I had an appointment with my neurologist today (on a nice, rainy day). I didn't allot time for the rain (and the ensuing traffic snarls) and then I got lost (the hospital has two buildings and I went to the wrong one; luckily a nice nurse noticed I was wandering around with a confused look and pointed me in the right direction), so I was surprised that I was only a couple of minutes late, but it ended up being irrelevant because the office was running 45 minutes late. An elderly gentleman mused aloud that his appointment had been for 1:15 and voiced his surprise because his appointment had never run late before. He finally got to see the doctor at 2:00. My name was called at 2:28. I sat in an empty examination room until the doctor came in at 2:34. My visit ended at 2:38. Yay for American medicine. (It was a routine checkup, for those concerned. I'm fine. I don't go back for six months.)
The tardiness of the office did give me a chance to listen to a cross-section of humanity in the waiting room, though. There was an assortment of characters there today. The woman sitting next to me stared straight ahead the entire time and didn't say a word until a younger woman came out in tears and then they both left. I'm afraid that wasn't a good visit. :( Another gentleman sat in a chair for ten minutes before getting up and pacing; he finally ended up leaning against the wall by the door the rest of the time (either because the chair was uncomfortable or he had problems sitting; it was a neurological clinic, after all). Another charming clan that occupied about half of the waiting room centered around a man in his fifties wearing sweatpants, an Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt, an eyepatch and a Harley Davidson baseball cap, accompanied by his wife, two other unidentified family members and a woman in her seventies who I'm guessing was his mother. His mother was that type of person (every family seems to have one) who had something critical to say about everything. She criticized the soap opera on television. She criticized the doctor running late. She criticized an overweight woman who left the office in a wheel chair. The one that really caught my attention was when she whispered to her son "I think that guy is goofy" (with an emphasis on "goofy" that implied weird, not funny). At the time, an advertisement for a sitcom was on the television and her son asked her if that's what she was talking about. She said "No, that guy standing by the door." The entire waiting room went completely silent because even though the woman was trying to speak quietly, everyone could hear every word she said (except maybe for the gentleman in his late seventies sitting to my right; he seemed rather hard of hearing). There was an awkward silence and the guy by the door kind of shifted around and put his back to them and the clan went back to talking. Very charming family.
I had planned on stopping by Goodwill after the appointment to drop off some boxes, but by the time the appointment ended I had time only to stop by my apartment for a few minutes before heading to work. Oh well. Guess I'll have time after my CPR class next week.
Cris was looking for ringtones the other night and mentioned a couple of songs that I hadn't heard in awhile, so I made a trip into iTunes to look for them. My curiosity was piqued when I saw that one of the songs had an alternate version by a group called "Kidz Bop Kids." And then I made the mistake of clicking on their album. As the name suggests, Kidz Bop Kids is a group comprised of kids (I'm guessing between 8 and 12) who sing songs from the Top Ten charts and release them on their own chipmunk-esque version of "Now That's What I Call Music." I suppose kids may find them fun, but some of those songs just aren't supposed to be sung by 8-year-olds. *shudder* Their Evanescence song made me cringe.
Before I closed out, though, I noticed one amusing little anecdote. iTunes is set up so that when customers buy from more than one artist those two artists become linked in a "Listeners also bought" box (with the idea that if you like this artist, you'll like the artists that other people who like this artist like - say that three times fast). In this case, I have *no* idea who the core audience of Kidz Bop Kids is, because judging by their "Listeners also bought" box, there are some confused people out there. I dunno. Maybe there are a lot of 8-year-olds who listen to Guns N' Roses and Poison.
I'm a volunteer first-aid responder at the company where I work (so far I've only had to take care of one broken arm and some assorted colds; I missed the stroke case we had several years back). The Firm arranges for our training each year (including training on AEDs; the Firm has three units, although I have yet to shock anyone . . .). My CPR training is coming up in May, and again (for the third year in a row) I e-mailed the person in charge to see if it would be possible to move the class from its traditional 8 a.m. time slot to something more reasonable for a person who doesn't get up until 2 p.m. This year, for the first year, I actually got a response (usually they just ignore me). A response that made me laugh out loud until my coworkers asked what was wrong. The person in charge had made arrangements for me to take the class outside of the Firm at a Red Cross training center, and wanted to know which of the Saturday classes in May worked best for me. Saturday classes in May that run from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. . . .
