Ill Tomato Plant

I am so bummed. One of my tomato plants is clearly dying and I have to decide whether to take it out to save the other one or try and nurse it till the tomatoes ripen (more than a month to go).

Here are my two plants. They've been doing well for the entire time:

Then right after a heat wave it started showing wilted leaves, so I thought it needed more water (many of the plants showed some stress after that), Extra watering perked them all up except this one. On further examination I see that things are not looking good at all. It's dying from the root up and there are bumps all over the "trunk."

What makes things hard is the tomatoes on the ill plant are looking good.

So now it's off to do tomato research.

As I feared this is bad. Southern Blight is what matches the description:
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetablepatch/a/TomatoProblems.htm

Southern Blight is a disease that can hang out in the soil and comes out when it's hot and wet. (Drat.)

There are similar distressing photos here:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publications/tomatoproblemsolver/root/south_blight.html
and here:
http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Plant_Pathology_Crop_Physiology/Plant_Disease_Clinic/Disease_Image_Gallery/Herbs_Vegetables/Tomatoes/Tomato+Southern+Blight.htm

This site:
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/blight1.htm

says I need to remove the plant and burn it (good luck with that in my city), and don't compost it. My recycling company uses a high temperature composting method that you can even put rotting meat into, so I don't think composting is a problem.

Here's one novel solution:
http://gardeningtoybox.bloghi.com/2009/01/20/how-to-get-rid-of-tomato-blight.html

But I don't think I need to do that. I have complete control over the soil in that planter and had completely changed it out this year. My planting mix is a simplification of Martha Stewart's (make fun of her all you like, but she knows her stuff)
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/all-purpose-soil-recipe?autonomy_kw=soil&rsc=header_3
I notice that her mix keeps changing, bit by bit - didn't used to have bonemeal or charcol.
The dirt is actually optional and I don't use it as it's too much of an unknown.
It used to be: peat moss, compost: sand, dirt (optional), vericulte and perlite
I'm a little suspicious of soil with pure white things in it (perlite) so for a while I haven't used it or vermiculite. Being lazy this year, I didn't add sand in and only used peatmoss and organic compost (chicken shit actually). Now it would be easy to suspect the virus hanging out in the poulet merde (the google spell checker must know french though I don't know how to turn it on) but I think the fatal mistake was not having enough things in the soil that didn't retain water (sand, perlite, even gravel) - apologies for the double negative, so even though it was on a drip system it was still retaining too much water and it would get occasional hand watering as well.

So depending on how much work I want to do today I may be able to make a difference here.

First take the ill plant out and put it in a separate planter - it's probably doomed, but I can give it a hospice bed if it's quarantined and not sharing soil. For the healthy-appearing plant it would really help it to get sand in its soil, but I'm not sure how to do that without traumatizing it. With the ill plant gone it might be able to dry out on its own. I'll have to go see how difficult this is going to be. It's a bummer as I'm so proud of the elaborate tomato cages I created this year with bamboo stakes and tie wraps but I can always do it again.

[time passes]
And that's exactly what I did. The ill plant is in a large pot that I had sitting around waiting for another job besides holding agility PVC. I lined the bottom with play sand which I had left over from a stepping stone project. Why I didn't use it in the soil mix escapes me, unless I did and just didn't use enough of it. Put the sick plant in and filled in the rest with sandy Alameda dirt which I usually never do as these houses didn't have trash service for a long time so all sorts of rubbish is literally in it (though the plants I put in the ground have done well - what does that mean?

The remaining plant I aerated some with a pole and poured a bunch of sand all over it and tried to work it in also leaving the hole where the other one was mostly open. There is signs of blight on the remaining one's tomatoes so all may be lost, but I'll give it my best shot. I don't know if my Farm Agent grandfather woutl be proud or appalled. Farm people take the heavy handed approach and quickly. Both plants would have been destroyed immediately and the soil scattered to dry or let fallow for a couple of years. But I am a not a farmer, but a namby pamby home organic gardener (that would completely puzzle him as he passed away before any of us could spell organic.) Maybe I should talk to one of my cousins who did a stint as an organic farmer.

Perhaps Some Lessons in Marketing to Americans are in Order

New restaurants in Alameda are fond of littering our doorway with menus. One that just appeared is a new combination Chinese-Vietnmese place. Now I love a lot of the non-beef Vietnamese food as they often use very fresh vegtables and the noodles are delicious. Having it be combined with Chinese food which is so often famously bad for you in that high fat often tasty way gives me some pause and I wonder if we have a literally mixed marriage here.

I open the menu and look at the noodle soups (a favorite), and I realize I am looking at a few 100 items none of which are veggie. Now I eat poultry and seafood, but I often eat veggie and tend to use the precense of veggie items as a mark of at least some sort of awareness of healthier choices and what a lot of people want (some alledgedly fine dining places are equally guilty of no veggie choices which is pretty inexcusable given that the don't have any cultural barriers to deal with). I find a couple of accidentally veggie items on the very last page, and ONE veggie and tofu rice plate. Not a good sign, not a place I'm going to bring veggie friends to.

Going back to the top of the menu I see Pho Ga which is Chicken Noodle Soup and decidedly not your mother's Cambell's Soup, and is often delicious. The very next item is "Pho Ga Long Trung Non" which in the points for honesty category is Chicken Noodle Soup with Intestines added. Pause. Now I was taught how to cut up a chicken, I know that even though I find them off putting, they're ok to eat. Though we would remove the intestines, my Farm Agent grandfather ate them and he lived to be 86 back in the day when it was still unusual for a guy with heart disease to live that long (the 70's), so it clearly wasn't harmful to at least him. But still, a lot of Americans of European descent aren't going to want to hear about Chicken intestines, especially things like Combination Chicken & Intestine Porridge (ok, that made me shudder a bit) and Pork Blood Porridge.

