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3月31日 VISTA - Not Always a Full ViewVISTA – Not Always a Full View
My old computer was getting more buggy by the day, and after consulting my favorite poet (whose day job is writing for computer magazines) I was advised to trade in my abacus and Windows 98 software and upgrade to a new computer. I settled on a sleek, silver machine with the HP logo on it running Microsoft’s latest operating system, Vista. For those of you contemplating a similar upgrade, I have only one word of advice for you – wait!
I’m not exactly a computer novice, having progressed from punch cards and FORTRAN to the Apple 2-c and DBASE, from DOS to Windows in all its past flavors. Therefore, I was not exactly surprised to find the task of moving data from my old machine to my new one not to be a simple task. However, I never counted on the amount of frustration I’ve experienced in the past month.
I purposely purchased a unit that has a built in internal/external hard drive, figuring I could use this not only to back up my current data, but also to transfer files from my old to my new computer. Wrong. To begin with, my new transportable hard drive came with a little piece of paper inserted in the box that my vendor never warned me about, stating that the backup software on the disc accompanying the drive did not work with Vista. Hello! They just sold me a Vista equipped machine. They suggested I log on to their website, and download the appropriate new drivers. I did. The website informed me to check back in the future, as there were as yet no available new drivers. I had the same experience with the medical software I daily use and depend on, as well as the synching program with my Palm.
I also discovered that while I could readily access my hotmail account, I couldn’t delete the contents of my spam folder; clicking on the appropriate button produced clicking noises but no results. Ditto for an annoying recurring popup that kept reminding me to adjust the resolution on my monitor (already done) then click on the number 2 to make the message go away. Isn’t the definition of insanity when you keep doing the same things but expect different results? I must have clicked, pushed, entered the number 2 on my keyboard more times then I can count, but you already know what happened – nothing. (Was it my imagination that heard loud laughter emanating from the direction of Redmond?)
Aside from the arguably improved graphic design of Vista, I’m told it offers improved intruder and malware protection (difficult to document at this stage of ownership) as well as a bundled speech recognition program. Now the later is something I can definitely use. I was surprised not to have seen this feature advertised in the promotion. In fact, it’s something that is buried in one of the sub-menus, and you can easily pass it up unless you know it’s there and look for it. It requires for you to turn the feature on, then go through a set up menu and brief tutorial. I was pretty excited, for on first pass, the program performed a lot better than my prior speech recognition program (which did not work with Vista due to lack of available drivers, etc…) The second time I tried using the program, it selected menu options just fine, but refused to take my dictation. Perhaps I wasn’t paying it enough - I don’t know. After going through the usual incantations, turning the computer off and back on, and all the frustrating dance steps familiar to any Windows user, the results remained the same – nada.
By this time I had invested more energy in this project than many guys invest in a relationship, and I wasn’t ready to give up. I turned to my ace-in-the hole, a friend who’s a Carnegie-Mellon graduate, writes robotics programs for fun, and recently purchased nearly the identical system. I went over to his place, poured out my frustrations, and received a pitying smile in return. “It’s really pretty simple,” he explained. “Let me just show you.” He activated his speech recognition program, ordered to word processor to come on, and sure enough, it did. Then he started dictating, “Mary had a little lamb…” The computer wasn’t interested in Mary or her little lamb, nor in my friend. The cursor just kept blinking. My friend then went through the turn off, turn back on ritual, sprinkled some incense, said a few incantations, and was rewarded….with the blinking cursor. Fortunately, I never touched his machine, so he couldn’t invoke some unintended foul up on my part. Genuinely puzzled, explaining that he just dictated five e-mails that morning without any problems using the same program, he repeated the process several more times.
I must confess, I felt a certain amount of satisfaction. Not only could I cause my own system to malfunction through my physical interaction, but I could produce the same results in another person’s computer just by my very presence in the room. This is some powerful mojo! Perhaps I could extend my power through great distances! Perhaps as you read these words, you soon will find your own machine doing unexpected things. Commands ignored. Mysterious system crashes. Unexplained lock-ups. HA-HA-HA-HA. Tremble before my power! Pray! Pray, and you might yet be forgiven. Or not. The gods have their whims.
3月26日 I Left My Heart In San FranciscoI've lived at various times in my life in several parts of our great country: Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles. I've traveled through and visited 44 of our 50 States, and found something in each one I found admirable. And still, there is one American city which holds an attraction I cannot completely explain, but find undeniable and magnetic. Regardless of the weather or the circumstances that brought me here, when I leave, the song rings in my mind - "I left my heart in San Francisco." Here are a few images from my most recent visit to the city by the Bay.
