driving in Scotland, part 2

In retrospect, I very much enjoyed driving a full-sized van over two-lane roads with narrow shoulders, on the "wrong" side of the road, especially in the rain. I can say that now because we survived, and because the inspector at the car rental return shop wrote "NND" ("no new damage") on the report at the end of the trip.

The Brits are polite people and they drive that way. Except for the honkers. Stop at a place where you aren't supposed to stop (such as, entering a traffic circle and stopping because you forgot to look right to see who's about to hit you, or stop to let pedestrians finish crossing the street) and the guy behind will honk - every time. That's OK, because a lot of accidents are caused by people stopping where they aren't supposed to stop. But, I remember being honked at in Germany only once. Maybe the other German drivers were getting ready to get out and beat me senseless with a bratwurst, but they didn't honk as much. In Scotland and Germany, I didn't see any obvious signs of road rage, and didn't drive by any fender-benders, either.

In Scotland, most of what you need to know is painted on the asphalt in large white letters. Like, "slow" as you approach an intersection. Like, arrows telling you which lanes are turn lanes and which are through lanes. Like, the speed limit, a number inside a large circle. They do have road signs. My favorite is the sign reading, "Slow down NOW." There was one sign, a red circle with a blue background, that I never did decide what it meant. After awhile you'd see another just like it but with a red diagonal line telling you that the mystery zone ended.

One thing they do not have is billboards. They don't even have the kind of small-sign clutter we've come to associate with cities. You might notice that while you are there, or you might not notice until you get back home and look at all your photos and realize their scenery is not trashed and cluttered with signs. In the U.S., our scenery is blocked by signs. In Scotland and other parts of the U.K. and Europe, where the scenery is spectacular at every turn in the road, may they never be cursed with such garbage.

When we returned the rental car I noticed a Japanese couple leaving in theirs, apparently having just arrived in Edinburgh. The lady was behind the wheel and she had a thoughtful, almost prayerful, expression on her face. They don't drive on the left in Japan, I've been told. I hope that she, too, was rewarded with an "NDD" at the end of their trip.

eating in Scotland, part 2

Earlier, I tried to upload a photo of sticky toffee. Here 'tis. Doesn't look like much in this photo but it tasted wonderful. This, from a restaurant in Crieff called Passion. We spent the rest of the trip trying to find one as good.

travels in Scotland, part 2

One aspect of Scotland that you notice right way is the friendliness of the Scots. Granted, those in the business of hosting tourists like us have an incentive to be friendly but their warmth and good humor is genuine. That extends to others you bump into along the way such as taxi drivers.



Pictured here is Galvelmore, the B and B in Crieff, west of Perth, where we stayed two nights. We found it using Google before we left and booked our rooms well in advance. It turned out to be a good choice.

Galvelmore is owned and operated by Katy and David Galbraith and, naturally, I had to stay with someone who could be a (very) remote cousin. They have two young children, who were off to school by the time this picture was taken.

scenery in Scotland, part 3

Pictured here is Culcreuch Castle, near Fintry. (As usual, click to enlarge the photo.) As castles go, this is modest but it has been made into a fine hotel with a very good kitchen and bar, and it is the setting for about 200 weddings a year.

The part of the building on the left is the original part. The first two or three floors were complete by 1400. The rest was added in more modern times. The date over the front door is 1721. We stayed in the bridal suite, on the top floor. It isn't often you wake up to look out over the battlements of a castle!

I went out of my way to find this for a personal reason (and, truly, this is off the beaten path). Back when my family was a Scottish clan with a chief, he lived here. His forebears lived elsewhere around Loch Lomond but this seems to be the only structure associated with the clan that is not a ruin. Alas, the chief was denounced as an outlaw in the early 1600's and fled to Ireland, losing his estates. His son was the last chief of the clan and since then we have been chiefless. No, I am not volunteering to become the next chief!

scenery in Scotland, part 2

The castles of Scotland range from well-kept Blair Castle (top photo) to Urquhart Castle, on the shores of Loch Ness (below). Blair Castle (check it out: http://www.blair-castle.co.uk/index.asp) has room after room stuffed with porcelain, embroidery, silver, oil portraits, medieval swords and armor, furniture, and a truly fine exhibit of the history of the Atholl Highlanders, "Europe's only remaining private army."

At the other extreme is Urquhart Castle. This castle was taken, destroyed and rebuilt several times during its history. Check it out here:
http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/properties_sites_detail.htm?propertyID=PL_297

eating in Scotland, part 1

Scotland has a bum rap when it comes to food. Think of Scotland and you think of haggis, a local delicacy made from "lesser ingredients."

The reputation is so poor that I came close to cancelling the trip to Scotland in favor of Italy. "Let's go where they know how to cook food," I said. What a mistake that would have been.

Four of us ate three meals a day for a week and none of us had a bad meal. The Scots do a really fine job with seafood, venison, lamb, and beef. We are thinking of a seafood restaurant down by the waterfront in Oban with especially fond memories (halibut, scallops).

All of the B & B's advertise a "Scottish breakfast" that would satisfy a farm hand - porridge, eggs any way you want them, mushrooms, tomatoes ("to-MAH-toes"), various cereals, fruit, toast, jellies, orange juice, coffee. . .enough to do you for the rest of the day, or at least until you see a good place for lunch.

For lunch, you can get almost anything from fish and chips, "pub grub," soups, sandwiches, you name it. You can order haggis for lunch. Some castles and museums have both gift shops and places to order lunch, a convenient way to stay on schedule.

Speaking of haggis, see the photo above. That was the haggis I ordered as a "starter" for dinner at Culcreuch Castle. In a restaurant, you don't get the full-size, uncut haggis which is the stuff of legends and the focus of ceremonies. You do get a nice sampling, though, with veggies on the side. Did I mention "lesser ingredients?" The overall effect was more on the order of meat loaf. You get lesser ingredients in sausages, kielbasa, German wursts, and American hot dogs, all of which I love in the wurst way. Don't ask, don't tell, just eat and enjoy!

Desserts? Oh, yeah. Desserts are an art form in some restaurants. Our favorite dessert was "sticky toffee," which we tried out in different restaurants to see how many ways there are to make it (we got no two alike, all wonderful). I tried to upload a photo but Blogger is rebelling. Maybe later.

driving in Scotland, part 1

No, we aren't passing anybody. No, the photo hasn't been "flipped" left over right.

Laurel wanted to try her hand at the wheel and I was grateful. That put me in the passenger seat, which in this case meant the left side.

Driving on the left is the first thing you notice in the UK. Even as a pedestrian, you have to look right instead of left, and then look left halfway across the street.