I suppose it's the thought that counts. I still have to e-mail back and explain that it's the time, not the day, that's the problem.
Of course, unless the government is looking for cookies recipes or pictures of Omaha, they're not going to find much in mine. Although I did write about the Pledge awhile back. That might qualify me as "dangerous." Or I might need to collect four more box tops yet. I'll have to find the official rules.
My weekend was pretty dull. I've discovered that if I take the side off my computer, for whatever odd reason it will play all the games that have been crashing (apparently I have overheating issues). I spent most of the weekend playing Uru and a few other assorted games.
My Impromptu Uru Review
(Those of you who know nothing of computer games can move along.)
All of my friends know about my Myst addiction (I have Myst posters, Myst mousepads, Myst t-shirts, all of the Myst books and even the limited edition audio CD of the first book). So I've been looking forward to playing Uru since it came out last December. Uru isn't the next game in the series; it exists in the Myst universe but takes place 200 years after Myst. And, unfortunately, for once I was disappointed in a Myst game. Uru was meant to be an online, multiplayer game, and if that had succeeded it would have gone a long way toward fixing the flaws. Unfortunately, as a stand-alone game it ends up being rather dull. Since not every player in the online game could be the hero of the game, there is no badguy in Uru and not really much of a plot (instead of trying to defeat a madman of some sort or another, my goal was to touch seven different clothes in each Age; yep, that's it). My biggest gripe was about the puzzles. Some of them were completely arbitrary (the solutions were not based on logic or clues, but random chance or random wandering). A couple of them involved manipulating objects, but you can't use your hands so you have to just push the objects around with your feet like Myst's version of soccer. On the other hand, some of the Ages and landscapes were beautiful (not quite as beautiful as the near photo-quality renders of the other Myst games, but the 3D world of Uru has rainstorms, sunsets and insects). Anyway, I enjoyed playing the game, and the backstory and journals were great, but the ending left me feeling very unsatisfied. Oh well, Myst 4 will be out soon. :)
I also played around with Age of Mythology (which I've played before; Cris and I used to play it pretty regularly) and Hoyle's Majestic Chess (enough to know that I am so rusty at chess that it's not funny).
I'm sitting at my computer desk right now listening to iTunes and watching a very determined bird outside my window. It's a large black bird of some kind (I don't know birds, so unless it's a sparrow or cardinal I can only describe it) that is about three times too big to perch on the little posts of my bird feeder, so it's resting on the ground for a moment before flying up to the bird feeder and flapping its wings to keep from falling off the feeder backwards while it feeds. After a couple of seconds it falls back to the ground to rest before another attempt. It's been doing that for the last five minutes. "A" for effort. It reminds me of Aesop's fable of "The Crow and the Pitcher."
New from my Reason list, a disturbing Guardian article outlining the political machinations of Christian fundamentalists (in Texas and elsewhere). I hadn't seen it put in quite this light (pushing abstinence-only is one thing, supporting attempts to blow up Muslim mosques is quite another). You'll have to forgive me if I lack enthusiasm for any religious group that is actively attempting to bring about a world war in order to meet its vague religious prophecies.
1. The wind in Nebraska is a living entity that vents its frustration by trying to break my birdfeeders.
2. The cooling fan on the processor heatsink inside my computer has no qualms about stripping 6 layers of skin off of my index finger if I get it too close while checking for air flow.
3. URU is really cool when your computer will actually run it.
4. Leftover smoothies make really good deserts when frozen and carved apart with a spoon.
5. No matter how bad my life seems to be, other people have it worse, and a lot of them are surprisingly optimistic given their situations (hence, I should stop complaining).
New in the Recipes section, a look at cookies created not with the oven, not with the stove, not with the microwave, but with . . . the waffle iron. Enjoy.
I added two morephotos to the set of building photos I posted yesterday. These are from the alley outside the windows of my office (I even opened the window this time without scaring the pigeons). Enjoy.
