In two weeks I'll be in China. It may sound odd, but my wife's apartment has become to feel more like home than my own apartment even though I've only spent a few weeks over there in the last year. My wife is often annoyed with how poorly I recall details of our visits to various locales together, but every time I talk to her I see her apartment in my mind with startling clarity. China no longer feels like an exotic place to visit, just a place where I don't understand the words spoken all around me, but that's ok because of my wife's patient translations.

Aiai, our daughter is sick with a cold today. It doesn't seem too serious, but she does have a cough and Nian took her to the doctors today. I never know what to say when either Aiai or Nian are sick; I'm not there so I have no way to gauge how concerned to be. Little children I think tend to get sick fairly often with mild colds, but I've never been a parent before so I don't really know.


I feel a little conflicted about John Kerry's recent statements to a group of college students that they could either work hard in school or "get stuck in Iraq." On the surface it appears to imply that if you are not smart you end up having no options and have to resort to the military. As a Marine Corps veteran I find this insulting. One of my co-workers is currently in the Army reserve and one of the smartest people I know. People misspeak from time to time, perhaps this is what Mr. Kerry did, but in the face of a firestorm of calls for him to retract this statement he has chosen instead to turn on his attackers saying they are distorting his words for political gain. Having listened to the statement in full and in context on television I would have to say his words are not being twisted and his inability to apologize for this gaffe says something about his core personality. As to the conflicted part, I'm unhappy we are in Iraq and think we should not have gone in. But it is sad to see an American politician saying disparaging things about our armed service personnel in order to ingratiate himself with a liberal college audience.

Congressman Charles Rangel often plays the same no-options card with regard to military service, but with a racial spin, implying people of color end up disproportionately serving in Iraq and dying. However no actual census of the infantry servnig in Iraq shows a disproportionate percentage of non-white service men, quite the opposite in fact.

The trouble with both Rangel and Kerry is they just can't keep away from trying to find a class conflict to get a handle on and exploit it. Maybe I shouldn't hold it against them, maybe this is just to be expected from politicians.

A couple of days ago I had an ah-ha moment. It came while reading the novel "The Kite Runner". In it there is a homosexual rape scene. This got me thinking about circumstances where homosexual behavior emerges in individuals that are not naturally prone to homosexuality -- prison populations for instance. This all lead to seeing a possible role for passivity triggering receptive homosexual behavior as a survival mechanism and in some circumstances even a smart role to assume so as to be in a better position for reproductive mating opportunities (though less so in modern Western culture).

I had a fairly productive burst of writing last night fleshing out these ideas in my Slashdot.org Journal with a 1,200 word essay entitled Submissiveness's Role in Sustaining Homosexuality as an Evolutionarily Adaptive Trait

I have already gotten a couple of positive comments from the Slashdot crowd, or at least the very small subset that follows my journal. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I got a small thrill from getting the feedback. I blog to improve my writing skill and to gauge my writings quality by whatever readership I am able to attract. My wife on the other hand blogs to chronicle her inner feelings. She had had another blog that was in a more easily found location in the Chinese blog-o-sphere, but abandoned it when it seemed to be attracting too many readers. I can't imagine wanting to walk away from an avid following, but Nian and I blog for completely different reasons, though she has allowed me to post a Google translated link to her blog on upper left of my blog here. She has never said so, but I also wonder if too many friends and family had found her blog, making it awkward to post frank ideas and honestly describe personal interactions.

Take my word for it, it's lucky I'm not competing with Nian for readership numbers as she could measure her readership in hundreds or even thousands per day if she wanted to.

BTW I highly recommend "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. It is not a novel about homosexuality, for those that might be put off by my mentioning one brief traumatic incident that unfolds. I'm over 2/3 the way through it, but discovered it missing from my gym bag today. It seems likely I will have to repurchase the book to finish it.

In response to my list of "very short stories" 6 words or less my friend A.C. took a stab at making a few himself. I think I'd have to admit that his are better.

-- Ultra Short Stories by A.C. --

Searching for soul mate, please wait...
Six words is barely enough to--
John, meet A3124, the bacteria colony.
Her mind rejected the first implant.
78% humanity required for all athletes
Ancient relics unearthed. They say "Hostess".

Nian's sunglasses came again, the fourth time SmartBargins.com has tried to fill the order. The fourth time they've gotten it wrong.

On a more serious note, I made Nian sad the other day with some careless words. It really all boiled down to ego, pride, and conceit on my part. It takes a while, but working through a problem seems to make our relationship stronger and better than before the problem came along -- this time was no different. Whether I was thoughtless or whether Nian was too insecure and sensitive doesn't really matter, what had caused the short-lived pain is between us and not for sharing. We had perhaps fallen into a rut in our nightly talks and now they are sweet and full of discovery that may have been lacking for some time. Still I am not looking forward for any other crisis to come along, especially with my visit to China coming so soon. I don't want to waste one minute of our short time together struggling to put things right for what always winds up always just being a misunderstanding.

Slashdot challenges its readers to come up with Very Short Stories, 6 words or less.