Note the stone fence on the right side of the road. Note the narrow shoulders. Sometimes the stone fence is on the left with the same narrow clearance. This isn't too bad on a dry day if you have no tour buses hogging the road. On a rainy day the road seems narrower. We had only a day and a half of rain but my passengers thought even that was too much.

Driving in the cities is a whole 'nother story, which I'll get around to later.

scenery in Scotland, part 1

People go to Scotland for a variety of worthy reasons. Some go to play golf. Some go to drink good whisky. We met one young lady from Pennsylvania who went to Edinburgh to work on a master's degree in photography. But a lot of people, like us, go to see the historic castles, churches, and ruins that dot the countryside. These photos were taken at Jedburgh Abbey. (Click to enlarge.)







Note the ledge and crossbar above the door in the background, below the lower of the two windows. That's where Laurel was standing in this picture.











To get there, we had to go up and down these stairs. Note the toe of my shoe, bracing me against the wall to take this picture, which gives you some idea of the small size of these steps. No room for fatties, here. The spiral staircases are as amazing as the ornate stonework in the rest of the building. The steps had to be cut identically to fit the staircase. The inside corners of the steps stack on top of each other, forming a column, and the outer edges are anchored in the wall. That's a rope going around the column, our "handrail."

travels in Scotland

Just got back from a very fine but too-short nine days in Scotland. Watch this space for further details and photos, to be posted later. Right now my body is telling me it is an hour or two until sunrise and I'm going to have to sleep off the jet lag. ZZZzzzzzzz

view from my office

Sometimes you've got to stop and appreciate the beauty of the world around you, such as this view of the building next door to our building (click to enlarge):

I want a fun, frivolous subject here

I want a subject less somber, less serious, than hurricanes and the foolishness of our President and his top-level advisors such as Rummy, the Secretary of War. No, that was the old title. The current title is, Secretary of Defense.

So, the latest hurricane is going to roll into the North Atlantic in time for us to fly over it on our way to Scotland. Should be a fun view from 40,000 feet or whatever altitude we're cruising at. That's as close as I want to get to another hurricane.

And, believe it or not, a few Floridians noticed a faint treble from an earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday. Really, really faint. So now we can add earthquakes to hurricanes, tornados, sharks and alligators as reasons why you Yankees ought not to sell the family homestead and move to Florida.

The Bucs lost their opening game, the Red Sox are killing themselves, the Devil Rays can't get started, . . . no wait, here's some good news: The FSU Seminoles held on to edge Troy. Troy? TROY?

I'm still looking for a fun, frivolous subject, here. I'd share a "joke" I heard on Sunday but, nah, I'd better not. It wasn't all that funny.

Thursday, we leave for Scotland. Now, that should be a source of fun topics but you will have to wait until we got back.

the primaries are over, thank God

We just finished our primary elections in Florida, thereby (almost) putting an end to a heavy barrage of the sleaziest, slimiest election campaign ads that we've seen in a long time - that is, since the last election. In Florida, the way you run for office is to pin the liberal tail on the donkey who is your opponent. That's donkey as in jackass, not donkey as in Democrat. Even the Republicans, whose mothers undoubtedly taught them never to say unkind things about other Republicans, were trashing each other. I'm happy to say that most of the worst offenders lost their bids for office, but not all of them.

I wish I could report that Katherine Harris' political career came to an end, but she embarrassed the party leaders by pulling in almost half the vote in a four-man. . .er, four-body. . .race. This is the Katherine Harris of Election 2000 fame, the Katherine Harris who calls separation of church and state a "lie," and the Katherine Harris who immediately went on the offensive by calling Senator Bill Nelson a liberal four times in a speech that lasted less than four minutes. We have to cope with this for two more months. I'd rather cope with hurricane season, which is also in full gear.

are we all insane?

Everybody in the world is a fool except you and me, and sometimes I wonder about you. Consider these stories from this morning's newspaper:

Authorities have arrested a polygamist, head of a "church," who over the past four years has "excommunicated" men and "reassigned" their wives and children to other men, apparently without serious opposition or objection. He has about 10,000 followers. Let's see. . .how many gallons of Kool-Aid would be necessary. . .

A headline reads, "Violence obscures Iraq's gains." It turns out that the "gains" are being measured by the number of bodies showing up at the morgue, and the number for August is substantially lower than for July and for June. The terrorists must have read that story, too, because at least 50 died in Iraq today and August isn't over yet. So much for "gains" in Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said yesterday that critics of the U.S. war "strategy" don't know their history, and are like those who tried to appease the Nazis. I'd say Rummy doesn't know his history, certainly not the history of Iraq or the Middle East. Neither he nor anybody else in the Bush Administration knew that Saddam, although a butchering murderer along the lines of Stalin, was a balance of power against Iran, Osama, and the al-Quaeda. A year after the "Axis of Evil" speech, President Bush was unaware that Muslims in Iraq were divided between the Shia and Sunnis. Rummy did not know and could not predict that the troops would have more trouble with the Fedayeen that with the overrated Republican Guard. Rummy seemed unaware of the numbers of troops and the time required to build new nations out of Germany and Japan, but instead insisted on attempting to do the job in Iraq with insufficient forces and on a ridiculously short schedule that collapsed. The Bush Administration had no strategy for the end of the war. . .but they certainly detest criticism.

Finally, to make my day, Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown says he regrets that FEMA had no plan for the day (month, year) after Katrina. His positive statements in the days after Katrina about help coming through from the federal government were just "White House talking points" to protect the President. Given the choice between lying to "protect" the President and telling the blunt truth, he lied. Now we know what "White House talking points" are. Just a pack of lies.

I could add something about John Karr, but that's old news. He must have done something bad to somebody, somewhere. Fly him back to Thailand.

And all that from Section A of the newspaper. I can understand why George W. Bush doesn't read newspapers. It will disturb your otherwise bland equanimity and might even prompt you to think.

saying goodbye to an old friend

I've just deleted the 1998 version of Quicken. I had to. I want to try a little on-line banking using Quicken but my bank, the Second National Bank of London (Kentucky, that is) insists on my using a newer version. So, I've installed the 2007 version of Quicken Basic (a dollar cheaper than the 2006 version at the local Office Depot - go figure). I'm going to miss the 1998 version because it was so clean and simple.

Why do I bother mentioning this arcane trivia? Because, of all the computer programs, I like Quicken the best. It ranks up there with e-mail, genealogy software, and the things you can do with digital photos as being Really Good Reasons to Buy a Computer. I liked the first version I installed, designed to run on DOS. The 1998 edition has worked despite upgrading to Win98, Win2000, and WinXP, and despite changing the hard drive twice. It just plugs along like the trusty Timex watch, a time-consuming thing to update but so nice to have when April 15 rolls around every year.

My regular readers of this blog are going to roll on the floor laughing when they read this because they know their father is not exactly first in line when new technology comes out. But, hey, sometimes you've gotta catch up with the rest of the world.

