Plum Sky Rock

More of my imaginary Broadway career

2010-10-14T13:33:00.001-07:00

I wrote this in a comment to a friend's status update on Facebook. He suggested I put it somewhere more public (more public than Facebook?!) so he can share it with his cow-orkers. Blame him.

As usual, the choice of music is left as an exercise for the Reader.


Spiral of Doom

Just sit right back for the conference call
A call that'll take all night,
That started with some Powerpoint
And no agenda in sight.
Facilitatin' this fine mess:
A Man'ger shiny and new,
But his reports they spanned the globe
And none of them had a clue
(Three hours and no clue.)

The meeting started getting rough
And they all blamed the boss,
If not for the drinks in the mini-bars
Action items would've been lost
(But at least they'd all be sauced.)

When that meeting hit hour five and he'd not passed chart two,
The Manager...
Said "Drink up lads!
Put it on the
Expense account.
We'll try again
Same time, next week
And there will be more attendees!"

[imagine a really great montage sequence here]

So this is the tale of a meeting gone wrong,
Stuck there for a long long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.
The Manager will get his boss
And try their very best,
To make the others sign on to
A plan that's now a mess:
No time, no spec, no budget left
Not a single new resource.
Like Babbage doing Engine work
As primitive as old Moorse.
Don't join us in the Spiral of Doom
This weekly misery
'Cause the fun's not over when we're done,
It's on...to...Version 3.

Paul's Guide to Vienna, Part 2 of 3

2010-09-17T11:21:00.001-07:00

Updated June 19, 2011: changed information about live music at the Reznicek. See below.

Paul's Guide to Vienna,

for People who've read the Guide Books and want MORE

Part the Second: Food

Please tell me that you are not a vegetarian. One can get by in Vienna without liking beer; they'll merely think you're touched in the head. Not like wine or coffee and people may avoid you socially. If you don't do meat at all, they may make you leave the country.

But seriously, vegetarians totally miss out in Austria, because the food culture is all about using every part of an animal, whatever the animal (usually pig). However, I will throw in a vegetarian recommendation at the end of the list.

A general note about sit-down eateries in Austria: they tend to be a bit leisurely in their service. It's not that they can't be quick, but the culture here is to have relaxing meals (or coffee, or drinks), so they won't give you the bum's rush if you just want to sit and hang. Plan accordingly if you are on a schedule.

Gasthaus Witwe Bolte

Traditional Viennese food in the historic district of Spittalberg (a former red-light district, so I read). Tends to be crowded with locals and visitors brought there by locals to get authentic Austrian/Viennese food. Tell your local friends (me excepted, of course) that you want to go there and they should be pleasantly surprised, or protest—faintly—because they were just there with the last batch of out-of-towners.

Restaurant Zum Reznicek

Traditional Viennese food, specializing in "innards", though they've cut back in the new menus. (I can still get cow brains and scrambled eggs there, but I know the chef. Note that Austria has never had a case of BSE.) If you go on the second Tuesdays of the month from September to June, you can hear live music for free. Karin's Viennese folk music group, the Liechtenthaler Quartett plays there on second Tuesdays, and I'll be there as well (for the beer as well as the food and music, but also occasionally as recording engineer). Important note: the Reznicek is not open on Saturdays.

Update: As of June 2011, the Liechtenthaler Quartett is no longer playing monthly at the Reznicek. Please check their website or subscribe to their newsletter for future events at the Reznicek and elsewhere in Vienna.

Schnitzelhaus

This is a chain that specializes in, wait for it, schnitzels. You can get turkey schnitzels, as well as turkey versions of the cordon bleu and other dishes. They also have breaded salmon (deep fried) and a veggie patty (microwaved, I kid you not). However, the schnitzels are freshly made (you see them flour, dip, bread, and fry the schnitzels while in line), and they also have brined pork schnitzels (Surschnitzel), which are yummy.

Nordsee

Cafeteria style seafood restaurant chain with hot entrees, salads, and sandwiches. Part of why I like them is probably because we don't really have places like these in California. They're much more like places I frequented in New England. Another place where you can get your food quickly and leave when you need to, instead of experiencing and not necessarily enjoying the somewhat leisurely pace of the average Austrian restaurant.

Trzesniewski

Spreads on breads. It sounds simple, but it's really great stuff. Each portion is about 50% larger than your standard business card, and there are some 15-20 different spreads to choose from. Deviled egg and deviled ham are familiar items, but the tomato spread is particularly memorable (and taste like tomatoes should, not like dried up ketchup). They deal well with tourists, and you can always step up to the counter and point. Go to the one near St. Stephen's (Dorotheergasse 1) and people watch. You can also order beer in "Pfiffs", that is to say, 0.2 liter beer mugs.

Vegetasia (warning, flash on the intro page)

Taiwanese style vegetarian food. All fake meat, all the time, though you should not go there if you have gluten issues. We had our wedding banquet there. Highly amusing to watch our guests (mostly Austrian) trying to guess what kind of meat something wasn't. Also very good, authentic Chinese food.

Other food related suggestions:

"Imbiss" or "Beisl" stands (all over, esp. near train/bus/underground stations)

These are "snack" stands. The basic ones sell sausage variants: either in a bun, pigs-in-a-blanket style (confusingly called "hot dogs", e.g. "Hot Dog mit Bratwurst, bitte"), or in bite-sized slices on a paper plate with your choice of condiment (mustard, hot mustard, ketchup, mayo) and/or bread (slices of rye or a roll). The larger ones also sell pizza by the slice. Many sell "Doner Kabap", which is essentially a gyro but in a big bun instead of pita bread. Most sell soft drinks, bottled water, and even gum and candy. They all sell beer.

Naschmarkt

A place where you can get schnitzel, goulash, pho', baba ghanoush, sushi, and pickled herring in a two-block pedestrian zone. It's a collection of semi-permanent buildings, from simple stalls to two story restaurants, selling fresh and cooked foods from all over the former Austrian empire, as well as a significant outpost of Asian and Middle-eastern cuisine. I'm betting that Lonely Planets might even have specific stands they recommend.

Cafes

There are a couple of cafe chains that are considered very good: Cafe Landtmann, Cafe Aida, Linauer. There are also bakery chains that sell cakes and pastries: Der Mann, Anker, Ströck. However, you can wander into almost any cafe in the first district and get decent coffee and desserts. You can, if you wish, go to the Hotel Sacher and get a Sachertorte. Be prepared to pay too much for ok coffee. And, as every Viennese will tell you, their mother (or grandmother) makes better Sachertorte than the Hotel. However, the wait staff at the Sacher are especially good at taking their customers' pictures, with the eponymous dessert fully in frame.

Starbucks

These are, unsurprisingly, all over (though there seems to be only ten of them in all of Vienna); the most egregious one is across the street from the Hotel Sacher. However, Starbucks' No Smoking policy extends to every single one of their (insert large number here) locations around the world. Warning: potentially annoying music (it sounds like every other Starbucks in the world) and lots of tourists who hang out for the fresh air. Extra plus side: 30 minutes of free Wi-Fi with each purchase. But you have to ask for the coupon.

Ice Cream

The Austrians love ice cream. But they seem to be able to turn this love off by the end of October, and save it all up again until the following April, when they go nuts for the stuff again for six to seven months. That's right, ice cream parlors are seasonal. Unless the weather is exceptionally warm, they all close up by Halloween. The commercial stuff can be had in your average grocery store year-round, but it's...commercial.

Glühwein

Mulled wine, usually with cinnamon and sugar. Depending on the weather, this and other hot, alcoholic drinks ("Punsch") may be available in many places. See also "Imbiss" stands and Part Three of this Guide.