Ok enough of the menu. I close it and put in on the desk. I can't resist looking down at it. The reason? There is a picture of (a) a bowl of Pho (b) a dead plucked hanging duck and (c) a complete and very dead pig with one ear pointing up. Eeeek. OMG, can you say cultural divide? This is why you see ducks hanging in the front window in China town. They consider it truth in advertising. Someone needs to explain to them that perhaps that's a bit much truth.

So even though I've completely lost my appetite right now I will probably give their Pho Ga a try someday when I've worked my courage back up.

GPS pondering

Part I

So after having driven off the map multiple times and having no inclination to stop doing so, I need to either go back to maintaining a great set of maps (might still so that), or buy a GPS.

Unlike backpacking GPSs, where they keep the price the same and just keep piling more features in - though in all fairness they're not that much money, in-car ones have come down in price and have gotten quite affordable as long as you're talking portable and not the specialized in-dash variety.

Just for fun, I checked to see how much that in dash Navigation System is for my Scion (which I turned down at the time.) $1800. Eeeeegads. That's enough to buy two top of the line portables and still have considerable lunch money, and I don't even need a top of the line one.

I'm a Garmin fan and I don't have any need to change so I started there first:

On the road-Automotive:
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&ra=true

After some time with the Comparison feature I decided that I wanted Widescreen and something I could update (they all can do that it turns out), and having the street names read outloud to you sounded like a nice touch "Turn Right on Elm St" (rather that just Turn Right)

So the nuvi 1300 looked like a good choice:
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=&pID=30950

Great - where do i get one? Well since I've never used an automotive GPS, going to look and touch one at a brick and mortar store sounded like a good idea. Garmin tells me that Sears and Best Buy and another one I'm forgetting have them. Well I like Best Buy over Sears, so I checked out their site to get an idea of their stock and they talk about a 1300T which the Garmin site doesn't even mention. The difference is that instead of just having the maps to the 48 states preloaded it also has ones for Hawaii and Puerto Rico. I pause a moment to consider this. I've driven in Hawaii - all around Oahu. One single map was just fine thank you. Ok 2 if you include the trail map. A GPS was most certainly not necessary. The idea of paying extra for such a feature amuses me, but sends me back to look further.

I probably should of just stuck with the 1300T. On checking the Garmin comparisons further (they highlight the differences with a slightly different color) I see that the nuvi 1350 has a feature that tells you what the correct lane you need to be in. Oooo that's a feature worth paying for since most of my misadventures start with being in the wrong lane. However is that worth $50? Hmmmm.

I think it's time to backtrack to the cheapest Widescreen and go from there.

Part II
Fortunately Garmin allows you to limit the blizzard of choices by selecting features on the left.

I selected Widescreen and the choices shrank down to just a couple of pages. Glancing down to the cheaper ones I see there's a different family of the nuvi that is the 200 series: 205W, 255W and the 265WT. So I compared those and the 1300.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/compare.do?cID=134&compareProduct=30950&compareProduct=13432&compareProduct=13431&compareProduct=13430

The 205W doesn't have the street name announcements, and a friend said her experience was that the street names helped a lot. The difference between the 255W and 265WT seems to be Bluetooth and the stated advantage is that you can use your phone hands free which doesn't sound like an advantage at all.

To quote:

For hands-free calling, nüvi 265WT integrates Bluetooth® wireless technology with a built-in microphone and speaker. Just pair it with your compatible Bluetooth phone and talk hands-free through the 265WT while staying focused on the road. Simply dial numbers with nüvi's touchscreen keypad to make a call. To answer calls, just tap the screen and speak into its built-in microphone. Enjoy convenient one-touch dialing for contacts and points of interest.

I don't think that's worth $50 more than what the 265WT is to the 255W.

So the 255W's page is here:
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=&pID=13431
List price is $219.

Checking Best Buy ...
As luck would have it it's on sale for $169.99

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17005&type=page&_requestid=152721

Sold. Cool.

An Honest Man - The Gabriel Method for Weightloss

I keep an ear/eye out for scams, frauds, come ons and general bad deals. (I am also a fan of mixed metaphors which is why the one in the title is still there - I swear it was an accident - they make the best ones). When the bottom fell out of the housing market, my favorite one, and how this all got started, the predatory house lending offer, has pretty much disappeared fortunately and I have to look elsewhere.

What gives me hope for humanity are the ones that hold up to scrutiny. The ones that accidentally made themselves look like scams by their choice of advertising such as AM Radio commercials and Facebook advertising. (Examples are Laurel Langmeyer's The Millionaire Maker, and James Lehman’s Total Transformation Program for dealing with your kids - use Google to learn more - this isn't about them)

What this is about is Jon Gabriel and The Gabriel Method.

In 2001, Jon Gabriel weighed over 400 pounds and in his words had tried every weightloss method there was and got a handy dandy wake up call by being scheduled on the ill fated, and famous 9/11/2001 United Airlines flight 93 to San Francisco - a flight he actually didn't make, and which lit a major motivational fire under him (funny how nearly dying does that to us mortals - never mind that if we're dead it doesn't matter anymore). So he set off to figure it out himself and things started to click. Fast forward to 2004. Garbriel now weighs 184 pounds and is maintaining that loss. We're talking a 220 pound weight loss and he has no extra skin (http://www.gabrielmethod.com/about-jon-gabriel). What he describes is convincing his body that it wanted to be thin. This is very much in the "the mind is a powerful thing" category.