Ernesto, just go away

We thought the hurricane season this year was off to a slow start. Katrina, one year ago, was the eleventh named storm for 2005. This year has had four storms that posed no threat. But I kept telling myself that Hurricane Andrew was the first named storm of the 1992 season (sheesh, it seems like yesterday). Now we have this storm that has pounded Cuba and emerged into the Florida Straits, and is on its way to. . .who really knows? Take a look at the 3-day guesstimate map, which shows it going way east of where I live:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/150927.shtml?3day?large

The bad news is, this is a part of Florida that doesn't need another hurricane. They were criss-crossed by three hurricanes in 2004, one right after the other:

http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/05/92/61/image_961925.jpg

George W. Bush is an arrogant idiot

I've been reading some new books about Iraq lately. One is Cobra II, written by a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general (the three-star kind of general) and a NY Times military correspondent, who go into excruciating and well-researched detail about the missteps of the Bush Administraton and senior brass. They don't seem to have set out to make Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and company look like aggressively uninformed dolts but that's the impression they leave. "Make no mistake about that," as Dubyah likes to say.

To summarize a long story, Bush went into Iraq with several objectives and failed at all except the toppling of Saddam. They sent a barely sufficient number of troops. The success of our troops, and our U.K. allies, is a tribute to the fighting spirit of our professional Army and Marine Corps. The CIA and military intelligence continually gave no useful information or gave false reports. George Washington knew as much about the location of the British Army as our field commanders knew about the Iraqis, which is to say, practically nothing.

Bush, et al., failed to understand the religious and ethnic subtleties of the people of Iraq. They failed to anticipate the Fedayeen resistance and failed to pay sufficient attention to them. They expected parades but our troops got showered with bullets and rocket propelled grenades. Once Saddam fled the city, Bush and the top brass believed the war was over, despite the fact that we were still engaged in combat in large areas of Iraq. Like the dog who chased cars until he caught one and didn't know what to do with it, they had no plan for the day after the war ground to a conclusion. Almost immediately, they began talking of bringing the troops home. They brought the experienced field commanders home and sent in replacements. They halted the influx of new military units. Keeping the peace in Iraq requires more troops than were needed to fight their way into Baghdad, because manpower is necessary to control the borders, man checkpoints, halt looting, engage in civil affairs, and keep the economy running.

In short, there was a window open in which to bring some semblance of democracy to Iraq but it was squandered by decisions to cancel an election, dissolve the Iraqi army (leaving thousands of men unemployed), and "de-Baathisize" the public institutions such as schools and universities to the point that they were crippled. That window is slammed shut.

So, now what? "Cut and run?" That was how we left Viet Nam but this part of the world is much more incendiary. We need to stay the course but do it more intelligently. Republicans ask, do the Democrats have better alternatives? That's a fair question, and in return I ask, do the Republicans have alternatives better than what we have seen to date? We have to wait until 2008 or later to find out, sad to say.

baseball in the minor leagues - you gotta love it!

Take a close look at this man. His name is Julio De La Cruz. He is a pitcher for the Clearwater Threshers, a Class A team in the Phillies system. Last night, he pitched the entire nine innings. . . and he pitched a no-hitter. Five strike-outs, and only one walk. There was one error charged to the third baseman that some scorers might have called a hit, but last night it was an error. A no-hitter is extraordinarily difficult in baseball. This is only the second one in Clearwater's 21-year history. You don't often see pitchers going from start to finish like he did, either. Start collecting his baseball cards, folks, we will be seeing more of him!

no party this year, she said

Boy, was she wrong! Surprise! And this photo includes only the family members who were able to come. The family came from California and Colorado, and Boston, and our oldest and dearest friends came down from Tallahassee.

There's one good thing about a birthday with a zero in it: You get to wait another ten years before you have to worry about it again. I promise, there will be a party then, too.

happy birthday!

If somebody had told this pretty young Michigan gal that she'd go to college in Florida and get a master's degree, that she would have four babies of her own and they would grow up to be happy and successful adults, that she would be a breast cancer survivor, that she'd still be married to the same guy after 34 years and, just before turning 60, she would start a new career working to protect children from abusive and broken homes who are at risk of becoming homeless or worse, I think she'd still have that same sweet smile!

actual bumper stickers

I wish I had one, or more, of these bumper stickers:

Blind faith in bad leadership is not patriotism.

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

If you supported Bush, a yellow ribbon won't make up for it.

Poverty, health care, & homelessness are moral issues.

Of course it hurts. You're getting screwed by an elephant.

Bush lied, and you know it.

Religious fundamentalism: a threat abroad, a threat at home.

God bless everyone (no exceptions).

Bush spent your Social Security on his war.

Pro America, anti Bush.

Who would Jesus bomb?

Feel safer now?

I'd rather have a president who screwed his intern than one who screwed his country.

Jesus was a social activist -- that is a liberal.

My values? Free speech. Equality. Liberty. Education. Tolerance.

Is it 2008 yet?

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." -- Thomas Jefferson.

Don't blame me. i voted against Bush -- twice!

Annoy a conservative: think for yourself.

Visualize impeachment.

Hey Bush! Where's Bin Laden?

Corporate media = mass mind control.

Stop mad cowboy disease.

George W. Bush: making terrorists faster than he can kill them.

Keep your theocracy off my democracy.

Democrats are sexy. Whoever heard of a good piece of elephant?

Corporate media: weapons of mass deception.

Stem cell research is pro life.

Hate, greed, ignorance: weapons of mass destruction.

Honor our troops: demand the truth.

Rebuild iraq? Why not spend 87 (now 400) billion on America?

Fact: Bush oil
1999 - $19 barrel
2006 - $70 barrel

The last time religion controlled politics, people got burned at the stake.

I'll give up my choice when John Roberts gets pregnant.

Scotland

We are going to Scotland in September. As usual, I have put off the little details like reservations, but now I'm seriously checking out B & B's and small hotels and small castles, and I'm calculating mileage and driving times from place to place. Now that July is almost over with and September starts tomorrow, for planning purposes, it is time to Get Serious and start making those reservations. The big Edinburgh Festival ends a few days before we arrive, which means their tourist season will be winding down, which makes it possible to find places to stay in the city even this late. We like to avoid crowds, and I want to drive around with as few other crazy Americans driving on the "wrong side" of the road as possible.

I've been "flying" around Scotland on Google Earth, flying low to see the hills rise up as I cross the country. I've also started reading Kidnapped, one of those books I should have read as a kid but didn't. Near the beginning of the book young David Balfour goes to Edinburgh and sees an "islet" in the middle of the Firth of Forth. On Google Earth, I'm seeing what may have been the island Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about. When we get there, I'll have to drop by to see if he's sitting out in front of the Hawes Inn, or the ghost of him since he's buried on a Pacific Island. If the Hawes Inn was fictional I'm sure some canny Scots have created one. I'll have to buy a drink for old RLS even if his ghost can't pick up the glass.