There's a new phishing scam out ("phishing" is the process of tricking an unsuspecting person into turning over personal information) that has an eye for detail that impressed even me. I've seen phishing schemes before where friends of mine have received e-mails from what appears to be eBay asking them to enter their personal information "for security purposes." One of them for PayPal was so realistic that I had to look at the source code to make sure it was a fake (although it's a pretty safe bet that any e-mail asking you to enter your personal information into the e-mail is a scam). This new one, though, is really brilliant (I can admire the creators even as I think they're vile people). The e-mail, appearing to be from Citibank, directs you to a specific site. That site autodetects which browser you're using, then suppresses your normal address bar and puts up a fake address bar that displays Citibank's real Web address (the fake address bar will even take you to other sites if you type in the addresses). The site looks identical to Citibank's site, and (according to the article) it spoofs the source code so that it looks like Citibank's real source code. It's a very clever ruse. I'm afraid a lot of people will fall for it. As a general rule, don't input your personal information into any e-mail forms, and if an e-mail directs you to a Web page form go to the homepage of the site and e-mail them first to ask if they're sending out e-mails like that (if they say "no," it's a hoax).
It amuses me that my Elph actually plays a sound file of a shutter clicking when it takes a picture (a sound file that I can turn off, so that it takes pictures completely silently). I guess humans are accustomed to that "click" sound. I suppose it would be possible for Canon technicians to replace that sound file with other sound files (just imagine your camera hissing like Vader with every picture . . .).
Sounds files aside, I still love my camera. :) I'd actually like to get a nicer camera someday (something like a Canon Rebel that accepts multiple lenses), but since I don't have a thousand bucks free at the moment (and if I did, it would be ear-marked for a computer), that will have to wait. In the meantime, I took some pictures of the buildings around my office this afternoon as the sun was setting. Let me know what you think.
I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend. Mine was just loads of pastel fun. :) After an early out (and an equally early *in*) at work on Friday night, I didn't do much of anything the rest of the weekend. On Saturday I went to Kohl's in search of a pair of athletic shoes. I *left* Kohl's an hour later with a pair of athletic shoes, a pair of hiking shoes, a mock turtleneck and four polo shirts, for a grand total of $150. Cindy is right. I should have been a woman. I probably have an ultra-rare XXY chromosome count or something.
On Saturday night, I lost track of time while playing a video game and only realized that it was light outside (oops) when the game crashed because some bloody adware program was trying to install *6* programs at the same time. I ended up with a permanent search bar on the desktop and some sort of memory manager (that only took up memory) and various other worthless programs that I removed, but the worst one was a program that redirected all the 404 error pages in Internet Explorer to the adware's homepage (that one took me almost an hour to remove). *grumble* I had to reinstall Windows Media Player, too, 'cause the adware messed it up. By then it was mid-morning and Amanda was up (and I never get to talk to Amanda), so I chatted with her for awhile, and by then it was nearing noon, so I just stayed up. I did three loads of laundry and sorted out three boxes of old clothes for Goodwill (since I bought all those new clothes from Kohl's), plus threw away two more boxes of junk. I looked for houses online for a bit, then I splurged on pizza and a DVD rental for myself since I didn't do anything else. At this point, I've been up . . . 36 hours. Which may explain why while writing this I kept getting distracted by the television, only to return my attention to the post to find I'd typed 5 rows of the letter "j" without realizing it.
Oh, yeah, and I ate the last of those cupcakes. Sorry to all the people who wanted one. That'll teach you not to stop by and see me.
Posted at 10:41:00 AM. |
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Friday, April 9
Which Holiday Is It Again?
From work today:
Me: Happy Easter. Have a cupcake.
Jeff: Why yes, I think I will have a cupcake, in honor of Jesus's birthday.
Pat: *stern* Birthday?
Jeff: Oh, well, re-birthday, anyway.
Posted at 10:46:00 PM. |
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Wednesday, April 7
Parking Meters Make Lousy Assistants
I figured out one of the reasons my last batch of night photos wasn't so good. Aside from the fact that I'm an untrained amateur who just likes to play around, I also remembered (after spending 2 hours taking photos on Sunday night) that awhile back I changed the ISO film speed setting on my camera from 100 to 400 (I think I was having trouble taking indoor photos without a flash and was trying to speed up the shutter), and then I forgot to change it back. Oops. I reset it today and on a lark drove around the downtown area after work and snapped a few. All of the ones that turned out were of an Episcopal church a couple of blocks from where I work (the same church from the foggy photos in my Photos section). I also snapped some of the First National Tower and reshot a few from Sunday, but unfortunately I left my tripod at home, so I ended up trying to lean against light poles or balance the camera on parking meters. Let's just say that even at my steadiest, there was always just enough wobble to make the picture come out blurry.