Here are my entries
----

Galactic archeologists discover ancient Earth civilization

Brain eaters starve after vanquishing Earth

Honest man found; is a transexual

Honest politician found... killed by lobbyist

Honest lawyer found... no cases won

Night came unexpectedly. Where's the Sun?

She stole hearts; damn organ trader

Flame lasted all night; didn't matter

He faced his fear. It won.

She liked him, especially with ketchup

Date he dug up came alive

He lamented finding backwards Wishing Well

He knew better, but better left

He scanned Hell; it seemed nice.

Devil in details damns bean counters.

It arched skyward, kept arching... duck!

His dying ended it... well mostly

I'm not sure what to make of Pope Benedict's recent statements warning scientists that they risked the fate of Icarus, who by ignoring the warning's of his father suffered a ruinous fall. This admonishment to scientists about the dangers of hubris at times seemed to border on the incomprehensible; a string of gibberish worthy of the best post-modern deconstructionists. Here is an excerpt:

"Contemporary life gives pride of place to an artificial intelligence ever more enslaved to experimental techniques, thereby forgetting that all science should safeguard mankind and promote his tendency to authentic goodness"

I feel safe in saying the majority of leading scientists are not Christians, do not believe in Christian dogma and see the fables Christians take as truth as myths themselves. Ironic the Pope thinks that citing one mythical tale's moral lesson will restrain the actions of an iconoclastic group like scientists, who by their actions are seeking truth in their own way. While all major religions promise truth, they are never happy with anyone looking for it outside the boundaries they, the religious elite, proscribe.

If you visited earlier today [that would be yesterday now] I have to apologize for having basically broken my whole blog. I uploaded a .wav file, working towards enabling podcasts. I figured the best place would be a subdirectory that gets made by the date. What I had forgotten was that this is where comments for the Zen Image get put. I need to make the comment retriever smarter because it latched onto the .wav file and tried to display it as a comment. A VERY-VERY-VERY-LONG comment.

I just got back from the gym [OK that would have also happened yesterday]. I haven't been totally lazy, but I'm not putting in the over the top effort I put in last week. I started reading "The Kite Runner" while I did the stair machine today. I should be able to finish it before going to China next month. My wife recommended the book highly and the reading has been pretty engaging so far, far more than "Gravity's Rainbow" which I had expected to love based on glowing praise for it from a variety of sources. But I found I was slogging through the first 200 pages or so and have put it aside for now (it is a rather longish novel).


Jane Wyatt died Friday. I know Nian won't know who this person is at all, but she played the mother on "Father Knows Best" a 50's iconic TV show that premiered in 1954 (four years before I was born). Robert Young, who also starred in the 70's medical drama "Marcus Welby M.D", played the father. I don't know if Jim Anderson, Young's character, really did know best, or whether the title was intended to be ironic -- in 50's America it could have been either. Wyatt also played Spock's mother on the original Star Trek (I hadn't realized both characters were played by the same women till today). I don't have any personal stories involving Jane Wyatt, but in 1970 I saw Robert Young eating at the restaurant my father was the chef at, "The Gay Nineties" in Rock Island, Illinois. Evidently Robert Young's daughter lived in the Quad Cities and he made it a habit to eat at The Gay Nineties on most visits. So I guess this one celebrity endorsement of sorts would indicate my dad was a well-respected chef in the Quad Cities at the time and the Gay Nineties was a fine restaurant.

Anyway several people from our family were eating in the restaurant the same day at lunch before going on to attend a wedding and reception elsewhere. I came down with a terrible cramp in my side at the table and it was feared that I might have appendicitis. My dad pointed out that Dr. Welby was eating just a couple of tables over, he jokingly suggested we get him to operate on me. For whatever reasons the thought of going and talking to Robert Young terrified me, I'm not sure if I thought he might actually be persuaded to do the operation. I had no trouble going to the hospital soon after however, where it was diagnosed I was constipated. We went to the reception (I guess the pain must have subsided) and when we got home I had one more humiliation to endure as my mom and dad proceeded to give me an enema. I guess it could have been worse, maybe Robert Young could have given me the enema.

Time for another [booming announcer's voice] Noon Time Notes [end voice]

I had meant to post more yesterday, there is the small start of a post at home that I will try to finish and post tonight. I have two other items to post, wish lists of a sort: one for my Nokia 770 the other for HDTV. I'm not sure either are worth posting. I remember back in Jr. High that I used to write up wish lists for high-tech items I would like to have (high-tech for the early 70's). Mostly fancy amateur telescopes I wanted to outfit with fancy real-time video, often drawing detailed sketches of these toys I wanted. Why I had wanted these now seems a bit mysterious to me, but I was very obsessed with astronomy in my early teens. The real time video would have been completely pointless in the 70's as the resolution and light sensitivy for an amateur device would have made the whole thing pointless. Today's internet provides what I really would have desired as a child as there is now an internet observatory that allows you to explore any section of the sky with whatever was the most recent big scope picture taken for that section. Still when I had my own telescope there seemed to be something special about the photons of light hitting my eyes as they had traveled hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of years from distant suns to impact on my retinas directly. The real time video would have destroyed this intimate connection. I would have been better off just looking at pictures in books at the library, which is something I did do most weekends, visiting those far flung realms in my mind at least.

