Absolute Piffle

Sure Be Glad When It's Over

2008-10-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

Two years for an election campaign, sure does seem like a looooong time. I support Sen. Obama and I hope he can clean up the mess made by the Bush administration.

Sports!

2008-09-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here feeding edamame to my chihuahua and thinking about... pro sports! There are a couple of interesting stories that I like.

Jamie Moyer was a Seattle Mariner pitcher for many years. A couple of years ago he was traded to Philadelphia (his hometown). Now you have to know that Moyer is the oldest active player in the Major Leagues at age 45. Moyer has been the exception of seemingly getting better as he gets older. He had his first 20-game winning season after 40, and he just won his 16th game this year, clinching the division championship for the Phillies (he did the same last year as well). He got where he is by dint of hard work and a careful study of the game.

Jim Zorn was the quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, and when his playing days were over, he became the Seahawks' quarterbacks' coach, a position he held for many years. Zorn is 55 years old, and surely must have felt he'd risen as high as he was going to. But in the off-season, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder hired him away to be the Redskins offensive coordinator. And then a few weeks later, decided to make Zorn head coach of the Redskins.

The decision was widely derided. Zorn seemed to have neither the personality nor the resume to be an NFL head coach. But surprise! he's doing a marvelous job. The Redskins lost their season opener to the defending Superbowl champion Giants at their home field, but they won the 3 games after that, including beating the favored Cowboys yesterday. Meanwhile the Seahawks aren't doing so well. The owners must be kicking themselves, don'tcha think?

So a couple of old boys doing well, great to see.

Motorola: another company I'm not too keen on

2008-09-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

I have a Motorola RAZR phone and bought the software to connect it to my PC. This was a few years ago. A while ago I started up the Motorola program and it told me I could update to version 5 for free. So I said yes, it downloaded the new version and rebooted. Then I ran the new software and it said "Your phone is not supported." Gee thanks a lot Motorola. Fortunately I was able to restore version 4 and all was well again.

Certificates, not College

2008-09-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Another thing I find interesting is the idea of using certification in place of college degrees. To get a college degree, you have to pay up and attend the place for four years and then get good enough grades to graduate. But your grades often depend on how obedient you are, and not on your knowledge.

When I worked at Microsoft, I spent much of my time interviewing and hiring software developers, as the company was growing rapidly. I soon found out that a degree doesn't mean much, even from a highly ranked college. We used to put the candidates on the spot and make them solve programming problems on the white board in front of us. I learned from bitter experience to start with a really easy question, the computer equivalent of "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?". One candidate, a freshly minted PhD from a well-known university, was totally stumped. I had several easy ones to offer up, and he could not do one of them. Say, how about those Mariners?

I've noticed sometimes young people aim for Microsoft network certifications instead of college. I don't know if it's right for them, but I get the idea. The real question is whether testing for certification is possible for various disciplines, in a way that can't be gamed.

Parmesan Cheese

2008-09-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

I have never understood why people like Parmesan cheese - it smells like vomit! I mean seriously, it smells like vomit, so how can that be tasty?

The chemical basis for this is butyric acid. Wikipedia on butyric acid: "It is found in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, vomit, and body odor." See, I told you so. And no, I didn't edit the article.

Back in 1968, I had a summer job as a, ahem, Cobol programmer at Standard Oil in downtown Chicago. The Democratic National Convention was just a few blocks away up Michigan Avenue. At lunch hour, we would walk around checking the scene out. All the public indoor places reeked as if from vomit. No one ever commented on this in the news reports, but much later there was an article that said two girls went around every day dropping tissues laced with butyric acid in trash bins and ashtrays. Nowadays, of course, neither trash bins (for fear of bombs) nor ash trays (for fear of ciggies) would be allowed.

Convention Madness

2008-09-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

I think a key thing has been overlooked in all the hoopla about Vice Presidential picks, which have little impact on the election (although they may be a godsend to late night comedians). And that key thing is that neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney attended the RNC (Bush did do a video thing).

