Thanksgiving - the Ideal Holiday

I ran the following essay in our Ward Newsletter for November:
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Thanksgiving -the Ideal Holiday


That's saying a lot, I know, but just give me a chance to explain.  Of course, you might already agree with me and wonder what all the fuss is about.  In that case, just turn the page and continue enjoying this newsletter.

As I said, Thanksgiving is the ideal holiday.  For one thing it hasn't been commercialized like Christmas or Mother's Day.  Most years go by without my getting a single Thanksgivings Day card.  And I don't think I've ever gotten a present from Saint Turkey.   Not having to worry and worry and worry about what to get my wife for Thanksgiving goes a long way to making this the ideal holiday.

Don't get me wrong.  Thanksgiving CAN be stressful, if we let it.  If we know that cousin Jimmy always causes an argument with Uncle Tim, we just arrange to have one or both of them NOT invited.  And if Aunt Millie can't stand the sight of the carved turkey, she can preside at the young folks' table.  For Thanksgiving, you can make your own rules.

Speaking of rules, who says that you have to have a big roast turkey dinner and invite everyone you know and a few you don't?  You just might want to spend the day alone reflecting on all the thing s you're thankful for - including some time alone.  Be warned, though, about eating out for Thanksgiving.  We tried that once.  The food was delicious but the restaurant took a dim view of us when we went to snack on the leftovers.

Thanksgiving is for everyone.  We can have a big Thanksgiving dinner and invite the Silversteins down the street or my co-worker Abrahim Akbar without worrying if we'll offend someone.  Thanksgiving means to give thanks whether it is to God or Allah.  Or to treasure within your heart. Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful, to be thankful, without worrying about your neighbor's beliefs or what he thinks about yours.  Thank your friends for being your friends, your family for being your family; and your dog for helping to clean up the dropped turkey bits.

QR Codes

Like me, you've probably seen designs like this in the newspaper and in various advertisements.  Now that I finally have a phone/camera with the capability of decoding these things, I looked them up in Wikipedia.  They're called QR codes and depending on the size and complexity of the pattern they can represent from 10 numbers to 5,000 alphanumeric characters.  They have error correction capabilities ranging from 7% to 40%.  Think of that - almost half of the pattern could be obliterated, covered with mud, or simply missing, and you could still recreate the content.

There are a couple of apps for the iPhone (I'm using QRReader) and a dozen or so websites that allow you to create your own QR code pattern.  The one I used is QR Code Generator by Delivr located at http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator The pattern can contain website addresses, e-mailing addresses, or plain old text that may or may not be computer commands.

Scan the code here and see what you get.

The iPhone comes to our house

I know it will sound like justification but it really is true.  Carolyn's phone has been acting up on here for the past two to three years.  It was one of the first of its kind but essentially the last smart phone that Palm Pilot made.  She has not been able to connect to our computers for the past 2 years so she has not backed up her contact list and calendar for that long.  Some days the phone will keep it's charge all day long and other days it is dead by the time she gets home.  And because she and I have different make and model of phone we get frustrated trying to use each other's phone.  We had a family plan with Sprint and Sprint wasn't selling or servicing the iPhone.  And finally, we expected our monthly rate to more than double and for that we wanted  a reliable, powerful system.

So when the iPhone 4s was announced and Sprint was going to be on board, we took the last two years savings and bought us a pair.

We pre-ordered by Internet so we could get a black one for me and a white one for Carolyn.  About the same time stores were running out of stock, ours were delivered to our home.

Carolyn got a pretty blue gel case and screen protector.










 I got an Otterbox Defender which totally encases the  phone in hard plastic and rubber and has a tough belt clip as well.

Friday evening we activated the phones on line.  Saturday we visited Sams Club and the Sprint Store to get protective cases and to transfer our contact databases and calendars.  Today we tried to figure out how to place and answer calls. So far we're impressed.

A couple of changes in our service may impact the way you call or contact us:  We have unlimited data so texting is free on our end.  We have unlimited mobile to mobile calls regardless of the network.  At least with the later models of iPhone we can now easily make actual face to face video calls like we've been promised in science fiction for over 50 years.

Random questionable ideas -2

I have learned to question anything that is said with authority but without substantial reason to think the speaker knows what he's talking about.  A current Republican presidential candidate was shown on a talk show recently saying, "I don't have the facts to back me up on this but ..." and he continued with his speculation about something.  It didn't really matter because he had already chopped the legs off his own argument. Scientists generally rate pretty high on my list of people who know what they are talking about but the class I'm taking this semester may be undermining that.  On the other hand, the strange things I'm hearing may be a result of my hearing loss rather than his statements.  In any case, here are the questionable statements I heard in the latest classes:

1. Writing by hand (especially cursive) involves the fine motor skills and is therefore an emotional exercise   Keyboarding with a typewriter or computer keyboard is not emotionally engaging.
2. The brain does not learn better by making exercises "fun".  The brain learns solely through repetition.
3. Neanderthals actually had larger brains than early humans but lost out in the evolutionary struggle because they were unable to form the social groups that early humans did.
4. Human brains have shrunk in the past 500 years indicating a possible evolutionary trend.
5. The  pointedness of dogs' ears correlates with their wildness.  The more pointy, the less they are domesticated.
6. The incidence of Down syndrome children correlates with the age of the father more than with the age of the mother.

What about it?  Anyone out there feel like taking one or more of these statements and find "facts" to either back up or refute the statement?

First Class doesn't always mean most expensive

This is one of those "I'll bet everyone else in the whole world knows this and I'm just finding it out" type of blog posts.  I grew up in the era of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th class postage which were generally reserved for packages, books, magazines, and all other stuff that didn't "deserve" first class status which was always fastest and most expensive.  At least that is what I thought.

