Dealing with Fraudulent Charges - Getting Worse

(this is Part 2 - Part 1 is below)

The day I discovered the Wal Mart charges. I checked pretty much everything financial having to do with me. I looked at all my bank accounts, and pulled all of my credit reports. Everything looked fine so it appears that the problem is isolated to a stolen checking account number.

That same day because I wanted to cover some outstanding checks and I didn't want my friends to have to deal with returned checks (my fees will be refunded but I can't say the same thing about there's), I transferred $ to cover those checks. Today I took a look and the number looked similar but there was a minus sign in front of it. Uh oh, that'll teach me to put more money in a questionable account. Looking at the account detail reveals that two more checks have come in and these are actual checks:

[I will put the images here once I edit them]

Looking at them shows the person didn't even try to match my signature and a coworker tells me that what the store is looking for is a match to a drivers license signature. That implies that they have a driver's license with my name on it which is a little scary and makes me wonder if I should get a new one - however they're using a different number so that won't help. And I just love the high end places they're going. $800 and $400 at Nordstrom Rack? How the heck do you spend $1200 at Nordstrom Rack? What kind of clothes horse are we dealling with here? A not very bright one or a desperate one as the checks are stamped with the time, date, and cash register number and these places have cameras. Maybe she (let's be sexist and assume she - there's a large home depot just down the street from that store) is wearing a large hat or something. And she is able to print off new checks (I really wish that wasn't possible), and get a hold of a fake driver's license.

So the recommendation now is to close and freeze the account, and open a new one. I've done that, but now I'm in a 2 week poor house holding pattern while I wait for them to return the $2000+ to me. I do have some money in the house account that I can use and there's Bank of Terri and my work has graciously offered to help out if I need it.

So the question is how did this happen and what can I do to avoid it in the future. It's clear that I need to use cash and avoid checks for lower amounts to buisinesses I don't know which is a royal pain, I hate cash more as it disappears so easily, so I'm going to have to treat cash like a check and write it down in the register. As far as what happened to the check, number one suspect is a large dr's office where I'm not a regular customer. Most of my checks are to friends and to well known agility organizations who I trust. I almost always use my debit card for retail situations. Ironically it's the house accout that's more vulnerable since more large checks go through it, but so far it's been ok.

It would be cool to have an account that stipulates the checks have to look a certain way and only that way. I'd put my photo on a check if it would help.

I sent email to those folks that had outstanding checks, saying that while I had told the bank about their checks that it would probably be better if they destroyed that check and I could write them new one.

So I wait.... (tick tick tick)

Dealing with Fraudulent Charges - the Start of the Story

(Good grief, this is the 301st entry of this blog - how'd that happen?)

I logged in this morning to find an overdraft alert email from my bank. First concern is - is it a legit email, but the language looked correct and more importantly they quote the correct last 3-4 digits of the account number.

I log into the account online (what did we ever do before the internet?), and what do I find? Two different charges from Wal Mart (where I never shop fortunately) totaling over $800. Yikes, to the phone I go to call my bank (after grabbing the checkbook so I have the account number).

The person helping said that these were ACH "checks" which is a paper check converted to an electronic check. She also pointed out that the check number of the original check is listed there. The number was just a little ahead of my current check number, and she asked if I had that check number with me. Fortunately I did and assured her I was looking at my own version of that check number.

She explained to me that they were going to investigate to see whether or not it was a simple mistake (like a digit transposition), or actual fraud. I had to answer some formal questions and got an incident number. Because there were two charges we had to do it twice and I noticed that the second number was 13 above the first. I asked "you mean that it's possible that 12 other cases were filed in the last 2 minutes?" She assured me that given the call center size that it was more than possible. Yikes.

Because it's not clear if it's fraud or not they weren't suggesting closing the account just yet, so we're leaving it open for now.

The plot thickens in the next entry...

That One Missing Set of Photos

Likes a lot of folks I take a lot of photos, and like for many folks they are a challenge to organize but I had a reasonably working system where I file them by date in drawers that can hold photo envelopes. (Digital photos now actually make this a while lot easier, but I digress.)

And like most everyone else there are always some photos that don't quite make it into the drawer or at least right away. I know this because I come across them from time to time, flip through them, "ha ha look at that," and often as not, instead of filing them, just put them back down right where they were. This can go on for years.

Then some knucklehead invented Facebook, and friends from 28 years ago are now gathering and trying to figure out who is in what photo. A set of the pick up and set down photos I have are of these folks. Some really funny ones. And guess what? I CAN'T FIND THEM!!! These photos have an audience awaiting - how often does that happen? They want to see them right now and the moment will lose its relevancy in a few weeks or months. The time for these very silly photos is NOW. #@!#@!$!!! Sigh. It just figures. I've gone through 100s of photos and they're not there. This means that they are sitting around somewhere. Somewhere close like within 20 feet of where the rest of the photos live. I have seen the photos in my house even though the photos are older than the time I've owned my house. They exist as I'm not the type to toss photos. If they could only talk. Well I guess it's just as well they can't.

This calls for major unearthing of long standing stacks of paper which is a small mountain of distractions so staying focused on the original goal is a challenge. I'm fairly organized except for paper which is my downfalling and I struggle with it. I'm shifting over to paperless which helps with the incoming things, but I'm not going backwards on that so I'm just going to have to do it. In my spare time of course.

Later...
I did find the photos. In a photo album. The rest are still missing, but the best ones are of course in the album and I've scanned them and posted them to Facebook much to my friends' delight and horror.

Sorting out the "G"s

Pretty much ever time you hear the news you hear something about G-some-number. I finally couldn't take it anymore as they were all running together in my head, so I had to at least try to parse it out some.

G stands for "Group" - they really need to think of something more original.

There are
G7 (formerly G6)
G8
G20

The G7 ("Group of 7" Yes, really.) are the finance ministers of seven industrialized nations:
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, and now Canada

The G8 (you can just guess what that stand for) also includes Russia and particularly focuses on the Northern Hemisphere and is a more general "heads of state" and has several subgroupings.

With the G20 we're back to finance ministers and government banker types of these governments:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• France
• Germany
• India
• Indonesia
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States
• European Union

The current G20 meeting is in London and the UK is also suffering a major recession which is why they're getting some very angry protesters.

Ref:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102592516

Meal Creation by Wandering the Supermarket Aisles

First of all, full disclosure, I cook for fun. I do not have to do the amazing feat of feeding people on a day in day out basis. In fact, I'm not sure I could or if I did I would have no energy for anything remotely creative wrt cooking. Terri and I both cook and we don't have human children.

Just for fun today I was standing in the grocery store and was pondering lunch and my imagination got carried away and found myself dreaming up something that was a dinner not a lunch (for lunch I think I just had something simple like take out chicken wings and a salad.

So first I picked up some salad stuff and grabbed an onion and a head of garlic, then wandered past the meats but was still in lunch mode and thought that was too much trouble, but then I took a right into the canned/packaged fish/chicken and a small package of Wild Caught Salmon called out to me.While holding it I imagined onions, garlic, tomatoes, and capers all simmering with the salmon over a nice pasta.

The trick is remembering what you did. I'm not sure I have it all yet.

Salmon, Tomatoes and Klamata Olives over Pasta

olive oil
1/2 small white onion chopped (could have used more)
2 cloves garlic smashed and chopped (could have used more)
1 3 oz pkg Chicken of the Sea Wild Caught Smoked Salmon
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes
some water (approx 4 oz)
salt
pepper
pinch of coriander powder
some dried basil (1 tsp?)
some dried oregano (1/2 tsp?)
5-6 klamata olives pitted and chopped - pit them like you smash the garlic - press down with the side of a knife the olive will separate from the pit.
red wine vinegar - I have no idea the amount, try 5 seconds of sounding like the Muppet Swedish Chef while shaking the bottle over the pan

What I wished I had
Italian Parsley
capers - forgot to buy them

and of course pasta - I used thin spaghetti but penne or bow tie would be nice

saute onion and garlic in olive oil till soft and delicious smelling, add salmon and let it heat through for a minute or so (it's already cooked). [Right around here put the pasta water on to boil] Add tomatoes and water (optional) bring to boil then as sauce reduces, add salt pepper, coriander powder, basil, oregano (and whatever herbs strike your fancy) reduce heat, [you should have the pasta in the water by now] let cook till sauce is further reduced and then add olives and sprinkle liberally with red wine vinegar, let cook for another few (I dunno 3-5?) minutes until it looks and tastes right.