Food Vocabulary

"Ketchup" is ketchup, "Mayonnaise" is mayonnaise, "Senf" is mustard, "Scharf" means spicy. Most Austrians treat Tabasco the same way that most Americans treat habañero peppers. Scale your expectations accordingly. "Brot" is both bread and sandwich, the latter usage usually of the open-faced variety. "Toast" is a toasted sandwich (closed). "Salat" is both lettuce and salads in general, though the non-lettuced variety is usually labelled as such; e.g. "Herringsalat". "Kartoffel" is potato, though you will also see "Erdapfel", which is Austrian German. Also specific to Austrian German: "Paradieser", which is the tomatoe.

Final important food word: "Zumitnehmen": means "to go" (that's "take away" for our British English-speaking cousins).

Non-smoking sections are available in many places. However, eateries tend to interpret that as meaning "don't need an ashtray". You can also have situations like our local mall, which is non-smoking but they have cafes that do allow smoking. They square that circle by having tables out on the concourse be non-smoking, but the tables "in" the cafe (i.e., under the roof of the cafe) are stocked with ashtrays. Coming from the fascistically smoke-free Left Coast, Austria was a bit of a shock, lung-wise. Important note: if you're eating outside, expect to be smoked at, or at least near. (See also "Starbucks".)

Smoking Update

The current (September 2010) smoking ban requires that any establishment larger than 50 square meters (about 550 sq. ft) have a separate smoking room with a closed door. Given that lots of hole-in-the-wall places are not very big, the gastronomically adventurous should be prepared to endure smoking, up close and personal.

Avoid Mexican food here. I've had Mexican food in DC (well, Herndon). This is worse. There is a brand of "Mexican" salsa, tortillas, and corn chips called "Santa Maria" in stores here. The company is based in Sweden. Just saying. (My worst Mexican food experience was in Dublin, Ireland. The Irish should not make Mexican food.)

End of Part the Second

Paul's Guide to Vienna, Part 1 of 3

2010-09-17T05:09:00.001-07:00

This is an aggregation of various suggestions I've sent to friends and acquaintances on what to see and do in Vienna (Austria). Once I noticed that I was doing a lot of copying and pasting from older into newer emails, it was clearly time to turn this into a blog post or three.

Updated June 19th, 2011: corrected typos and harmonized citation text styles.

Paul's Guide to Vienna,

for People who've read the Guide Books and want MORE

Part the First: Preparations, Lodging & Sightseeing

Before you leave:

Dante Calling Virgil

These posts are in no way substitutes for a comprehensive guidebook. I have several for Vienna, despite the fact that I live only half an hour away by train. My go-to book is the one from Knopf: Knopf City Guides Vienna. The stand-out feature of the Knopf City Guides are the elevations of the street fronts. They are like Google Street View, but hand illustrated and much better annotated. Your needs may vary, so check out your local library or bookstore. Compare different ones and see which one suits your travel style and schedule. I don't recommend evaluating travel books solely via online sites; you need to actually leaf through them to get a feel for how easy they are to reference. You should also see if they fit into your pockets comfortably. Try not to look furtive when doing so, or you may be approached by security people.

Sprechen Sie Deutch?

Before coming to Austria, most of the German I knew came via Yiddish, and the rest from Hogan's Heroes. In general, you can get by in Vienna without conversational German; most everyone in the tourist industries speak some English and the second language on most signs is English. Having said that, knowing some basics of the local language is always helpful to the traveler. Many guidebooks include a short lexicon, but my money is on a dedicated lexicon/phrase book like the Berlitz German Phrase Book. Not only are these books easy to carry, but they group the words by category/situation. Like the guide books, I recommend looking at these in person before choosing.

There's an App for That

Yes, this advice is more applicable to folks who own smartphones or other connected devices, but even people who have "feature" phones may have useful programs that are already installed or can be added. Currency calculators are always handy, and I had a German/English dictionary on my Palm Pilot back in the day.

With a smartphone, there are more tourist/tourism specific apps, but I would also look to a good navigation app, especially if your phone has built-in GPS. And unless you are prepared to deal with a data plan (see below), get apps that include all the maps you need, instead of something like Google Maps where you'd need to download maps on the fly.

International Roaming

No two other words strike more fear into the budget conscious traveler with a cell phone. Since this varies between carriers and even calling plans, please check with your cell provider on how to activate this and how much it will cost. Don't forget about the data plan. There are also pay-as-you-go services, which involve swapping out your SIM and possibly unlocking and/or jailbreaking your phone. For those of you who understood the last sentence, you might consider Bob for your calling and data needs in Austria. (I use them for my iPad.)

Place to stay:

PENSION DR. GEISSLER

Postgasse 14, 1010 Wien, Österreich

I've recommended this to multiple friends as well as my brother when he came out for my wedding. It's inexpensive lodgings that is a 10 minutes walk from St. Stephen's Cathedral, and it's just around the corner from the Schwedenplatz, which is a nexus for public transit. Also, their showers have curtains.

Sights:

Wiener Rathaus, Vienna "Town" Hall

Neo-gothic building, which can get pretty old after a while, since there are lots in Vienna. However the plaza in front is a major venue for events all around the year, so it's worth going by just to see what's there. See "Part the Third: Seasonal Notes" for more info.

Bezirkmuseums (District Museums)

Vienna, over the years, has incorporated the smaller towns and villages that grew up outside the original city walls (now the Ring), which define the modern-day "First District" (or just "1st"). While city administration is divided into district offices, there isn't much for the visitor to notice when she crosses district boundaries. The one place where district history is gathered is the local Bezirkmuseum. Aside from general history, these museum often have special exhibits on famous locals: composers, writers, musicians, and the like. Do check the above website on opening times. These are not large places, and tend to have very limited visitor hours.

The Prater

Home of the big ferris wheel ("Riesenrad') best known from The Third Man (and slightly known from The Living Daylights, aka: "Dalton 1" in the James Bond movie series). Good for cityscapes and picture taking. The rest of the Prater is a combination of boardwalk and city park, so all sorts of people wander through. Last time I was there (with friends visiting from California, natch), we saw a man doing hand puppets and a woman shooting video of him. I'm guessing YouTube.

The Danube (Donau) and the Danube "Island" (Donauinsel)

The Austrians dug a canal paralleling the Danube as a means of flood control as well as to ease navigation (they also "straightened" the Danube in the 1850's). In doing so, they created an "island", which is just the stretch of land between the canal and the main Danube channel. It's another, relatively seasonal place, with restaurants, bars and clubs that cater to the summer crowd of sun-worshippers and vacationing families. There are also art exhibitions and theaters. As far as I know, there are no boats regularly navigating the Danube named "Proud Mary". There are paddle boats, though, but not of Mississippi-esque proportions. There are tours, but you should be careful about not accidentally ending up on the Bratislava or Budapest ferries. On the other hand, there are some nice Turkish baths in Budapest....

Hundertwasserhaus

I've not been inside this building, so I can't confirm the undulating floors. However, the exteriors are definitely wild, and I imagine the tiling contractors are still suffering from PTSD. Very cool, but there's not much to it once you wander around the building once or twice.

MuseumsQuartier

This whole complex is dedicated to "modern" art, with museums, shops, theater spaces, and offices. There are art installations in the open courtyards, including a series of concrete blocks that look like giant, pink erasers with holes in them large enough for a person to sit or lie in. These things get moved around all the time for various "shows". I'm not sure I get any of it, but it's fun to look at and wander through.

Imperial Apartments, Hofburg

Sisi (Empress Elisabeth) is Austria's version of Princess Di, and the Imperial Apartments are, if not a shrine to Sisi, at least a semi-dedicated museum. They've recently re-done the whole Sisi wing, which I've been told by a Viennese docent as being very well put together, but the shrine-like quality has only increased.

Heeresgeschichtliches Museum

The Military History Museum. It is full of sharp and pointy things. It is full of things that go boom. It has some cool uniforms, including a couple from Franz Joseph. It is worth noting that Austria calls the period from 1939 to 1945 "the dictatorship". In fact, Austria does not claim to be a country during that time. While technically true, I find this stance to be more than a bit facile. However, the Second World War section of the museum is otherwise stunning, including some very interesting art installations.