My wife mentioned she had a nightmare the night before, something involving her brother Yi helping her to fight off some killers, but he failed to help her get them all and a few were left when she woke up.

I then had a strange dream myself last night, though not a nightmare. I dreamed I was Frasier from the TV show of the same name. Niles and Frasier's dad helped me strap a huge stack of bed mattresses to the back of a pickup truck and I was to deliver them somewhere. I traveled up a familiar route that is highway 74, the route I take on my visits home to the Quad cities. Barely out of the city a couple of the mattresses blew off the truck, as we evidently hadn't tied them down well enough. I went back to my dad (Frasier's dad) and explained how they had blown off somewhere on the highway and were no where to be found. I offered to make good on the loss to him.

I was on my way out the door and I thought I'd make a quick post. Since I discovered my Nokia Maemo Recorder could save .wav files I thought I'd make a quick audio post. Making the recording was quick, but finding the file and ftp'ing were not so easy. I should have hooked up the keyboard before even trying.

There were quite a few other glitches to also work out, but in any event here is an Audio Post

I received some new comments to my blog recently, but I only knew of them because of blog alerts by email. At first I thought perhaps they were about Nian's application for a CR1 visa, this because one of the comments was entitled "this may help with your application." I went to my main page, but there were no comments in sight for the last couple of weeks. I searched backward and found the same comment attached twice to an older blog entry about taking the GRE. I then realized the site "applycorner.com," which was attached to the comment, must have Google'd for GRE in blogs and Spammed everyone they found commenting on the GRE or various other applicable college application matters.

Somebody actually had to do some work to get the Spam through. They had to find a relevant article then enter the captua code to leave the comment. Likely there is an army of oversea workers working at slave wages to do this kind of Spamming. Sadly the additional cost of paying someone to manually Spam blogs isn't enough to discourage the practice. Search engine driven Spam attacks are probably here to stay, because even though they cost more than the old Spam-everyone approach, their targeted nature makes it more likely the links will be followed as relevant to the discussion at hand and thus generate income for the Spammers.

It's have been a couple of weeks since I've received a genuine comment, It would be nice to get more, but I do get some and the last one, received on October 10th, proved doubly refreshing as it proved some people evidently do actually go back and read my older blog entries -- it was attached to the June post Now All I Need Is A Giant Baggie...

I haven't been reading many other blogs lately, so I haven't been leaving comments with other blogs. I certainly notice a tick-up in my readership and comments when I'm out prowling the blog lanes and being sociable. I have a couple of sites I discovered earlier when I started blogging; I should stop by and say hi, you'll will find their links on the left under "Friends of BNL."

Here is the point where I tie the two or three main ideas of the post into a witty exit line. Damn... today I fail. I'm also too lazy to PhotoShop (actually Gimp) a Spam Can picture to be dressed up in gaudy 70's garb or poised on the Saturday Night Fever dance floor.

I haven't been roller-skating in over a year, inside or out. I have a rather specialized set of skates called MicroStars; top of the line in 1978 when I got them. They had felt a little wobbly on my last outdoor outing so I took them apart to clean, oil, and adjust them, only to discover 3 of the 4 truck bolts were missing and only the side cushions were holding the axles in place. I stopped by Skate Ranch looking for replacement parts after a visit to relatives in my hometown last fall. The place was closed down, but the owners, Howard (my former employer) and his father were still around doing some maintenance for a planned transition -- the rink had closed it doors to the public after 45 years. I gave Howard some money for replacement trucks, which he promised to mail me when he found them, but they never came.

Chuck Sergeant got in touch with me out of the blue a couple of months ago, a fellow former Skate Ranch employee who had come across my blog by accident. A friend of his had purchased the rink and it had reopened to the public. Floyd, Howard's father had passed away -- at the ripe old age of 100.

I just emailed Chuck to touch bases yesterday, mostly to get a line on the replacement truck bolts. Chuck gave me the business number for the new owners. The place has evidently turned over ownership a couple of times in the last year and now only does a few private skate parties during the week. On weekends the old Skate Ranch is now serving alcohol and catering to a large Country line-dancing crowd.

I imagine most of the old light-show and center dance-floor are still in place. At least I should be able to show Nian an echo of my halcyon days of floor-guarding and DJing at a Disco Roller-Rink when she gets here next year -- if things don't change even more in the interleaving time...

Today's lunchtime notes are being made at a Hardee's on Neil Street. No WiFi here, but that's not really that big of a deal as I don't really have time to websurf. I'll upload these notes later at work or at home.

My wife's laptop is finally fixed so maybe we can get back to video messaging soon. It will be nice to see her smiling face again. Of course next month I'll be in Guangzhou, but still the video is a nice stopgap until we can really be together.