Optional: Serve with salad and a baguette.

Ref: http://frap.org/Cooking/

Interest Rate Free Fall

I have a semi high interest savings account that I pay house expenses out of.

This is from a reputable bank fortunately, but the interest rates have recently been readjusting at a startling rate: Here it is from late 2007 on:

Nov 1, 2007 Interest Rate Change to 4.121% (4.20% APY)
Dec 13, 2007 Interest Rate Change to 4.025% (4.10% APY)
Jan 23, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 3.590% (3.65% APY)
Feb 1, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 3.348% (3.40% APY)
Mar 11, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 3.057% (3.10% APY)
Mar 19, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 2.960% (3.00% APY)
Oct 9, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 2.716% (2.75% APY)
Dec 30, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 2.472% (2.50% APY)
Jan 20, 2009 Interest Rate Change to 2.374% (2.40% APY)
Feb 3, 2009 Interest Rate Change to 2.178% (2.20% APY)
Mar 3, 2009 Interest Rate Change to 1.638% (1.65% APY)
Mar 21, 2009 Interest Rate Change to 1.490% (1.50% APY)

In 2007 it hardly changed at all, then went through a spate of changes in 2008, then it stabilized and now in 2009 it's jumped off the building. Wow. A friend jokes that soon we'll be paying them. i just saw Hero's for the first time (the first DVD). Maybe the interest rates will suddenly figure out how to fly just before hitting the ground.

Gimo Investigations - And So It Begins

Well we can't say we weren't warned. In this post:

http://www.frap.org/Blog/2009/01/bye-bye-gitmo-investions-next.html

I did a summary/rehash of the information contained in a Phillipe Sands interview on Fresh Air mostly just so I would have the names of the major players we were likely to see again within easy reach, and sure enough what he said is prophetic. The Spanish are considering opening an inquiry into Gitmo and funny if a lot of the same names crop up again:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/28/international/i150618D86.DTL&tsp=1

And funny how we're hearing all the players protest their innocence even though we all knew the potential for this to happen was all too real.

This may get nowhere, but it is amusing to watch even this much transpire.

Roche vs Genetech - An Agreement is Reached

I got my latest black plastic encased mail from Sharebuilder. I've started looking forward to them. This one tells me that they actually have reached an agreement. The letter is from Genetech and not Roche and the offer is for $95/share and they recommend I take it. Given that the current value is around $81 that's probably a good idea.

So the Genetech board suggests "tendering" the shares. And what happens if I don't? Pretty much the exact same thing if I did though I would be "paid" later.

Ok fine, I'll tender my glorious 1.5 shares. But just trying to follow instructions is proving to be a challenge as the site isn't responding.

I enter the site and enter my control number and it says that the site isn't working please try again later (I've tried at 2 different times). Oh and when does this offer expire? In 3 days. Thanks guys for yanking me around. You ask me to do something, say it's urgent, and then things don't work. I do believe the proper response is sod off.







I will try one more time on Monday then will just let them do whatever they are going to do. I did send Sharebuilder email about it though have not heard back

A Jacket to Help You Feel the Movies? I'm not so sure about that

I'm a member of IEEE an engineering professional association mostly so I can qualify for their life insurance (which for me is mortgage insurance). I normally don't pay too much attention to their newsletter, but once in a while I take a look as it's often quite fascinating to see what people are working on.

This time one of the articles talks about a jacket you can wear that helps you experience the emotions that a character might be experiencing: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/8287

While it sounds intriguing, I thought it through, and started to shudder.
You see I have much too good of an imagination. Visual images (especially violent ones) stick with me for a very long time especially if there is some emotional impact associated with it. I actually had to learn to get more, not less, emotional distance from what I was watching just so I could watch things like CSI, and enjoy the eye-candy of certain NCIS characters (of both genders) without freaking out about the open chest on the table. I watched Blair Witch Project on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I would take the time to stop and look out the window and say to myself "What a nice DAY it is. Such a beautiful, peaceful DAY" (and breathe :) Can you imagine something designed to help you experience the same stress level of the BWP characters? Heebe-jeebe-jeebe.

AIG: Finally a Consensus

After all these years, it was starting to look the Left and the Right were were never going to agree on anything ever again. Then AIG had to come along and try to pull off probably the most openly egregious and audacious (and shockingly oblivious) abuse of government funding ever attempted, and suddenly we have unity. Nothing like a good public flogging to bring people together. Fortunately, AIG isn't even a scapegoat, they completely deserve it. I can hear the fires being lit right now that certain executive feet will be held to. I wonder if a lot of AIG execs (and ex-execs) have fled the country.

Songs for Riding a Bike to Nowhere

I've been taking RPM/Spin classes at my gym for over a year now and am pretty used to what makes good music for it and have been working on my own sets for when I can't make it to class but want to go in and use the Spin Bike on my own.

RPM classes feature a lot of cadence changes, but lack in maintaining a pace for an extended period of time, so I tend to do that more when working on my own.

Here's my current list:

Songs for Spinning

• Sheryl Crowe - Everyday is a Winding Road
• K T Tunstall - Suddenly I See
• Sneakerpimps - Walking on the Sun
• Offspring - Come Out and Play

Stand in the pedals for the choruses of all 4, the songs build in intensity - do the same.

• Oingo Boingo - Weird Science

Now to crank the heartbeat- do 1/3 of the song anaerobically, standing in the pedals, the song seems slow but is excellent at getting you to work harder.

• Oingo Boingo - Dead Men's Party

Mixed terrain recovery - lots of ups and down, just like Oingo Boingo. I've also used "No One Lives Forever" but got tired of hearing about my doggy getting old in 10 years so swapped it out.

• Prince - Take Me with You

Recovery - cruise like the song does, or since it's a short song, double your pace and stay at 110-120 rpm.

• Sheryl Crowe - My Favorite Mistake

Everybody's got one (I have around three :) - sit down, add resistance and grind your way through the metaphor like you know you can.

• Alanis Morrisette - Thank U

Do whatever you need to do to recover from the last one.

Tons of other options
Sheryl Crowe - All I Wanna Do (yes, the silly bar and car wash song)
Garbage - just about anything, but it's really easy to get caught up and completely overdo it.
Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus or Enjoy the Silence
New Order - Blue Monday, or Bizarre Love Triangle, or Perfect Kiss (haven't tried them in a workout yet)
k. d. lang - Constant Craving works nicely as a recovery track or even a drive home track
The Police - Murder by Numbers is a great recovery track
Romeo Void - I Might Like You Better If We Slept Together - actually kinda long and I took it out.
Midnight Oil - Power and the Passion - also long
The The - Uncertain Smile extended mix - one of my all time favorite songs but still quite long
RPM - Losing My Religion

Things I haven't tried yet but might be fun are
The Go Gos
B-52s (same overdoing it caution as with Garbage :)
English Beat
any of the 80's haircut bands
Billy Idol - Dancing with Myself - worked nicely when an instructor played it just for fun

I have an RPM instructor who occasionally tries to kill me with doing intervals to Cheap Trick (I'm blocking out which track :)

Squaw Ski Lesson

Apoligies, but this is a bit dry and techie, but it's what I learned and I don't want to forget it.

I just blew the rest of the season's ski budget on a 2 hour private lesson with an instructor I like at Squaw Valley. "Blew" implies wasted, it wasn't. It was very effective and I'm not likely to forget it though I want to get it all down here as best I can.

My instructor was Greg Rosenthal, and Greg is very good at deconstructing the mechanics of skiing and what makes a ski turn smooth and effective. (Those classic S shaped turns.)

Sadly, it now is completely evident to me that I'm not going to become good enough of a skier this season to feel comfortable on Shasta with its ungroomed slopes and little details like steepness and these things called trees that inhabit the less steep parts. I think for me to feel comfortable off piste, I'm going to have to be able to ski without thinking about the mechanics of turning and that's going to take another season. Right now, there's about a month left in the season and I certainly could spend it skiing, but I'm going to Shasta to climb it in May so my time is probably better spent training to go up the mountain instead of down. :) though it would be so nice to just ski up on skins as that is easier than walking. Ah well, some day.

Back to the ski lesson. First bad, but important, news is that I'm working too hard on my right turns and overusing my left quad instead of shin pressure on the boots to cut the turn too short and slow myself down. I've always struggled on the right turns, but never realized that it was the over-braking that was exhausting my quad (it's been two days and it's still tired). I need to learn to stay in the turn longer and not put so much effort in my quad, but instead use skletal force from my shins to the front of the boot to weight the ski. In other words, bend at the knees, and lean more forward. Like really lean forward. I actually tried falling forward (slightly terrifying - what a trust exercise) and suddenly I had a lot more control because the front part of the ski is widest and the easiest to steer. I tend to lean backwards even after stopping carrying a pack.