The ones that came out aren't too bad, though. A couple of them carry on the "old meets new" theme from the foggy pictures. Whether you want to take that as a synthesis of traditional thought and modern inspiration or a gloomy display of "old ways" resisting the encroachment of the wheels of progress is up to you.
I'm still putting up with iTunes (as the least inconvenient of the various music services), and I used it to burn a compilation CD for the first time last week. Not for me. Lane was tickled with her custom-made CD of "Lane's Awesome Dance Hits, Vol. 1." Although I think a large part of it was the custom-made cover I made in Photoshop. She's already asked when Vol. 2 is coming out . . .
Nick is also still enjoying his ballpit (which you may remember from the December archives as the present that turned out to be a lot bigger than I was expecting and that raised eyebrows on his parents, but he loves it so it turned out okay). He likes to climb inside it and nap. (Note that there are not currently any plastic balls in it. They're scattered all over the house . . .)
On the downside, I learned that I shouldn't leave anonymous gifts on people's cars, especially when they're nervous about other things. They tend not to gush thanks when they're trying to decide whether to buy bullet-proof vests. Sorry Cris . . .
Amanda and I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night, and despite my reservations about Jim Carrey's acting ability I actually enjoyed it. Those of you who haven't seen it but are planning on doing so should skip to the next paragraph (I won't give out the ending or anything, but I'd hate to spoil it). The movie hinges on the question "If you could have bad memories erased, would you?" If some part of your past caused you incredible pain, would you choose to simply forget it forever? And, as the movie brings up, who is to say you haven't already done that? Memory is an interesting thing . . . Maybe I'll write more after I've digested the movie (it's a very complex movie).
I also went on a night photo run last night. They didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped (out of 30 pictures, these are the only ones that were even half-decent). I think I messed up one of the settings on my camera. I'll have to figure out how to reset it.
While taking my laundry up to the laundry room this afternoon (yes, I live on the ground floor and the laundry room is on the second floor - odd arrangement, I know), I came across a cigarette on the carpet in the hallway. It had been burned, but the ashes were still in the shape of the last half-inch of the cigarette and there was a burn mark on the carpet underneath it, so I know that someone had just pitched it (most likely from the staircase above). This does not make me happy. Fill your lungs with carcinogens and spend hundreds of dollars a year on a habit that will cost you thousands more in medical bills later if you'd like, but don't burn down my house while you're doing it. :P
Texas is the setting for a new case involving a woman who killed two of her three young children by bludgeoning them with rocks. I first saw mention of it in a mailing list discussion on my REASON list, where the trial was deemed noteworthy because the woman claims she was instructed to kill her children "by God" (and thus the religious angle). The discussion went back and forth through several posters, with it eventually polarizing out into two camps: those who thought this was a failing of logic caused by religion (essentially brainwashing), curable with critical reasoning classes in school and exposure to non-insular cultures (with one poster going so far as to suggest that it seemed unlikely an atheist would ever follow voices from the sky commanding him to kill his children); and those (including me) who thought that mental illness overrides such concerns and that culture merely dictates the form in which the delusion manifests (a religious woman hears "God's voice"; an atheist gets instructions from a talking vending machine or secret codes in the nightly news). To a person suffering from a serious mental disorder, the concocted fantasy seems completely real.
I revisited this case later when Cris and I discussed it and the possible outcomes of the case. I was being disgruntled () because the prosecution-happy State of Texas has insisted on going to a jury trial (claiming she knew right from wrong and deserves prison) even after 5 medical experts have testified that she meets the definition of "insane" under Texas law. Cris pointed out that regardless, her life outside of confinement is over. I agreed, but expressed my opinion that she needs help rather than punishment and should be committed in an institution that understands her disorder rather than imprisoned in the general penal population. We agreed to disagree over my position that the trial is pointless and she simply needs to be declared insane and committed (Cris thinks some accountability is still in order).
