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Scary Scooby

2009-09-28T20:02:36Z

In about 15 minutes Saturday, Zoe went from normal to hoarse and sneezing. We'd been to Port Discovery in Baltimore, and had a blast as usual. But it's also a den of viruses, and I guess Z got one. So Sunday we mostly stayed home. I scanned some pix of her http://sn.im/zoe2009 in the afternoon. We went to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I liked it, but like Monsters vs Aliens, it doesn't reach the level of Pixar in storytelling. The physics were really outstanding, though, and there were a lot of clever lines and cultural references, and a few adult in-jokes. Zoe got scared toward the end, but once it was over, she said she really liked it.

In the evening, I let her watch Scooby Doo, and at 11:30 I heard a shriek coming from upstairs. She had a scary Scooby Doo dream, so she slept with me after that. Then this morning she woke up crying a bit again, saying "Daddy I dreamed that Mommy got invited to a birthday party and I didn't." Then she went back to sleep for another two hours.

So no more Scooby Do in the evening.

Sugarloafs, speedboats and Awesome Hat Ladies

2009-09-21T03:01:20Z

We spent yesterday hiking around on Sugarloaf Mountain, something I'd wanted to do all summer, since Scott recommended it. We went with Charlotte, Pritha, Jenny, and Paul. It was fun but exhausting. My right knee is one big bruise because I whacked it on a tree; C's knees hurt from the climb. And Z got too tired, which we paid for today. But all three girls rode with C and me. It's kind of like having two new nieces. They're good kids, and we enjoy their parents' company.

Today we went down to National Harbor and went on a speedboat ride with Zoe. Z was cranky all morning, throwing fits at every little thing. Though she had a very good hour after breakfast, happily painting rainbows and buildings for her friend Alan. Whom we didn't manage to get together with today.

We arrived at National Harbor at 1PM, a full hour early, and Z started screaming that she didn't want to go on the speedboat--it was too scary. We let her play a bit outside in a play area at the Harbor, then had lunch at Rosita Mexicana, which was excellent and not too pricey. After lunch we had ice cream, then Zoe announced she wanted to go on the boat. So we waited another hour and went on the 4PM. She had a blast. The boat goes downstream from the WW bridge to Fort Washington, then further down across from Mount Vernon and back. Z loved it.

The playground there is basically a huge sandbox, with the foot, leg, head, arm, and hand of a huge metal giant protruding from the ground. Zoe had a great time playing there. As we left, she saw a big ol black church lady in an electric blue dress with a Very Fine Hat. The hat was about 18" high and was all tulle and white rhinestones. Zoe hopped up and down and complimented the lady, who was delighted. Driving out, we saw her again, and I said, "Look, Zoe, it's Awesome Hat Lady!" Zoe squealed and waved, then told her Mom, "I'm going to get that hat and wear it to school! And the teacher is going to say, "Qu'est-ce que c'est?!"

Quote

2009-09-10T18:17:22Z

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

-- Sir Peter Ustinov

National Aquarium

2009-08-30T23:39:59Z

Today C&I took Zoe, Charlotte, and Pritha to the National Aquarium on 14th St, across from the Reagan building. We'd talked about going to Baltimore, but eventually C balked and said it was too much travel for her. So we went downtown instead. It's a pretty nice aquarium, though of course nothing like MoBA, Baltimore, or even the Zoo. But it was fun anyway. Charlotte got scared a bit of the alligator, and Zoe said "the octopus gives me the freaks." Also, on the way down, she was talking about the scary monsters in Nightmare Before Christmas, and she said, "that one monster is so scary that he can scare the brain right out of your HEAD!" Which got a lot of laughs, so then she said, "He's even so scary he can scare you out of your WHOLE BODY!" That gave Pritha the giggles.

The cashier at the Aquarium was (clearly) Ethiopian, so when I thanked her in Amharic (my newest dog trick) she asked about Charlotte. She was very nice and interested and talked to Charlotte, who was shy. Pritha volunteered that Charlotte's Ethiopian name was Kasech, which I'd never heard.

After the Aq we walked to the Washington Monument, and I took pix of the girls. They ran around and shrieked like banshees. When we got to the other side, I pointed to the Lincoln Monument and asked the girls what it was. Zoe leaped up and volunteered, "It's Hamraham Lincoln!" Which again got Pritha giggling and talking about "Hammerhead Lincoln". A great idea for a comic--or the name of a band.

We had great fun today. But as we got the girls home at 7:15, Jenny has to feed them and get them into bed quick.