Greg taught me another way to learn to shift forward by showing me how to ski backwards. Skiing backwards resembles a silly terrain park trick, but you simply can not do it unless you shift your weight forward and this helps you to learn that positition which is what you need going forward as well. What was fun, that skiing backwards involved overturning all the way around which is something I do by accident all the time when I forget to look down the mountain and turn my hips up the slope. So now I feel I have a touch more things I can do when that happens and I feel a bit less of a dork.

Steps to turning
- stand up (out of any bent position)
- with your weight evenly balanced between the skis, steer your feet, meaning turn your feet in the direction you want to go. Many ski lessons now only empasize putting the weight on the outside ski, but on anything but a green run that's actually not quite enough (In my head, I'm saying "point your feet" - in the direction where you want to go). The skis will turn and start to head down the hill (eek - don't panic)
- now just before it starts down the hill, weight the outside ski and bend your knees applying forward pressure from your shins to the front of the outside boot (make sure your weight is forward). By bending your knees you can put more than body weight pressure on the ski.
- hang in there and let the ski turn (this is where trying to fall forward really helps). If your inside ski's inside edge seems stuck, roll your inside knee out some which should let the ski slide over.
- if you feel you're going too fast turn up the hill .

You can see how well you're going by examining your tracks. Mine generally look like backwards number 2's :) which shows me cutting my right turn too short.

Other Notes
You can learn a lot by watching others while you're hanging out on the ski lift. It's disheartening to see how poorly people ski when you're looking at an intermediate run. One day, I should take a video camera and film the expert runs. The trouble is that the expert skiiers are not always easy to see or get to, unlike us amatuers who are everywhere. :)

Also I had just bought a really nice North Face Ski Jacket from REI (on sale - $120.00 off!) and was really glad I did, because at Squaw, I was being pelted by blowing snow while sitting on a chair lift at 8000'. Which was pretty funny since it was a gorgeous snowless day.

Anyway I got to spend the afternoon practicing what I'd learned so it could set into my muscles, but have decided to say good by to the rest of the ski season and spend the rest of winter snowshoeing and training with a pack. Thank you to the weather gods for providing us snow to have fun on and to give us water for the rest of the year. More snow is very much welcome as we really need it here in California.

Humor: The Prejudices of Healthy People

This was meant to be a silly thing that a friend (not in my dog circles) sent me. However it belies some assumptions that I can't stop thinking about. First of all here is the platitude. The punch line is at the end:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Enlightened Are You? A Test:

If you can live without caffeine or nicotine;
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;
If you can resist complaining;
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you any time;
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;
If you can ignore friends' limited educations and never correct them;
If you can treat the rich and poor alike;
If you can face the world without lies or deceit;
If you can conquer tension without medical help;
If you can relax without liquor;
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs;
If you can have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender, sexual preference, or politics

— then you have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog.

ANONYMOUS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cute. However it reveals some really interesting prejudices of some who consider themselves striving to enlightenment. The key is what does spirtitual enlightenment have to do with your level of health. Ok, some Kudalini Yoga people would say everything, but personally I see them as separate which is totally non-holistic of me but I think a great stride towards sanity and less self-judgement, because honestly what does caffiene have to do with spiritual development. Really??

Despite my MS, I am one of those healthy people. I try not to be an annoying healthy person. I do not scold or cajole or convince anyone (well besides Terri, who needs no such convincing), unless they ask me to about diet or exercise or other healthy habits. I am not in the health gestapo and I think that people should make there own choices. Not to mention our idea of what is healthy changes as our knowledge changes. Some alcohol is actually good for you, same with caffiene, and there are a ton of people who need some sort of herbal or medicinal help sleeping. That does not make them inheritly less spiritual and I think it's completely arrogant of those in the no caffiene, no alcohol, no fun crowd (I'm in that crowd I get to say that - not by choice, more by what my body prefers) to claim that they are somehow more spiritually evolved. I believe the correct response to that is: Oh eff off.

So for fun, I'll take this test (be a fun one to put on facebook)

If you can live without caffeine or nicotine
Yes. Well except for dark chocolate, if you haven't be paying attention that's actually good for you.

If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains
What's so wrong with complaining? The point is to whine all you like, but work through it, not suppress you feelings and frustration with the healing process.

If you can resist complaining
See above. Oh and my dogs complain too, unless my nut ball is chasing a sheep or a squirrel.

If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you any time
Well ok.

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment
Well ok.

If you can ignore friends' limited educations and never correct them
No, I correct them. Politely.

If you can treat the rich and poor alike
No, I give the rich a much harder time.

If you can face the world without lies or deceit
Wow, you tell the complete truth the whole time?
Remind me not to trust you with sensitive information.

If you can conquer tension without medical help
Just because I can does not make me more enlightened.

If you can relax without liquor
You really aren't any fun are you?

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs
Yes, but piss off.

If you can have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender, sexual preference, or politics
Oh I sure do when it comes to Right Wing Assholes, and I don't feel that's something I have to rise above.

So I guess this means that my dogs are more enlightened than me. Guess I should tell them. I'm sure they'll say they already knew that.

The Data Backup Dilemma

I have my new Terrabyte disk and I'm thrilled but now I'm left with - how do I back it up? I guess I can take the approach that we use at work. We use multiple USB disks of the same size. This works great but I don't have those kind of resources.

I take a lot of photos and video. Video data storage is quite large, and I'm likely going to do more, not less.

What I envision is a digital library of easy to access photos and videos, and I want to have it all online but backed up as well. When I started to run out of disk space I copied all of my older electronic photos to CD and took them off the drive. This drives me nuts having to go grab the CD (though it's nice to see that the CD works fine.

This is a common topic and the British Museum is struggling with it:

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/10/16/227474/strategies-for-long-term-data-retention.htm

But even us ordinary humans are trying to cope. This is an excellent article written in 2006, about Mark who is a videographer, and wants to keep his videos past the time he dies. It's interesting to read both his thoughts and the 100 comments as well.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/08/backup

Though I can't believe some people still like tape. I hate tape. I hate that it's slow. I hate that it's not reliable. I had to deal with it for over 10 years and I'm so happy that we've moved to disks.

Someone mentioned Blue Ray DVDs that hold 25 Gig (single layer) or 50 Gig (dual layer), and a 100 G in the works. That would be perfect.

More info: http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/
and http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/08/68539

And a Sony bright, shiny object
http://gizmodo.com/5054187/sonys-bwu+300s-blu+ray-recorder-burns-50gb-in-30-minutes

More speculation is here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10065439-1.html

As usual, no mention of Mac compatibility, but it will happen.

Staying tuned. In the meantime, I'll keep my 300 Gig disk around to help with backups.

More Mailbox Drama: Genetech Fights Roche's Buyout Offer

In a completely unsurprising move. Genetech just sent me a letter (to all stockholders - of which I have a glorious 1.5 shares of)

WE URGE YOU NOT TO ACCEPT ROCHE'S OFFER--WE BELIEVE IT SUBSTANTIALLY UNDERVALUES YOUR INVESTMENT

I could have told you that. Oh wait, I did. But it's nice to see they agree.

Genetech continues:

We consistently indicated our willingness to consider an offer from Roche that reflects the full and fair value of Genetech and the significant benefits to Roche of full ownership. It is ironic that even after our many efforts to engage in constructive dialog, Roche not only refused to increase its initial offer [of $89/share], and refused to engage in productive negotiations with the Special Committee--it reduced [italics mine] its offer price to $86.50 per share.

How stupid does Roche think we are? Jerks.

Scary Lily

We have a Lily that we got as a wedding present that has died back this winter. I think that's normal, but because it was a gift I've been keeping an eye on it. Now that it's Spring it's growing back and the rate that it's growing is a little disconcerting. About 1 cm every 24 hours. These photos are taken a day apart. I'll continue to be nice to it as I don't want it mad at me :)

Prop 8 Showdown this week

(I know I've blogged about this before, but wanted to say it again.)