And if the Imperial Apartments is Sisi's Shrine, then the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum is a reliquary for Archduke Franz Ferdinand. On display in its late-19th and early-20th century Wing: the car that the Archduke was shot in, his bloody uniform and the chaise longue on which he died.

Stadtpark, Strauss Statue

This tends to be touristy, not least because of the webcam on the statue, so people arrange to be on it so their friends at home can see. However it's a good green space with lots of freeloading ducks, pigeons and swans.

Schönbrunn Palace

Reasonably impressive building. Unless you've seen the Hermitage or the Sun King of the Hill: Versailles. Nice zoo.

Haus des Meeres, Vienna Aquarium & Terrarium

Built in a former anti-aircraft tower ("Flakturm") it's probably the most vertical aquarium you'll ever see. Great for kids, and even a bit of WWII history. We always try to get sushi before or after a visit.

The Torture Museum

It sits underground in a corner of the park where the Haus des Meeres is (you can see it from the Haus des Meeres' entrance). I've not been, but I'm told that it's not that different from other, Old Europe torture museums. My son went when he was five, but was apparently unaffected.

End of Part the First

Some thoughts on the Watchmen movie

2009-03-10T08:00:00.001-07:00

Saw the Watchmen movie last Saturday (Mar 7) in Vienna. Enjoyed it very much, even though I had to watch the German dub (the English version will probably not get here before June; they're not getting Slumdog Millionaire until April). Sadly, my German is not good enough to catch the subtleties of the dialog, so it was probably a good thing that the writing team lifted so much of it directly from the comics. However, that did mean that I spent quite a bit of the movie actually looking at the images, which is a significant part of the movie going experience, after all.

So, I can't really review the movie when I haven't actually experienced it fully, but I can (and, of course, am going to) say a couple of things about the quality of the differences between the movie and comic (hereafter "Movie" and "Comic"). I'll try to avoid spoiling anything. But, if you're the kind of person who doesn't want to know anything about a movie before going into it, you should stop reading right now. Also, if you haven't read the ~~Comic~~, ur ~~Graphic Novel~~ Comic (dammit) this may not make a lot of sense.

You have been warned.

So Zach Snyder has not quite repeated what he did with Frank Miller's 300. That's a good thing. It wasn't that 300 was a bad movie, but I would argue that the movie was more-or-less a remake of Frank Miller's comic book, which was all but a kind of full fledged storyboard/pre-vis for the movie that was running through Miller's head, and which eventually come out via Zach Snyder (though not quite in the same way that Robert Rodriguez's Sin City relates to the comics, but I'm not going there in this post).

As a fan of the Comic, I loved seeing many of the iconic "shots" show up in the Movie (though not the symmetric centerfold from issue #5, AKA "Fearful Symmetry"). However, I'm not alone in wondering if viewers new to the story get the same frisson from those scenes that even blew Dave Gibbons away for the attention to detail on matching the Comic. Roger Ebert mentioned in his blog that he was a bit lost in the first viewing, though he still enjoyed it even as someone who hadn't read the Comic. Any other non-Comic reader feel that way?

The thing that absolutely blew me away was the opening credit sequence. In what could only have been a couple of minutes, Snyder condensed an enormous amount of background material; essentially giving the audience a series of thumbnail sketches of this alternate reality in a handful of moving tableaux. In particular, I really liked the Dr. Manhattan/JFK bit, partly because I had issues with the insertion of Tom Hanks into historical footage of LBJ in Forrest Gump. And as a not-so-subtle wink to the comic origins of the Movie, these sequences were composited like multi-planar cartoons, where different characters were on different planes, and they moved at different speeds as the camera pans, creating the illusion of depth. Of course the "cut-out" quality of the movement defeats any suspension of disbelief from the opening sequence, which is very meta; sort of like Snyder is telling us: look at this animated comic of the movie I made from a comic book.

One thing that did surprise me was the bloody-mindedness of the Movie, which in retrospect, made perfect sense. For the Rorschach bits, clearly there needed to be Blood (apropos Stoppard's "The Player" in Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead). What caught me off guard was the sheer viciousness of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, particularly in their first fight scene. Again, Snyder is working well within the Comic's canon; and it's obvious in hindsight that this is exactly what Alan Moore had intended with these characters. I, like many who read mostly Comics Code-compliant titles while growing up, was certainly conditioned to an almost antiseptic version of personal violence in comics, as typified (and only slightly parodied) in the "Biff!", "Pow!" and "Bam!" of the Batman TV series. Even recent, comic-based film outings suffer a form of reality distortion (at least for the "hero"). How many fingers did Batman break in succession on one person? How many necks did Iron Man snap with his (enhanced) hands)? How many limbs did/will Wolverine sever with his adamantine claws? Those are supposed to be things the bad guys did, which of course, brings us right back to the name of the Comic and Movie.

Right. That's probably enough for now. Though did anyone else hear a little Blade Runner-esque Vangelis in the scene where Dan Dreiberg is walking home in the rain? Hmmm.

100 Most Important Books to Read Before You Die: Part 1

2009-02-21T08:56:00.001-08:00

2009-02-21 22:28 CET - Update: Fixed missing word and added tags.

To give proper credit, friend Jason originally asked (on a private mailing list) for recommendations on the "100 Most Important Books to Read Before You Die". Some of his criteria are (and I quote/paraphrase):

Important

Diverse

Insightful

Clearness over originality

Factual for its time

Jason started us off with the Old Testament, which is certainly Important, somewhat Diverse, Insightful, not so Original, and Factual, for its time.

Here, then, are my first 10 suggestions, with more or less reverent (or relevant) commentary. I continue with Jason's religious theme:

The New Testament

The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the AUTHENTIC Words of Jesus by Robert W. Funk & the Jesus Seminar

The Qur'an (Koran)

The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer

Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch

Fantasia

The Iliad by Homer (sort of)

Troy

Clash of the Titans

The Epic of Gilgamesh

E.g.

here

Tipitaka & Mahayana sutras

Schisms

The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

Hinduism for Dummies

video version

Tao Te Ching/Daodejing (The Tao and its Characteristics) by Laozi, translated by James Legge

Bonus Item:

Blogging the Bible by David Plotz at Slate.com

It's like a reading the inner monolog of the person tasked to write The Old Testament for Dummies. Last I heard, he's working on turning these essays into a book. He's also considering doing the same thing with the New Testament.

Maxtor is Dead to Me

2009-01-31T09:48:00.001-08:00

The following is an IM exchange between me and Maxtor/Seagate support:

Hello. How may I help you?

Paul T.S. no name: Hi. I just bought a OneTouch4 Plus and failed to format it under OSX 10.5. The support page for the drive says I can email Tech Support to get a link for the software that allows HFS+ formatting under Leopard, but the link to Tech Support expects me to register in your database. I DO NOT wish to register. I DO NOT want to be on a mailing list. I want software that makes your product work with my computer as advertised.

Jared J.: its not going to put you on a mailing list it does that so it can send you the correct software

Jared J.: there are people out there that want software that shouldn't work with there drive and some of stuff has encryption which can't be used in certain courtries so we have the registration process to avoid international trade issues

Paul T.S. no name: There is absolutely no technical reason for your process to require my email. Product ID, serial number and country of origin is all you need.

Thank you for using Seagate products. You may now close this window.

Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

30 Minutes Earlier

I bought a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus drive and started to reformat it before looking at all the documentation. While it would format to Fat32 and NTFS (under MacFUSE) just fine, the volume erase command fails when I tried HFS+. When I finally check the docs, I find out that to format under Leopard, I have to run this piece of software that came on the drive only. Ok, so I'm an idiot for not checking the software on the drive. But Maxtor is brain-dead for not including the software on the CD that comes in the box.