The fact that his mind could influence the cell programming of his fat cells to reset to a lower preferred level is what is catching my attention. As many know (I should get a ref but well, I know you know :) your body has a preferred size, making weigh loss difficult. If you try to starve it off, when you stop paying attention, your body will shift into a super efficeint mode to horde every calorie and you could well gain more weight. This happened to me. I carry an extra 10 pounds got sick of it and got impatient and decided to just starve it off (it's only 10 pounds for heaven's sake). I got half way there and then the holidays happened and I stopped paying careful attention. Shazam. I regained the weight plus another 3-5. Boy was I peeved. I'm now back to my usual weight and am wondering whether Mr. Gabriel's approach might be perfect, but I digress.

Full disclosure I don't own the book though I may get it since his methodolgy is very intriguing, but what I really find interesting about him is what he's not doing, and he's showing incredible restraint in doing so.

Here's the deal. For $25 you can buy his book (I'll skip the link since it's certainly not benefiting me :) which describes his story and approach. Fair enough. And after you read the book you can get a CD of his with visualizations (Sounds to me like self hypnosis). Right. And how much is that? Zero. It's free with the purchase of the book. It's what? What kind of guru is this guy?
Oh wait I see a "limited time offer" in fine print so he may not be the complete financial golden child, either that or a business advisor had given him a talking to about giving out free advice that could easily make him more money.

And according to this website: http://www.womens-health.com/boards/weight-loss/7103-gabriel-method.html he's been giving free advice over the phone and there is a whole bunch of him on You Tube (I can see his business manager slapping him around right now). I have some You Tube links below.

Doing the research on this amused me. The cons to his method were listed as (my comments in []):
- holistic, not specific [because I need to be told exactly what to do]
- gradual, too slow [I think it's been proven over and over again that successful, non-surgical weightloss is gradual, and look at the dates on the pictures on his site - it was pretty dramatic.]

Refs:
http://www.gabrielmethod.com/
http://www.dietsinreview.com/diets/the-gabriel-method/
http://redesignedmom.com/2009/04/11/the-gabriel-method-new-article-series/
http://www.womens-health.com/boards/weight-loss/7103-gabriel-method.html

Gabriel has over 10 videos on You Tube. Here are just 2.

Visualizing Your Ideal Body:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFYBtzirD3Q
The Mind-Body Commection
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knc8Qzf6COs&feature=related

Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett; Change of Heart, The Lion's Game

While I'm still miffed that Jackson's death has overshadowed Farrah Fawcett's, it is understandable. Fawcett was a little older (62) and has been battling anal cancer for 3 years, her death was very sad, but not a complete surprise. Jackson's death, while on some level not a surprise at all (kinda frail, subjected himself to a whole bunch of medical procedures, though a great dancer and still in ok physical shape), did seem to take a whole bunch of folks unawares. Jackson was only 50 and was working on a new show. People were really hoping he could grow up (dammit) and get past some of the drama that has plagued him, and to summarize: just shut up and dance. It will be interesting to hear what the autopsy results show.

Taking a break from the book Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult.
I'm halfway through listening to Change of Heart and I desparately need a break from all the angsting. So I decide to get a highly rated spy thriller The Lion's Game by Nelson Demille. While it doesn't have quite the same moral angsting that Change of Heart does, it's not like it's relaxing. In Change of Heart 2 people die, Lion's Game is up to a few hundred and I'm only 1/4 of the way through it. There's just less dwelling on the deaths. Change of Heart has characters reliving their guilt trips over and over again, and agonizing about how to make decisions in light of what's happened, Lion's Game is the much more simple: chase those bad guys.

Farrah Fawcett, Health Net, The book: Change of Heart, Michael Jackson

Going to try to treat this a little more like Twitter since I've seen other bloggers do it, though here I get to use as many lines as I like. I could also do Facebook updates, but am conscious of overwhelming my friends news feeds, so I try to keep that down to two a day or so.

Farrah Fawcett
CNN breaking news tells me that Farrah Fawcett has died at 62 of cancer. Details aren't out yet, but will be soon. I grew up watching Charlie's Angels and while I'm not at all like her (I'm more the Kate Jackson type) I did admire her being out there hair and all. However what is giving me the more pause is realizing that Fawcett had the world's best medical care and also took care of herself. She's been diagnosed for a while and was in remission but it came back and didn't let go. I find this sobering. It's easy to kill yourself over time by not taking care of yourself, and not getting good medical care, but for this to happen to someone who's done probably everything right and to be so relatively young is sobering. These days you have to financially plan on living to 90, and people of both genders routinely make it to 80 these days (my own parents are 83 and 86), but it doesn't always happen that way, despite all of our efforts.

The Health Net Dance
My own annual Health Net dance is entering what I hope is the final act. Each year because they way, way jacked up the cost of my copayment for my M.S. medicine I meet my max out of pocket expenses for the year in about February and then I start the 3-4 month process of telling them that I've met it and to please tell all the providers that. This time the part that I've met me maximum happened in record time (2-3 weeks) the problem is they left out the part that involves giving me my overpayment back. Plus there's also this part about having to file an additional claim to cover the part that I had to pay while they were taking their time processing the original part (which sometimes isn't necessary if they're paying attention).

It's now the end of June and I've now received my reimbursement check now it's time to get that last copayment overpayment back. I was hoping that this part wouldn't be necessary but this year it appears to be - sigh. Trouble is I have to keep reminding Health Net what they're job is without knowing what their job is unles they think to tell me. I've started keeping careful notes (thanks Google Docs) and can look up the pitfalls year to year. It's getting better, but it's still a pain in the rear each and every year.