Tomorrow is Zoe's first day of Kindergarten! OMG she'll be leaving home before I know it. :{(

Funny email exchange over a Russian ad I didn't understand

2009-08-21T20:09:50Z

From me to Andriy, Andrei:

что значет ето?
(See image to right)
Я не понимаю его. "Fish: you're on the surface"? Не может быть correct.

--mj

From Andrei:

Судак это не только рыба. Это и город на Украине.

Sudak is not fish only. It is a name of the town in Ukraine.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Судак_(город)

Translation of
"Судак: вид сверху"
you can interpret as "City of Sudak: view from the top" or "City of Sudak: Satellite view."

Does it make more sense now?

My response:

То очень более лучше.
После этого, будет фото моего дома: "мудак: вид сверху"!
спасибо!

--mj

Socialism! SOCIALISM!

2009-08-19T20:28:52Z

This from the comments section in a story in the Atlanta Journal-Courier:
http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2009/08/19/the-cnn-world-the-fox-news-world-and-barney-frank/

By Len_RI

August 19th, 2009
4:04 pm

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by socialist electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the socialist clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the socialist radio to one of the FCC regulated channels to hear what the socialist National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using socialist satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of socialist US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the socialist drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as kept accurate by the socialist National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my socialist National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the socialist roads build by the socialist local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the socialist Environmental Protection Agency, using socialist legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the socialist US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the socialist public school. If I get lost, I can use my socialist GPS navigation technology developed by the United States Department of Defense and made available to the public in 1996 by President Bill Clinton who issued a policy directive declaring socialist GPS to be a dual-use military/civilian system to be managed as a national socialist asset.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the socialist workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the socialist USDA, I drive my socialist NHTSA car back home on the socialist DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the socialist state and local building codes and socialist fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it’s valuables thanks to the socialist local police department.

I then get on my computer and use the socialist internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and browse the socialist World Wide Web using my graphical web browser, both made possible by Al Gore’s socialist High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. I then post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

Two linguistic surprises

2009-08-09T13:23:22Z

I surprised two people this week by saying something in their language unexpectedly. I love doing that, mostly just because it gets a laugh, but also because I think it honors people by showing some interest in their culture. Language is so much a part of who we are.

Friday morning at work we had a visit from a contracting candidate who is originally from Ethiopia. I had already surprised him during the phone screen by asking a couple of questions in German. At the end of the visit (which went very well), as he was leaving, I said "Amesegenallo" ("thank you"). He looked puzzled and said "What?" I repeated it, tentatively, because I wasn't sure I was saying it right. (Getting it wrong can be a little embarrassing, but it gives the other a person a chance to correct you, which makes the friendly connection, too.) He looked like he'd seen a ghost--he literally started. He said, "You say 'Amesegenallo'! I didn't think you were saying that! How did you know?" I told him restaurants. I've never had that reaction before.

Friday night Zoe had a sleepover with Charlotte, and Pritha had her friend Kingda over. It was like Grade School United Nations over there--Charlotte is from Ethiopia, Pritha from India, Zoe's Guatemalan and Swiss, and Kingda's dad is Hungarian. When I heard that I asked her, "Vogy beszelek Magyarul?" Which I guess is conjugated wrong, but she got it anyway--she giggled, and then said "Igen!" I didn't have anything to say after that, though, so I asked her about where she'd been and so on. A sweet kid, and bright.

Tribute to my Mom for her 80th birthday

2009-08-05T05:04:43Z

This is a transcript of a short speech I made at my Mom's 80th birthday party on 7/18/09 in Fort Collins, CO. Her real birthday will be August 14.

This may be a good time for some of you to get up and get some more
cake or something to drink, because nothing I say here is going to be
a surprise to any of you. For those of you who stay, I'd just like to take
you on a guided tour of what it's like to have Viki in your life.

The one phrase that keeps coming to mind for me about my Mom is
"fierce love." The thing that most stands out for me about her is her
unending willingness to examine anything that gets in the way between
you and her. She'll fess up to just about anything about herself that
she needs to bring love back. Oh, and she'll fess up anything about
you, too, if she thinks you need it. Though there's been a whole lot
less of that lately, and the quality of what remains is excellent. And
if she gets it wrong, whatever it is, she's always willing to do it
again, open it up again, try again, go over it again, until both of
you get it and peace comes back.