My ancestors lived in Scotland, somewhere in the vicinity of Loch Lomond, north of Glasgow. They left, one step ahead of the law, and went to Ireland. After getting pounded between the English and the Irish, between Protestants and Catholics, some of them got brave enough or desperate enough to sail to the New World. That was more than eight generations ago, in the 1700's. One of the reservations I've already made is to spend a night in a modest little castle that once belonged to the clan chief, when my clan still had a chief. I don't think I'll buy a drink for the old chief. His ghost can probably pick up the glass and drain it.

Anagrams

I was never worth much when it came to anagrams, the silly mental exercise of rearranging the letters in a word or phrase to make a new word or phase. My mother was very good at it, but this is not an inherited trait. I am telling you this so you will not suspect that I had anything to do with the following except steal them shamelessly from an e-mail and copy them here while waiting for traffic on Intracounty 275 to thin out.

At the risk of insulting your intelligence, for each pair of words or phrases, rearrange the first one to get the second one:

DORMITORY
DIRTY ROOM

PRESBYTERIAN
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER
MOON STARER

DESPERATION
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE
HERE COME DOTS

SLOT MACHINES
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY
IS NO AMITY

SNOOZE ALARMS
ALAS NO MORE Z 'S

A DECIMAL POINT
IM A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO
TWELVE PLUS ONE

MOTHER-IN-LAW
WOMAN HITLER

My favorite of this bunch:
ELECTION RESULTS
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

news you can use from the Discovery Channel

My son and I spent quite a bit of time learning all about dung beetles and sharks on the Discovery Channel. We missed the program about how to escape a gator, though. Fortunately, one young man here in Florida was paying attention:

http://www.wesh.com/news/9569904/detail.html

car maintenance - a "whew" experience this time

Today it was time for my car's air conditioning system to get the fishy eyeball from the guys at a shop who repair a/c systems for a living.

I knew this was going to cost me, big time. In the good old days, the mechanic would say it needs a can or two of Freon and that would keep it going for the rest of the summer. Now they don't use Freon and they are smart enough to say there's some reason why your system lost so much of the refrigerant gas. That's the cue for saying that you need a new compressor or condensor or evaporator, or some other odd part they haven't sold enough of lately. . .none of which is cheap. . .plus labor and taxes.

You can imagine my shock upon getting the expected bad-news phone call this morning. The shock was, it wasn't bad news. My a/c is fully charged and working fine, and was blowing cold air. Their best guess was, when the fans for my radiator conked out, that also affected the a/c system. Because I learned long ago that you don't run the a/c when it is low on Freon or whatever they use nowadays, and because I assumed that was why the a/c was blowing warm air, I hadn't given it a chance to prove itself after getting the radiator fixed.

The price for all their trouble: $16.00 including tax.

It is good to know where honest mechanics are. They could have sold me $400 worth of repairs today and I wouldn't have known the difference. Come to think of it, the garage that gave me five pounds of air for a tire on Monday could have sold me a front-end alignment and my ignorance would have been bliss.

Next time I have a problem, I know who to see.

car maintenance - getting tired

There are some stories I shouldn't tell on myself because they make me look like an "idjit." But I'll share this one with you because it may save you some time and money some day.

Our daughter - our West Coast daughter - was home for the weekend. She was driving our new(er) car. Because (unlike her parents) she hadn't gotten used to the "feel" of it again, she noticed something we hadn't noticed. It was drifting to the right. Aha, we thought. It must be the old front-end alignment.

I took it to my garage this morning. I got there early because I'd taken our daughter to Tampa International even earlier. Told him my story. Could be the front-end alignment, I said knowingly. Or it could be the tire, he said.

It was the tire. The right front tire, which had five pounds less air than the left front tire, which naturally makes it want to drift to the right.

Well, as long as you have it, go ahead and change the oil, I said.

At the end of the day the report was, you also need brakes on the front end, he said. Since we are going out of town and I don't like to wait for trouble to come to me, the brake job will be next on the list. Tomorrow. And on Wednesday the other car is due to have the air conditioner repaired.

Sheesh. These are maintenance-free cars, for the most part, but our long hot summer is wearing them down as much as it is wearing their owners down.

dang, it's hot

Last week, my radiator hit the boiling point and I had to shell out big bucks to have the cooling system fixed. Now the air conditoning system isn't working, either. This is the wrong time of the year for the a/c to blow warm air. It's 92 degrees in the shade outside my bedroom window and the humidity feels like 92 percent. Driving around this afternoon I feared the tires would melt into the pavement due to having to stop at every traffic signal. Both windows down and the moon roof open, and it still felt like being inside a microwave oven.

Our daughter is home from San Francisco, where it never seems to get much above 60 degrees, and she wanted to use my car. We didn't coordinate our schedules very well. I didn't get back from running errands before she had to leave, so she was forced to hitch a ride with a friend whose air conditioning works, we hope. It's more fun to drive yourself to a reunion but it is also more fun not to smell like a horse after you arrive.

I've lived in Florida's hellish heat and humidity for most of my life. Maybe, one of these days, I'll get used to it. Maybe the City of Clearwater will synchronize its traffic signals, too. Maybe it will snow tonight, too.

why the news media. . . (cont'd)

Tonight I watched Nancy Grace of CNN go totally berserk regarding the judge who gave up trying to find a jury in the Couey trial. As usual, she looked like she was wetting her pants while shrieking that the judge should have tried harder. Meanwhile, as if to prove the point that the news media make it difficult to find juries in well-publicized trials, she played a recording of Couey's confession several times with his words up on the screen in case you couldn't understand his mumbling. The judge has already ruled that the jury will not hear or see the confession, assuming they ever get a jury. At one point she asked someone to imagine what the photos of the body might look like. . .the body of a girl who was buried alive in a plastic bag. I can imagine. I don't want to.

With the massive publicity, all aimed at proving his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt, you have to wonder what kind of people will ever get to sit in the jury box. The dialogue during voir dire will sound like this:

Q: Have you heard about this case?

A: Do I look like a Martian? Of course I have.

Q: Despite hearing his confession repeatedly on CNN, can you keep an open mind and make a decision about his guilt or innocence based solely upon the evidence brought into the courtroom.

A: Well, of course. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

This illustrates one reason why I no longer believe in the death penalty. They will eventually find a jury, which will proceed to find him guilty and recommend death by burial alive in a plastic bag. That, frankly, would be fine by me, but as you can see, I am not qualified to sit in the jury when case against the squirrely bastard finally goes to trial.

why the news media drive me crazy

Judge stops jury selection in Couey murder trial
Thursday, July 13, 2006

Judge Richard Howard stopped jury selection in the John Couey murder trial Thursday at about noon.