So I go to Maxtor's site to download said software. It bounces me to Seagate (fine) and I navigate down to the download area for this drive and eventually get this message:

If you have erased the software and need to obtain replacement software for your hard drive, contact Seagate Technical Support by email. [emphasis mine]

If you click on the Seagate Tech Support link, you don't see a list of email addresses. You get a SalesForce generated login page, in which you have to root around before finding out that if you were not registered, you need to click on the "Register and Create a Support Case" link. Of course, you'd first encounter a secure certificate mismatch dialog, because Seagate apparently registered "sso.seagate.com" for the certificate, but is serving these pages from "apps1.seagate.com". I then tried to find an email address from the Contact Us page. Guess where it redirected me: back to the apps1.seagate.com login page. So I clicked on the IM link from the Contact Us page and the above is the result.[1]

So Maxtor is now Dead to Me.

Epilogue

I managed to work around this problem by booting up my Powerbook that's running 10.4 and formatting it there. Once that worked, I can reformat it in HFS+ all I want under Leopard. I still don't have the "official" Maxtor software, but I don't need it since I'm not using their drive encryption apps.

[1] Now, it's unclear if they disconnected my chat deliberately or not. It appears that their chat system is a bit eager to boot people. However, it also doesn't use audio feedback when a new message comes in, so waiting for an available agent requires 100% of your attention.

Fixing iTunes 8 Podcast Refresh with AppleScript

2008-11-01T05:41:00.001-07:00

I have a problem.[1] I am addicted to podcasts. I blame Leo Laporte whose "netcasts" were some of the first I subscribed to, and who just kept adding more shows to the TWiT network.

But that's not my real problem. My real problem is that Apple added one feature to iTunes 8 when they should have added two, or even three. iTunes 8 let users set the refresh frequency (and other attributes) on a per-podcast basis. This is a reasonable feature as far as it goes, though even daily podcasts tend to be somewhat irregular in their posting time.[2]

The problem is that while I can now tweak the individual podcasts, I can't seem to consistently apply an overall setting for the update frequency. The UI is ambiguous: the "Use Default Settings" checkbox is underneath the "Settings for:" drop down, which has a horizontal rule separating it from the "Check for new episodes:" drop down. Even worse, I can't manually enter a time or date for the update schedule. The whole point of having iTunes update my podcasts automatically is so that I don't have to get up at 5:30 AM and click the damn "Refresh" button myself, not even the first time to get the ball rolling. UI Fail.

Admittedly, a comprehensive UI for configuring various podcast options might end up looking like Cast Away from Wooden Brain Concepts.[2] That might be a bit too much for most users, but the failure of iTunes to include a simple date/time entry box seems pretty stupid.

That said, I did come up with a relatively simple solution using AppleScript and iCal. I did try it first with Automator, but it didn't give me access to podcast updating actions, and recording a "See Me Do" workflow failed because Automator was recording the name of the Podcasts "row" in iTunes and the number of podcasts. So instead of just matching on "Podcasts", it would try to match on "Podcasts (100)", which of course changed every time podcasts were added and deleted. FAIL.

The actual solution was to delve a bit into AppleScript and create the following script:

tell application "iTunes"
	updateAllPodcasts
end tell

I saved it as an application, then created a new event in iCal which opened this application as an alarm action at 5:35 AM, repeating daily. In theory, I can now create another event to update my iPhone, and this I can do using an Automator workflow.

Now I can sleep soundly at night, knowing that I'll get all my podcast updated before I have to get up for work. At 5:45 AM.

[1] There are many other problems like it, but this one is mine.

[2] And I'm not sure I ever understood the "update hourly" setting for podcasts. Really, you really need to check every hour for something that you might not listen to for days? And if you are listening to something every hour, why isn't it just being streamed? Sounds like some OCD designer/programmed added the option for completeness only.

[3] Playing with Cast Away right now. Lots of interesting features, but nothing obvious for explicitly setting podcast update times.

The Road to Carpathia

2008-10-16T11:04:00.001-07:00

I wrote this back in 1999 for PEERS' annual Bal des Vampires. It is actually a sequel to a 1997 skit. If the characters seem weirdly familiar, it's because they are.

The Road to Carpathia

A Skit in One Unnatural Act

By Paul T.S. Lee

The Players

Vladdy Ricardo (Paul Lee): An alter ego of the Count, Vladdy comes from the Little Havana part of the Carpathians. He is a band leader first (Vladdy Ricardo's Latin Orchestra), a vampire second.

Lucy Ricardo (Ruth Chow): A native of California, she met Vladdy while attending Columbia (he worked swing shift at the med school blood bank and bussed tables at the Bat Cave, a vampire club in Spanish Harlem). Lucy knows that Vlad is a vampire, but hopes that modern science might have a cure soon.

Vladdy Ricardo Jr. (LW Boy): Also known as Little Wooden Vlad, Little Vladdy, or just Vladdy Jr. He is about to turn 3. He is not quite a vampire, nor is he entirely human. Neither modern science nor literary criticism theory is able to explain Vladdy Jr.'s existence or status, which is just fine with the Ricardo's.

Ethel Mertz (Jessica): Lucy's best friend and upstairs neighbor. She thinks Lucy's big secret is that Vladdy does not have a green card.

Fred Van Helsing Mertz (Steve George): Ethel's husband and a friend of Vladdy's. He doesn't care that Vladdy doesn't have a green card (Vladdy does), but wonders if the Ricardo's will raise Vladdy Jr. as a Catholic.

Mina "Boom-Boom" Harker (Jennie Redwitz): Exotic dancer, occasional dance instructor, and ex-girlfriend of Vladdy. She is managed by her husband, Johnny.

Jonathan "Johnny" Harker (Greg Chow): Former lawyer, now full time manager for Mina. Favorite singer: Frank Sinatra.

The Props

LW Boy

Basket for Little Vladdy

Sign: "Ricardo Residence"

Sign: "A While Later"

Sign: "Welcome Carpathia High Grads"

The Script

Cathleen comes up towards the front of the hall, well before the stage, and speaks to the guests.

Cathleen: And now, let us imagine a different history for Vlad the Impaler; one in which he was drawn to a different Lucy... a more modern Lucy...

Act I, scene 1

INT. RICARDO RESIDENCE

["I Love Lucy" theme begins, enter VLADDY. Music fade out 5 seconds after entrance.]

VLADDY: Babaloooo! Honey, I'm home!

Enter LUCY from opposite side.

LUCY: Hi Vladdy, how was the rehearsal?

VLADDY: Not so good. The boys are tired of playing the same old tunes, and I just can't seem to find the time to write some new ones.

LUCY: Poor Vladdy. I think you need a vacation.

VLADDY: Maybe chou're right. We haven't had one since little Vladdy Jr. came along.

LUCY: Of course I'm right. You work all night and sleep all day.

VLADDY: That's not fair, sweetheart. I'm a vampire. I have to work nights.

LUCY: Wah!

VLADDY: Oh honey, please don't do that. It gives me such a headache.

LUCY: [pauses] WAH!!! WAH!!!

VLADDY: Uh, uh, look honey. Mail from the old country. Maybe I get a chance to take you and the band on the road.

[Hands one letter to LUCY, opens and reads other.]

VLADDY: "To Herr Frederich Van Helsing Mertz," Hey, this is for Fred! I didn't know his mother was a Van Helsing. I wonder if he is related to the other one. [Continues reading.]

"We regret to inform you that your great uncle, Abraham Van Helsing, passed away in his sleep on 1st May." They are related! Ay yai yai. Fred, a Van Helsing.

LUCY: "From: Carpathia High Class Reunion Committee"
"To: Count Vladimir José Estephan Hohenzolleren Consuela de Soto Ricardo,"

It's from your high school, dear. I think it's an invitation.

VLADDY: "It was Herr Van Helsing's final wish that you should receive the Van Helsing family legacy and some portion of the estate. To expedite matters, we have booked passage by ship and train to Carpathia for you and your wife. We hope to see you soon.