I keep meaning to get back in touch with friends and relatives. Now that I have my nifty new portable internet appliance I have no excuse for not sending off a few quick how-ya-doings. Compared to the volume of my blog postings it wouldn't take much. Truth be told there just isn't much I have in common with what little family I have and the closest of them is a four hour drive away which makes it impractical to visit on anything other than major holidays.

When my dad was still alive maybe we should have spent more time staying in touch with the rest of the family on my visits. But I think his arthritic condition just drained him of the desire to do anything other than just spend a little quiet time with his only child when I was in town.

So here I sit alone in Hardee's, my wife and daughter 8,000 miles away while I type away at notes for strangers.

This would be the third time SmartBargins.com has sent the wrong sunglasses, listed on the receipt as "Oscar de la Ranta Women's Tortoise asses" -- their inventory computer's strange automated way of shortening "Oscar de la Ranta Women's Tortoise Sunglasses." SmatBargins.com has sent me another UPS return label and so today I am sending sunglasses back for a third time. We are getting closer this time as they only got the color wrong, not the entire style. Tonya their sales rep took all my information in good stride and laughed out loud when I asked if I was approaching the record for wrong order returns and pointed out how the receipt read: Women's Tortoise Asses. Pleasant as this banter was I hope this is the last time I have to navigate the automated answering system, a system that dropped my first call last night after a long time listening to elevator music.

For the record my wife couldn't stop ribbing me about the efficiency of American mail order corporations and seemed to take great glee in knowing I would have to go through the call center again to complete my gift order for her. Maybe she sees this all as appropriate karma payback for other recent purchases of mine without consulting her first.

OMG I'm touch typing on my Nokia 770! My bluetooth keyboard came today!

This keyboard is going to take a little getting used to especially for numbers and special characters as they are mapped to letter keys with two special function keys, but damn this thing actually seems to work pretty well! Even the detachable clip stand fits the Nokia well and really makes for convenient viewing. This is a bit of a surprise as the clip stand was designed for TRIO style PDAs not Nokia 770s. For those of you that want details the keyboard is a "Think Outside Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard" and is easily activated with the maemo.com BT Keyboard app.

The keyboard folds up into a size almost identical to my Nokia 770. I have taken to carrying the Nokia everywhere with me in my back pocket. I could squeeze the keyboard in as well, but that definitely would be a strain on the pants, though that isn't really needed today; right rear pocket: wallet, left rear pocket: Nokia 770, left shirt pocket: Stowaway keyboard. I tried keeping the Nokia in my shirt breast pocket the first couple of days, but its weight made it pull the pocket out and tend to flop around loosely. The keyboard is lighter than the 770 and while similar in size doesn't seem to cause the same loose floppy behavior.

There is a strange feeling walking around with all my new toys pocketed, I feel unencumbered while still bristling with hi-tech geek potential. In the presence of any WiFi hotspot I could whip out my devices and begin some serious online usage. With a bluetooth phone (don't worry Honey, I'm not buying a new cell phone, at least not until the next plan renewal discount) I wouldn't even need to be in a hotspot to get online. And of course one doesn't need to go online to do word-processing or a myriad of other things. I still haven't decided on a good calendar/contact app, but once I have I can finally put away my simmering PDA envy feelings -- feelings I've harbored for over a decade -- feelings that started as I watched colleagues at my former employer Wolfram Research roam the halls madly scribbling away on their Apple Newtons.

My wife knows I had been thinking about getting a PS3 when they come out. I'm pretty sure this keyboard would allow you to turn your PS3 into an awesome hi-resolution internet appliance. Though my wife might shoot me if I got a PS3 right on the heels of these purchases. For now though I am happy as I definitely have ultimate blog on the go device.

Noontime Notes


Taking time to jot down some noontime notes again. I had been having good luck with handwriting recognition on my Nokia yesterday, but today I can't get it to recognize the "j" in "jot" so we're back to using the touchscreen keyboard. In any event I've ordered a bluetooth keyboard, a nifty small fold up type that has gotten lots of good reviews. I did a lot of research first to make sure it would be compatible and found a really good online price, assuming it holds up well it should be usable with any PDAs or advanced cell phone I or Nian get in the future. Still Nian may see it has another unneeded hi-tech toy and that we have other more pressing financial concerns in our near future.

I have another trip to China next month to see Nian and Aiai. At a minimum the Nokia and the new keyboard should help me keep better notes to record my visit. At least I won't get stuck on "j" when trying to jot down "having a jolly time just jaunting around Bejing."

----

Nighttime Notes

Just got done digging up my DLink router manual and figuring out how to set the WAP encryption and password. This turned out to be a little more obscure than I expected. I was thrown off by the fact the DLink defaults to 128 bit 26 digit Hex key and my Nokia defaults to a 64 bit 5 digit ASCII key. I thought the password had to be something other than the WAP key, but finally realized they were one and the same, just that I had to set the WAP to ASCII in my router to give it a sane readable entry name.