Jurors were released because Howard said it's impossible to find an impartial jury in Lake County [Florida], where jury selection started Monday. He wants to move the case even farther from Citrus [County].

Couey is charged with the February 2005 kidnapping, rape and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford of Homosassa.

There was initial skepticism when Howard moved jury selection to Lake County, which is only an hour-and-a-half from Citrus County. With that not working to his satisfaction, Howard released all the potential jurors Thursday.

The widespread publicity about the case, along with Couey's incriminating statements made later to investigators, caused potential jurors to read about the case and hear details on many media outlets.

mystery photos [revised]

One of the cool things about sorting through old stuff is that you run across photos you'd all but forgotten about. These were taken at Pat O'Brien's. For my handful of faithful readers, here's a little quiz: What city? What year? And why ARE these people smiling?

[They were smiling because they knew, many years later, they would have a son who would join the two photos into one, seamlessly, even to the point of removing a white box on the wall above Dad's head. Nice work, ol' buddy! Here's your masterpiece.]

sharks and gators and lightning, oh my

Florida is not a safe place to live:

1882-2005, Florida
Total Shark Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
Fatal Shark Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1948-2006, Florida
Number of Alligator Fatalities . . . . . . . . 19
Number of Shark Fatalities . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1959-2004, Florida
Number of Lightning Fatalities . . . . . . .428

1985-2005, Florida
Number of Tornado Fatalities . . . . . . . .103

1990-2004, Florida
Number of Bicycle Fatalities . . . . . .. . . . . . 1,401
Number of Bicycle Injuries . . . . . . . . . . . . 91,039
Number of Shark Attacks (not fatal) . . . . . . . 247

2001-2005, U.S.
Number of Dog Attack Fatalities . . . . .113
Number of Shark Fatalities . . . . . . . . . .10

Granted, the numbers are hard to compare because the beginning and ending years aren't uniform, but you could calculate bites per year or maybe bites per hundred thousand population if you know the population data, but hey, you take what you can get where you find it. It does seem that shark bites aren't as fearsome as, for example, dog bites and lightning strikes although dogs seldom remove a whole arm or leg whereas lightning is usually terminal.

missing stuff [revised]

I've gotten used to the idea that things go missing now and again. Little things, like the folding cash that turns up three months later in a pants pocket, or the good ballpoint pen that doesn't turn up at all.

Lately, I am missing a box of slides. This is a big steel box, about 8 by 14 inches, that holds about 750 color slides, all taken in Europe in the late 60's when I was stationed in Germany.

We were burglarized right after Thanksgiving. One of my theories is that the burglar took it, the same guy who left behind credit cards and jewelry, and who almost took an old CD player (not a portable player but the big kind you plug into a stereo system) but dropped it by the window on his way out. Nah, that makes no sense. But he did take my digital camera, so maybe he has an interest in photography. Nope, that still doesn't make sense.

I've challenged my wife to find it. I am famous for not being able to find things that threaten to trip me as I walk by them.

It must be around here somewhere.

[The burglar didn't take it. I know I looked at it in March of this year. Now the Big Q is, where could I have mislaid a big heavy steel box full of slides? New theory: The house is haunted. The same ghost who spirited away, so to speak, my new electric sander decided he, or maybe she, needs some cheap entertainment during the day when we aren't at home to provide such entertainment. That makes more sense than the burglar theory.]

lawyer competency

Now and then a news story makes you want to read it at least twice. Here's one, which is not so much a newspaper item as a summary of an appellate court decision from Michigan:

________ [name omitted to protect from further embarassment] v. City Attorney for the City of Ann Arbor. An applicant for an assistant city attorney position asserted his veterans-preference priority, but he didn't get the job. He sued, but didn't win his lawsuit, either. The appellate court explained that he failed to demonstrate his ability to perform the job at the level of skill and with the expertise required by the city attorney.

This doesn't explain whether he represented himself in the lawsuit. Whether he did or not, this will not look good on his resume.

everybody loves fireworks

a few words about the Fourth and the flag

There's going to be a lot written and said this week about the American flag, now that the Senate has (narrowly) refused to go along with the big push to amend the Constitution to prohibit burning it. Much of it will come from people who never wore the uniform.

American veterans have seen our flag flying under dramatic, unforgettable circumstances, often overseas. For me, it was at Checkpoint Charlie, where the American flag stood as a beacon of hope against the backdrop of a lifeless, dismal-looking East Berlin.

The words on this sign chilled the marrow of people who passed by it:

Looking over the Wall, an East German "VoPo" ("People's Police") officer looked back at me, reminding me why the American Army was in Europe.

I've sometimes wondered what he was thinking. I'm sure I looked like an American. He knew I was free to leave (after my tour of duty ended) and go back to a nation where, unlike him, I am free to speak, engage in symbolic protest, and make a jackass out of myself, without fear of jail thanks to a Constitution and its First Amendment. The United States has survived flag burnings. Where is East Germany? It is now part of a free Germany.

Time travel, and more

I've been on a trip back in time (about 80 years) and halfway across the country (Florida to Kentucky). It started with the re-discovery of an old photo. I'm on another "toss-it-out" project involving stacks of old paper and a "let's-get-organized" project involving bushels of old photos, but this one photo (see below) sent me off on a mission.

On the back of the photo is written, "Fourmile District School, Emberling, Ky. -- about 1923 or 1924" and a note saying Chester Casey is on the far right, near the top row. Chester, or "Check," was my mother's brother, probably her favorite sibling because they both were talented artists. He became a commercial artist in New York City but he was about 12 years old when the photo was taken.

A Google search turned up the fact that the school was in Harlan County. I e-mailed several school officials and, to my surprise (this was yesterday, a Saturday) got a quick reply telling me where the school used to be located. He suggested the local paper would be interested in the photo, so I e-mailed their editor and (again to my surprise) got a quick reply saying yes, they would, because they might be able to publish it in their next Harlan County Heritage section.

Now, go back and look at the photo (below). You can see from the faces of the children that these were not children of affluence. They were growing up in the coal mining region of eastern Kentucky. They were mountain kids. They look like they'd be at home in the woods with a fishing pole or a rifle, girls too. They have character in their faces. I like Chester, standing slightly aloof but with a see-everything look on his face. I like the little girl on the front row with one hand on her waist. I like the principal, a man with a big job and limited resources. I spent some time re-touching the photo to take some spots and creases out of faces, and I felt like they were looking back at me.