The novel Change of Heart by Joli Picoult
http://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Novel-Jodi-Picoult/dp/0743496744
My book club is reading this and let's just say it's not light reading or listening (I'm going through the audio book). It's about the death penalty and several perspectives on it, plus some apparent magical reality showing up just when I was about to give up just to really complicate things. Other fluffy topics are freedom of religion, what exactly is religion, what compromises will you make to save your child, revenge, letting go of revenge. It's from multiple perspectives and all of the characters are 3 dimensional - even the secondary characters. It makes me cry (multiple times), yell, laugh, argue. It's just exausting. I'm nearing half way through and I think I'll stop and listen to a spy novel or a light comedy.

Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest
I'm just ever so slightly offended that Michael Jackson is having heart problems the day that Farrah Fawcett passes away.

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2009/06/25/open-thread-michael-jackson-cardiac-arrest/

Now I read that he fell into a coma and died. I've removed the stuff of the history of his face.
Now the superstitious "these things go in threes" speculation begins. Trouble is that has been my experience so I am waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.

Denali dreams

It's funny what one's mind does when you read about things that are incredibly hard (sometimes impossible), but still sound fun. Ah, romanticizing. I wonder why we do it. It's like the opposite of a survival mechanism. It serves no obvious purpose yet we clearly need flights of fancy as we have been telling each other stories since the time when we figured out how to talk. (Ok, I don't know that, but neither does anyone else and it's something we all seem to mostly agree on.)

Denali (AKA Mt McKinley) is a gorgeous mountain that I have spent most of a week looking at while taking a class on the Ruth Glacier in Denali National Park in Alaska. Here's a photo of it that I can proudly say that I took:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellenclary/668251238/in/set-72157600562308186/?addedcomment=1#comment72157619790543347

I've also written before (and many others have also) that it's one seriously bad ass mountain (I have at least two books about that very subject). It's 20,320 feet, but at its high latitude apparently the effective altitude is much higher and it's cold, cold, cold (there are a lot of references for this which I should probably put here when I dig them up). The wind can howl for days - if you like being stuck in a small very battered tent for days, you will be in heaven (not I). Some people (heresay) say that Everest is actually easier (probably because they have the invaluable Sherpas). I don't know about that, but let's just say it's not Disneyland.

I write all that to remind myself of the reality, and in a valiant effort to not feel whistful when I read that American Alpine Institute has just had their 4th summit this season:
http://alpineinstitute.blogspot.com/2009/06/denali-summit-is-reached.html

Sigh. Now for more reality.
4 people have died on Denali this season and we're not talking amateur hour like you get on Mt. Whitney and Mt. Hood:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iL2d-SYDkcdlkzagLN4ThFBmKHowD98PHE982

Mountaineering is a fabulous way to get yourself killed, but I now have a family (a wife and 2 dogs :) and even though I do carry life insurance which is designed to cover the mortgage and would make a decent apology: "Sorry I died, but how about a nice paid for house?" For some reason, I don't think I'd be very easily forgiven.

Going with an excellent guide service like AAI certainly makes a huge difference and one of the best ways to increase your odds of coming home safely, but that's no guarantee. It's also the hardest climb they do (this is from one of their employees). You have to be able to carry a 60 pound pack and tow a 100 pound sled using snow shoes, not skis.

And there's the altitude thing which is what really kills it for me. You can't train for altitude really. Sure you can be in really good shape so at least you're not distracted by that aspect, but altitude can take you down even so. The one good thing about big mountains that you don't get with the smaller mountains like Rainier, and Shasta is that they build in a lot of aclimatization time and you can get pinned down which forces you to spend time at that elevation (or go down). But then I'd just get lonely and miss my family. I swear I'm just so not cut out for this. Fortunately my other obsession is dog sports is highly social and I'm going to be starting to learn group road biking which should be fun.

But I still get whistful and I think that's just going to be the way it is. I'm sure I'll come up with some compromise solution, but for now the only thing I have planned is Mt. Whitney and even though that's pretty high, I'm pretty sure I can succeed at it since I've done most of the route (and know it very well - I could guide it easily), we are going up gradually, and I've since gotten really good at pressure breathing (put a ref in here), and it's a silly, well used trail (you're not route finding - which is sort of a bummer since that's the fun part), and I've been sick often enough to know that so far, what I get is Acute Mountain Sickness (not HACE or HAPE) and I can cope with that for a day.

But Denali. Sigh.

Check Fraud - Wrap up and Lessons Learned

I've been delaying writing the end of my check fraud misadventure as the final details had not wrapped themselves up, but I'm going to take a chance and say they are.

As I detail here, someone(s) created and wrote fraudulent checks against my checking account.
The bank asked me to speculate who I thought it was and I cheerfully did so as the obvious suspect was a large, busy Doctors' office who I had no history with and written a check to.

After I sent that off I started receiving nasty grams from Telecheck, who does the electronic check handling for Wal Mart. They had their undies in a twist about Wells Fargo stopping payment on the 2 Wal-Mart checks, and they wanted their money. By that time Wells Fargo had sent me a letter about the Wal-Mart checks saying that they obviously weren't mine and that the money had been refunded to me. Tele-check wanted a full notarized affidavit, but that was if I didn't have the bank behind me (in other words, if I was just reporting it to them), so I just sent them the bank report. The Wal-Mart charges were resolved just by a phone call to Wells Fargo, the 4 figure Nordstrom Rack nonsense is the one where I had to do the written affidavit (but never needed to notarize it - since it wasn't my signature that was in question.)

