to know that it exists so it is safer from random "fishing" expeditions. Also, with my own database, I can keep additional information such as a synopsis of the story or a book review along with the book title and checkout information. But it is a real burden to keep track of all those things.

The Sacramento Public Library has an "opt in" program that will keep track of the books you check out from the time you sign up for the program until you stop it. You can at any time remove one or more entries or even clear the whole thing. Such control makes the Library database almost useless for the gendarmes since it could not be used to show that you did or didn't check out some book.

What's more is that the Library makes it very convenient to download the information into your own computer. Someone who is ultra cautious could download routinely and clear the Library's database so there would never be more that 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, whatever you feel comfortable with.

I said convenient to download. The Library will directly download your checkout file to you or email it or simply present it on the screen. And they will do it in one of three formats.

Full Detail



Brief Display
or MARC (MAchine Readable Catalog) format



You might have picked up that this was the 2nd entry of 124 and represents only the last couple of months. My strategy is to overload with data anyone who is interested in looking at my checkout list.

Slight change, big problem

Isn't it interesting how quickly we get set in our ways. For example, the Sacramento Public Library has changed the printout and picking criteria for those of us who volunteer to pull books off the shelf which people have reserved. The change is minor and actually saves us a little time every once in a while. But from some of the comments, you'd think we had been asked to pick the books while we're naked.

The process used to be like this: We'd look at our Pick List for the next book, CD, or periodical that had been requested. Using the Dewey Decimal System call numbers for non-fiction and the author's name for all other material, we'd narrow our search to where the material should be. We'd then look for the title listed, pull out a book with that title, and compare the last four digits of the book's barcode with the barcode listed on our Pick List. That last comparison is surprisingly important to the pickers. It validates that we have the "right" book, the exact, the only book with that barcode. Sometimes everything else is correct (author, title, published date, etc.) but the bar code doesn't match. Usually, in those cases we'd put the book back and look for the "right" one. If we were pretty sure the books would be the same we'd not "substitute" on our list and pull the "wrong" book.

The change made by the library was to give us our Pick List with no barcodes. Everything else is there but the barcodes. The pickers first reaction was panic - "How will we ever know we've got the RIGHT book?" The next was anger - "How could they do this to us?" And the last was passive aggression - "Well, I'll do my job but I can't be responsible for pulling the wrong books."

It WAS weird pulling a book by its title and then not checking it against the barcode. More than once I wondered if I had the right book although in almost all cases I saved time by not having to check that I had the RIGHT book. And its going to take us a while before we can feel comfortable that we have the right book or other material. There are areas where I think we're still going to have trouble such as close look-likes, unreadable titles (Russian or Persian or Chinese). Sometimes looking by barcode was the quickest way to find a CD.

I'm going to say the jury is still out. We really need to give it a couple of weeks to properly evaluate the effect.

Comment moderation

I apologize for the fact that I finally had to turn on comment moderation. A blogger by the name of Shakadal posted a comment which had two URL links to spyware that masquerades as anti-spyware called XPantivirus. The program tries to entice you to install it so that it can "clean" your computer.

It is really a shame to see such tactics but that is the world we live in now. I hope this is only a temporary solution.

Wedding Rings

In our German class this evening we read a little essay about the custom of wedding rings in modern German society. Some of the interesting things we learned were that Germans will use any sort of ring for a wedding ring, it doesn't have to be really expensive or encrusted with diamonds; that most of their wedding rings are inscribed in the inside with the first names of the married couple and the marriage date; that the wedding ring is worn on the right hand ring finger; and that they are very superstitious about losing or even taking off the rings.

It was interesting that I should come home from that class and read a piece in my daughter-in-law's blog For Bunny or For Worse about significant rings in their family. Of course, since one of those rings used to be my wedding ring, I feel I should tell a little about it's replacement.