This may come as a bit of an inconvenience for some of my neighbors as I found there are dozens if not hundreds of access logins from users other than myself to the internet through my router. If you buy a router that has wireless access remember to enable the WAP encryption whether you are using the wireless access yet yourself or not. I'm surprised the setup wizard doesn't explain that leaving the default unenabled WAP encryption will let everyone use your router as a hotspot. On the other hand this makes setting up hotspots a snap -- you're probably already doing it.

I've really been trying to loose weight the last month or so. No real progress to report. However I did receive a rather amusing backhanded complement at the gym last week. One of the people I run into often at the gym asked me what I was working on today. I explained that while I was doing mostly upper-body my real goal was cardio with lots of stair-machine for weight loss at which point he asked, "why, you're not fat for your age are you?"

I watched both "Heroes" and "Studio 60 on the Sunshine Strip" on NBC tonight. I've seen all the episodes since they premiered three or four weeks ago. They both showed a lot of promise, but now they are meandering. The both seem to be stretching out some thin plot line and hoping to make it last all season. I'll give both a little longer, but there are too many viewing options these days and I have too much going on to commit to two more hours a week if it isn't going to deliver on solid entertainment. When it comes to series I tend to be a bit compulsive, only watching all episodes as they arrive every week will do once I decide to watch (and never the repeats). I often enjoy the summer break in network programming, as I don't have to keep track of what needs to be watched. Life has been very busy this last two years with my new wife and new family obligations, fortunately the big networks have helped me out by showing far fewer programs that I would want to watch. I'm pretty certain I watch less than a 1/3 of the TV of the major networks than I use to. Thanks NBC CBS ABC and FOX for helping me cut down on my TV addiction.

OK, I finally got Saturday's intended post and fixed up the inevitable spelling errors.

----

I'm sitting in Legends, a local campus town eatery/sports-bar, having just finished a reasonably tasty hamburger basket. The joint is near empty, which surprises me somewhat. I suppose college day traffic is much higher at lunchtime and by tonight the establishment should swell with nighttime jocular activity.

There is really no point to the description of my surroundings (as is probably true for 99% of everything that gets posted in blogs) other than that today I'm jotting these thoughts down on a pad of paper rather than plodding along waiting for each letter to be recognized on my Nokia. I also don't have to concentrate on writing each letter in just the right way or avoid dotting my i's and crossing my t's after I finish a word, something that sends the Nokia's handwriting recognition up the wall.

This is a small experiment of sorts to see if my posts have a different flavor between the three input methods: Nokia, keyboard, or pencil and paper. The Nokia may force a type of brevity that reads more quickly and is more suited to readers who just like the little slices of life they gather from their blog surfing. For me these "brevity" type post are of little interest in and of themselves other than to keep recurrent readers coming back and letting them know my blog has not been abandoned. I wonder how many blog corpses litter the internet landscape?

What I really want to achieve is more like a series of mini essays each with some witty or profound insight (I haven't quite mastered summoning witty or profound on command yet) occasionally indulging in really long serious essays to be referred to, but stashed down in my Slashdot Journal. I am working on just one such essay now, but can't seem to get just the right tack on what to me is a very important issue -- the issue of "fairness." Not what is fair, but how to step back and not be blinded by our own preconceptions, needs, and wants to understand the true nature of fairness and why many things we think of as fair and unfair are mere societal illusions.

Even this half started essay (which has bogged down) stemmed from another half started essay on the increasing unfairness of intellectual property right laws, which I realized rested on some ill defined assumptions of fairness. There is a lot going on right now and I may not get around to finishing either them anytime soon (though I do plan to whine from time to time how poorly my progress on them is going).

I have just finished reading an article in "New Scientist" on confabulation and how to a degree we all do it, mostly unknowingly, and its especially chronic exhibition in some brain damaged individuals. This floats around in my head along with a quote from a recent South Park episode, "25% of all Americans are retards". Put another way (and less crudely) Americans choose to believe all sorts of incredible things not based on facts but emotionality. Putting all these things to together it is not hard to see why getting to the core of what is fair is such a hard chore.

Finally what is this post all about? This is mostly a procrastination post; a diversion before I dive back into my GRE studying. As to the experiment in writing styles, one conclusion might be that writing first on paper tends to lead to a more rambling writing style. Then again I just have a tendency to ramble in general, ask any of my co-workers.

I typed up my post from noon yesterday and mailed it to my home account from work. So here I am at home reviewing my mail account on Hotmail.com, but I can't find what I sent. There is a mess of Spam, which I mark and delete as Spam (why does this never seem to make a dent in future Spam?) In the Spam folder I find a couple of pieces of mail from me, but not the one I want. I un-Spam them, which I have done before with other mail I have sent myself from work, but it never seems to learn, plus it seems that if I send two pieces it only keeps the first (which is what I did today) and thus have nothing to work with tonight.

Next time I must remember to send mail to both my Hotmail and Gmail accounts. I notice that the Gmail account, which goes for weeks at time without being looked at, is completely empty of Spam. In fact the only mail in it is from my wife who mostly sends me pictures to this address. I have a third email account I use specifically for online purchases. It gets lots of Spam, some uninvited, some from the various companies I have ordered online from. I try to stay unsubscribed to the latter, but the unsubscribe links they provide don't always work.