Some days pass, and I nervously watch my checking account get clobbered by late fees. Even though the account is frozen, electronic and pre-authorized transactions (both electronic and paper check that I've told them about) still go through. This is great as it protects me from further fraud but other things are not impacted. However there is a catch. I had forgotten about two rather large monthly preauthorized payments that went through overdrew the dwindelling funds (Tired of being ripped off, I had removed most of the funds except what I needed) and incurred still more overdraft fees. Peeved I called Wells Fargo and ran into a wall I'd never run into before. Customer Service said they'd be happy to help but they can't since the account is frozen and under investigation. Escalating to a supervisor got me the same exact story. Frustrated I printed out the details and wrote a letter to the fraud people supplying the case number. The fees disappeared a few days later. They might of anyway if I'd done nothing but I felt better. WF did charge me $2 for the phone call even though it did me no good - I was not charged for reporting the fraud.

A few days later the Nordstrom Rack money reappears and all the service charge fees disappear, and I mean "disappear" they don't refund the fees like customer Service does, they make them completely vanish. Now that's power. Now I'm just waiting for one last check to clear (the Forest Service for Mt. Whitney)

Now you have to assume with these things that you're never going to hear back if anything happed from any investigation, but I got in the mail a letter from the merchant I pointed the finger at. It's written to all of the patients in the practice (not to me specifically) saying that they have received information that it's posible that some patient check or credit card information may have been compromised. GOTCHA! It's like you want to ask the person(s) responsible: "Was that really worth it?" You likely don't have a job now. You definitely are being investigated. You may be arrested. You may be sent to jail. You are or will be considerably poorer that you were before you decided to take this risk. You probably did this to get out of some severe money problems. Now those problems are worse. If you have a family things for them just got worse also, unless having you out of the picture helped.

This all appears to be winding down and guess who reappears again. It's TRS - Telecheck and the letter is mostly in CAPITAL LETTERS demanding payment (i think I saw them jumping up and down in it) saying that a collector will be contacting me (I'd welcome that, but they never did). It's like you want to sit them down and gently say: I'm so sorry, but there are bad people out there and sometimes bad people steal from you. (Especially if you're a large company dealing with a lot of money - probably why the letters get so strident.) I call the Wells Fargo check fraud people and the person helping me asked if they've sent me a "Merchant Letter." "Er, no."' I repond. After confirming which transactions we're talking about she says: Ok, we'll send you one out and you can just make copies of it and that should take care of it.

A few days letter as promised Wells Fargo send me an official letter saying that this transaction was fraudulent and this "in no way should reflect poorly on [me]." I send a copy of that letter off to TRS. Some days after I hear back from TRS acknowledging that they've received information that I may (ha) have been a fraud victim and could I help them out by doing this and this and this oh and this also, and please have it all notarized. Now normally I love helping out with investigations as I find the process completely fascinating, but I really have had enough of Telecheck, and after a careful reading of the letter to make sure that it's a request and not a requirement, I just file the whole thing with everything else.

I'm hoping I'm done with Telecheck. I must admit fearing I'm not. The thing is that I rarely use their service so how am I supposed to know if I'm still on this blacklist? The only way is to write a check to my regular Dr. who uses them which I guess I should do just to test it out, but I'm just not sure I care enough - but for completeness I should.

Lessons learned
- The first one is obvious. Don't write a check to someone you don't know. Use cash (I hate cash so this is an adjustment - I now record cash spent in my register which makes me feel better about it). If it's a business then use a debit or credit card. The problem with this is with tradespeople, but tradespeople don't have large offices so there's less cracks for a check to fall through.

- The other one was much less obvious. Whilw you shouldn't use that checking account again, don't be in a hurry to close the account until you have downloaded all the information you want from it. After I closed that account I immediately lost my online access to it. Calling up to complain about it repeatedly did no good. Asking to reopen the account did no good. My only access to it now is to ask Customer Service to mail me the statements. I know they keep them for seven years so I'm just leaving it be for now but I'm out about a year and a half of statements since I was a bit lazy about downloading them. I have switched all my accounts back to online and paper. This is ironic as I usually scan and shred most of my autopaid bills now, but this will cover me if I don't do it right away.

So I have emerged from this more educated and only about a few small dollars in small service fees (less than $10) poorer. I got all my money back. Wells Fargo did an excellent job handling it even with the stumbling blocks.

And let's hope I'm done with Telecheck.

Lassen Peak: Let's Hear It for Plan B

I am semi-bummed because we were rained out of our Shasta trip, but I admit to being kinda relieved too. It rained HARD all night long at Treva's in Redding on Wed night and we were supposed to leave Thur morning, but consulting the weather channel that morning showed the entire Western States under a cloud of rain and predicted to not lift until Sat.

More sobering were the thunderstorm predictions. If there is some place you do NOT want to be during a thunderstorm it would be on a mountain, especially when hanging on to an ice axe or trekking poles: "Here lightning lightning lightning, I have your favorite target right here." Well ok I could have been playing Golf on a mostly flat golf course, but still... I also decided that I didn't want to hang around in a wet 3 season tent as I like to climb in near perfect conditions (light snow falling is great, rain is not great at all). A 3 season tent is fine in the rain, but needs time to dry out - eventually it's going to soak through. I'll pass.

So it turned into a day trip to Lassen which was fun as the whole time we were in at least part of a cloud. Since it was a day trip and we were dressed for Shasta the weather just didn't matter (save for thunderstorms and there weren't any) and the rain became snow in just a few feet of elevation gain. that's right in June, snowing on Lassen at at just under 9000'. How cool is that? Patricia took a photo of me and since I was completely bundled up I was completely unrecognizable. She said I looked like a muppet.

We didn't get all the way up as, my friend, Patricia's knee started to catch (she has some torn cartilage in it that she needs to address), but we'll go back in Summer so she can see the mountain. Though she's been on it, she's actually never seen the mountain in person.