"Yours sincerely,

"Hawkins, Seward, Holmwood & Morris, Esquires"

LUCY: "Dear Count, As part of our special reunion celebration, we would like to invite you and your Latin Orchestra to come and play at the Reunion Ball. We hope that you and the band can come.

"Yours sincerely,

"Carpathian High Reunion Committee"

VLADDY & LUCY: [together] Honey, we have to go to Carpathia

VLADDY: What? Lucy, you're talking crazy again. This is serious. Fred is a Van Helsing!

LUCY: What does that have to do with you?

VLADDY: Van Helsing was a famous vampire hunter. He nearly caught me a couple of times before I decided to come to America.

LUCY: Do you think that Fred is going to find out who you really are?

VLADDY: Not if I can help it.

LUCY: But you can. You and the band just got an invitation to your high school reunion. They want you to play at the ball.

VLADDY: Really?

LUCY: What if we go with Fred and Ethel? You can keep them out of trouble and find out what this legacy is, and Fred won't suspect a thing.

VLADDY: That's a great idea honey. Here, let's seal this letter back up and get it to Fred. Then bring him and Ethel back here. Don't forget to act surprised when I mention that we're going to Carpathia.

LUCY: OK. [exit LUCY]

Hold up sign: "A little later...." Enter FRED, followed by ETHEL and LUCY.

FRED: Vladdy, you home?

VLADDY: Oh, hi Fred. How are you?

FRED: You'll never guess what I just got in the mail.

VLADDY: What's that, Fred?

FRED: Boat and Train tickets to Carpathia. My great uncle on my mother's side passed away, and I have to go over there to claim my inheritance.

VLADDY: What a coincidence, Fred. I just got an invitation to my high school reunion in Carpathia.

[Enter ETHEL and LUCY.]

ETHEL: Did you say Carpathia?

VLADDY: Sure did, Ethel. [to Lucy] Honey, we just got an invitation for my high school reunion in Carpathia next month.

LUCY: Say. I have an idea. Since we're all going to Carpathia, why don't we see if we can travel together?

ETHEL: That's a wonderful idea. Lucy and I can go shopping while you boys play shuffleboard.

FRED: Now don't start spending money we don't have yet, Ethel. How about it, Vladdy? Maybe you can show us some of the sights back home.

VLADDY: Sure Fred. There are lots of sights to see on the Road to Carpathia.

ETHEL: Come on Lucy, let's go pick out something to wear on the Road to Carpathia.

ALL TOGETHER: [singing] We're off on the Road to Carpathia We certainly do get around.

Boom, chica boom, chica boom, chica boom, chica boom, chica boom, etc.

[Exit all in a conga line as singing fades out]

Act I, scene 2

INT. CASTLE W/SIGN "Welcome Carpathian High Grads"

[MINA is doing warm-up exercises, while Johnny watches. Enter VLADDY, LUCY, FRED, ETHEL, in same conga line from scene 1.]

VLADDY: Mina, long time no see. You remember my wife Lucy. And these are our friends, Fred and Ethel.

LUCY: Hello, Mina.

MINA: Hiya Lucy. Hiya Vladdy. Ethel, Fred, nice to meet you. This is my old man, Johnny.

JOHNNY: Howya doin'? You folks comin' to see Mina's number at the dance?

FRED: Actually, I have to be at the lawyer's office. We were suppose to get here before dark, but the sun sets awfully early around here, and I'm afraid I'm running la....

ETHEL: [Interrupting] Are you the Mina "Boom-Boom" Harker? Arrested in 27 states and Canada?

MINA: Always glad to meet a fan. That's 28 states now, and Puerto Rico.

ETHEL: Gosh, I've always wondered what you do in your act. Every time I get to that part in the newspaper, Fred takes it away.

FRED: [Interrupting] Well, Ethel, obviously Mrs. Harker is quite busy getting ready for her ah, ah, ah....

MINA: "Performance?"

FRED: [Relieved] "Performance." We shouldn't disturb her any longer.

MINA: That's all right, Fred. The girls can stay and watch. You boys will just have to wait 'till the show.

VLADDY: Come on Fred. Why don't you go see if the lawyers are in. Johnny and I need to check on the band. We'll see you girls back at the hotel.

[Exit VLADDY, JOHNNY, FRED.]

LUCY: [To MINA] So. You and Vladdy dated.

MINA: When I was younger. Anyway that was ages ago. You don't have anything to worry about. Johnny is the man for me.

LUCY: Well....

MINA: You probably wouldn't care if I did something else for a living.

LUCY: No, I guess not.

MINA: Lucy, honey. You may not believe it, but I have helped keep more couples together than you know.

ETHEL: How do you do that?

MINA: Dancing lessons.

ETHEL & LUCY: Dancing lessons?

MINA: Girls, every woman can do what I do on stage. It just takes a little professional coaching.

ETHEL: Really?

MINA: Sure, hon. Watch.

[dancing lesson to the song "Hell" by Squirrel Nut Zippers]

[MINA begins by show some burlesque moves. ETHEL enthusiastically tries steps, pulls LUCY in, who is reluctant at first. As lesson progresses, she gets more into it. Actual dance steps TBD.]

MINA: So you see, girls, with some imaginative costuming and a few of these moves, you can keep your man interested for a long time.

ETHEL: Gee, thanks Mina.

MINA: Anything for Vladdy's friends.

LUCY: Yeah, thanks Mina. Gosh, Ethel, we should get back to the hotel and change for the dance. See you after your show, Mina.

MINA: See you later, girls. And keep practicing those steps.

[Exit LUCY & ETHEL to side room, giggling.]

Act I, scene 3

INT. Same as before. Enter VLADDY & Johnny.

JOHNNY: Hi honey. How did the lesson go?

MINA: Just fine. Say, Vladdy, that Lucy of your can really dance.

VLADDY: Thanks Mina. Listen, you two. I need your help. My friend Fred is a relative of Van Helsing.

JOHNNY: Not the Vampire Hunter?!

VLADDY: Yes. And the family lawyers have told him that there might be vampires at the reunion tonight, so he's coming to stake us out.

MINA: How do you know about all this.

VLADDY: The lawyers told me. Professional courtesy.

JOHNNY: We can't let him find out anythin'.

VLADDY: That's where I need your help. Could you two keep him occupied when I'm leading the band.

MINA: Sure thing, hon.

VLADDY: Thanks. [Looks at watch] Gotta go do the last sound check. Mina, I'll cue your entrance as soon as the second set is over. [Exits]

JOHNNY: Eh, Mina, I have an idea.

MINA: Really?

JOHNNY: Yeah, and it'll take care of this situation, permanently. Here's what you're gonna do.

[Exits whispering to each other.]

Act I, scene 4

[At the ball, backstage. Entry music the last 10 seconds of "Hell".

Enter VLADDY and MINA.]

MINA: Thank you, thank you. You are all too kind.

VLADDY: Let's have another round of applause for our very own Mina "Boom-Boom" Harker. [pauses] And now, some more music from the islands. [to Mina] Nice show, Mina.

MINA: Thanks, doll. A lot of familiar faces out there we haven't seen in decades.

VLADDY: Centuries. I told the committee that if they made it a costume ball, people will come. You know how many of us like to live in the past.

MINA: Not me, honey. Every night's a new night for me. You taught me that.

[Enter JOHNNY, escorting LUCY.]

JOHNNY: 'Nother great show, Mina. Hey, Vladdy, she dance, or can she dance!

Enter FRED and ETHEL.

ETHEL: Great show, Mina.

MINA: Thanks, hon. You're doing pretty good yourself out there.

FRED: Yeah, Mina. I don't know what you taught Ethel, but I haven't had this much fun on the dance floor in years.

MINA: Well, Fred, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. [to ETHEL] Can I borrow him for a spin?

ETHEL: If Lucy doesn't mind me borrowing Vladdy for a dance.

JOHNNY: Bada-boom, bada-bang. And Lucy can dance with me.