The junk free Gmail account may not be so much a product of Gmail superiority (then again it may), but because Nian is the only person on the planet that knows it's address. It speaks strongly for having opt in only mail systems. I need to research if Gmail or Hotmail can be setup this way.

Damn it sucks to have a two-day old post that I still can't post. The real question is why real Spam gets through, but Hotmail.com thinks what I write is Spam. Maybe it's a slight on the quality of my writing...

I noticed the marquee sign on the McDonald's on Neil Street the other day read "WE HAVE THE WORLDS BEST EMPLOYEES" I couldn't help, but think no wonder American is loosing it's edge in the global market place if we're using the world's best employees to make hamburgers.

I wrote a long rambling post at lunch today, this time on a pad of paper, but I left the pad at work, so that one will have to wait till tomorrow (for those of you that have a taste for long and rambling).

Nian and I had a long talk last night on money matters. She tires to be diplomatic but it is clear she worries that I will endanger our future with profligate ways, one reason for this is I have some credit card debt that was being used to finance some stock purchases. It should be noted these were not high interest rate debts, but low interest loans that can be had from time to time. SAIC's IPO has come and gone and soon I will have a nice size dividend to pay off the credit cards and still own twice as much stock as I had a year ago. My 401K is doing well also, but all this is not enough to assure Nian we are in good shape financially, mostly because I don't have much real bank savings nor own a home with built up equity. Certainly getting the credit cards paid off will ease her mind somewhat as will getting a real house early next year. Though I guess I can't blame her for being nervous about making the leap across the sea to an unknown life of interdependence with a man that once made some very bad business decisions and spent the better part of ten years paying for them.

----

BTW I initially had a slightly better picture of a hand holding credit cards, but after I posted it I realized it was a woman's hand and decided to change it for fear people might think I was implying that Nian used to many credit cards. It was much harder to find a man's hand holding credit cards -- I don't think it would be unfair to read a little sexism into this about who is generally expected to spend more.

The SIAC IPO went through. My stock is worth about 12% more today than yesterday. Most of this is in my 401K so it's not like I can go out and buy a sports car with my mad money, but it still is my biggest one day bump in net worth. SAIC general stock itself closed at $18.16, 21% higher for the day over its opening price of $15. After an upcoming dividend and adjustment my remaining stock will track in value with the SAIC general stock. I guess it should be noted SAIC stock was the highest volume traded stock by far on the floor of the NYSE today. It seems likely the current value will stick as it wasn't an erratic ride to $18, but a quick early rise to $18 and then lots of trading hovering around the $18 level.

Well we've negotiated all the visa paper work in trying to get Nian her CR1 visa only to encounter one more extra step, one beyond our control -- Administrative Review. A little Googling provides these possible triggers for an A.R.

A Lookout Hit or Red Flag Hit can be generated on a visa petition, among other reasons, for any the following: *Past arrest record *Past criminal conviction record *Past firearms record *Past record of domestic violence or sexual offenses *Past fingerprint record with any law enforcement agency *Past visa or immigration history *Watch List or Pending Charges "Hit": Petitioner or Beneficiary is currently on watch list or wanted on pending charges with any law enforcement or other government agency, (local, state, federal, FBI, INTERPOL, Homeland Security, State Department designated terrorist group list) *Common or Similar Last Name with others in the database who have past arrest or conviction records (sometimes called a "False Hit")

Trust me that 1-5 and 7 are impossible. Nian's previous visa history is existent, but spotless so that leaves "False Hit." Hmmm, what are the chances anyone else from China with the last name Yang (the sixth most common sir name in China) has an arrest record? There seems to be no tracking the progress of an administrative review nor anyway to petition for expedition.

Our case has only been in this review limbo since the October 4th, so it is too early to be despondent over the progress of our case. This just may be one more routine step (though not one everyone has to go through) that takes another 4-6 weeks to complete.

I'm sitting in my dentist's office right now waiting for my biannual checkup and cleaning, so time for a few quick news blurbs. SAlC, the company I work for, is going forward with an IPO. This has been a long time coming and is good news for my wife and I, has I had loaded up on stock over a year ago and had been trying to hold onto as much as was practical as after IPO after IPO date slipped. Initially I had hoped to make a real killing, but time and research has dampened this initial enthusiasm. While I hope to pay off in full some debts from previous bad decisions, I no longer expect to make tens of thousands in profit, let alone become an over night millionaire like the crew at YouTube whose company just got bought by Google. Still I will be watching the trade letters SAI on the New York Stock Exchange with great expectation tomorrow -- Friday the 13th (Doh!) Hopefully this will leave us well positioned financially as I look for a House for us early next year.

No cavities today, so we'll take that as the good omen looking forward to tomorrow's trade.

There are things to say about Nian's visa application, but I'll wait till I get to a real keyboard to say something about that.