A lot of people voted for GWB in 2004. And nobody likes to be told they're wrong. Democrats have denounced the current administration, but that can be attributed to partisanship. The news media's negative coverage can be written off to liberal bias. But when the Republican convention and national candidates distance themselves from the sitting President, who are you going to blame that on?

It's the same mistake Gore made in 2000 distancing himself from Bill Clinton. A lot of people do not make decisions based on an objective facts; rather they see how other people act and react. And this distancing is very damning.

HP - not so good anymore

2008-08-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a student at Caltech in the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard was a respected maker of scientific instruments. Their instruments were first rate and of course, everyone liked their story of starting the company in a garage in Palo Alto. Later, their minicomputers were well-respected, too. The company I had in the '80s, Inner Loop Software, made software that simulated their graphical terminals.

I've bought many HP products over the years. Right now, we have two HP laptops and two HP printers. I have not been happy with the latest three of these. The laptops are both semi-broken and I've never been able to fully free them of the crapware that came installed on them - PC Decrapifier was only able to zap some of it. The latest HP printer I bought is OK but I don't like its software and I've never been able to use all the features. We had a heck of a time trying to use it with Photoshop Elements.

In short, while the current HP equipment is cheap, it's no better than it has to be. The days of HP as a quality brand are over, at least for me. I've had good luck with local PC builder Puget Custom Computers and I think I'll try Canon for my next all-in-one printer.

Kat Kinkade, R.I.P.

2008-08-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

I never met Kat Kinkade but I loved her two books about the Twin Oaks commune in Virginia. Communal living has always interested me, though I've never joined a commune. Ms. Kinkade was an excellent writer who brought alive the issues and conflicts that arose at Twin Oaks. Her first book came out in the '70s and was mostly taken from the Leaves of Twin Oaks, their newsletter. Her second book was more of a piece, her take on Twin Oaks in the '90s.

She made Twin Oaks sound like a wonderful community, but it suffered from many of the same problems as other communal entities: very low income and people slacking. Still, the commune continues to this day and that's something.

Ted McNamara, R.I.P.

2008-08-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

A comment from his nephew alerted me to the passing of Ted McNamara. I knew him back in the 1970s, when we both used to hang out at Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood. (I've written about him earlier here.) He was quite a guy, though rather down and out at the time, living on income from telemarketing jobs and sporadic royalty payments from songs like "Sooner or Later" which he co-wrote.

He had studied to be a Catholic priest, but dropped out for a life of merrymaking. He was one of those guys who makes everyone feel good, always greeted folks like a long lost cousin. He went by the moniker "Trashy Teddy" because I suppose of his eclectic taste in paramours. The day his blocked Rhodesian royalties came through was a great party. But I go on.

I played my Sho-Bud pedal steel a few times in his pickup band at Barney's, until the cops stopped it, because Irwin didn't have a cabaret license. Doug Westin let Teddy's band play the Troubadour on Ted's birthday. I still have a tape or two from those days -- somewhere. Steve Dodge was a co-leader of the band (not really co-leader but a separate band with overlapping membership). Teddy introduced me to a number of famous musicians, but I am more grateful for the good times.

With Ted's passing, all my friend's from the '70s at Barney's are gone - Ted, Steve Dodge, Gracie Mueller. There were others I remember: Lucky (anything but), Cindy Grande (so-called because of her height) who had sore hands in the evening from giving massages all day, Stewart the bartender, and the rest (as they say on Gilligan's Island).

Table Mountain Star Party, 2008

2008-08-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

We worked up our nerve and ventured out to the Table Mountain Star Party, held every summer on a mountain top near Ellensburg, WA. The idea of a star party is to go a remote and dark area where you can see the stars and the Milky Way. When I was a kid, seeing the Milky Way was commonplace, but no more because of light pollution.