FRED: [to MINA] Mind if we stop by the buffet first? I could sure use a bite.

MINA: What a coincidence! That's just I was thinking. [Holds out hand to FRED. FRED leads MINA off stage.]

[Other couples begin to dance. Jokes go back and forth.]

LUCY/VLADDY: What's a Vampire's favorite cocktail?

A: Bloody Marys.

JOHNNY/LUCY: What's black and white and red all over?

A: A vampire at dinner time.

ETHEL/VLADDY: How many vampire hunter does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Three: one to drive in the stake, one to cut the base off, and one to stuff garlic in the socket.

VLADDY/JOHNNY: What's a Vampire's favorite cut of meat?

A: A steak.

LUCY/ETHEL: What does a Vampire love with his morning croissant?

A: Coffin-au-lait

ETHEL/JOHNNY: Why aren't there any Jewish vampires?

A: Because blood isn't kosher.

LUCY: Hey Johnny, how did you and Mina meet?

JOHNNY: It was love at first bite.

[While jokes are happening, FRED gets "bitten". Wait for scream cue from FRED.]

ETHEL: That sounded like Fred. [Rushes to FRED] Oh my God. Somebody help. He's white as a sheet.

VLADDY: Oh, oh.

LUCY: Vladdy, do something.

VLADDY: It's too late, honey. [to Fred] Fred, Fred. Can you hear me?

FRED: [Fred channels Bela Lagosi] I can hear everything. Do you hear them out there.

[Sound cue for wolf howls] The Children of the Night. Such music.

VLADDY: Cut it out Fred. You lost blood. That doesn't give you an accent.

FRED: Oh.

ETHEL: What happened, Fred?

FRED: I went to the buffet with Mina, and then she bit me.

MINA: Oh, oh. I think we used the wrong plan, Johnny.

JOHNNY: [to FRED] Hey there, big guy. No offense, we were just trying to help Vladdy and keep you out of trouble.

VLADDY: Well, it's too late now.

ETHEL: What do you mean, too late? He's walking and talking. Really pale, but walking and talking.

VLADDY: Ethel, your husband is now a Vampire. He will need fresh blood every two or three days. Unless someone puts a stake through his heart, cut his head off, and stuff his mouth full of garlic, he will live forever.

ETHEL: Wah!

LUCY: Don't cry, Ethel. You'll get use to it. After all, Vladdy is one of them.

ETHEL: Really? I don't see him going hunting every night.

VLADDY: No, no. Too much work. I'm part owner of a blood bank. Twice a week, I drop by for a transfusion. When I travel, I carry it in powder form. [pulls out zip lock bag, begin commercial section]

Tired of hunting down your meals when far from home? Try Vladdy's "Hemo-Quik[tm]". Just add water. One little box can last you a week.

LUCY: [Pulls out bottle] And when you're feeling run down, try Vita-veta-vegamin. [takes a swig] That's Vita-veta-vegamin. [Another swig; staggers]

VLADDY: Ok, honey. That's enough.

ETHEL: So everything will be alright?

LUCY: It takes a little getting use to.

MINA: But you will get to buy him a whole new wardrobe.

ETHEL: Oh, shopping!

MEN TOGETHER: Girls....

LUCY: Oh hush. We'll be getting a few things for ourselves too. Dancing costumes.

JOHNNY: Bada-boom, bada-bing. If you know what I mean.

FRED: Well, if I'm going to stay up all night, let's dance!

VLADDY: That's the spirit, Fred. Hit it boys. Conga line!!!

[Exeunt Omnes Congus]

FIN

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Intermittent Quality

2008-09-25T01:41:00.001-07:00

Who programs rain-sensing intermittent wipers? Have they actually driven in the rain? In traffic? In a car with a windshield?

I've driven two cars with rain-sensing wiper systems. Two is a poor sample rate, but since I drive/drove them all the time, and one of them in a place where rain is not seasonal, my sample rate of their performance is very high. And I have zombie Richard Feynman on my side.

Our Toyota Corolla Verso[1] has four levels of "rain" sensitivity, as well as two, fixed speed settings. To me, this implies a speed spectrum like this:

0 - 0.2 - 0.4 - 0.6 - 0.8 - 1 - 2

This was certainly the case in all the cars I've driven that had variable speed wipers that were directly controlled by the driver.

However the actual spectrum I get on the Verso is:

0 - WTF! - 1 - 2

Changing the variable setting doesn't seem to affect the sensitivity of the system. What's more, the lowest sensitivity setting will cycle the wipers as fast as the highest setting. What??!!

This is not rocket science, people. Regardless of how much the "rain sensor" is a technical black box, the data it outputs should be some normalized value which reflects how "wet" the windshield is, which is compared against a trigger value that's associated with what the driver has set.

And this is probably one of the easiest features in a car to test. You don't need a track, you don't even need most of the car. A correctly configured windshield and wipers and a couple of spray bottles will iron out 80% of the bugs in the system. The other 20% will require misters and a shower head.

Get on this, people. And fix my system while you're at it.

[1] The Verso is something like a Sienna squished into the wheelbase of a Rav4. I wanted an actual mini-van, but neither Honda nor Toyota sold theirs in Europe.

I never meta post I didn't like

2008-09-25T00:57:00.001-07:00

I started writing this entry some nine months before its posting date. Typical.

While re-reading A.S. Byatt's Possession for the umpteenth time, I realized that one of her themes is totally why I've waited as long as I have (three-four years) to start a blog: For whom am I writing? In the Romance (not a Novel, especially when borrowing its preface from Hawthorn's preface to House of the Seven Gables), there are writings for Publication, private Correspondences and personal Journals. Byatt meditates on all three, through the thoughts of the characters as well as via the narrative voice. As one character puts it:

Letters [...] exclude not only the reader as co-writer, or predictor, or guesser, but they exclude the reader as reader; they are written, if they are true letters, for a reader.

—Possession, Ch. 8

Now, I did spend the better part of a year writing weekly newsletters, which were eventually distributed to something like 200+ people during its year-and-a-half of active life. I admit that part of the reason the newsletters stopped was that I'd come back to California with the family, and so a majority of people who got updated on my life via the newsletter could just come visit or phone without have to deal with trans-Atlantic time zone differences and international toll costs.

Also, I'd be less than forthcoming if I didn't mention that it was hard work trying to put the events of the week into some sort of context, or at least come up with a framing device that could transform the snippets from social gatherings, family anecdotes, personal observations and baby pictures into a sort of Narrative. And the pictures were a pain as I felt this drive to organize them by event or time frame, tag them so that the file names would include the names of all the people in them (there really should be a standard for adding meta data, such as tags, to images, like id3 for audio files). This was partly due to a mild tendency to OCD on my part, but it also made it easier to track down specific images when the inevitable requests come in for the full resolution originals.

At some point, I hit the wall on the pictures and the newsletters, which is why there are 11000+ photos from the last three-and-a-half years in my iPhoto library (if I could get my act together, I'd only keep about two months' of pictures in iPhoto, with the rest exported out to folders ordered by event and date) and the most recent newsletter dates from early 2005.

So for a while now I've been thinking: a blog, that's the ticket, that'll help me to clear out iPhoto and finally let people know about our summer vacations, the Balls my wife and I have attended and the continuing adventures of my son. This urge has gotten stronger as I see more and more of my friends blog, though of course it doesn't help that they are also all over the place in terms of Voice and Audience. Many of them using their blogs as a primary source for their families (read: Grandparent types) to keep up with their children. Just as many blog mostly about current events, their non-familial interests and/or their jobs. A much smaller percentage will mix these two, though sometimes they will try to avoid this conflation of Narratives by having different blogs for different people. (Disclosure, I'm doing this as well, or rather, I plan on doing this as I also have another blog which will carry on the tradition from my original newsletters to share family updates. Just as soon as I can get some pictures tagged.)

Well, as you can see, it's still slow going. Wish me luck in keeping this and the other blog updated.