So it's time to focus on Whitney where Terri and I will be going in mid July. I'm pretty confident about it and I like that very much. The best thing going for us is that it's a well used TRAIL and not cross country. The other good thing is that there won't be much snow. Trouble is I love snow. You can fall in it and usually be ok, and you stay a lot cleaner, but snow progress is much slower than dirt when you're on foot unless you're glissading or skiing or sometimes snowshoeing. But dirt it is for now. Will keep training in the gym on an inclined tread mill 5 deg 15 min; 10 deg 15 min; 15 deg 30 min, and working in elements of my Shasta training plan that Courtenay at Body Results designed for me.

Predicting Trends and Getting it [Mostly] Wrong

I am pretty bad at predicting what will last and what won't.

While I'm not as bad as the person who quit his job at a start up because he was completely convinced that what they were involved with was completely ludicrous. They were working on something where someone would actually "log in" to a computer network and talk to other people - who would do that? What they were working on was related to the internet which as we know was a complete failure.

I at least had the fortune to see how powerful the internet and email was because I was thrust into the middle of it in grad school. I saw how useful it already was because we were using it. I didn't have to use my imagination.

But I've sure gotten other things wrong. I wish I had the email where a friend emailed me about this research project they were working on in Europe. It was called the World Wide Web and everyone would have a website where other people could come and check out what they had on their server. I was sending out an email newsletter at the time and would I be interesting in converting the newsletter to a special language they used called HyperText Markup Language (HTML)? Now I was in grad school. I routinely heard about lots of different research projects. I politely declined, though I at least knew to keep at ear out for such things, so I could tune back in when I saw "www.blah.com" show up on business cards and some really geeky magazine ads.

Ok so the Web I got semi-wrong. I got another one completely wrong. During the beginning of the DotCom boom there were a lot of online communities that were petering out. Things like AOL, and eWorld, and several others. Everything was becoming a fad and would have very brief but bright times in the spot light and 1000s of suddenly wealthy companies were trying to turn just about any idea into money. Everything was trying to move online including some people who tried to live their entire lives online (remember that?). So it was another time to be dubious of things even during that wildly optimistic time where nothing can go wrong (Can It?).

Someone (actually more than one) had come up with this idea of having auctions online. Where people could bid real money in an attempt to buy something they'd never seen before. Now if you've been to a real auction, you know there is a time before the auction where you can inspect what you're going to be bidding on. I bought my now vintage guitar at auction and I had a chance to play it before bidding on it. The idea of having auctions without an inspection period was completely nuts. Who on earth would do that? Really now. Come on. Oops. Yeah well I've bought many things on eBay since then - good thing I didn't go very public with that opinion.

If I was asked to guess how long people would put up with the chore of texting I'd get that wrong too.

So now we have Facebook, My Space, Twitter and a ton of other social networking sites. I don't see My Space lasting forever as Facebook does such a better job of it. Facebook is an obvious juggernaut and while I delayed getting involved in it for a long time, the phenomina of having people from 10, 20, 30 years ago plus some folks I didn't even know existed (an unknown cousin in my case) is most definitely a jaw dropping one.

But what's going to happen to the short attention span specialist Twitter? Facebook has a Twitter like function where you can say what you're doing right now, but Twitter is more set up for having your own page of updates without overwhelming your friends' news feeds. I don't know though. They really need to find a niche and they're certainly trying to. It's great for someone who is really busy and really interesting, and who has a fan base who wants to know what they're doing. Rachel Maddow has one which is great but wouldn't it be great if Obama had one (maybe he does I haven't checked.)

So I don't know what is going to happen to Twitter, but there is one prediction that I'm willing to put in print. Facebook will kill Classmates.com. I've complained quite a bit about the Social Extortion tactics of Classmates (will put a link in for that entry) where they will encourage you to contact someone you went to school with and then won't show them the message until that person pays them money. Apalling extortion. Even dating sites have higher class. In dating sites, the person who wants to send a message pays money, not the recipient. Because of Facebook, I have come into contact with many, many more people than I have with Classmates. Classmates.com will die it's only a matter of time.

A Legal Same-Sex Marriage: California's Version of "Honorary White"

Those of you who either remember or have studied the bad old days of apartheid in South Africa may have heard that a status sometimes awarded to those of a different race traveling to S. Africa was "Honorary White." I had heard of the term in 1982 from a friend who was from there and it made such an impression that I remember the conversation clearly. Now that I'm researching it I find the specific details a a little different according to this 1962 Time Magazine article, as it was used for Japanese who traveled there because, well, money talks - at least then it did.

What relevance does this have now? Well none I wish, but the analogy keeps occurring to me.
According to the Calif Supreme Court, my same-sex marriage is legal. My marriage is one of 18,000, which lands us all in this really strange position. We have been granted admission to a country club that has shut the door on all the other riff raff just like us. The law of the land is that sames-sex marriage is not legal - oh except for you. What does that make me? An honorary heterosexual? You've got to be kidding. While I'll take it as I very much want to be married, that's equally as ludicrous as Honorary White. This will not last and it appears the court is of that opinion too and the court has requested the legislature fix the equal protection fubar that this leaves us in.

So we will vote on this in 2010 and possibly again in 2012. The cool thing is that while I'm annoyed at how much money this past election and the future ones will cost me in donations, I did not spend my life savings on it like some completely short sighted Yes on 8 morons let their church talk them into. If they spent their life savings on this past election, then they don't have it for this one or the next one and it also means they are completely illiterate when it comes to reading the writing on the wall. They're still stuck on "But we voted on it. Aren't we done?" (As if you can vote on someone's civil rights.) Um, remember prohibition? That was a US constitutional amendment and so was the undoing of it. The California constitution is much easier to amend (look it up).