The Supreme Court Prop 8 Showdown is this week on Thur March 5th and the nation will be watching. It's been so strange for me. Getting married is such a personal decision, and even though I knew I was signing up to be a political football, I still wasn't quite prepared for everyone to have an opinion about it. Fortunately, there's overwhelming legislative support to overturn Prop 8. I can only hope I get to remain married in the state's eyes. I know I will always be married, but I really do want for it to stay that way legally as well.

The court will have 90 days to issue a decision after the hearing, but you know they've already made up their minds so I think it will be more the time it takes to write up the decision.

Remembering Peter Decker

This is not about the famous fictional detective, but instead about a childhood friend. Peter Decker is pictured in the photo, he is standing on the right and his friend Scott is on the left.

It's been raining for a couple of weeks in California and usually at least once during the rains I am reminded of Peter who we lost during a rainy season.

It was March 1978. I had just started high school and Peter, a year younger, was still in junior high. That year the rains were heavy and relentless. Our horses were in knee deep mud and the bottom part of our orchard was a river a couple feet deep. This was Southern California and NOT normal.

At one point during that time, I was in a car driving past the nearby country club golf course - part of which you can see from the street (Yorba Linda Blvd). A very impressive impromptu river was flowing down the middle of it. While being duly amazed, , I didn't think much more abut it. Peter and our mutual friend Scott, took one look at that and thought what many young boys thought. Rafting!

But there is a common tenant in river running: Know the route - usually by visually inspecting it from the shore. This, of course, didn't occur to the boys. All they saw was a good time, and who could blame them?

The boys fashioned a raft or rafts out of something (I'm not sure what), and started down. As with most flowing water, it was going much faster than they expected. At the end of this section of the golf course (around Kellogg Dr. you can see a sat photo here.) the river of water hurtled into a drain pipe. Scott bailed off, but Peter was sucked into the drain pipe. At this point, this would have been a traumatic, but survivable event. What turned it into tragedy was that for reasons I have never understood, there was a metal grate at the end of that pipe (and only one end), and Peter drowned.

These days such a scenario has wrongful death written all over it but being a grieving kid, I don't know what happened in that regard if anything.

Peter was like any Junior High School boy, A perfect tormentor of girls near his age. Our friendship was just as typically combative. He would relentlessly tease me and I'd beg for him to stop or go away. That year we were in different schools so I hadn't seen much of him, but just a few days before he died chance had it that our buses let out at the same time and we walked home together. This was not a happy experience for me. We lived on country blocks and I just double checked the distance with Google. 1000' of Peter torment (more that 3 football fields). What's amazing is that I have absolutely no recollection of what he said, but rest assured it was content-free - things like mangling my name, or making up ridiculous scenarios and asking questions about them mostly having to do with if it's something I would do/contemplate. The usual crap.

But then we'd reached my house (his was 3 houses further), and he suddenly dropped his barrage. Asked me a normal question about my day and we actually had a brief, but genuine conversation which was highly unusual. And we parted on civil terms. Even said polite goodbyes to each other which at the time I found to be a pleasant surprise. A few days later he was dead, and I'm left to wig out about it for every rainy season for the rest of my life.

[Edit much later
Google has been scanning old newspapers and I have found an article that references the incident. The location is wrong, but the date is 1978. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19780306&id=AuIbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=dWcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3291,2734876&hl=en]

I Can Finally Ski Decently

After struggling for two seasons, I can finally ski decently (albeit relatively slowly). Parallel turns, weight on the outside ski, don't freak out about the speed (mostly), and even pole plants. This is on moderate blues like Trailblazer at Sugarbowl. Harder blues (like the ones on Mt. Disney) I'm quite bad at and am not even thinking about blacks. The major breakthrough was ponying up for better, more responsive skis. When I ask my current skis to turn they say "Right Away" My older ones though parabolic, were more "Let me get back to you, well, ok." Perfect on greens, but tough on steeper slopes. I am a little concerned that my Tele skis are also this type of ski, but I think I'll wait on worrying about that.

My left leg fatigue is still there but improving. I don't know if it's because my skiing skill is better and hence less wasted effort, or my legs are getting used to skiing, or because of the heavier weight training - (I'm lifting way more than I ever thought I could because of a mountaineering trainer's encouragement) or a combination.

Noticed a tele lesson going on and went over to say hi. It was actually an Alpine Skills International group which are the exact tele lessons I'm thinking of taking. I'd been waiting to take their class till I was a better skiier, but I think I'm as good a skiier as his students. His name was Jeff.

I'm just so happy that I've come so far from falling off of chairlifts when trying to exit. Today I steered around two different spills at chairlift exits and I avoided crashing into a snow boarder who wiped out right in front of me. He was very apologetic and I told him it was ok as I got to work on stopping. His instructor was amused.

Coming Out: I was Once an ASH'er

Warning this is not a cheery topic though I have 10 years of distance on it. Those who have come to know me (after that time period) will likely not believe this. It sounds like a different person. And that's exactly what major depression is like.

A decade ago, I was desperately depressed and suicidal (mostly inwardly, but some very subtle outward). I needed a place to talk about the hell I was going through. To talk bluntly about it. Very bluntly. No encouraging words. "No hang in there" crap. Just needed to tell an understanding group of people that I seriously wanted the hell out of life, because depression makes life so physically and emotionally painful that all you want is out.

ASH was that place. ASH is a USENET newsgroup that stands for alt.suicide.holiday. It no longer exists today but now is just mostly a spam trap. I haven't worked up the nerve to post what name I used there. Nor am I sure how relevant is it to this particular post.

ASH was not a support group, and yet it very much was. Just by being a place people could go and talk about what they were feeling with out someone trying to talk them out of it is (to make a really bad word choice) refreshing. It was an emotionally risky place (I created a post like that on ASH which someday I might post the link to) to be as you come to care about the people there, even though you support their right to end their lives and their suffering if they so choose. Most people survive their stint on ASH (the newer antidepressants save countless lives, but there are 15% of people for whom they don't work for), but the exceptions haunt you.

And I think that is the most important thing. If someone you know even mentions vaguely in passing thoughts of suicide, talk to them about it. Find out how their feeling and try not to cheer them up unless you sense they truly do want that. Depression is a horrible awful place to be and the more you are able to listen the better. If it's too much (it often is), then really encourage them to talk to a therapist. Reassure them that they're not going to get locked up unless the therapist thinks they are an immediate danger to themselves or someone else.

Facebook - I Finally Gave In

I'd been resisting joining Facebook despite multiple invitations. I have so many email accounts that it was hard to muster up the energy for another time sink. But I kept noticing just how many people I knew were on it which made it more intriguing.

But the thing that put it over the top for me was a different thing. I am working on a long blog entry about the drowning death of a childhood friend that rocked my community pretty hard (the rains remind me of him and his story needs to be told to the internet.) I did find references to it. You guessed it - on Facebook. Now most of the information I could get to and not be on Facebook but at that point since I was already there, it was just as easy to join and get full access.

Facebook is bewildering and that's even with help. What's scary is the amount of matching it can do and find people to suggest as friends and it turns out you know these people. Well most of them. There are a couple who sought me out and I don't know why they are. One of them I think I'll send email to and ask, politely, who the heck they are (we have one person in common so they're not a complete stranger.) the other was likely looking for a videographer as that invite happened when I publicized my No on Prop 8 video.

I must say this does bring up old High School anxieties. Even though it doesn't happen to me now (actually it never did - that was more my fear), what if someone were to send out friend requests and nobody responded? You could orchestrate a virtual shunning - something that I bet high schoolers are really good at. Especially since Facebook is really good about saying who took who as a friend. I can just imagine the drama. "You took Person-x as a friend? You are dead to me." Oh the tension. Oh the very real pain for some.

At least it's less tacky and more adult than MySpace and more relevant that Tribe, and I do have my advisors and it's a great way to keep track of agility people though that's not very hard. Just go to an agility trial with in 100 miles (or more). You'll find them. There are agility people who live hours away (even out of state) that I see on a regular basis. Now that's dedication.

Now about this sheep being thrown at me...

Skiing in Warm Snowstorms - Yeeck

So I had what I thought was a great idea. On Sunday, there was going to be a storm coming in at night, but the report said that it was only supposed to be snowing lightly during the day. I wanted to go skiing, but didn't want to have to do what could be an exciting drive on top of it so I instead took the Bay Area Ski Bus (http://bayareaskibus.com). Well there's one leetle thing that I neglected to take into account. How warm it was going to be. Snow falling in warm conditions often turns into rain, but I'm jumping ahead.