David Pogue: Eat Your Heart Out

2008-08-17T01:24:00.001-07:00

So I've been known to write lyrics now and then, particularly for the fine people of PEERS. The following were written in 1997 and 2003, respectively. The first was for an Arthurian themed event called "La Belle Daunce Sans Merci" and the second for for a Greek mythology event that was never produced. The choice of appropriate music is left as an exercise to the reader.

A Song about some Orkney Lads

(spoken)
Gee Mordred, what do you want to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night, Robin:
Try to take over the throne!

(sung)
They're Robin and Mordred
Yes, Robin and Mordred
One is a Bastard
The other's brain-dead
They're of the Orkney Clan, and
Morgana's evil plan
They're comin',
They're Robin and Mordred, Dred, Dred, Dred
Dred, Dred, Dred, Dred, DRED.

Before our tale is done
Their treach'ry will be shown
By the dawning of the sun
They'll take over the throne

They're Robin and Mordred
Yes, Robin and Mordred
All the blood they've shed
Is upon Morgana's head
To prove their mother's bile
They'll desecrate the Grail
They're comin',
They're Robin and Mordred, Dred, Dred, Dred
Dred, Dred, Dred, Dred, NARF.

(NB That's "Sir" Robin to you.)

I Am The Strongest Man

Oh better far to live and die
Under the sword and shield I ply,
Than play a Hera-crossed stepson's part
With a crazy head and a strongman's heart.
Away to the Hellenic world go me,
Where Heroes fight with gymnastic glee
But I'll be true to the Delphic Plan
And live and die the Strongest Man.
    For I am the Strongest Man!
And it is, it is the Delphic Plan
To be the Strongest Man!
    For I am the Strongest Man!

        You are!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!

And it is, it is the Delphic Plan
To be the Strongest Man!

        It is!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!

When I sally forth to seek my preys
My royal master blocks my ways.
I kill a few more beasts, it's true,
Then King Eurystheus tells me to;
And suddenly he is o'er keen
To have his stables very clean,
And manages to get me to
More dirty work than e're I do,
    For I am the Strongest Man!
And it is, it is the Delphic Plan
To be the Strongest Man!
    For I am the Strongest Man!

        You are!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!

And it is, it is the Delphic Plan
To be the Strongest Man!

        It is!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!

When lion, snakes, and birds I kill,
It is a sign of my martial skill.
Stag, boar, bull, mares, and cattle too
Apples, Cerberus, a Girdle?
    Whew!
Twelve years of labors have I done
Can I go home to raise my son?
And back in Thebes they say "You're Great!
"But Herc, there's a Centaur at the gate.
    "For you, the Strongest Man!"
And it is, it is the Delphic Plan
To die the Strongest Man!
    For I am the Strongest Man!

        You are!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!

And it is, it is the Delphic Plan
To die the Strongest Man!

        It is!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!
Hurrah for the Strongest Man!

Hum at your own risk.

Ching-Shan Lee 1927?-2008

2008-03-10T15:26:00.001-07:00

As some of you already know, my father passed away on Tuesday, February 26. Unlike my mother's death, his was not unexpected. Dad's physical health had been in decline since before my mother's death and had done so rather precipitously after his fall at the end of 2006. This was further accelerated after falling a second time, as well as breaking his hip, in late 2007. Of course, if you had asked him, he would have said that he didn't expect to survive into the 21st century, and this from the early 90s, as my mother had told me at the time (and continued to tell me throughout the 90s). I last saw him just after Christmas last year, when he got a chance to see pictures of Tobias playing in the snow.

********************

My father was a survivor, an intellectual who was forced to work more often with his hands than with his mind. He survived the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (the family village is near Harbin). His personal convictions caused him to leave Beijing in early 1949, one step ahead of the Communists, and survived the trek to Taiwan, via Hong Kong and a stint in the Taiwanese Army (a journey which, incidentally took five years off his age). Those same convictions kept him from working as an acupuncturist in the US, as the licensing board was affiliated with Mainland China. Those convictions kept us from re-contacting his family in Beijing for years, and delayed our trip there until 1994, 45 years after he'd left it. But his other convictions, about personal honesty and importance of his children, my brother Eugene and I, led him and us into new lives. His losing a religious debate to a Jesuit at university caused him to convert to Catholicism. His personal disappointment at the Taiwanese government, as well as both our parents' desire to give us children better opportunities than the twin options of rote cramming our way into a place at university or a stint in the Taiwanese Army brought our entire family to the United States. A second exodus for both our parents (my mother was born and raised in Vietnam) and we were all strangers in a strange land.

Embarrassed about his accent, he felt uncomfortable speaking English in front of native speakers, though he could understand them well enough (and he could "read" a person with amazing accuracy). So while my mother could still work at nursing related jobs while trying for her US license, my father ended up working as a stevedore of sorts, loading numbered cages at a food service distribution warehouse, and he would end his working life as cook at a Chinese fast food stand in a mall, six days a week. Those of you who've eaten my father's cooking (for it was my father who was the Chef of the house, mom was always sous-chef if they were both in the kitchen) will find it hard to reconcile the amazing dishes he made at home (often looking just like the pictures in recipe books) with the endless servings of "egg fu young" and "mu shu gai pan" from the food court. (Though I admit that my friends and I at Rice welcomed visits from Dad on Fridays nights, where dozens of egg rolls and a half pan of sweet and sour pork were eagerly wolfed down by always hungry college students.) Unwilling to take advantage of his culinary skills (he and mom attended cooking school with Fu Pei Mei in Taipei, and his technique is the reason I curl my thumb in at the cutting board), we passed up opportunities to run our own restaurants.

Though he curbed his own ambitions, he expected much from Eugene and I. He had little knowledge of Rice University when I first entered, though eventually he'd clearly heard of its reputation from our Chinese friends, and was more than happy to tell people that I attended that "rice pot" school. And of course, Eugene was the one to actually get the first college degree in the family, while I left school and Texas for a journey of my own, which has brought me to my own strange land, thus completing some sort of cosmic, family loop. And if I have any regrets at all, it is that Tobias will not have any direct impressions of his Chinese grandparents, his Yehyeh and Nainai.

********************

As with my mother's passing in 2001, we will not have a full funeral ceremony, but will hold a viewing on March 19th, from 10 AM to 7 PM.

Winford Funeral Home
8514 Tybor Dr
Houston, TX 77074
(713) 771-9999
(Tybor is off Gessner, one block South of Highway 59.)

Eugene and I will be available to visitors at the viewing.

In keeping with Chinese tradition, we will be handing out "red bags"--with candy and a coin inside--at the viewing. We ask that you eat the candy in remembrance of my father's cooking; and spend the coin for pleasure, in memory of the pleasure of my father's company.

We also ask that you refrain from bringing flowers to the viewing or sending them to my parents' home, not for reasons of tradition, but ones of practicality: we simply have no space for them. Cards, however, would be most welcomed, and should be sent to:

The Lee Family
16922 Macleish Drive
Houston, TX 77084

We already have a memorial fund in my mother's name at Katy Hospital. If you are so inclined you can donate time, money or other resources (blood and plasma) to the Memorial Hermann Hospital System either in my mother's name (Chin-Ling Lee) or my father's. For more information about donating, go to:

www.memorialhermann.org

It was my father's wish to be interred with my mother. Eugene and I have decided that after cremating Dad's remains, we will eventually inter both their ashes with the remains of my maternal grandmother, who is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles. This might take place as early as this summer, but we'll give advanced notice once we've gotten things organized.

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I will be in California from this coming Thursday, the 13th, to the 23rd (Easter Sunday) and will be in Houston from the 18th to the 20th. You can contact me via my US cell: 650-440-2270, though please be aware that Central European Time is five hours ahead of Eastern and eight hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time, so the ringer might be off depending on when you call.

I hope to see some of you in the Bay Area and others in Houston.