My parents taught school here in the 1930's. It was a tough place to live but they loved the kids. After their retirement they loved to go back to class reunions. They were proud to see that many of these children went on to live very successful lives. I hope these kids have children or grandchildren who will see this photo someday.

Fourmile school, Harlan Co., Ky., circa 1924

There's a story about this photo (see above). Click on the photo to enlarge it:

Dove Disney

I went to the Epcot Living Seas aquarium with some apprehension. I haven't been "wet" in a year, I'd be performing in front of an audience, and I'd be using somebody else's gear.

That apprehension ended when I stood on the platform, suited up, ready to take the plunge. Wow! Schools of fish. Rays, turtles, sharks, grouper, you name it. For an artificial environment, they've done a perfect job of recreating a real Living Sea. They told us they feed the sharks every two days and they'd fed them yesterday. They also said, if you see one coming, get out of his way because he will not get out of yours.

I got a little paranoid after realizing how easy it was for one to swim by before I noticed. For the little guys on the bottom, that was no problem but when I looked over my shoulder and saw the nose of their nine-footer maybe ten feet away, all I could think of was, which way can I go and how fast can I get there? But, no problem. They see divers every day and probably realize that divers taste like neoprene. (Surfers, who taste like coconut oil, are much more palatable.)

Other than that, our forty-five minutes in the water went by too quickly. To all my family who chipped in for this present, thank you!

Diving Disney

You're looking at a Christmas present that is six months overdue to be enjoyed. Tomorrow night, I'll (finally) get to go diving at Epcot. Keith, at the dive shop, tells me the water in their tank is so clear it is like diving in gin. With perfect visibility and no currents, I'll get spoiled, he said. Schools of fish. Well-fed sharks. I'll report back later.

some motorcyclists have been out in the sun too long

During the past six years, deaths of cyclists have risen in Florida. This is an expected result of repealing the law requiring helmets. Here's the story, although the writer demonstrates the kind of sloppiness in dealing with statistics that we've learned to expect from the news media:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/19/State/Report__Biker_fatalit.shtml

I love the attempt by the helmet law opponent to change the subject by saying: "What causes most of the crashes is cars," he said. "Usually, it's the car driver turning left at an intersection and causing an accident because they didn't see us coming."

Sure, and removing your helmet is going to make them see you better.

tropical relief

T.S. Alberto dumped about four inches of rain on us, blew a few trees over, and lifted the roof from a motel on our beach, but otherwise did little more than give the TV news clowns a chance to practice their hysteria.

Time was, a serious journalist wanted to send reports back from whatever war we had going on. That seems to be out of favor, not to mention more dangerous than ever. Now they want to be live on camera, one arm wrapped around a palm tree, with hair, coat and legs blowing downwind while telling us how dangerous it is out there. Puh-leeeze. Give us el breako.

I don't want TV weather guys in my face. What I really want is a FEMA debit card with some of my hard-earned federal tax money on it. They are apparently easy to get. Use a fake name, fake social security number, and a P.O. box address, and you too can obtain a little extra cash (at $2,000 per card) for hurricane relief necessities such as plastic surgery, expensive booze, season tickets for a football team, diamond jewelry, and overseas vacations. You say you are already in jail, and were at the time of the hurricane? No problem, man. Some of your fellow jailbirds have already obtained their unfair share.

Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of genuine hurricane victims are still waiting for FEMA relief assistance which, I promise you, will never come.

the season is off to a roaring start

Hurricane season, that is. Here's the latest on Tropical Storm Alberto:

http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm1/projectedpath_large.html?from=wxcenter_maps

Note that they have stopped drawing a line up the middle of the "cone of uncertainty." Note also that we are IN this cone. This is consistent with our weather pattern this year: A month's worth of rain in an afternoon followed by 29-30 days of drought.

a few notes for a Friday [edited]

[Edited on Sunday, 06-11-2006. See next to last paragraph.]

Here are some odds and ends, jotted down while waiting for the "river of steel" to thin out so I can drive home:

Evidence that some teenagers in the U.S. have the intelligence of a turnip:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MYSPACE_MIDEAST_TRIP?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME

Evidence that some lawyers in the U.S. need to be closely supervised by nannies:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/08/Tampabay/Rock__paper__scissors.shtml

Evidence that some adults need to be closely supervised by nannies:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/08/Hillsborough/Teachers_resign_over_.shtml

If you worry that politicians and other talking heads might run out of silly, brainless things to talk about, and that we might be forced to listen to a national debate on serious issues, you are not alone:
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/08/Columns/Maybe_we_can_get_that.shtml

Finally, and I have no URL link for this one: The death by bombing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq may have no measurable effect in Iraq, where they are engaged in tribal warfare that the Hatfields and the McCoys would have been proud of (every act of vengeance begets another act of vengeance).

However, the U.S. Air Force must be extraordinarily proud. I have been reading "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," by NY Times military correspondent Michael R. Gordon & retired Marine General Bernard E.Trainor, who give us a detailed, researched history of the current war in Iraq. Among other things, they report that none of the top 200 Iraqi leaders were killed by air-strikes during the war, or at least until their book went to press this year. You might recall that the war opened hours earlier than planned because of a hot tip that Saddam Hussein would be at a particular location. The Air Force pounded the hell out of that location with bunker-busting bombs and the Navy launched rockets from offshore. Later, they discovered that they'd beaten an open field into submission. No Saddam, no bunkers. And that's been pretty much the story on the quality of intelligence from the CIA and the military intelligence agencies, and the Air Force's belief in "air power."

The Army used to say that a war is not won until the muddy boots of the Infantry stand on enemy soil. That was before Viet Nam, and before Afghanistan, and before Iraq. [And I must add, that is still true today but it is extraordinarily difficult for a trooper to know if or when he can relax. The Marines who apparently went berserk, shooting up the neighborhood after one of their buddies was killed, did what you would expect any young man who is heavily armed, trained to kill, and scared on a 24-7 basis to do under such circumstances. If our troops reacted to all roadside bombings in the same way, would their incidence decrease?]

Here's something I read on another blog and wished I'd written it myself: We were winning in Viet Nam when we pulled out. If we had not pulled out, we would still be winning. But that war would still be going on.

the season is upon us

. . . hurricane season, that is. As if on cue, we have a respectable thunder storm blowing up from the southeast and the weather radar for the Gulf shows storms blowing in all directions. My wife's trip home was blocked by Clearwater firefighters putting out a burning pine tree on the corner near our house - in the pouring rain. Lightning must have set it on fire just as the storm broke. It was blazing merrily from the ground up and they were using a fire hose on it. We had a record 96 degrees earlier this week. This is going to be a long, strange summer.

multimedia madness

There's a limit to my tolerance for computer stuff and I'm seeing it, looming up in front of me. Audio-wise, I've made a CD for my cousin (that's not her above) and her husband, who are celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary next week. I pulled down a batch of songs from 1956 from iTunes to add to the songs I've ripped off, excuse me, "ripped," from audio CD's at the public library. That was a fun project although it took substantially longer than it should have. I didn't include the dreary stuff they played on the radio before Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the great blues singers, and the rock 'n roll pioneers came on the scene, which narrowed the choices considerably.