First bad sign was that the host came on the PA when we were around Dixon and said it was raining at Sugarbowl (where we were going) and many of the lifts were closed. Two other resorts, Northstar and Sierra at Tahoe were offered where conditions were a little better and the group selected Northstar. Now the bummer of the bus is that there isn't some magic opt-out button. You are stuck with the group decision (I was hoping to still go to Sugarbowl, but was happy to do Northstar as I hadn't seen it in years.) Fortunately the ski bus had Northstar lift tickets for only $40 which was less than what I would pay with my Day Pass at Sugarbowl.

So we get there and it is raining, but we hear that conditions are better higher up. So we all take the gondola up to the "Mid Mountain Lodge" where it is sort of snowing, and the final day of the Dew Tour Snowboarding Super Pipe Competition is going on which is cool

Then I notice what the falling snow is doing. It's melting the second it lands. Snow normally when it lands on you, just easily brushes off. Not this. This really isn't snow. This is rain falling in the form of snow. Just walking around checking the place out, I'm getting wet. I take two baby beginner runs and I'm soaking and I can hardly see - I didn't bring googles, just sunglasses. I retreat into the lodge to dry out and read my book (about mountaineering accidents - yes, really - I do like cautionary tales as I learn from them).

After a while, conditions improve some and the women are going to be doing the final runs, so it seemed like a good time to go up and watch. It sure was. I saw the winning run by 17 (!) year old Austrailian Tora Bright. and I also saw Kelly Clark's high flying second place run (which was also stellar). The atheticism and the eye candy almost made it worth it. :)

I took 2 longer runs before conditions worsened again and I then gave up. The really good skiiers who were able to get higher up on the mountain where getting all snow and were having a magical time which we all were getting drenched which is a reason to get that good.

Then came the long, long drive home. Because we are now on the wrong side of Donner Pass chain controls are in effect and Cal Trans has blocked off lanes to check all the vehicles and we were on a smaller highway before even getting to I-80. Just to get going on 80 took 2 1/2 hours which would normally be under 30 minutes. They had brought a bunch of movies, so I got to watch that paeon to paranoia The Game and also some forgettable Office caper film. But it still was just arduous and I was thinking that if I had driven to Sugarbowl I could have left at noon when I realized just how bad it was and spend the day with Terri and go play with the dogs.

So the lesson was twofold
- snow in warm conditions can easily turn into rain or melt-on-contact might-as-well-be-rain
- the Ski Bus can get you there in questionable conditions that you may not want to drive in, but there is no guarentee that you will like it.

And the most important take away for me is that: I'm working on building my ski skills. Less than optimum conditions take away from that focus since that is not what I'm working on. I really need to stick with good weather conditions to get the most out of my ski time.

Help! There's a Hostile Takeover in My Mailbox

I innocently opened up the mail and in it was something from Sharebuilder that looked like it would be an annual report though it's a bit late for that. I was just about to toss it into the ignore for a while pile but something got me to open it.

It's from Roche offering to buy my glorious 1.5 shares (Sharebuilder gets the credit for allowing me to buy partial shares) of Genetech for 86.50 per share. Now given that it's a great time to be buying stock, but a rotten time to be selling it, my "Scooby Sense" (as Rachel Maddow is fond of saying) stated to go off.

Reading further I see:
On July 21, 2008 Roche publicly announced an

unsolicited proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Genentech common stock not owned by them, and proposed a merger at $89/share.

On Aug 13, 2008 a committee of the board of directors of Genentech said sod off. No, that's not what they said. It says they:

rejected that proposal as substantially undervaluing Genentech.

It goes on to say that

In light of the lack of progress, we have decided to make an offer directory to Genentech's stockholders thereby giving the public stockholders the opportunity to determine whether to accept the offer.

Yikes, that doesn't sound friendly at all, not only that, they are offering stockholders a lower offer than the rejected offer - what do they take us for - morons apparently. I do believe this is a hostile take over that has just been hand delivered to me by a US Government Official (my friend Pierre gets credit for that description :). Once again, the news is affecting me (though granted this is no Prop 8).

Doing some casual checking of actual news sources, rather than what I've been handed shows:

Genentech Rejects Takeover Bid from Roche
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/business/14drug.html?ref=todayspaper
Roche takes its offer to Genentech Shareholders [that's me apparently - wave]
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BUQT15QHSV.DTL

And what would Roche do if they are successful? Take all their new toys and go home. Yep, they would absorb it into Roche and de-list it from the NY Stock exchange. Now I don't mind semi private holdings at all, I work for a private company. But to have a good public company be taken away (via a Low Ball Offer even) and deprive ordinary stock holders of any benefit of Genentech's innovations, just really rubs me the wrong way. Although I guess we would all become Roche stockholders but that means that Genentech's actions would be wholly within Roche.

Fortunately, I don't have a lot of money invested in them and it's worth it for me to just hang in there just so I can write about what is going to happen next. Actually, even if I had a lot of money invested I wouldn't take such a bad offer anyway. Should be interesting to see how this all works out. The Reply deadline is March 9, 2009.

The Arkansas Ice Storm (Jan 2009)

On Jan 28-29, 2009 Arkansas, Kentucky, parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and other surrounding areas were hit with a fierce ice storm. Here in Calif it made the news once or twice and then disappeared. A week after that I got a call from my friends in Arkansas. They just got phone service, but were still without power and were looking at at least another week without power, and that turned out to not be an exaggeration.

The full impact of such an experience can not be carried off in the media, but it was certainly underreported here. Now I don't get CNN, but I get CNN news alerts via email and there was hardly a mention of it.

The night of the 28th was completely unreal as ice was falling from the sky and accumulating on the trees and power poles and transformers. When the weight of the ice became too much for the object being piled up on, it would splinter, crack or just explode. It felt like bombs were going off. They've been there around 20 years and have never been through anything quite like it. 90% of the power grid was impacted.

A sobering reference is here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/6239492.html
though that link no longer works

Here are some closely related ones:
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2009_4696114
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2009_4695789
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2009_4696662

And alarming images like this one can be found at
http://www.aecc.com/content.cfm?id=2209

And my friends? It took them over a week to clear the trees from the driveway so they could get out. This is only after being imprisoned in the house for a couple of days because it was just too hazardous to go out because of falling ice.



This is John standing in front of their driveway that you can no longer see and the downed trees were much worse further back:





They lost a lot of trees and many more were damaged:



The other more heroic effort was to keep the birds and the fish alive. They lost a lot of fish as they had to hand pump oxygen into the tanks. Furthermore their primary source of heat became the wood stove (after they had all piled into a much smaller part of the house) and the parrots skin dried badly in the lack of humidity so they had to be misted which must of puzzled them no end.



Fortunately my friends have survived the ordeal (there were 50 or so deaths having to do with falling ice, hypothermia, and carbon monoxide poisoning) now have power and are enjoying hot showers again. What's alarming is that there are some still without power according to the Power Cooperatives website. This is not for lack of trying. Some 700 people were involved in the restoration of miles of downed power poles.

When they got power back I got this celebratory missive:
i HAVE POWER!!!!!!! i AM BACK ON LINE!!!!!! i AM GOING TO GET TO TAKE A BATH!!!!!!!! AND COOK!!!!!!! AND HAVE ICECUBES!!!!!!! AND DRINK WATER THAT DOESNT TASTE LIKE PLASTIC!!!!!!

i AM SO HAPPY.

Sometimes the most impressive of dramas are going on not very far away.

A Real Skiing Lesson - The Alpine World Championships

I'm not used to having what ski instructors tell me show up at the World Championship level, but that is exactly what's happening now.

A basic truism of skiing is keep your weight on the outside ski - there are a ton of references on this, but my fav is Lito Tejada-Flores with his DVDs and web site: Breakthrough on skis. It's easy to think that this is just something they tell you to help you learn, but I'm watching the Alpine World Cup on Universal Sports Womens Super G that was just held 3 days ago on Feb 3rd (well the whole competition will be going on for a while) in Val d'isere, France. This is a tough, very curvy Super-G course and the object lessons were (a) memorize the course carefully (you don't get to practice on it) as there were a lot of missed gates and (b) keep your weight on the outside ski. You are going at very unforgiving speeds: if you lean in you will go down or your inside ski could catch an edge and send you flying. While there were good examples of that in that competition, an excellent example of that happening, also happened on Dec 5th at Lake Louise, NY to Romanian Edith Miklos here. A different less dramatic example is here.

American Lyndsey Vonn is currently in the lead of the entire competition (she did win the Super G event with a beautiful run, and also Lake Louise as well), and will no doubt become a household name during the Olympics in Vancouver. The results page is here.