Mental illness is a sad subject (especially for those who have had to deal with it, not just those with an illness but the family members thereof). In this case (as I understand it now), the woman believed God told her to kill her children and that they would be resurrected (physically), and she described in chilling detail how she found the rock that God had left for her and used it one at a time on her children. Several of the people I have heard weigh in on this issue have said that she should have known better and it was her fault for not seeing through the disorder. I think that's too easy. I don't think some people understand just how real the illusions of the mind can be. At work today I used the example, "What if a person came to you and said that the sun is not really yellow, it's green, and you have a mental illness and your mind has been tricking you into thinking it's yellow. Every time you've seen a book say the sun is yellow, it's actually said it's green and your mind has switched the words. And now you need to come along peacefully to the institution to be tested." Would you (a) agree that you were mentally ill and go along peacefully or (b) assume the person is either a con artist or a psychopath or simply messing with you? After all, you can see the sun, and it's yellow. To a mentally ill person, their suns seem perfectly yellow, even when they're actually green. I have a friend whose mother became mentally ill in her later years. She began to hear voices (threatening voices) that instructed her to wire money to accounts that didn't exist and the like. She believed she was being watched all the time and would whisper to "keep them from hearing." She was completely convinced the voices were real and would scoff (or become suspicious) of anyone who said they weren't.
From my own perspective, I've never been mentally ill (at least, I don't think so), and I hope I never am. But I can testify about brain disorders. Prior to my grand mal seizures, I had about 8 months of "mini" seizures, where, essentially, clusters of neurons in my temporal lobe would fire randomly for 30 or 40 seconds (I would not actually "seize" as people associate with the word "seizure"; I stayed completely conscious and none of the people around me knew I was having one unless I said something). Prior to my diagnosis I simply called them "dizzy spells," for lack of a better description. Now that I know what they are I can describe them a bit better. At the onset of the seizure, I could feel my perceptions of my surroundings change. I would feel euphoric for most of the seizure, but I would also lose all emotional attachment to my surroundings. Regardless of where I was (at work, in my apartment, etc.), I would experience a kind of reverse deja vu, where, although I knew rationally where I was (I could say "I'm at my desk at work"), it would seem, emotionally, that I had never been there before. I could stare at things on my desk and think "That is a cup" but I would not feel any attachment to it as being my cup. It was a very eery feeling. Thirty or forty seconds later it would pass, and within a minute or two my surroundings (or rather my perception of my surroundings) would be back to normal. This is a far cry from hearing voices, or suffering from multiple personalities or anything of the sort, but it does illustrate that the brain, when not functioning correctly, influences a person to a great extent. It seems highly unlikely that a person suffering from a mental disorder of any considerable degree would be able to "see around" the disorder and essentially self-diagnose to say "I am insane." Certainly not without outside help. Someone to say "the sun is really green."
As a closing thought, I'd like to point out that this woman heard voices from God commanding her to kill her children. She's on trial (no one is seriously suggesting she actually heard God). According to the Bible, Abraham heard voices from God commanding him to kill his son. The voice stopped him before Abraham succeeded, and Abraham is held up as a paragon of faith and obedience. People today who claim to hear voices from burning bushes or the sky are diagnosed with chemical imbalances or physical disorders of the brain. Maybe Abraham needed a psychiatrist. (Okay, that was my none-too-subtle way of pointing out that mental illness is a perfectly rational, and to me far more likely, explanation for the visions and voices heard by the inhabitants of the various religious texts around the world, not just the Bible but any religious text. And this last paragraph will garner more unhappy comments than the entire rest of the post combined.) This point aside, my original point is that to a person suffering from a mental illness, it seems completely real. It's easy to say "well, surely she would have realized it's wrong," but it's not so easy actually to recognize right and wrong when your fantasy makes perfect sense to you. Rather than horror, I feel a profound sense of pity for this woman, who is fighting guilt along side a seductive illusional world.
Posted at 11:21:00 PM. |
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Oooooo, Shiny
Thanks to Mull's sharp eyes, I no longer need to drool over the Canon S400 Elph I've been wanting for the last 8 months (the S400 is the 4-megapixel successor to my 2-megapixel S330). Why, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you (whether you asked or not). The S500 is now out! Five megapixels of digital nirvana . . . Feel free to buy me one. ;)
My application for the Navy was accepted today. I start basic training (or whatever the Navy's version is) in two weeks. I figured if they're going to start the draft soon anyway I might as well get a jump on it and pick which branch I want to be in. And since I don't really like marching, I figured the Navy was the best choice. This should be fun, considering I've never seen an ocean. In retrospect I should probably have chosen the Air Force (at least they have a Stargate), but I guess it's too late now. Oh well. So, to all my friends, best wishes. See you in four years. Oh, yeah, and Happy April Fool's Day, too. ;)