3月22日 Music and MadnessThere is a close intersection between the arts and the mind, between creativity and madness. The following poem fuses the world of the musician with that of the psychiatrically disturbed. Draw your own conclusions.
Selectivity
Where thalamic clavichords have Keys uncountable, only spidery hands Can finger major, minor – a third
From joy to blue, a fifth from rose to sky. A single hydrogen may hold the right key down, a methyl –
turn the night sky green. Once, ham-fisted phenothiazines slammed out cacophonies like diskinetic
drunks at a karaoke bar, thick fingers beating joy with pain. Now nanobot Perahias slip blood/brain
fences unescorted, pump serotonin yo-yos between synaptic paddles until a side-man flips a switch,
sends voltages to keyboards and mixers down the line. Pure frequencies. For the music, details we needn’t know.
David T. Manning 3月16日 Juvenile Diabetes - the Path to a CureBeing a doctor, I get exposed to a lot of patients with all different kinds of diseases. However, when the disease hits someone you know, your perspective changes - things become personal. I'll let Justine tell you her story in her own words. Maybe it will touch you, as it did me and her audience, and you'll feel motivated to do something about this problem. Don't let that feeling melt away. You, too, can help, through your local chapter of the JDRF - The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. And now, just finishing her first year of college, here's Justine.
There are two defining moments in my life that I can say with absolute conviction, have molded me into the person standing here in front of you.
The first happened almost 4 years ago. I was 15 years old and into my second semester of my freshman year of high school. I had just finished a season playing with the school’s girls tennis team, and had signed up for my first season of outdoor roller hockey. I was your typical teenage girl. My whole future in front of me, nothing could touch me; I was invincible.
That all changed. My parents started noticing changes in me. I started eating more, drinking more, and going to the bathroom sometimes multiple times in an hour. I would wake up suddenly with painful leg cramps in the middle of the night; cramps I just assumed were growing pains. None of my new behaviors concerned me, in fact I barely even noticed; meanwhile my parents were growing more and more concerned.
April 15, 2003 started off as any other school day for me. I woke up, got ready, and was off to school until 2:30. Only this time, I wasn’t going straight home. Instead, Mom picked me up and took me to a local hospital to get blood drawn. I still didn’t understand why and I didn’t care to know.
We finished up there, went to the grocery store, and then headed home. I started my Geometry homework, laying out everything on my bed and settling in for the following hour of math confusion. Somewhere around 5:00 PM the phone rang. It’s never for me, so as usual, I ignored it. Now, I wish the phone never rang.
At 5:00 on April 15, 2003 a doctor reading the results of my blood test told my mother over the phone to get me to Loma Linda’s Emergency Room as soon as possible. I was being diagnosed with Type I Diabetes, and everything changed.
Most of the people in this room are familiar with how it goes. They start an IV, doctors come and talk to you, etc. Then you go upstairs to your own little room on the pediatrics floor and they come in every hour during the middle of the night to poke your finger with little needles and you just lay there because you have no idea what is happening to you. Here you sit in a hospital room at 2:00 in the morning, while just a few hours ago you were doing homework. In fact, your geometry book is still lying on your bed where you left it.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the hospital or the nurses and the group of doctors. I don’t want to rehash all the trainings and learning how to carb count and what you can and cannot eat anymore. I don’t want to think about the first time that the nurse hands you the syringe and tells you to give yourself the shot. Go ahead. It’s no big deal. Besides, you’re going to have to learn to do it eventually.
If there is one moment in the hospital that I want to share with you, it is this one. There came a time where the stress, the changes, the obvious emotional struggle my parents were going through, and the overall feeling that life would never be the same, came to a boiling point. Before I broke, my mother was sent home by the nurses because she too, was feeling the stress. I cried harder lying in that hospital bed, with my dad crying next to me, than I have ever cried in my life.
But there came a time, after the tears had dried, that I made a promise. I swore that I would never, ever, let diabetes keep me from living my life. I would keep playing sports, keep going to friend’s birthday parties, and in general, keep being a normal teenager. Diabetes would never control me. I made that vow.
I spent my first year taking an average of six shots a day, not to mention countless finger pricks. I played in my first season of outdoor roller hockey two weeks after I left the hospital, as the only girl on my team, and I loved every second. My friends had birthday parties, and I attended. I even indulged n a little birthday cake as well. And somehow I managed to pass all my classes and complete my freshman year.
I started on an insulin pump in my second year, and you could never make me give that little piece of equipment up. I played a second season with the high school tennis team, and at the same time, played a second season of roller hockey. Life went on.