Well, recently I needed to mail a small package to Texas so before going to the Post Office I visited their web site to get an  idea of what this would cost me.  

After finding the "Get Prices" page on the USPS web site I filled out the bare basics of this package.
The next page warned me that I would have to use 1st class "package" rather than just first class if it met certain criterium.
I was then offered the rates beginning with the enticing words Express and Priority.  Note the prices are from $26 down to $17.  I'm beginning to think UPS might be better.  The small package flat rate Priority is only $4.95.  Maybe that's the way to go?
When I finally open the First Class section, it is more out of curiosity than anything else.  I can't imagine how expensive a package going first class must be. But no!  Surprise!  First Class package rate is only two bucks.  Best bargain in town.  At this price I'll be back.

Saturday mornings

Every other Saturday morning around our house has become so routine that we're in danger of taking it for granted.  Edward brings Tim and Jacob (and sometimes Camdan) over to our house to mow and edge the lawns or some seasonal job such as clean out the gutters or sweep down the spider webs.

Timothy helps with the lawns unless he's needed to vacuum the carpet. Jake helps with the lawns unless he takes care of Camdan.

 And everyone gets to enjoy Carolyn's great waffle, pancake, or French toast breakfast if they get here early enough.
 
I can't say enough about how much we appreciate our Saturday morning workers!

interesterified

Have you ever wondered about those phone numbers on consumer products like milk or margarine that say "If you have any questions about our product call 800-555-1234"?  I certainly have but until today I hadn't called.  I called today after reading the ingredients on a Marie Calendar frozen chicken pie box.  There on the fifth line down, second word over was this word I had never in my life seen:  interesterified.
What the ??? I thought.  I tried breaking it down interest-terrified, no; in-terestial-fried, no; in-te-rester-i-fied, no again.  So I called.

I don't know what I was thinking. Yes, I do.  I expected some happy Nebraska farmer to be spending a day off in the office just waiting for a call from me so that he could carefully and cheerfully explain what this mysterious word meant.  But I should have expected an automated, impersonal answer such as, "Good morning from Con Agra, the smallest name for the largest food supply company in the world.  You may select a menu item at any time by saying that item.  Are you calling about Marie Calendar Chicken Pies or Another Product?"

I carefully said "Marie Calendar Chicken Pies".

The machine said, "I'm sorry I didn't understand your answer.  You may select ...

After three unsuccessful attempts to understand me, the machine began tagging button punching to my menu:  "If you are calling about Marie Calendar Chicken Pies say 'Chicken Pies' or press 1; otherwise press 2."  It understood my button even if it didn't see which finger I was using to press it.

The next level followed with choices about caloric and other health facts, allergic reactions, menus, ingredients, and so on.  We played our little game until the machine finally gave me button choices and I was able to give her the finger again.  I chose ingredients.  The machine read the ingredients, noting that they were in decreasing order of weight in the actual product and that the actual weights were a trade secret...  But no explanation of interesterified.  I pressed the button to talk with an actual customer representative and "surprise" I was told that "all our customer representatives are assisting other customers" so I should wait or call back.  Five minutes later I was still getting the same message with no hint as to when my name might come up on their board.

I decided to Google.  Wiki Encyclopedia quickly responded with the following:

Interesterified fat is a type of oil where the fatty acids have been moved from one triglyceride molecule to another. Interesterification does not alter the fatty acids. This is generally done to modify the melting point, slow rancidificationand create an oil more suitable for deep frying or making margarine with good taste and low content of saturated fatty acids. This is unlike partial hydrogenation which produces trans fatty acids.

Aha!! They've found a way around the ban on transfat oil!    Other Google responses indicated that although the jury is still out on interestereified oil we should be cautious.  We've been deceived before.  But that's another story.

My walker gets an upgrade. My cell phone is jealous.

At the side of this paragraph is a picture of my walker, the walker we bought last spring on our way home from a Parkinson's seminar in Palm Springs.  It's been a good machine.  In fact the only serious breakage hs been the little red reflectors at the near end of the arm rest.  I'd point them out in the picture but they're not there.

I've been looking for something to replace them and finally saw something on Amazon.  To show you, I decided to try the video capabilities of blogspot.

Is that impressive or what? It's an LED with four settings Off, On, Fast Blink, Slow blink.  Now that I know this works, you may actually see some videos on this blog.

Shrek comes to Sacramento

Last night I had two "firsts".  It was the first time I had been in the Sacramento Community Center Theater, which sounds like a cozy little facility but is, in fact, a 2,422 seat facility located between the Capitol and the Convention Center.  Also this is the first time I had seen a musical derived from a cartoon.  In this case it was Shrek.

Sad to say, overall I wasn't really impressed.  The theater is designed to be "portrait" rather than "landscape" which means that even seats on the edge get a fairly straight-on view of the stage but the seats are so far away from the stage that it really doesn't matter.  Bathroom, food concessions, and souvenir shops all appear to be undersized. And getting around with a power wheelchair wasn't easy.

I have a mixed review of the play.  The actors, dancers, puppeteers all make a tremendous effort and the play sparkled with energy.  But we were so far away from the stage that I felt like I was watching the show on my iPod instead of on stage.    We weren't familiar with the songs or most of the dialogue.  So we ended  up many times wondering what the people around us were laughing about.

Prior to the show we ate dinner at Spataro, just a block away from the theater.  The service and food were excellent.  The only item less than great was the warm chocolate hazlenut cake which was small, dry, and disappointing.  at least the presentation was beautiful.  And we so seldom order dessert that it can hardly be a significant factor in this review.