Video-wise, I have a new scanner. It makes excellent copies of color slides and negatives. Now I'm learning what I never knew before about resolution, dots per inch, scanning photos versus scanning film, and printing. The printer has always been the magic box attached to my computer and I've never pretended to understand it.

Tonight we attended the wedding of a lawyer in our office. That's her in the photo above. Now I have to learn how to take "red eye" out of photos. The photo above doesn' t have much "red eye" but you should see the others. I've seen instructions for doing this but the job seems to require 20 minutes per photo, times about 30 photos. I tried downloading a plug-in for Photoshop but it didn't plug in. Tomorrow is a vacation day and I'm celebrating by doing carpentry work on my roof. I don't have time for all this computer nonsense.

the Da Vinci Code

We had to see the movie, having read the book. The details were still fresh in our minds. Good thing, because anybody seeing the movie first is bound to get lost by the end of the first reel.

I liked it but wasn't overly impressed by it. She's lukewarm. She didn't think there was much suspense. This may have been a function of knowing how it was going to turn out, but I don't think so. My theory is that the movie and the story line didn't procure the "willing suspension of disbelief" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817) which is necessary to enjoy fiction, especially science fiction. Coleridge called it "poetic faith."

In "Mission Impossible" and the James Bond series, you enter the theater thinking, OK, this really is impossible. You accept that, and then you can relax and enjoy the show.

In "The Da Vinci Code," I didn't have as much trouble with the theological underpinnings as I did with the basic story. We are to believe that in 2,000 years, a genealogical line that began with one couple and one child came down through 80 or more generations (four to a century, or more) to the point where we now have - at the risk of tipping you off - only one child. Yeah, right. We are asked to accept that the Catholic Church was able to locate and murder the line, or most of it, despite being scattered all over France, England, and Scotland. This was before the Internet, which I can use to find your birthday, phone number, and last three addresses. They could not have been that omniscient or that efficient.

The movie, and the book, were puzzle stories, starting with the puzzle of why a mortally wounded man would spend maybe an hour setting the stage (the floor of the Louvre) with puzzles rather than go for help. The movie left the viewer with no time to solve the puzzles. The solutions popped right up from one actor or the other as fast as the puzzles were explained to you. In effect, the audience is deemed too slow or stupid to "get it." The audience has no time to buy into the story. Our audience of two didn't buy into it.

On the theological side, could Jesus have sired an infant? Joseph was a carpenter and we can assume the boy Jesus learned the trade. When he hit his thumb or cut his hand, he got bruised and bloody as we all do. During his short ministry he expressed no antagonism towards women. Of course it is possible that he could have become a father himself. The only "shocking" part of this work of fiction are the crimes attributed to the Catholic Church. As a student of history, I am not shocked. I am, however, not suspending my disbelief in this story. It is just too far-fetched for me.

Year of the Gator

In college basketball, this is the Year of the Gator. Florida's team was the first from the state to win the national championship. The FSU team made a grab for the gold ring in 1972 but fell a few points short.

In the carnivorous world of Mother Nature, this is also the Year of the Gator. Three alligators have mistaken three women for lunch, which is a flippant and irresponsible way of saying three women suffered horrible deaths at the hands, or rather jaws, of reptiles left over from the days of dinosaurs. Two of the gators measured about nine feet long.

A gator's modus operandi is to lie still, imitating a log under water until something goes by that looks like prey. Its method of killing is to drag the prey under water and hold it until it stops bubbling and kicking. One of the victims, a tourist from Tennessee, was snorkeling in shallow water. Another, a college student, was jogging along a canal and apparently was dragged under water. The circumstances of the third death are uncertain because "drug taking equipment" was found at the scene.

To put this into historical context, Florida experienced only 16 fatalities due to gator attacks between 1948 and 2005, plus one in Georgia, not to mention nine "suspected alligator killings." Those fatalities represent about 4.3 percent of gator attacks. We've now had three fatalities in a week. There are several factors at work, here. Warm weather has arrived, and mating season has begun. The drought has dried up gator holes, causing gators to search for food and water in residential areas. The boom in residential housing has caused natural gator habitat to be filled up with houses, people, and small dogs, which gators seem to fancy. These factors added together do not explain why three women have been killed by gators in a week.

Florida counts about 1.5 million gators in the state, almost one gator per ten people. A thousand new residents stream into Florida every day, which is both bad news and good news from a gator's perspective. Bad news: Your habitat is diminishing. Good news: Your food source is increasing.

There is a moral to this story for Yankees who want to sell their homes and put a thousand miles between their friends and their new Florida home. The moral is: Stay home. Between hurricanes and gators, you don't want to live here.

thunder = music

I awoke this morning to the sound of thunder,
How far off I sat and wondered,
Started humming a song from 1962,
Ain't it funny how the night moves. . .
(with apologies to Bob Seger)

We did wake up yesterday morning to the sound of rain and thunder, really good boomers from somewhere east of Tampa. Rain, rain, come on down. We just had the driest March and April in 100 years. I'm not normally going to comment on the weather here, but we have wildfires all over the state right now (let's all join in singing "The Fire Down Below," another Seger song). To see a "live" map of Florida showing how much of the state is up in flames, go here:
http://flame.fl-dof.com/wildfire/tools_fmis.html#FMIS
and then scroll down to "FMIS Mapping System" and click on that. (It takes a minute or three to download the map. Be patient.) The icons will give you an exaggerated impression of how extensive the fires are, but not by much. With a lot of dry brush and fools setting fires by accident or on purpose, we are going to have a long hot summer in several senses of the term. (Cue to "Have you Ever Seen the Rain?" by John Fogerty.)

computers [growl]

I got my machine back up and running thanks to my good friends at the shop who spent entirely too much time on it (but they gave me a huge break on their labor charge). They installed a new card for the monitor that allows a digital cable connection, added more than double the memory, and made a "clean install" of Windows XP. They thought it would be an easy fix but three of them worked on it for two days. They aren' t sure what happened. Their best guess is that my Windows 2000 installation was faulty, although it worked OK for nearly a year, and a recent Windows upgrade didn't fully install, leaving the system on shaky ground until the electonic version of a belch scambled some drivers and other key files.