For future updates on this and other family related stuff (like long dormant Newsletter), please go to my other blog.

Long Distance Meta

2008-01-15T09:26:00.001-08:00

From nine time zones away, I'm keeping up with the Steve Jobs keynote at MacWorld 2008 via Engadget and TUAW. I was also trying to read Fake Steve's liveblog, but the app he's using seems to think that both Safari and Firefox are outdated. Maybe I need to be running in Leopard? Sigh.

A Constitutional RIght to Fly

2007-11-18T10:09:00.001-08:00

La Professora posted about her presentation on "What is the threat to civil liberties in the War against Terrorism?". As she says herself, people seem to have an expectation of privacy either where there is none at all (e.g.: talking out loud on a cell phone while walking in a public space, posting personal info on public pages in MySpace/Facebook or the like), the information is being collected by a third party for business reasons and is not covered by any specific privacy policy (e.g.: customer loyalty cards) or it is being collected by the government in the course of normal interactions with individuals (e.g.: tax returns, title transfers, automatic toll payment records).

As creepy as it might seem to many people (including myself), I absolutely understand why a government might want to collect such information and perform analysis on it. A government might even wish to do so in a period of absolute peace, let alone when explicitly threatened by known terrorists. (Like La Professora, I shall pass on the rhetorical quagmire that is the definition of " 'War' on 'Terror' ". Nope, not going there in this post.) Such efforts occasionally approach the disturbingly surreal, as is the (thankfully overruled) idea of finding terrorist in San Francisco by looking at sales of falafel.

I agree that if one does not even attempt to change the status quo by using the ballot box, then one's complaints about said status begin to sound more like bellyaching than Civil debate (as opposed to "civil" debate, which is rare on the InterTubes indeed.) However, our views diverge on the "No-Fly List", which is not something that a person can actually do much about, to the point of not even knowing if one is on the list until one is trying to check in at the airport. At last count, the list contained 300,000+ names. To put that in perspective, this means that some 0.1% of people in America—about one in a thousand—are on this list. When was the last time you were in a mall on a Saturday? There's one. What about on a university (or even a large high school) campus? At least one. Are you near a mosque or a falafel stand? The FBI would have you believe that those are terrorist hotbeds, in Des Moines or Damascus, so there would be lots more.

Assuming no duplicates (because we all know how consistently names in non-Roman languages get transliterated to English), deceased (I wonder how many of the 9/11 hijackers are still on this list) or members of the US Senate, that's over three hundred thousand people who are too dangerous to be allowed on airplanes (er, see below), in spite of otherwise being restricted to carrying liquids in three oz. containers/quart baggies, no blades of any kind and the ubiquitous humiliation that is the removal footwear and belts. (Lighters and safety matches, on the other hand, apparently pose no security threat on planes whatsoever and can be carried aboard, even in opaque baggies.) These people are too dangerous to be allowed to fly, but they are allowed to take trains, buses and ferries. They are allowed to buy fertilizer and rent moving vans. I don't know if they're allowed to take flying lessons, but there are general aviation flights which would not turn them away, nor necessarily ask for ID, let alone call up the TSA to check the "No-Fly List".

My favorite security expert, Bruce Schneier, has said many times, in essays and presentations, that he doesn't care if Osama bin Laden is on his flight, as long as the guy isn't bringing a bomb aboard or otherwise able to overpower the crew and control the plane.

Ok, let's step back from the administrative nuttiness that this list represents and look at the constitutionality of such a list. It is clear that the Constitution does not explicitly assert a Right to Travel. However the First Amendment grants the Right to Free Assembly, and I would argue that the freedom to assemble, especially as the Framers would've understood it, necessitates the freedom to travel to the point of assembly. And it's worth noting that even though technology affords us with ways to virtually assemble, there is a vast difference between a million avatars marching (flying, slithering, etc.) on Second Life Washington and a million physical beings heading to the Mall. (I realize that this difference is sure to diminish as the technology seeps into governments' and politicians' day-to-day activities, but it will be a long time coming.)

Additionally, though constitutionally less sound, I would argue that a "No-Fly List" violates habeas corpus, though certainly not in the same way as actually holding a person in custody without a writ. What if a person had to travel to or from the continental US to Alaska or Hawaii to see a dying relative? In Miami? Are they suppose to take the Pan-American Highway? How many passenger liners connect Honolulu to San Francisco? Via the Panama Canal? As far as I know, there are no "dying grandma" exemptions to the "No-Fly List". We treat convicted criminals with more respect.

Imagine if the list was, instead, a "No-Car List": that is to say, a list of people who are not allowed to ride in cars (or motorcycles). Many New Yorkers may not even notice this as being a restriction (depending on how one defines taxis). People in the Northeast, especially ones living in larger cities, might find this inconvenient, but there are enough public transit solutions to cope most of the time. Things start to get harder as one heads West, until one gets to Los Angeles, where public transit is as much a comedy as it is a tragedy. In that case, it could easily be argued that to keep an Angeleno from using a car is tantamount to house arrest. (And before you cyclists object, go ride a bike in Metro L.A. for a week, then tell we can talk.)

I do not argue that cars are the same as passenger airplanes. I do suggest that airplanes have made certain, American, lifestyles possible[1]: living two time zones away from your parents, having parents who live two time zones away from each other, having siblings who live literally in the four corners of the country. And now, those lifestyles are only possible because of easy air travel. To take that away from 0.1% of the population for reasons that cannot be disclosed to the public at large nor the persons affected is contrary to the spirit of what America stands for.

The Declaration of Independence implied a person's right to travel by asserting that everyone has a right to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The Preamble to the Constitution further asserts that it is for "secur[ing] the Blessing of Liberty", one of which is surely the right to move about as one pleases, both as to where and how. And as a nation of Immigrants (I include myself in that number) and Migrants, how can we ask the world to "[give us] your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breath free" and then tell them that they have to take a train?

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[1] My wife is Austrian, and we live in the house her father grew up in, sharing the property with her paternal grandmother. My in-laws are two streets away, about five minutes by foot, in the house my wife grew up in. My brother-in-law lives in the house behind her parents, purchased from the estate of the deceased neighbor. Her six cousins and their families live within a half hour drive of our house, most of them living in our town. This is, as far as I can tell, still the norm in Austria, as well as most of continental Europe (the UK and Ireland being notable exceptions), though this pattern is shifting towards the "American" model, as trans-EU employment opportunities increase and families become more "nuclear".

Into the Wilds of Blogland

2007-09-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Hello world. If you found this blog because I sent you a link, thanks for following the link. If you found this through random searching/clicking, and don't otherwise know me from Adam, I hope you find something of interest here. Well, probably not this particular entry, but in time. More later.

Plum Sky Rock

More of my imaginary Broadway career

Paul's Guide to Vienna, Part 2 of 3

Paul's Guide to Vienna,for People who've read the Guide Books and want MORE

Part the Second: Food

End of Part the Second

Paul's Guide to Vienna, Part 1 of 3

Paul's Guide to Vienna,for People who've read the Guide Books and want MORE

Part the First: Preparations, Lodging & Sightseeing

End of Part the First

Some thoughts on the Watchmen movie

100 Most Important Books to Read Before You Die: Part 1

Maxtor is Dead to Me

30 Minutes Earlier

Epilogue

Fixing iTunes 8 Podcast Refresh with AppleScript

The Road to Carpathia

The Road to Carpathia

A Skit in One Unnatural Act

By Paul T.S. Lee

The Players

The Props

The Script

Act I, scene 1

Act I, scene 2

Act I, scene 3

Act I, scene 4

Intermittent Quality

I never meta post I didn't like

David Pogue: Eat Your Heart Out

Ching-Shan Lee 1927?-2008

Long Distance Meta

A Constitutional RIght to Fly

Into the Wilds of Blogland

Paul's Guide to Vienna,

for People who've read the Guide Books and want MORE

Paul's Guide to Vienna,

for People who've read the Guide Books and want MORE