So keep that weight on the outside ski when turning.

Altitude Blinders

I just realized that I am a world class idiot, but I'm not supposed to look at it that way. I'm supposed to be giving myself a break with this realization and just because I was too blind to not figure it out years ago does not mean I get to stop giving myself said break.

As I've whined before, I struggle with altitude, especially above 11,500' though I have been able to adjust to 12,000' and have been up to 13,000' 3 different times. When I was younger and MS-free and hiking with my Dad, climbing was relatively easy if I spent one night at altitude beforehand. I've climbed San Gergonio peak, Kearsarge Pass, and Gardiner Pass.

Well in one of those k'duh moments, I finally looked up the altitude of such lofty places. They are, in order: 11,500', 11,700, and 11,250'. None, precisely none, were at or above 12,000' Up until I started the Whitney and Shasta follies, I have probably never been above 12,000' unless it was on a plane or on a Swiss cog train. My pre-Whitney adult hiking experience (after those Sierra hikes with my Dad) was in the relatively low California coastal mountains.

So I need to just lay off on myself and take the proper time to aclimate. The trouble on the Whitney trail is that the altitude jumps between the camps are 2,000' and my body and most official texts on the subject of aclimatization prefer 1500'. Fortunately in the Outpost (10,000') to Trail Camp (12,000') climb there is Consultation Lake which is around 11,680' and a lovely place to camp from what I understand. I hate to give up that 400' on summit day, but it beats being sick even before summit day.

Want to Climb Mt. Whitney? - Apply for a Permit Now (Feb)

Mt. Whitney being the tallest mountain in the continental U.S. is probably one of the most popular trails in the entire country. Good reason too - it's a very beautiful striking place. However its popularity means that the trail has quota restrictions on it for half the year (May 1 to November 1), and that there is a lottery to decide who gets the permits. Unlike the various state lotteries, the odds of securing a permit are actually very good if you are flexible and go with only a few people.

I've been there several times and I'm realizing that people aren't always familiar with the permit application/lottery process.

First of all, the absolutely most important page to consult is this one:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/recreation/wild/mtwhitney.shtml

and the most important factoid to gleem is that February is the month to apply for the Main Trail permits for May1 - Nov 1. Which means NOW! If you want to go up Whitney on the Main Trail (by far the most common), you need to get your rear in gear.

The information page on the lottery itself is here:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/recreation/wild/whitneylottery.shtml

First you down load this form (this is the pdf version):
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/recreation/wild/applications/lottery_only_application.pdf

Fill it in listing as many possible dates as possible. By far the best thing you can do is list something like "any 3 [or how many you want] days from [start date] to [end date]." Generally the snow hangs around till early July. I assure you that if you include June in your list, you will get June. It might (sadly) be a low snow year and that may be ok, but odds are good you will see snow, and if you don't have snow skills, it could put the kabosh on your summit bid. It happened to me and that was my inspiration to learn snow skills, so it ultimately was a good thing, but you may not see it in that positive of a light. :)

When you're done filling out the form, you must mail it in to the address listed on the info pages with a Feb postmark. The lottery process starts Feb 15th so mailing it in now is a Really Good Idea. Applications received after Feb 15, but still in Feb will just get added to the pile. Remember the more flexible you are with dates the better the odds that we'll see you on the mountain.

Day vs. Overnight. While carrying a pack is not that fun, the overnight people suffer much less than those trying to climb and descend 6000' over 22 miles in 24 hours. Honestly, I've never tried it in a day and hope to one day, but for a first time, you will be far happier if you do an overnight trip.

Camps. Most people push on to Trail Camp at 12,000' which probably makes the most sense if you intend to summit in 2 days, but the lower camp: Outpost at 10,000' is much, much nicer is below treeline and has a lovely waterfall.

One thing. If you do get a permit (ok it's a voucher that allows you to pick up your actual permit the day before your trip), remember to reserve a camp spot at Whitney Portal the day before you go in. The pain-in-the-rear reservation site is here:

http://www.recreation.gov/

and using it is akward at best. On the left in the search area set the state to California and in the Park or Facility name say "whitney portal" and that should get you started. If you have registered with them before it may have your info - or not. :(

There are walk-in campsites, but I never have tried it as the very last thing I want to contend with right before an important climb is a full campsite. The main portal campsite is very nice and I have my favorite spots but I'm not telling. :)

When you're there, you absolutely must go see Doug Sr. at the Whitley Portal Store. His knowledge of the mountain is amazing and he truly is a dear, who I love visiting with. Plus the food is delicious especially after you've been on the mountain a while. Warning if you order a pancake, split it with someone as it's the size of a serving platter - this is not a joke. Also, if you are ever planning on going up the "Mountaineer's Route" (not the Main Trail) talking with Doug Sr. about it is invaluable. I also have an older trip that has details on the lower portion of the Mountaineer's Route (up to the two Boy Scout Lakes) here.

Oh, and in the Major Bummer dept is you have to:

• carry and use a Bear Canister
  
• carry and use a "Wag" bag for packing out your poop
  

If someone comes up with a way to make the Wag bags stink less I'd love to hear about it. They do stink less on Shasta but that's because it's in snow and much colder.

Best of luck and hope to see you on the mountain.

Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass

Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass is one seriously creepy book.

It's not the violence, there is some, but not a lot by today's standards. It's about those who prey on the elderly. getting them to trust them and then abusing them and slowly and systematically robbing them blind. I have elderly parents (fortunately with 3 kids who keep an eye out), but even so the heebee geebee factor is way high. The mind games (and the complete lack of empathy) of the perpatrator just completely unsettled me. My compliments.

I love Grafton's books as I lived in Santa Barbara for 9 years and even though most of the street names are changed she only changes them a little so fans like me know exactly were she's talking about. Cabana Blvd is actually Cabrillo, Capilo is Castillo (there's also Carillo, all major streets - Santa Barbara is tough for lost tourists). Floresta is actually Firgueroa. Far as I can tell where Kinsey lives is completely made up, but with some exceptions, that's about it the rest is completely easy to vizualize which is totally cool.

I listen to the audio books from audible.com and I really like this narrator, more than the previous one with a New England accent (Kinsey lives in S. Calif - decidedly not from New England). My only complaint is that neither of then can pronounce San Luis Obispo (Louis! not Louie - if you can't guess I live there too)

I know Not to Test Drive Cars I can't Afford but ...

I know not to test drive cars I can't afford but didn't know how that applied in other circumstances like skiing.

I went skiing today and yesterday rented skis from Any Mountain.
My choices were the basic super-stable beginner ski, a higher end ski with more stiffness and speed, and some demos. I said that I probably wasn't an advanced enough skier to control the demos, but was interested in the second one. After some description I decided that it was worth trying especially if it would help me learn to ski better.

I brought my old slow skis to Sugar Bowl as well just in case I couldn't control the skis I rented. Turned out the rented skis handled beautifully, easy to control and very responsive. I had a great day skiing and I don't know whether it was because of the skis, or my improved skills or better leg strength (though I will have some left quad weakness), or a combination.

On the way back I decided to check out how much they were as I'm planning on skiing 4 more times this season and it might make sense to just buy them rather than rent. So when returning the skis I asked to see the equivalent retail model.

Well. It turns out that what I thought was a nice midline ski (made by Volkl) is actually a high performance ski. The responsiveness and control I noticed comes from the fact that there's a thin layer of titanium (!) embedded in it. And it's $800-$1000. Ack!

Here's one reference: http://www.rei.com/product/774394

And here's a similar, woman specific, model that they have demos of that I'll have to try out sometime: http://www.rei.com/product/774405

They say they do sell them at the end of the season, which is tempting, however that doesn't help me right now. Maybe I'll just rent demos since it appears that I can actually handle high performance skis.

I always say only buy [quality-wise] up to what you can tell the difference. Unfortunately now I can tell the difference (ouch).

THIS JUST IN
At the time of writing, eBay did not show any Volkl skis in my size, but today (the next day) Liquidation Sports did show a used pair (probably also from a rental fleet) and the buy it now price was reasonable ($120), so I did order that. Shipping of skis is steep which drives it up to $150, but that it still cheaper than 4 rentals. These will probably be fine for another season or two and then I'll probably be so hooked that I want a new pair.

I'll look into selling my old Rossignols on Craigslist. I like Craigslist as then I can deal locally and not have to deal with shipping.