We had just moved to Sacramento after having lived in Long Beach for over 30 years. But my wedding ring just no longer fit. It was even causing me problems keyboarding - both the computer and the piano. So I began leaving it off longer and more frequently. Naturally, Carolyn was concerned and we talked about having it resized. In fact I thought that I should have brought it along when Carolyn and I took her engagement ring in to a jewelers to have the setting tightened. But I hadn't. While Carolyn was giving all the details about address etc. and paying for the tightening, I sat near one of the display cases. I looked down and saw a ring that really appealed to me both in looks and in price. When she was done with her business, Carolyn came over and insisted that we check out the ring I had spotted. Amazingly, it fit perfectly! Quicker than you can say, "Bob's your uncle." (for you Mary Poppins fans out there) I had a new wedding ring given to me by my bride of 35 years.

Not that it mattered to me any, but the ring was not new. The jewelers had acquired it as part of an estate liquidation. The scratches it had were no more than what it would get on my finger in a couple of months. So there's sentimentality for you. The next installment, we'll tell the story of Carolyn's 3 wedding rings!

I cried, you didn't listen - book review

I Cried, You Didn't Listen by Dwight Abbott. Caution: reading this book will make you sick. Sick that such conditions can still exist in our country. Californians especially will have cause to be physically ill because this book is about how the California Youth Authority turns a troubled boy into a hardened criminal. If this book can be believed, the CYA also employs hundreds of "counselors" who don't deserve the title or the pay as they are little more than pedophilic babysitters. Instead of backfilling for the education that young men have missed out on or training the young men a trade that they can use in real life, the CYA facilities essentially train the boys in the law of the jungle where you kill or get killed, enslave or become a slave.

The author of this book didn't even do anything wrong to become a ward of the state. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His parents were involved in an accident and he was being taken care of by close relatives who didn't measure up to the state's standards. So he was taken from family and place in the hell holes they call security facilities and left to fend for himself. With that a modern day version of Lord of the Flies is enacted.

The miracle is that he survived at all and without having even more hatred and dysfunctional attitude toward "the man". Even if only 1/10th of the story is accurate, the pain, the battering, the torture, the humiliation delivered to these most vulnerable people in our society is enough to guarantee jobs for prison guards in California for years to come.

There are a couple of curious spots in the book such as when, after being imprisoned for 4 or 5 years as one of the toughest cases, he is suddenly taken to his family and released there. That makes no more sense than jailing him in the first place.

Read at your own risk.

New computer storage options

Have you noticed the latest computer "accessory" to hit the mass market? I'm talking about mass storage devices - external hard drives with humongous storage numbers like 500 gigabytes for $130 or even a terabyte for $250. These are drives that only network engineers would have thought about just a couple of years ago and now you see them at Costco, Sam's and Target. What is going on?

Well, for one thing, digital photography has really hit big. I'm not even sure where to get film developed any more. And with digital photography we take 20 pictures or more where before we would have taken 1 with film. Digital cameras are increasing in pixel range so that a 5 megapixel camera was top of the line for professional photographers 5 years ago and is now commonplace for pocket cameras. My hopelessly outdated, 2-year old 5 mega-pixel pocket digital camera takes pictures roughly in the range of 1 megabyte. I take approximately 150 pictures per month so my storage needs for pictures alone increase at the rate of 150 MB per month of 1.8 gigbytes per year. I don't know if my audio needs will increase at that rate but just converting all the CDs we had took up slightly more storage than all our photos to date.

People who Photoshop or develop scrapbooks on the computer can easily increase their photo usages by a factor of 10 because each picture will exist in several different sizes as well as be included in more than one project.

Has anyone out there had experience with this external hard drives? What has been your experience? Good or bad? Do you use the hard drive for "mirroring" your active drive or for making periodic backups? Which software have you used? And your opinion of that software would be??

Installing the new TV

As he promised to do, Steven paid us a visit this weekend. Of course Lisa came along since she knows to love to see her as much as him. It was a good weekend for them to visit as they got to be a part of Tim's baptism and share in the festivities.

Also on the agenda was a replacement for the TV in our bedroom. On a very busy Saturday, we managed to find time to haul Steven over to Costco where he used all his skill in retail sales to steer us to the set that we'd be happiest with even though it wasn't the biggest or least expensive or even most expensive. We knew it would fit in our living room and we liked the picture quality we saw. It didn't hurt that the brand was SONY and that it was on sale for $300 less than the usual retail price.