Friday's Noon Time Notes

Eating at Dairy Queen today. I had hoped that it would have WiFi, but no. I took the time to train the handwriting recognition and it works much better now. I'll probably use it more often than the touch-screen keyboard, but it still could use a lot of improvement. Erk, I just had to go back to using the keyboard because the handwriting suddenly went totally bonkers. I have yet to use the larger keyboard designed for thumb-texting. I may have to invest in a portable keyboard to be truly happy with my new toy.

The manager just came over to see what I'm up to; it seems he owns this restaurant and the QUIZNOS I ate at yesterday, he told me that he has everything needed to make this location a WiFi hotspot, but can't get DSL here in Savoy. I suggested he go cable modem if Insight doesn't charge too much for a business location. I also suggested he offer to put a sign on his door that Insight provides the internet access in exchange for a much lower monthly bill. As easy as it to go WiFi by just hanging a wireless router off of your cable modem I'm surprised I don't see more locations offering WiFi here. I would think it would be in Insight's interests to aggressively promote its adoption in business locations in exchange for just this kind of advertising.

Incidentally I connected at home to my router without doing anything to the configuration. I have probably been providing free WiFi to my neighbors for over two years. I really need to fix that. I wonder if I've been jotted down as a hotspot by some war-drivers?

Sunday's Noon Time Notes

A couple of days later, I'm eating at McDonald's and studying for the GRE. I decided to try the handwriting recognition again and it seems to be working much better today. I'm still waiting for each letter to complete so I'm still not writing at full speed yet, but it is probably very close to using the touch-screen keyboard in speed. My speed and skill will probably improve with time. Actually I just tried Something new starting on the last line, which is to write ahead one word at a time. It seems to do a pretty reasonable job when used this way, but it often gets the capitalization wrong, which is odd because I have auto-capitalization correction on. It is also odd that auto-word completion doesn't more aggressively try to guess when you have only entered one letter. For instance guessing "the", "this", or "that" when you type "t" or "or", "on", "only" or "our" when you type "o", and guessing "you" on "y" would certainly be a time savers, since you pick from a list of guesses there seems to be no reason not to guess. It also seems to completely refuse to guess when there is only one letter left forcing you to enter the whole word and space regardless that there aren't any other choices and you'd like the spelling confirmed.

Despite these nits it works well enough for a mobile device, but I hope to see some improvements with the next OS release.

Back to work now, as always, more later.

Wednesday's (Today's) Noon Time Notes

51 miles in five days!

My old personal best was 50 miles in seven days.
48 miles of that was stair-machine vs. 3 miles treadmill, but I assure you the per mile effort is comparable and my workout Thursday should bring this week's total effort to well more than the exertion of running two marathons in a week.

Now if only the scale reflected my attempts at loosing weight with similar advanded progress.

----

OK, from here on we'll try to keep things a little more on track. If I jot some blog notes down at noon, I'll try to get them off to the net as soon as I get back to work. Maybe not all of this was worth posting, but having blogged for years now it has become a compulsion to finish each and every post started. Maybe I just hate wasting keystrokes.

Going back to do a little backfill

----

I had created another lunchtime post on Saturday, but didn't post it immediately. I went for a long workout at the gym and then that night my wife expressed displeasure with my Nokia-770 centric posts the last few days, this and the fact I had mentioned she threatened to buy some luxury for herself in retaliation for the 770 purchase in my blog. I had never believed she would go out and buy something to get-me-back, but I did feel her teasing and joking on this issue betrayed an undercurrent of resentment at my getting the internet tablet device. I guess you could say we had a small tiff over all this Saturday night. By Sunday night she was in an apologetic mood for being a tad unreasonable on Saturday. Now I'll probably be in hot water again for airing our dirty laundry in public. So Saturday's post still sits on my Nokia and I haven't decided what to do with it. My wife would prefer I center my blog around family issues, but it is hard to be family centric when your family is 8,000 miles away. I also try to be as honest in my posts as I can, so to try and steer their subject matter in an attempt to keep my wife happy would defeat the purpose of what this blog is supposed to be about. This all really boils down to a bit of a culture clash. My wife will probably feels she has lost some face by my posting of anything with a negative aspect between us, whereas her own posts about me in her blog tend to be glowing to the point of embarrassment.

In the mean time I've set new personal bests for myself at the gym. In any one day I hadn't exceeded a personal best, but Friday and Saturday together set a new 2 day distance record of 25 miles between stair-machine and treadmill, then Sunday night I tacked on another 13 miles to nearly double my all time 3 day total. My best one week total ever (about 2 years ago) is 50 miles and I hope to meet or exceed that tonight, setting a new 4 day personal best. All this in an effort mostly to shed say 5-10 pounds before my Anniversary trip to China. I wouldn't call myself fat by any stretch of the imagination (at least by American standards), but my pants have gotten tight in the waist line and it is time to do something about it. I have been at this weight a couple of times in the past and I let the last 5 pounds creep up on me as I studied for the General GRE test in the last two months, now I am making up for my below average Gym attendance with a 4 day all out attack to get the numbers moving back in the right direction before I have to really buckle down and study for the Computer Science GRE Subject test I have scheduled for next month.