And it means they're not noticing that children don't care nearly as much as they do about who marries who, save for maybe their children that they've succeeded in brainwashing.

So we continue to live in interesting times.

Rattlesnake Canyon

This week's Car Talk Puzzler is about Rattlesnake Canyon in Santa Barbara a place that I've hiked in many times, while I was thrilled to hear about it, I find the timing ironic as parts of the area just burned in the Jesusita Fire in early May. (Yes, like 3 weeks ago.)

http://www.keyt.com/news/local/44397807.html

http://www.independent.com/news/2009/may/12/jesusita-fire-nears-containment-new-phase-begins/

The puzzler is why is the water level higher in August than in the beginning of summer even though the rainy season doesn't start till Nov or so. I could swear there's a hot spring on the trail and was sure that it had something to do with that (the summer heat maybe bringing the water out more), but I can't find a reference to a hot spring, just a description of the pool that people would play in created by a very old filled in dam (this part i remember well). There are also a lot of very cool small falls on the trail. The water is clearly from a spring, so it's possible that the fact it's from a spring has something to do with it. Though I can't figure it out as the spring on Shasta stops running late in summer so it's probably not from a normal spring which brings me back to there must be a hot spring in there somewhere. My memory of the area just isn't clear enough - guess I spent too much time playing around the water (it was a great obstacle course) and didn't soak in the water much. There are worse fates.

Anyway I'm sad about the area burning. I know it's intended to burn, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Shasta Prep

I have a mountain of food in the living room and I'm just not really up to organizing it, so I've asked for Patricia's help. I'm getting less and less thrilled with playing house in the mountains. I like to climb things, but the mechanics of going on a trip into the mountains I am not fond of. If I could keep up with groups, I could just always go on group trips. Problem is that I like to do my own trips and itineraries as I'm pretty good at route finding. Maybe I should just hire someone to help me prep for a trip (menu creation and organizing). I don't know who does that, but someone must. There are plenty of underemployed guides who cook. While I'm dreaming I could just have my own sherpa and a cook too.

It's likely going to be wet and rainy at Shasta. I don't know whether I'm disappointed about that or relieved. given that my goal is just to get above Helen Lake (hopefully up to the Red Banks), that should be completely doable in the wet, but if the temperature doesn't drop enough at night to refreeze the snow, it would mean being in soft snow the whole time and that just won't work and I would not be inclined to leave at midnight which is what it would take for me to get that far as I climb slower than average. Mountaineers leave at night because frozen snow is much easier to climb (using crampons), and mountain weather in the afternoon is unstable so it's best to head down at noon. I can climb to Helen in the dark as I've done that part of the trip more than twice. I've been as far as 50-50 Flat (which is not flat just not as steep) around 4 times, as far as Spring Hill more than 6 as I can reach it during a day trip from the Bunny Flat trailhead. So the lower part of the route I know well - well enough to know that the trail to Horse Camp is actually harder than just staying in Avalanche Gulch proper and then traversing left at the treeline.

However past Helen is where things get really steep and really tough (though no crevasses fortunately). The slope on the part of the route just below the Red Banks is over 30 degrees. It's that part that I want to try just to see how it is. Fortunately I have good ice axe skills (I'm a glissading queen) and am good at self arresting (using an ice ax to stop yourself when you fall on a snow slope), however a 30 degree slope is usually not where you want to test your skills as simply hanging on to the ice ax in that scenario is really hard and if the snow is firm you may not be able to get the pick into the snow and you may find yourself taking a fast trip back down to Helen. This happens to a Shasta climber one or twice a year though deaths aren't common fortunately (there's a dangling modifier in there but it's too awkward to fix - I'll assume you understand that it's not just one Shasta climber that this happens to.)

For the most part we're going to be hanging out at the Sierra Club's beautiful "Horse" Camp. There are no longer any horses there, in fact you can't even have dogs there, though you can outside of the Sierra Club property. In fact you can take your dog as far as Helen. Which dog would be a fun question as Yoshi is in better shape and there are hardly any dogs there but he's such a nervous boy. Trek is more resilient about the outdoors, in the snow there would be no poop to find and eat or roll in, and she'd love the quiet though she's currently not in as good of shape but we're working on that. I'm supposed to be writing about a snow trip and I'm again writing about my dogs - what does this mean?

Star Trek: Sylar as Spock

Google tells me that I'm about a year and a half behind on this, but I like the fact that I didn't know this going into the film as then I got to experience the unsettling realization firsthand.

Sylar, the serial killer in Heros season 1 (played by Zachary Quinto) is now Spock in the new Star Trek film. Ok, Sylar isn't there but those Quinto eyes have an intensity that both Sylar and Spock share, and underscore the uncomfortable fact that the characters are two sides of the proverbial coin. An ambiguity that the always brilliant J. J. Abrams seems to thrive in.

According to this article
http://www.tvguide.com/news/Heroes-Baddie-Logical-13093.aspx
Heros creator Tim Kring thought it was cool too. It is a fun circularity as Sulu shows up in Heros.

Check Fraud

I've been waiting to post about this until I had some resolution, and now I do.

In early April, I received an email from the bank saying that they'd transferred money to cover an overdraft. I knew there was enough money in the account so I immediately checked and saw two charges totaling $800 to two different Walmarts. I never go to Walmart so I called the bank and we went through the process of filing a report which involved answering a series of questions that basically said I had nothing to do with the charges and I was not involved in some elaborate, impressive sounding theft conspiracy involving buying things and then walking away with the merchandice while claiming fraud (people do this? yeesh.)