But the nicest part was that after we got it home, Steven went right to work installing it on the wall. While Carolyn and I went to see My Fair Lady at the Davis Musical Theater Company with some friends of ours, Steven figured out how to install the bracket in the sturdiest position. The bracket we purchased came with a combination studfinder and level. What service!


He then made sure the wiring was done correctly so we'd see the best picture we could, given our cable network and TIVO setup.


Finally, he and I lifted the set onto the wall bracket, making sure that it was centered on the wall between the photo rails.


We set up a small card table beneath the TV to hold the TIVO and VCR until we can find some other piece of furniture to serve that function.


It's too bad they don't have wall mountable TIVO's and VCR's that could double as picture frames. That way, the whole installation would look very unobtrusive.

Tim's baptism

This past Saturday morning was a special time for our grandson Timothy and the rest of his family. For a few short moments, Tim was the newest member of the Mormon Church as he was baptized by his father Ed in the baptismal font just behind where we were standing in the picture above. I'm holding Jake in this picture to prevent him bouncing off the walls, he was so excited.

Shortly after the baptism, Edward also confirmed Tim while I and members of the bishopric joined him in laying our hands on Tim's head for the ordinance.

Actually, although the short baptismal ceremony was under the direction of the ward bishopric, the meeting was carried out pretty much by the whole Loveridge-Miles family shown above. I played the piano for prelude, postlude, and songs, Marcia Miles gave the opening prayer and Jake gave the closing prayer. Carolyn Loveridge talked about the Holy Ghost and Tiffany gave a talk about baptism. Edward and Tim of course were the main event.


One of the most wonderful things about the event was the number of friends that came to celebrate with Tim. These were not, in general, Mormons but friends from scouts , dance and gymnastics classes, and various schools. Edward, Tiffany, and their boys have made lots of friends in the community. Thank you all for joining us at this time.

Daylight Savings Time

Just a reminder that on Sunday morning at 2:00 am you should hop out of bed and set all your clocks to 3:00 then hop back in bed comfortable in the thought that the hour you just lost will be waiting for you this fall. The following paragraphs were sent to Carolyn's office workers. I thought you might enjoy it.

Did you know……

Although standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads in 1883, it was not established in U.S. law until the Act of March 19, 1918, sometimes called the Standard Time Act. The act also established daylight saving time, a contentious idea then. Daylight saving time was repealed in 1919, but standard time in time zones remained in law. Daylight time became a local matter. It was re-established nationally early in World War II, and was continuously observed from 9 February 1942 to 30 September 1945. After the war its use varied among states and localities. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 provided standardization in the dates of beginning and end of daylight time in the U.S. but allowed for local exemptions from its observance. The act provided that daylight time begin on the last Sunday in April and end on the last Sunday in October, with the changeover to occur at 2 a.m. local time.

During the "energy crisis" years, Congress enacted earlier starting dates for daylight time. In 1974, daylight time began on 6 January and in 1975 it began on 23 February. After those two years the starting date reverted back to the last Sunday in April. In 1986, a law was passed that shifted the starting date of daylight time to the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight time was not subject to such changes, and remained the last Sunday in October. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed both the starting and ending dates. Beginning in 2007, daylight time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

For a very readable account of the history of standard and daylight time in the U.S., see Ian R. Bartky and Elizabeth Harrison: "Standard and Daylight-saving Time", Scientific American, May 1979 (Vol. 240, No. 5), pp. 46-53.

New gadget on the block

Some people will do just about anything to get their hands on another piece of hardware if only to play around with it. My latest adventure is the Nielsen Homescan scanner. Nielsen (of the well-known Nielsen Ratings for broadcast statistics) has enlisted a panel of thousands of American families to help them develop marketing patterns and trends. To monitor people's watching and listening habits, Nielson had to attach recording devices to radios and TVs and the people who were involved were pretty much only passively involved.