We are not campers by any means, so it was a little rocky. We rented an RV for the week and drove up there. The packing up the RV took longer than I thought - it's almost like moving. The drive up the single-lane mountain road (gravel for the last two miles) had me worried, but it proved to be a piece of cake, even in the large and unwieldy RV.

There were even some music jams (see above), and thankfully I took Shelly's advice to bring my uke. Fellow KBCS DJ John Sincock was there, as it turned out, and very helpful with astronomy info.

The kids had a great time, as the kids activities were really well planned and executed. We gave each of the them a walkie-talkie and let them run around as much as they wanted. Then we just called them when they were needed. Very convenient.

The weather, which we'd been told was highly variable, was cold. It turned out that our RV heater would only run for about half an hour on battery power. The heat is generated by propane, but it needs the electric fan to work, and the power for that comes from the RV battery. When the juice runs out, the heat stops and the carbon monoxide monitor starts beeping like mad. I thought we were being gassed, but we were only out of power on the RV. With the RV battery dead, we couldn't start the generator. But we could start the truck (it has its own battery) and that recharges both batteries. All this had to be figured out in the middle of the night while freezing our patooties off.

I've read about small propane heaters with disposable cylinders for camp heating, but I worry about asphyxiation in an enclosed area.

But it was all an adventure, as they say, and it was a good family trip roughing it. They did have an espresso stand, which was a nice touch. They also had a shower trailer. The showers had hot water, but were exposed to the elements, one side for men and one for women. I took two but Shelly and the kids passed.

I had bought a Celestron 5" NexStar telescope for the occasion, but I can see now that it wasn't the best choice. Better would have been astronomical binoculars, or a larger simpler scope with a Dobsonian mount. We did see the moons of Jupiter and the Milky Way and Stacia especially was excited by that.

The food service was convenient but too meaty for us. Shelly's a vegetarian and the kids don't like most kinds of meat, not to mention picky in general. If we go again, we'll make or bring all our food.

The star party was well run -- many kudos to the hard-working volunteers.

Having a Uke lession with Bill Tapia

2008-08-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

Bill Tapia is still going strong at age 100 1/2. I had a ukulele lesson with him this July on Whidbey Island, along with my friends Susan and Niels. The man is sharp as a whip and full of energy, even though he was born during the Roosevelt administration - the Teddy Roosevelt administration. He liked my Ron Phillips resonator uke. After giving all three of us rather intense lessons, he said he'd been up all night with a sick stomach.

Bobby Climbs A Rope

2008-08-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

From the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Acts in Seattle, July 2008.

John Stewart R.I.P.

2008-01-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

This is sure turning into the dead guys blog! The musician and songwriter John Stewart passed away this week. He wrote "Daydream Believer" and other songs, and was a member of the Kingston Trio. Roseanne Cash wrote a wonderful tribute to him and his approach to songwriting and life on her website.

Picking the nominees

2008-01-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

I pretty much agree with Jon Carroll's Who Am I Kidding column: I'll be voting for whomever the Democratic nominee is. Clinton, Obama, Edwards - all fine by me.

We here in Washington State don't get much choice in these matters. There is a primary but it doesn't count (for the Democrats anyway). Candidates are chosen in caucuses of party activists. We went to one when we first moved here in the late 1980s. You have to sit there for over an hour trying to convince other people that your candidate is right. Finally they take a vote and then some of the people at the caucus have to agree to go to some sort of regional meeting and cast their vote. I volunteered for that and went to the regional thing, and it turned out our candidate didn't for some reason qualify to get any support at all. In any case, it's all too late to matter anyway, as the candidates are decided early.

It would be nice to have some choice in the matter, but oh well.

Happy 100th, Bill Tapia!

2008-01-01T00:13:00.000-08:00

Hawaiian 'ukulele master Bill Tapia turned 100 years old today - and he wasn't even the oldest guy at his birthday party! He is still performing and teaching music. If he's not the oldest active musician in the world, I'd like to know who is. I produced a Bill Tapia concert in Seattle a few years back and really enjoyed hearing all his stories from the old days.