Almost four years have passed now since I was diagnosed. I’m still on the pump, and still loving it. I graduated high school and am a freshman in college right now. I don’t play any sports at the moment, but I played 4 seasons of tennis, and 3 seasons of hockey by the time I graduated. I would like to say that I haven’t broken my promise to myself in the years since…… but I would be lying.
About a year ago, I got the opportunity to attend an American Heroes Air Show with my father. My dad volunteers with Los Angeles County Fire Museum, and the show had asked if they would bring a piece of equipment to have on display. My dad ended up being the one to take it, and I decided to keep him company.
There were a lot of helicopters there on that day, but none as magnificent as one particular helicopter. It was the Army’s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, and it was beautiful. Not many people can look at a giant hunk of black metal that for all intents and purposes should not be able to fly, and call it beautiful, but I do.
Something happened to me that day that I do not question. I am not a religious person, but I fully believe that God spoke to me at that air show. As I stood gazing at the Blackhawk, I felt Him say to me “Justine, I put you on this Earth to do many things, and one of those is to fly. You were made to fly this helicopter and you will find a lot of joy in doing so.” And I believe Him. Nothing could tear my eyes away from that helicopter for long the rest of that day.
After we went home, I found dozens and dozens of pictures, articles and descriptions all over the Internet, and everything I read and everything I saw fortified my desire. I would sit in that cockpit someday. I was born to.
Shortly after, I changed all my plans for my future. I had planned on going to college, getting a Bachelor’s, maybe even a Masters degree in Biology, and working in forensic science. That no longer satisfied me. I was going to graduate high school, get my associates degree, and join the Army. From there, I’d do whatever I had to, to get in my helicopter. I had never been so excited about my future before in my life and I suspect I never will be again.
I broke my vow shortly before the third anniversary of the day I got diagnosed. I had been chatting online with a recruiter, and medical requirements came up. I lost everything in that moment. You see, if you’re a diabetic, the Army, Navy, or any other military branch will never let you join. There is no flight suit with your name stitched on it, no boot camp or flight school, and most especially, no cockpits.
My mother found me a few minutes later crying my eyes out on the couch downstairs. It took several minutes of trying to control the sobbing before I could attempt to explain to her what was wrong. Neither she nor my dad fully understood what flying meant to me, and they don’t fully understand even now. It is impossible to put it into words, and it is equally impossible to explain how much it hurts to know that, due to circumstances beyond my or anyone else’s control, I am being kept from it.
We all have our reasons for being here tonight, Some of us know what its like to live with diabetes, some of us know what its like to have a child, a grandchild, or a friend with diabetes, and some of us can only imagine.
I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is check my blood sugar. I end my night by checking my blood sugar again. I start off and end every day of my life since I got diagnosed doing what I have to do to live with diabetes. You think about it all the time. How many carbs are in this? Time for another shot. Does this have too much sugar? Oh, I’m low again. You spend every day wondering, if when you’re sixty years old, you’re going to have all your arms, legs hands and feet. Will you be able to see?
Nobody, whether it’s a one year old child or an adult, should have to go through life like that. No parent should have to give their child a shot, or prick their fingers and hear their cry of pain. No child or teenager should have to wonder if maybe, just maybe, someday they can get their feet off the ground.
I have 12 more years before I am too old to join the military. That is 12 years to find a cure. But for every day, every week, every month, and every year that goes by, my dream will get further and further from my reach. And if my story, my pleas, aren’t enough for you , think of this: every day that goes by without a cure, there is a chance that another child, another teenager, another adult, will be denied their dreams because of this disease. If the shots and the finger pricks and the daily life of a diabetic aren’t enough to motivate you to help us find a cure, let the possibility of more dreams lost be enough.
Every diabetic, child or adult, can live with this disease, but we cannot live with what this disease is taking away from us.
3月12日 Stunning Supreme Court DecisionI had a wonderful weekend - I'll post some photos later in the week. Meanwhile, I found in my mailbox the following item of sufficient interest to share with you:
Breaking News: Supreme Court Gives Gore's Oscar to Bush
Stunning Reversal for Former Veep
Just days after former Vice President Al Gore received an Academy Award for his global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," the United States Supreme Court handed Mr. Gore a stunning reversal, stripping him of his Oscar and awarding it to President George W. Bush instead.
For Mr. Gore, who basked in the adulation of his Hollywood audience Sunday night, the high court's decision to give his Oscar to President Bush was a cruel twist of fate, to say the least.
But in a 5-4 decision handed down Tuesday morning, the justices made it clear that they had taken the unprecedented step of stripping Mr. Gore of his Oscar because President Bush deserved it more.
"It is true that Al Gore has done a lot of talking about global warming," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority. "But President Bush has actually helped create global warming."