There are one or two family news items I can relate -- my daughter Aiai has expressed missing her dad on several occasions now and sleeps every night with a soft fluffy stuffed animal dog I brought for her on my last visit. Nian has a roommate for now that she would probably be better off without. Since Nian's parents will be moving back to Gaungzhou next month to live with her for a while, the roommate will have to be moving soon anyway, but rarely a day passes that I don't hear something irritating the roommate is up to, most often having to do with failing to do any work around the apartment at all in exchange for what is essentially free room and board.

----

BTW Didn't go to the gym that Monday, but Tuesday I finished another 13 miles which brought the 5 day total to 51 miles, beating my best 7 day total ever in just 5 days.

Damn, my attempt to improve efficiency hasn't quite succeeded yet. I'm sitting on 3 posts that I haven't quite been able to get posted. More like 5 posts as two of them were stopped and continued. Worse, they now sit astride overlapping points in time, so just going back and posting them in order won't cure the situation. One of them involves a disagreement Nian and I had, so that may be one reason I'm having trouble finding just the right way to tell the stories.

I also spent most of the night getting new apps installed on my Nokia 770 to get things done in a more UNIX like manner. I had already installed a voice recorder app on my Nokia and now I wanted to ftp the sound file I had made directly to my blog (this blog) on jaytv.com. I ended up having to download and install bash, ftp, and Xterm and several support files for these before I got to the point where I could do what I wanted to do. I had assumed the audio files would be in mp3 format, but when I finally found where the first file was tucked away on the file system it turned out to be a new file type used for VoIP called iLBC. I transferred the .ilbc file, but neither IE nor FireFox were able to play it directly (they filled the screen with a long string of ASCII garbage).

For those that already have the appropriate file converting software or player my first mobile internet recording can be found at http://www.jaytv.com/larrys/blog/pod/nokia_recording_01.ilbc. The rest of you will have to wait until I figure out how to convert these files to mp3 (or some other podcast friendly format). If I do figure out an easy way to do this I may be tempted to turn my posts in to podcasts as well. After all the WWW has just been waiting to make me a podcast star.

Nian has criticised me for not posting often enough to my blog, so hopefully this will become a lunchtime habit. She has also suggested that when I do post that the posts tend to be a little on the long side (blogging from my Nokia-770 will certainly cure that).

I'm eating at Quiznos today because the web access is free. Still I had to fiddle with the connection manager before getting it to connect correctly. Next time things should go much more smoothly. I now know how to drill down to the saved connection settings and correct them when things go wrong. It turns out you must have the access key length pre-set and I had tried to enter a 10 digit code while the Nokia was still set to it's default 5. Odd that it wouldn't just figure out what protocol from how many characters you enter.

I talked to Nian just before lunch today, she'd been hard to stay in touch with because it is a special holiday there in China this week, culminating yesterday in Autumn day. All is well across the sea, though Nian is threatening to buy herself some expensive luxury in retaliation for my purchaseses without consulting her.

I had hoped to be entering this post from McDonald's, but it turns out that the WiFi isn't free. So I'm here in the lobby at work making a quick post before going to the gym.

It feels odd to post this way. The touch screen works well enough, but I'm a touch typist and I'm used to just letting my thoughts flow without having to concentrate on what my hands were doing. Still this a hundred times better than trying to post with my cell-phone. With time and practice I'm sure it will feel more natural.

I had promised a follow up about my assertion that certain inequities were on the rise in America, but first I need to acknowledge a factual error in my blog for September 25th. I had stated that Boston was trying to pass laws to take down a legally owned CITGO sign because of remarks made by Hugo Chávez's against President Bush. It turns out the city of Boston owns the sign and/or has it listed and protected as a historic landmark, so while I don't approve of the knee jerk reaction I see nothing wrong with de-listing it.

I started to write this post a few days ago, but to be honest it bogged down in trying to explain the starting point of the assertion I just mentioned, so we'll put that aside again for now and get on with more important news. Part of my poor blogging habits this last week has been due to playing with a new toy, a toy I hadn't told my wife I had bought yet and so couldn't blog about it. I bought a Nokia 770 internet tablet device. On the whole I'm happy with the purchase and will say more about it as time goes on. I intend to use it for making short blog posts when I'm away from my computer, something my Samsung camera phone was really never up to.

Anyway I told my wife last night I had bought it and somehow also ended up also confessing to an unmentioned business purchase I had made last year as well, after essentially promising I wouldn't spend more money on a side business project that had turned into a money pit. Nian was pretty understanding, as it wasn't about the money but the broken promise, but I still felt bad. It's strange how even 8,000 miles apart the littlest omission or untruth comes out anyway, even if its from months and months in the past. And it isn't because Nian grills me that I eventually have to come clean, I just eventually end up saying something stupid that I have to explain. The only solution seems to be not to keep secrets from my wife, no matter how small.