Anita Rowland, R.I.P.

2007-12-11T16:49:00.000-08:00

I just read the very sad news that Seattle blogger Anita Rowland passed away yesterday after a long illness. She organized the local blog meetups that I attended a few times. She was a kind and intelligent person. My condolences to her husband Jack.

It's here!

2007-11-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

New Uke almost here!

2007-10-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

My new Ron Phillips resonator tenor ukulele is almost completed! I am eager to get my hands on it!

John Todd R.I.P.

2007-10-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

John Todd was a wonderful mathematics teacher at Caltech. As undergrads, myself and a couple of friends asked him if we could enroll in one of his graduate classes. He said yes. We were worried that we might not be able to keep up with the grad students. It turned out the grad students were even more worried, that we might show them up. In any case, it all worked out fine. It was a memorable class that gave us a taste of what real mathematics research was like. John Todd was unusual in that he didn't have a PhD, just a Bachelor's degree, so you had to be careful to call him Professor Todd not Dr. Todd. He was a great teacher that I remember well to this day.

Interview with Bill Tapia

2007-09-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

A fine interview with Bill Tapia, the great ukulele player. He'll turn 100 years old on New Years Day.

Albert Ellis R.I.P.

2007-07-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

I never met Albert Ellis, but he was one of those people who had a tremendous impact but are not that well-known. Everyone's heard of Freud and Jung and their followers, but their kind of psycho-therapy has fallen from favor. Instead, most therapists today practice the kind of therapy that Albert Ellis pioneered. His books and speeches were controversial and raunchy. Back in college, we boys eagerly read them for tips on getting girls out of their clothes.

The reason his therapy has become so popular, is that it works, more or less, and it doesn't take a lot of time to perform, say 10 sessions instead of years on the couch. The two psychotherapists I have known socially both follow his school of thought. If Albert Ellis had been more well-behaved the whole media hero-worship thing would have made him a household name.

Mr. Wizard, R.I.P.

2007-06-13T23:15:00.001-07:00

I seem to have found a new theme for this blog: wait for a celebrity to die that I had some knowledge of and then comment on him or her. Of course, it could be a long wait between posts!

I grew up watching Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) on Chicago TV. Perhaps he was something of an inspiration for me to go to a science school (Caltech). He'd do stuff like have a long-haired girl touch her hand to a Van Der Graaf generator and watch her hair rise up. According to the obit linked here, he also played the ukulele.

One day, many years later when I had a small software company in Los Angeles, I got a visitor who said Mr. Wizard was in a nearby office and needed some help with his computer. Well I followed him and found Mr. Wizard muttering over a Radio Shack TRS-80 and its dot-matrix printer. He was in a foul mood and stormed off - I don't think he ever asked for help, my contact had done that on his own. I couldn't get the printer to work, so I was no use. I must say I was surprised at his surly personality, so different from the TV show. Maybe that's what a Trash-80 will do to you.

The Sweet Hollywaiians

2007-04-20T14:33:00.001-07:00

National Popular Vote

2007-04-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

Now this is a clever idea! I always thought that the US was stuck with the electoral college system for Presidential elections, because small states would block an amendment which would reduce their influence. The National Popular Vote idea is this: each state assigns all their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. No constitutional amendment is required, as each state can choose how it picks electors.

Seattle Central Library reconsidered

2007-03-30T23:56:00.000-07:00

This P-I article expresses many of the same reservations I had on my one visit to the now 3 year old Seattle Central Library. It just doesn't feel like a library you'd want to read a book in. The Bellevue Regional library is much nicer, frankly, with absolutely none of the architecture hype. Bellevue has free underground parking, easy access to all parts of the building and many comfy places to read. If I want to browse the Internet, I stay home to do it.

The Bellevue library is a pleasant northwest design. The Seattle library, while parts are spectacular, is mostly cold and ugly. I liked the old Seattle Central library better - just a simple office tower.