In another setback for the former vice president, a group of scientists meeting in Oslo, Norway today said that Mr. Gore was growing at an unsustainable rate.
"The polar ice caps may be shrinking, but Al Gore is clearly expanding," said Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke of the University of Tokyo.
The scientists concluded that if Mr. Gore continues to expand at his current rate, he could cause the earth to spin off its axis by 2010, sending it hurtling into the sun.
"Here's an inconvenient truth," Dr. Kyosuke added. "Al's got to stay away from those carbs."
Elsewhere, after foreigners received a record number of Academy Award nominations, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs proposed building a 12-foot high fence around the Kodak Theater.
3月6日 HorseplayHorseplay
Highway 101 winds along the scenic Santa Barbara coast from Ventura north until it turns inland shortly past Refugio State Beach, just before the turnoff to the Hollister Ranch. Dark oil platforms are framed against the background of the Channel Islands and the shimmer of sunlight reflecting off the Pacific. Today, the ocean lives up to it’s name. Only a few surfboarders are in evidence, sitting gloomily astride their becalmed boards, scanning the horizon, waiting like Godot for the roll of a wave that never comes. Once we turn inland into the Santa Ynez Valley, the temperature climbs noticeably. The hills are still green from the recent rains, but the creek beds are almost dry, indicating the surrounding vegetation is soon to change colors.
We leave 101 at the Solvang exit, soon passing an ostrich farm on our right. The sight of dozens of these large, ungainly looking birds (and not a one with his head buried in the sand) trooping across a grassy plain arrests my attention, but as I’m driving, fortunately only momentarily.
Once a year the principal hospital where I work invites the member of the Executive Committee to a weekend retreat. The ostensible purpose is to allow us to hash out the multiple and mounting challenges threatening the immediate survival of our institution, and what we might do to improve the odds of this happening. It’s also a reward to those of us who donate our time and energies to the hospital without other compensation, as well as a chance to do some “team building” in the parlance of the business world.
The venue selected by the Chief of Staff for this year’s retreat was the Aliso Ranch, located on 10,000 acres of rolling hills, gullies lined by ancient California oaks, and dotted with 2000 head of grazing cattle, scattered deer, watched over by soaring golden tailed hawks. Aside from the usual amenities, a friendly staff and surprisingly good food, the Ranch offers horseback riding, fly fishing, mountain bikes, paddle boats and kayaks, as well as access to tennis courts and golf courses for those who are so inclined.
Our Saturday morning meeting goes reasonably well. The presenters were sufficiently experienced to leaven their PowerPoint slides with small doses of humor, and not exceed the 4-½ hour timetable of talks and discussions that’s been shown to be the upper limit of our attention spans and bladder capabilities.
I hadn’t ridden a horse in over twenty years, though I had done a fair amount of riding prior to that time. As a result, I wisely chose to sign up for the intermediate group, rather than the advanced. The later contained two members of our group who either owned horses, or in the case of one, used to train them.
The chief wrangler did a pretty good job of sizing up his potential riders; I was very grateful for not having been given Diablo or Widow Maker for my mount. After giving us some preliminary (and sensible) rules like staying on the trails, not crowding the horse in front, and not straying too far from the group, we set out to ride.
The first hour on horseback was great. Redman, a reasonably well behaved quarter horse, responded well to thigh pressure and neck-reined commands, easing my earlier anxieties about not having ridden for so long. The scenery was arresting as we made our way up from the valley floor to the ridge that offered panoramic views of the Santa Ynez River and its surroundings. The weather was about as perfect as you could ask for riding – not too warm, clear, with only a few scattered clouds. Robin, scrub jay, and blue magpie calls filled the air. Aside from the creaking of the tack, the occasional snort of a horse mixed with the murmurings of some of the riders, nothing disturbed the serenity surrounding us. I was feeling good, thinking to myself, “hey, this is horseplay!”
The second hour my left knee started a minor protest every time we’d canter or gallop the horses. Pretty soon, the minor protest became a major rebellion. For anyone who has ever ridden a horse, you’ll know that it’s just about impossible to be on horseback at anything other than a slow walk without the use of your knees. (O.K., I’ll concede that if you were riding sidesaddle you might be able to get by, but as I’m the wrong sex and we’re in the wrong century for this exercise, I won’t count this.) Needless to say, after a couple of hours, I was more than happy to dismount. I can’t prove it, but I could have sworn Redman smiled at me as I walked away. 3月2日 Math SimplifiedThe week is winding down, and so am I. I haven't had a chance to visit with many of you over the past couple of weeks, and it will be another week or so before I can start to catch up. In the meantime, here is a little humor for the math challenged to help you start the weekend. MATH SIMPLIFIED 1. Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi
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