That all completed I had two incident numbers and a promise of 10 days to resolve it.
(though it all worked out in the end.) Since they weren't sure if it was just a mistake or actual fraud, they suggested leaving the account as it is for now while they check. To cover some real checks I had coming in I transferred money to cover it. That was a mistake

The next day I checked the account and the balance looked similar except there was a minus sign in front of it. Hmmm. Checking further showed that evil check kiter had written 1300+ to Nordstrom Rack on two different visits. I didn't even know it was possible to spend that much at Nordstrom Rack. The reason the account balance looked similar was a coincidence. They had sent it into the red to nearly the same amount it was in the black yesterday. $#@%@#!!! I could see the check images and they were completely different, but had my name and address on them and my account number. I had the actual blank checks of the check numbers they had chosen. Peeved I called the bank again and this time they said I should freeze the account and go to the branch and open a new account. I told them all the checks that were outstanding. They told me that electronic access would still work but only those checks would go through.

So I went and opened a new account, and told the 5 parties who had the checks. All but the Forest Service said they'd destroy them and I wrote them new ones - the Forest Service had already been sent off and later cleared.

Wells Fargo sent me an affadaviat to fill out. I did and on form they asked my who I thought might be responsible. They're actually asking me to speculate? Wahoo, because I sure had a very good idea who it might be. You see I usually only write checks to friends and dog agility orgs. I have a long history with all these folks and I trust them. The only unknowns were the out of town Forest Service, and a relatively large local Dr's office who I had never been to before. Given that our steroidal shopper was very local and the Forest Service is in Bishop, I had a nice big target to point to and I did so and said why.

Also in my report, just to make things plainly obvious, I included printouts of the cashed checks and my completely different looking blank checks with the exact same number.

To be continued...

Self Sabotage

I keep having to remind myself how much I dislike hiking by myself. I forget. I start thinking about how fun it will be to climb something and someone else isn't around who wants to go, and when I go and do it I find myself pretty much instantly now saying "I hate this" It's the weirdest thing - a complete cognitive disconnect. I wonder if this is what childbirth is like? No, this isn't even close, but the crave/hate phenomena seems to come up in a lot of ways. Addiction comes to mind but I don't have an overpowering urge to hike, I just like to explore, but don't like to feel like I *have* to do it alone.

One issue is that after snow, dirt just isn't any fun at all. Climbing snow is much more work, but snow is much more fun. It's prettier, and it often doesn't hurt when you fall on it. (Though granted it can be cold, and it can be hazardous in different ways than dirt and rock.) My last snowshoeing day trip I was fine, my last time on dirt at Mt Diablo (Eagle Peak) I was miserable even though everything went well.

I'm also setting myself up to fail on Shasta and I'm not sure what's going on. I'm not getting enough time to train and am unwilling to make more time. I even paid a trainer to design a perfect strength workout for me, but the best I can do is once a week instead of twice. At least I am exercising in some fashion pretty much every day, but it's not likely to be enough. My goal at Shasta is pretty modest. Get further than Lake Helen as that's the furthest I've been so far. This is totally within my grasp as I've been up to Helen at least twice and could have gone further, but wanted to glissade. Now that I've spent a couple of winters skiing I can probably resist the perfect glissade and continue on.

But I'm having a major attitude struggle and after this climbing season I really do need to take a break from it. (It really is time to get that road bike and deal with my hip injury). Though I fear pausing climbing as I will be 50 in a few years and while people climb well into their 70s, it's harder, and I fear my MS symptoms coming back and interfering with things like walking. Of course, this worry and stress doesn't help preventing my MS symptoms. They say that MS really isn't stress related (an old disproven theory was that MS was stress related), but the more stressed I am the worse my symptoms are. Within 3 hours of learning that my beloved dog Cali had a spleen full of tumors and had to have it removed right then, I went half blind in one eye. This wasn't psychosomatic, a later MRI showed damage to the optic nerve. Fortunately, I recovered from that, but the lesson for me is pretty clear. Beat up on yourself at your peril. Of course, then I start beating up on myself for beating up on myself. I'm so good at this. Sigh.

Beware of Trial by Media

The distressing case of the murder of Tracy girl Sandra Cantu, is getting more distressing by all the media coverage, speculation, and the invitations by Kron 4 and others for people to share their views. I'm obviously a huge free speech advocate, but I also believe in our judicial process. The more we stir up a lynch mob, the less and less chance that her accused killer (look it up if you must) is going to get a fair trial anywhere outside of a mountaintop monastery in Tibet.

We all have a right to our opinion, but we do not have the right to try and convict her accused killer especially even before the wheels of justice have even started to turn. Take a breath, slow down and let those in charge do their jobs. Rushing to judgment is not going to bring Sandra Cantu back, nor is her killer any less guilty, and if it turns out the wrong person has been arrested then the real killer might get away with it.

Maybe we have been watching too many cop shows and want it all tied up within the hour.

Perhaps Not the Safest Place to Be on the High Seas

So just to stay semi-current on geo-political events I looked up where Somalia's location is. They are the eastern-most tip of Africa located on the Gulf of Aden right near where the Suez Canal lets out, which is seriously prime real estate if you're in the business of commandeering loaded merchant ships.

And who is on the other side of this not so quiet body of water? The nice calm (not), and nearly completely lawless country of Yemen. Yikes - Can you say shooting gallery? Trouble is, if you need to go from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean then the Suez Canal is just about the only practical way to go which makes the whole adventure a not so welcome crap shoot.

This newscast says that a 10th of the world's cargo travels through there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjAhAJVSgLM

What's really surprising to me is the size of the ships especially the ones described here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSp9OGK69oA

I was thinking that the best defense is not to stop and some have out run them, but some how they are able to catch the ships. And now the pirates have rocket launchers. Eek.

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.