Altitude: so it's not what I thought it was

So I've been assuming that my altitude issues were getting worse as I seemed to hit a wall just above 7000'. I'm discovering that that's not the case and what I've been observing is something that's always been around and something I can work past.

The 7000+' issue is there but it's something I noticed a long time ago when climbing up Sentinel Dome at 8122' in Yosemite from the Valley floor (~4100'). I gallivanted up to Glacier Point at 7214' no problem, but when I did the rest of the distance up to the top I struggled some though was able to do it. This was 15 years ago. Now that I look at the numbers I see it would be a great training hike for Shasta though that trail is technically closed in Winter (though some leap over the barrier). Anyway, this is [mostly] not the issue i was having on Shasta.

The reason I've never really noticed the magic 7k' before is more of my climbs start above 8k', so in all cases I had to acclimate some. Once on Lassen I didn't acclimate, but just went up and was fine till about 9k and then hit a wall. Maybe I just need to pace myself better knowing that I've going to run out of reserve oxygen.

Last weekend we went snowshoeing on Shasta and got up to above Spring Hill (over 8500'), and sure enough right around 7200' I felt the oxygen dissipate from my muscles. Mentally I was like: Hey wait! Come back! But it was like the air had been let out of a balloon and all I could do was sort of observe it happening. The cool thing though was that I was then able to feel that even without that oxygen reserve I could keep going, though did a lot more pressure breathing and the weight training I've been doing is helping.

So I'm still left with - what happened on Shasta last year? I really thought I was ready but I was actually in good sealevel shape, but not able to cope with the stresses of higher altitude and also pushing myself to keep up with a group (something I'm probably not going to do much of now). It appears that to compensate for low oxygen, you have to over train and Courtenay, the Body Results trainer I'm consulting with, is emphasizing heavier that typical weight training and intervals.

The relevant Body Results pages are:
Intervals: http://www.bodyresults.com/E2intervals.asp
Strength: http://www.bodyresults.com/s2hiking-strength.asp

And a good altitude reference (and description of pressure breathing) is
http://www.bodyresults.com/E2altitudecoping.asp

But I can't escape the feeling of futility. The fear that no matter what I do I'm going to fail. I also can't do the full program and do all the dog related things I like to do. It's striking a balance and it's really tough. I'm down on myself for not keeping up and I have to stop myself and say "Hel-lo! You just did 100 lb squats after doing RPM and then you walked both dogs. That's pretty cool in and of itself - give yourself a break."

One issue is that if I don't get enough intense aerobic exercise (like the RPM spinning class), I start to get depressed. My exercise program does include aerobic training, but not in the quantity that my brain apparently needs. It sneaks up on me gradually but became clear this week. I did RPM today and feel good but I need to do it very consistently for a while to keep me from getting worse even at the expense of training. If I get depressed then everything stops, my perspective goes to hell, and I would need to go back on medication which I'd rather not do if I can avoid it. One thing that helped me realize that I was tettering on depression is that I don't seem to realize that the fact that my altitude issues are not worse is really great news. More correctly I know it's great news, but I don't feel it. The joy just isn't there and that's a red flag.

Bye Bye Gitmo - Investigatons Next?

Obama signed an order to close Gitmo (Ref.) and I just listened for a second time to a Fresh Air interview with Phillipe Sands on what might happen next and just how far reaching the implications of the Bush administration being involved in torture.

What was interesting about the Sands interview is that he goes into detail about what might happen, and who it might happen to.

Torture is considered an international war crime, right along with Genocide. What I didn't know is that these crimes are considered crimes against the whole world and most any country can investigate them and in fact is to some degree obligated to. If the US does not advance an inquiry into just what happened at Abu Grab and Guantanamo Bay, then another country is very likely to do so.

It's easy to think in terms of Bush and Cheney who have some sheilding by just because of having been the pres and vice pres of the US, but those who are really vunerable are those who were just underneath them, but in very high profile positions.

Names that we may be seeing again in terms of being investigated are these attorneys:
Donald Rumsfeld: former Sec of Defense
David Addington: Cheney's General Council and Chief of Staff and very central to policy making, and credited with coming up with the general climate that torture is ok.
Jim Hayes: Legal Council to Donald Rumsfeld, and now a lawyer for Chevron
John Yu - Attny who authorized aggressive interrogation methods, author of the torture memos
Alberto Gonzales: former Attny General and White House Council
Doug Fife & Paul Wolfowitz - helped dispense with adhereing to Geneva Convention

It's very interesting that Bush did not pardon anyone preemptively and Sands points out that even if Bush were to pardon all involved, then another country will step in.

Also if any of them were to travel things get really interesting because of extradition agreements. This is not theoretical. In 1998, the despot Pinocet went to London for a medical procedure. He thought he was safe there, but Spain who was investigating him and which Pinocet knew to avoid, asked for extradition, and he was immediately arrested.

It means that all these people are in some sense imprisoned here. Not much of an imprisonment, but it's a start and like that their freedom is curtailed at least some.

What's appalling is that precisely none of these people are apologetic about what they did. Ironically the one who has come the closest is Bush himself.

What's also interesting is that this screwup is entirely from the Administration lawyers and not the military lawyers who apparently were very opposed to this.

Staying tuned.

When Training is Emotionally Risky

Anyone who has trained for a physical goal has dealt with this, it's that classic fear of failure combined with a sense of futility and inevitability.

It's particularly difficult when it's something you've failed at multiple times, and yet refuse to give up just yet. While training for ski mountaineering this season, I find that I again am going back to Shasta and will try to climb it. While training for skiing right now, I'm not completely convinced that my skiing confidence will be enough to make me feel ok in ungroomed areas like Shasta, as I'm only recently figuring out how to ski without exhausting myself, so I may instead default back to climbing.

Because I want to give myself the best shot I can, I've hired mountaineering trainers Body Results, and Courtenay is designing programs for me first aimed at ski mountaineering and then for climbing. Her idea is that if I concentrate on strength and intervals that may indeed help me with my altitude issues.

Courtenay says that women always underestimate what they can lift. Sounds right, it's what we've been taught. Well I got to see this theory in practice as I went to see her while I was up visiting my parents in Seattle. We talked about dumbbell rows (here is an example). I mentioned that I normally do them with 15 pounds, and she said ok. Try this. She pulls out a 40 pound dumbbell. Eek! But she was encouraging and said just try it. I was able to do about 6 and that's all she was asking. I had no idea I could do that without getting hurt. The training regime for the first month had me doing 30 pounds, which is a great confidence builder.

She also showed my how to set up and use a squat cage, and even though it wasn't a part of my program I have been doing them anyway just because of the shear novelty of them and because it was cool to get past being intimidated by it. Now I can squat weights that I had no idea I could do. I started at 45 pounds (that's the bar weight) and added 5 pounds each time. I'm up to 85 pounds and am going to stay either there or at 90, as it's getting difficult. She's also having me deadlift 40 pounds and that's harder as it's tough on my back though I've figured out how to make it easier by raising the barbell up on step risers (the big boy weights that are too heavy for me, are wider in diameter so they don't have to bend over as much as I do.)

But during training I still have this inevitable feeling that it's still not going to help me magically deal with altitude. I don't let it stop me but the feeling is still very much there. Altitude issues are tough when you live at sea level and I've written about them a lot before, I'm going to Shasta this weekend to snowshoe and will get above the magic 7500' level where I usually have trouble. I was up at 8000' at Squaw Valley but that's downhill skiing so I don't know how much of a test that was though I was going up stairs at that altitude and didn't feel out of breath so there's hope.

The thing that I have to keep in mind is that I have these great adventures, while not reaching my goals despite how disappointing as it is and how much of a failure it makes me feel like. I may not have gotten above 10,300' on Shasta, but I have been there multiple times and what a gorgeous place to be. I know my way around the lower Avalanche Gulch area very well and can tell others how to navigate it (not that it's that hard mind you, but in snow everything tends to look the same unless you're familiar with it.) I have good mountain skills, I'm comfortable in snow, and know how to snow camp (something that a lot of hikers dread and I think they really should learn how so they don't have to be so limited to just summer), I've been snowed on in June which is a magical feeling, and I'm a really good glissader. I'll glissade by someone struggling up the mountain and they say how they want to be in my position and I happily tell them: "It's the only way to fly." I'm also in the best shape of my life. My genetically inspired high cholesterol and triglycerides is under control with exercise, diet and supplements.