To measure consumer products purchasing the user (that would be me in this case) is equipped with a hand-held scanner to scan the products purchased. This information as well as where the products were purchased is uploaded through their handy little base/modem. From time to time we're also asked to participate in surveys although it looks like they will be strictly voluntary. What as I saying? The whole thing is voluntary. I can choose at any time to stop participating although they do want to their equipment back in that casee.

I was a little surprised to see that they're still relying on land based telephone connections to upload the information. I really expected them to connect through a USB port on a computer. I guess they'd lose a large segment of their target audience if they do that. Actually, there was a note to people who only have cell phones so maybe that is the group they'll be having use the USB connection.

Black screen of death

I suppose I could say I deserved it since I did what a person should never do. But I still feel sorry for myself.

Last Sunday, I came home from church, hung up my suit coat in the closet in the computer room, then glanced over at the computer. Under normal circumstances, the screen would be blank, having cycled through the screen saver to the power saver. But it wasn't blank. Far from it. It was black with white letters like the old DOS boot programs. And close to the top of the screen the words fairly yelled out, "There is no FAT on your hard drive. Data is inaccessible."

I sat down in front of the screen trying to take in what had happened. When I had left the computer it was operating fine. In fact it was in the process of ripping a tape of the Chronicles of Narnia. Had I overloaded the computer somehow?

Then it hit me. I reached down to the computer, popped out the floppy disk, and restarted the system. I was pretty sure I knew then what had happened but I still held my breath until the system came up with no glitches whatsoever.

Earlier that morning, I had found a floppy disk that appeared to be important but wasn't labeled properly. I stuck it in the computer to see what was on it. That's normally a fairly safe thing to do. But then I got distracted and forgot about doing that, forgot all about the disk. Sometime while I was away at church, Windows downloaded a system update, asked if it could restart my system, and after a 5 minute wait period when I hadn't answered, the computer restarted itself. Only problem was, this time there was a disk in the floppy drive slot and not just any old data disk/ It was a boot disk (for Windows 98). So, of course the system tried to start from that disk and found the system on the hard drive (Windows XP) highly incompatible. Crash. Or at least STOP!!

Moral of the story - never leave a floppy drive in your computer when you walk away from it. You just may get the scare of your life.

Bonus story: Since the computer had been recording the Chronicles of Narnia, I assumed the recorded file was lost when the computer restarted. I looked all over the drive for a temporary file assuming that as soon as I started the program again, it would be deleted or written over. I finally gave up, resigned to recording the whole thing again. As soon as I did, the program Polterbits said I had left the program without saving the file. Would I like to use that file or start another one? the program asked me. Turns out we have a program smart enough to keep an old file even when the program is summarily aborted. I wish Outlook were that smart. Thank you Polterbits.

Innovage MP3 players

I wasn't the only one to get an MP3 player for Christmas. Our grandson Tim also got one. They're pictured above with my Apple iPod on the left and Tim's Innovage Shift3 on the right. As you can see, both have the capability of showing pictures. Both also have the capability of playing MP3 files of music or the spoken word. Neither came with a useful user's manual and neither is exactly what I would call "intuitive". It was only by studying a 200 page, independently produced user's manual for the iPod that I have become somewhat comfortable using the iPod. And half the iPod's functionality is the PC based program iTunes which handles the inputting, cataloging, and syncing of music between the PC and the player.

On the other hand, Tim's Innovage MP3 player was virtually untouched since he got it. I don't know if it came with a users manual or whether it just wasn't helpful. There doesn't appear to be a PC resident companion program to help in getting music from CDs or the Internet into the Innovage. More out of curiosity than anything else, I borrowed Tim's player and played around with it to see if I could "break the code" and make something of it.

First of all I tried to find a company website where I might be able to download a users manual. No luck. So after a lot of trial and error I have been able to load the Innovage with pictures, music, and Storyteller tapes. Although I was originally confused about how it handles folders, it does handle them well and it makes a big difference in finding photos and songs.

One thing the Innovage has that the iPod does not is a recorder that uses a built-in microphone. According to the screen, with about half the storage filled with files, there is still room for 16 hours of dictation. The dictation sessions are named with the date and time making each one unique. They are also recorded as wav files making them playable on a PC.