The "clean install" of Windows XP meant they backed up the data files, reformatted the hard drive, installed Windows XP, and copied the data back to the hard drive. That means I have to reinstall every program I was using. This is not as bad as it sounds. After all these years, going back to Windows 95 with some old DOS and Windows 3.1 data files and other stuff still tucked away in nooks and crannies, my computer is so full of crap that a "clean install" is the best way to go. Now I'm going back to reorganize and delete the old crap, with a faster computer and a great looking monitor to enjoy.

My love-hate relationship with computers is swinging back in the direction of love, or at least admiration, for this stupid machine which, in reality, is no smarter than a light bulb.

computers [snarl]

The first computer I ever saw was one of the first PC's made by IBM, sitting in the living room of an IBM employee in Boca Raton, Florida, where they developed their "Peanut." It had a tiny screen and used an audio tape for memory. Peripherals? A mouse was still a rodent, "floppy" was an adjective, and a hard drive meant Interstate 75 through Georgia. I remember thinking it was cute but what possible use would I have for one? Lawyers crunch words and ideas, not numbers. OK, so a guy spends four hours typing checkbook data into his new computer. When he's done he says to his wife, "Looky here, Thelma Lou, I told the computer we have $310.82 in our checking account, and the computer just told me we have $310.82 in our checking account." (Yawn.)

I was thinking of that last night when our computer crashed. With a snap and a crackle, it all went dark. The machine tried to reboot itself. Crash. It tried again. Crash. It finally gave me the dreaded Blue Screen of Death with a long, mysterious message about the K_Mode not being able to do something followed by pure gibberish, in English but still gibberish. I fancy myself as semi-adept at dealing with computers but this one mystified me. I took it to a shop first thing this morning where a genuine guru has resuscitated my computers in the past. He opened it up and started testing this and that. It's now after 5:00 and he's still working on it. If he charges me full price for labor, I may as well have bought a new one, although migrating to a new computer is a pain in the heinie. Aaaargh. If you don't think of computers as a hobby they are a monumental waste of time and money.

I'm still at the office, using my office computer and waiting for the River of Steel to thin out so I can drive to a computerless home. I can feel the withdrawal symptoms already. I have three books to read and the Rays-Yankees game is on at 7:00, so the urge to check e-mail one more time and maybe play a game on Shockwave will just have to be sublimated. When I saw the IBM "Peanut," I had no idea what the future would bring. I shoulda bought stock in the company.

In the Spring, a young man's heart lightly turns to. . .

thoughts of baseball. Here in the Tampa Bay area we have a team that promises, each year, to be a better team than last year and we have long-suffering fans who have forgiven the broken promises. This year, however, the Rays show genuine promise, if: (a) the pitching rotation finds itself, (b) the better players come back from the disabled list, and (c) the young players mature. Speaking of maturity, here's a prime example. (Get the video started, on the right. I tried to put up a better link but it was too long t work.)

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2423307

new monitor

After weeks of indecision, I bought myself a new monitor . . . a Dell 1907fp. The motivation was a new one at work, a Dell 1905fp, that made my old one at home look dark and fuzzy. So I spent the evening installing it and playing with it, and trying to decide if I like it. My JPEG photos look really sharp, after increasing the resolution to the maximum 1280 x 1024, and that was the primary reason to buy it. But if I am doing something with a white background (using a word processor, or typing up a new blog entry), this thing has an irritating tendency to change colors with only a slight movement of the head. The white background turns a pale brown on the right side if I move to the left, and vice versa. If the entire screen is white, the left and right sides look off color without even moving my head. I'm going to have to decide if this is a problem or not. It is not an obvious issue when looking at photos, oddly enough. I got a heckuva good price on it. Why is everything in life one trade-off after another?

now, this is smart

Behold, the smart car. Literally. The Smart gets 60 mpg with a 60-horse engine. This isn't the car for the Grand Prix or the inside lane on the Interstate, the Autobahn or the Autostrada, but for getting around town, this is the car I want next. Unfortunately, you can't get them in the U.S. This photo was taken in Florence, Italy, in 2002.

driving under the influence of gasoline

To paraphrase the colonel in Apocalypse Now, we Americans love the smell of gasoline in the morning. Even with gas prices hitting $3.00 per gallon, we will not change our driving habits. I drive to work and home daily on a stretch of Interstate highway, and I generally poke along at 60 to 65 m.p.h. We have three lanes each way which is good. I can stay in the middle lane while the drivers practicing for the Grand Prix in their Hummers, big SUVs and pick-up trucks fly by in the inside lane. Some of them talk on their cell phones, probably griping about the price of gasoline.

There's an easy way to fight high gasoline prices: Slow down. The people who run the Edmunds.com web site studied various techniques that are often suggested to improve your gas mileage. They found that some of the suggestions actually will make a difference: Accelerate moderately, not like a jack rabbit (improves mileage about 30 percent or better), drive the speed limit (saves about 12 percent on average), and use cruise control on the open road, if you have it (about 7 percent). That's about a 50 percent savings. That effectively cuts the price of gas in half. If I sold gas at $1.50/gallon, do you suppose a line would form at the pumps? Sheesh - there would be a riot.

A few years ago I spent a lot of time on the road between home and the east coast of Florida. I discovered a cheap (free) way to make a long trip at a slower speed not merely tolerable but fun. Go to the library and pick up a book on tape, or CD, and let somebody read to you while you drive. I would cross the peninsula on S.R. 70 and watch the cows fly by at 70 m.p.h. (OK, gas was cheaper then) while listening to the reader. At the moment I am listening to the unabridged edition of Dracula, the book, not a sound track from a movie. On the relatively short drive to work it makes me want to slow down so I can hear more of what's coming next.

The only disadvantage is that other drivers are beginning to look like vampires, but I know the fast ones prefer gasoline over blood.

bagpipes - a different perspective

why wait for trouble. . .

Air Force General Chuck Yaeger was the star of TV commercials for an auto parts store some years back. After extolling the virtues of replacing old auto parts, he looked the camera squarely in the eye and asked, "Why wait for trouble to come to you?"

I can tell you why some of us do it. Laziness. Inertia. Procrastination. "I'll get it checked out on Friday," you say, and a month of Fridays goes by.

See this tire? I've been driving on it, in this condition, for at least two months. It made a rumbling sound that was noticeably worse driving back from Jacksonville in February.

I drive the Interstate twice a day, five days a week. The noise got worse. I finally dropped by my garage earlier this week. "You will be shocked when you see it," the man said. I was shocked. The missing tread was on the "inside," hard to see if you don't have the right angle, impossible to see if you don't get down and look. There isn't much below that exposed belt except a thin layer of rubber and a whole lot of compressed air.

As the man said, it could have blown sitting still.

There's no doubt in my mind that God watches over me behind the wheel, and this is just one more example.

Moral of the story: If it sounds wrong, feels wrong, or smells wrong, it's wrong. Get it fixed. Do it now.