But it does nag. Struggling with altitude gives me a lot of self knowledge. I know that it's AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) treatable with Diamox, and not something more serious. Knowing this, I'm going back to Mt. Whitney this year and I'm going to summit if weather conditions allow. I've done the hard part (to Trail Crest at 13,000') twice and run out of steam. This time I'm not going to stop unless it's something more serious (I know the last time I was at that altitude I could have pushed myself, but it would have been an exhausting step by step grind). The gotcha will be if the 7500' altitude wall I've been running into of late (a new development for 2008) stays or lets up with persistence and acclimatization.

For not reaching my original goals I certainly have a fine time doing so, and I have to keep perspective on this, even it it means that I may have to find lower altitude adventures. Fortunately, there are many challenging mountains that are 10k' or close to it. The often challenging and sometimes deadly Mt Hood is merely 11,249'. Mt Adams in Washington state is heavily glaciated and is 12,281'. There are other peaks in Washington which are difficult and even lower.

Selling a Dream

One of my jobs at work is to go through our Spam Queue to look for things that got caught by mistake. It's an appalling sort of job going through email that tries to appeal to our most base desires, so to cope I spend time analyzing the trends.

The trends are remarkably simple:

• sex, sex, sex (meaning enlargement, viagra, russian women, some porn site advertising)
  
• beauty / body image (lose weight, abs of steel, fake pharmacies; Closely related to sex)
• money (get rich quick, get out of debt, refi, avoid foreclosure)
  
• business (also money - but more specific)
• Advertising such as
  - As Seen on TV (e.g. pedipaws - a dressed up dremel)
  - Free and likely a catch (fake watches, gift cards, test and keep, bootleg software)
  - Buy this (the usual advertising but surprisingly little)
  

And that's pretty much it. Five topics sum up our most basic desires, and the first two are pretty much the same. What does that say about us? Are we that simple at our most base level?

Commercials (radio and TV) run along similar lines but starts to differ in interesting ways.
AM radio is very snake oil and skates quite close to spam. FM radio and TV are more expensive and more regulated so what shows up is more beer and cars.

And sometimes you see a cross over. I saw an enlargement ad on TV and was shocked that someone could afford to do it (or that someone took it). And Viagra is everywhere it seems.

But they all are selling a dream. I'm still not sure what that says about us. I think it means that a lot of us crave companionship and fear loneliness, and there are far too many of us that are happy to take advantage of that vunerability.

Prop 8 Supporters being Willfully Dense

From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/06/MNNK1541BC.DTL

But Prop. 8 proponents said Monday that Brown was carving out law where none existed. They argued that if the attorney general's argument prevailed, it would be virtually impossible for voters to amend the state Constitution whenever the courts determined that inalienable rights were involved.

DUH! For precisely ONE time they got the point, but refuse to learn ANYTHING from it.
"What do you mean we can take away rights? That's just not right " (ok, that's me putting words in their mouths.)

Willfully dense. Just amazing.

Jerry goes on to say:

It would be "tyranny of the majority" to allow such rights to be taken away by a simple majority vote, he said, arguing that such an action is "inconsistent with the guarantees of individual liberty in the state Constitution."

You go my man!

John Stewart is also very much on the My Hero list with his respectful skewering of Jim Huckabee. You can see that interview here. (The URL is a little long so I didn't put the full thing in here.

Zappos: faster than a speeding brick and mortar

I have nothing against going into stores, but it will usually take me more than a week to actually get myself to said store (except for the grocery store). The advantage of a brick and mortar clothing store is that I can try things on.

Zappos is trying to challenge that advantage and appears to be being successful at it. They usually have things priced at pretty close to list price, the difference is the speed that it appears and they pay for shipping both directions. What a great business model. They actually encourage you to order several items and return the ones you don't want. (They do have to be in new condition so wear them inside first.)

The shoes (they sell other things too) show up amazingly fast the next day even when I order after 5pm. This is to the point that I've started inadvertently testing them out. At 8:45pm last night I ordered a pair of running shoes that I've been putting off buying for a while. At 11pm I got a shipping confirmation (say what? who works then? I guess they do), and at 11am (just over 14 hours) the shoes appeared. That's just astounding. I think about going to the store for longer than that.

I still like going to physical stores as I like to see the selection but this is just amazing.

Are We Musically Unshockable Now?

I've been wondering for a while now if we're past being shocked by music anymore.

In the 60's the Rolling Stones singing Why Do We Live Together created a huge stir.
This continued with all the inuendo of 70's disco.
Then the 80's and the door pretty much came down
Though the 80's was when i was paying by far the most attention so my perspective may be skewed:

- Violent Femmes Add it Up where Gorden Gano asks: Why Can't I Get Just One Fuck?
- Frankie Goes to Hollywood openly sang about oral sex and it later became clear the singer was gay.
- Prince and his Little Red Corvette which wasn't a car
- Madonna getting it on with a holy statue in the Like a Prayer video
- Rap really got going and while it started out in politics (my favorite) it quickly became (or went back to), getting really explicit about sex (and misogyny).

In the 90's and the 00's people get more in to a lather about the conduct of the artists than the music, which is nothing new. Keith Moon blew up toilets, 100's of guitars and hotel rooms have been smashed and trashed. but now it's more about celebrity drama and bad judgment. We have Wardrobe Malfunctions (which was more just a risky choreography move gone really wrong on one of the most public of stages - the Super Bowl), leaving your babies in a car while you go shopping, somewhat controversial African child adoptions. But none of this has anything to do with the music. Even when the Dixie Chicks were having their CD's run over by red state tractors it wasn't the music, it was them dissing Pres. Bush. (which puzzled the blue states and funny how that doesn't happen anymore even in the red states.)

Even songs like Detachable Penis are novelty songs and no one that I know of protests them.

I got my hopes up while listening to Alice Radio (97.3 in the bay area) when they played "I kissed a Girl and I liked it." The singer, Katy Perry, goes on to say she hopes her boyfriend doesn't mind. The DJ came on and said that her boyfriend did mind and dumped her and has written this blog entry about it (I should look it up, but I haven't). But is anyone protesting the song? Ok Google tells me that a church in Ohio is trying (by putting on their marque that homos are going to hell - yawn, be more original please) and it seems to be backfiring or having no effect at all besides people being really annoyed at them (Ref.) So once again, it's about the backstage drama, not the music.

My research continues, this is fun.

Dear Harvey, We need You Now

I just saw Milk, which is a Gus Van Sant film about Harvey Milk. I hope both Sean Penn (wow he's come a very long way over the years) and Gus Van Sant get Oscars for it as this is such an awesome film, and they took pains to nail the details.

And everything felt so Deja Vu when they were talking about the Brigg's amendment. Milk talking about the importance of coming out and making sure every voter knew a gay person. Prop 8, while not as heinous as the Brigg's amendment, showed us that we still have work to do in that area, and I dearly wish he was around to offer his wisdom.

I realize that the odds of him not getting shot, or then perhaps dying of AIDs complications in the 80s, or just simply not surviving to age 78 (he was killed when he was 48. 30 years ago), were not good, but I still wish we had him and his insight around.

We miss you Harvey. We really do. Thank you Gus and Sean and everyone else for bringing him back to life.

I had a Great 2008 and Wow I Feel Guilty

I watched a lot of new year's celebrations here on TV (feeling lazy and didn't want to go out, so instead cuddled with Terri and the dogs - we do these inadvertent sofa puppy piles to see how little horizontal space we all can take up). Everyone interviewed on TV was saying 2008 good riddance and were hoping for a better 2009.

While I completely understand, I feel gratefully way out of step with this perspective.

I got married. I am employed. My spouse is employed. My employer is in good financial health. I have a house with a good fixed rate loan that I can afford. I have a car that I can afford. If it turns out I can't afford the car I can sell it and just use my truck that I keep for the house (and because it's paid for). We have 2 great dogs, one who is doing very well in her agility training and hopefully going to be a star, the other, who has been a behavioral pain in the rear, is improving and is doing very nicely in his herding training.

In short, it's been a good year for me. The passage of Prop 8 was a bummer but there is growing high profile opposition to it and the Supreme Court will review it in March. My parents are in so-so health, but are coping, and my mother just had a knee replacement and that is proving to be life changing in a positive way. I still have MS, but it's been stable for years (I'm a good kid and I take my medicine), and I still train for mountains and skiing. (Which I'm not that great at yet.)

This is all making me slightly paranoid. I feel like: "Don't get too comfortable" - like there's a disaster around the corner. I sure hope not - I like this.