The street price on the Innovage Shift 3 is about $25 or half the price of the iPod Shuffle or about 1/15th the price of the iPod Classic 160 gb pictured above. But you still would think they could include an understandable manual. If you're interested in looking at what I've put together so far it is available as a pdf file here. I would welcome comments, additions, or corrections here at this blog.

Public pay = public disclosure ???

The Sacramento Bee published a big article this morning regarding pay increases for state workers and specifically the pay increases for those already making $100,000 or more per year. It seems like it is another example of the rich getting richer while the poor make do.

As a byproduct of this article, however, the Bee put together a searchable database of all state employees and their departments and base salaries. Needless to say this has caused a bit of stress and consternation among state employees, many of which have let the Bee know what they think about this "invasion of privacy". Even those who concede that it is legal to do so think it shouldn't be done - one of those just because we can doesn't mean we should.

I don't know how long the database will be available but in case you're interested here is the link: www.sacbee.com/statepay

Encore, encore

Once again Mother Nature has performed her magical opening act for Spring time. At least it seems like magic to me when thousands of trees burst forth in pink and white blossoms ON THE SAME DAY. Mere humans have trouble deciding on when to make the change for Daylight Savings Time (which is this coming Sunday morning at 2:00 am by the way) but it seems all these trees know just when to spring forth with their new outfits. I can just imagine a tree whispering on the breeze, "Pssst, full blossom, tomorrow morning, pass it on."

The trees in our yard haven't bloomed yet although they are getting ready. Most of them have buds which are swelling, waiting for their signal. The front lawn is starting to grow again. Right now it is starting to look shaggy. The back yard hasn't woken up yet.

Another year, another dollar or so

I think this is a record for me. I completed our tax returns for the Federal and State, electronically transmitted them to the appropriate agencies, and received word back that they had been received and deemed complete. Now if I had paid what the program suggested last year, I would be wondering when our refund was coming. But I prefer to be on the paying end instead of giving Uncle Sam a free loan. So there won't be any refunds this year.

As I said, I think this is a record as I usually work on our taxes about this time then let them sit for a couple of weeks and finally send them in around the middle of March. This time I realized that there was really no reason to sit on the returns. Our financial situation is actually simpler than it's ever been, we're not waiting for any more statements or reports, and we're not going to lose that much interest paying now rather than waiting until April 15.

Besides, now we're in line for President Bush's economic incentive.

Hattie Big Sky - book review

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson is a heartwarming book. Since the death of her parents 16-year old Hattie has lived with so many relatives and "near" relatives that she calls herself "Hattie Here and There". Her current living arrange is less than ideal as her Aunt Ivy wants her to drop out of school and earn a living as a chamber maid and her Uncle Holt doesn't dare cross his wife. Then Hattie gets the chance of a lifetime when a real Uncle dies and leaves her his "almost" homestead in Montana, land of the Big Sky. In order for her to really get the homestead she must "prove up" the homestead by living on it, putting in so many rods of fencing and raising so many acres plus making the final payment of $37.75, a significant sum at that time.

The book tells, in her own words, of Hattie's trials and triumphs between January and November of 1918 on the unforgiving Montana plain 3 miles north and west of Nowhere. This year is also the final year of the First World War and the great Influenza Epidemic, two tragedies that leave their mark on Hattie as they do with virtually everyone else in the developed world. In fact, a strong sub-text in the story is the story of zealous patriots who become vigilantes in search of a hidden enemy - the American German. Like our modern "patriots" who renamed French fries "Freedom Fries", these "patriots" of 1918 renamed sauerkraut "Liberty cabbage". And that was just the harmless part of their antics. They weren't above burning down barns, pushing over fences, and harassing Americans of German ancestry or accent.

This book is cataloged in our local library as a teenager's book. It is indeed easy enough for a bright 3rd grader to read but it's an enjoyable read for an adult as well. It's also a wonderful book on tape. The book was "inspired by" the true story of the author's great grandma who indeed "proved up" a homestead as a young woman. I would highly recommend it for a young girl because of the strong role models in the story.