It isn't enough for her to just win. You have to both win. And if you
don't, then it ain't over, and God help you. She's not only on her
side, she's on your side, too. And she's always willing to laugh at
life, and laugh at herself, and laugh at you. And if you have a
problem with that, you should probably get over it. Because God knows,
even if you don't, that you are no less ridiculous than she is. Even
if you're less willing to show it than she is. Because Viki's wise
enough to know that whatever it is that's so funny about herself or about you
isn't what really matters. And she's certainly good for a
laugh. Always has been.

Viki's always preferred sins of commission over sins of omission. She
likes to quote Luther on that: Luther said, "sin bravely that grace
may abound." So I guess, once a good Lutheran, always a good
Lutheran. But whether it's for the sinning, or for the bravery, or
both, grace does indeed abound. Her battles with herself, and with us,
have produced that finest product of old age: the person who is a
distillation of herself, and not a caricature. Those times
that some of you may remember with her that were not so peaceful have
boiled away. And what remains is what was always there: what we always knew
was there, because we had daily experience of it, like intervals of
sunlight between storms.

What remains is generosity and humor, peace and love and wisdom. And
yes, occasionally the trouble that love and wisdom bring. She brings
that faith and that willingness to throw herself into the white water
so you can both swim out. And that fierce love. And she spreads it to
others, waking them up, bringing them back, maybe not always gently,
but increasingly so.

Finally, what Viki trusts is that whatever is sane and right and joyous
in you, can communicate with the same in her. And you'd better believe
it will, eventually. And lately, that part, too, comes more easily.

So thank you Mom, for your fierce love. Thanks from all of us. You did
good.

Rewind: 2008 elections: Minnesota GOP sues God

2009-08-02T14:52:34Z

Wish I hadn't missed this last year:
http://newsifact.blogspot.com/2008/09/gop-subpoenas-god-over-precise-meaning.html

Oops

2009-07-31T15:03:47Z

Conservatives

2009-07-27T20:26:53Z

Conservatives call government "law and order" when it governs others, and "tyranny" when it governs them.

Great kid

2009-07-26T14:46:34Z

Last night as I was getting Zoe ready for bed, I hugged her and said, "Zoe, you're a great kid." She smiled and said, "Thank you, Papi. You're a great grown-up."

Champurradas y quetzales

2009-07-26T14:45:53Z

Yesterday we bought hojaldres and champurradas at a Guatemalan bakery in Old Town Gaithersburg. They make excellent champurradas there. Got a laugh from the ladies working there when I tried to pay using the Quetzales that had been in my wallet since Christmas. They laughed again when they saw I was wearing a Gallo shirt--something I hadn't thought about.

Malpractice lawsuits have a negligible effect on health care costs in the US

2009-07-22T03:47:23Z

From: Anderson GF, Hussey PS, Frogner BK, Waters HR.
Health spending in the United States and the rest of the industrialized world.
Health Affairs, 2005 Jul-Aug;24(4):903-14.
Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Department of Health Policy and Management, MD, USA.

...

Role of Malpractice Litigation
Another commonly cited contention is that medical malpractice litigation is driving up U.S. health spending. The authors compared malpractice claims data from the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K., using information from national reports and databases. While the U.S. had 50 percent more malpractice claims filed per 1,000 population than the U.K. and Australia, and 350 percent more than Canada, payments were lower, on average, than those in Canada and the U.K. More important, average payments per capita were only $16 in the U.S. in 2001, compared with $12 in the U.K., $10 in Australia, and $4 in Canada. Including awards, legal fees, and underwriting costs, the total amount spent defending U.S. malpractice claims was an estimated $6.5 billion in 2001, or 0.46 percent of total health spending. [emphasis mine]

...

Free full text of entire article at:
http://sn.im/us-health-spending-vs-others

On "Socialism" hysteria and universal health care

2009-07-22T02:49:29Z

A friend recently posted this on Facebook:

Socialism doesn't work!!!!and neither does national health care just ask someone frome a country that has it....like a Canadian

My response:

You don't have to ask a Canadian. Just check out the CIA World Fact Book, 2008.

The US is ranked 45th in the world in life expectancy at birth. Lower than Jordan and Malta, and lower than almost all industrialized nations, most of which have universal health care. But we do just beat out Albania and Cyprus, so all is not lost. Canada is 14th, 20% above the world average. Canadians live on the average over two years longer than Americans. (http://sn.im/life-exp)

The US is also ranked 45th in infant survival (inverse 5-year mortality), ten places below Canada, at 35th, and just below Cuba and Guam.

All this despite Americans spending on average just under twice (192%) what Canadians do on health care (http://sn.im/hc-costs).

So maybe a Canadian isn't the best person to ask if you want to brag about how well our "system" works.

Next up: Canadian banks, American banks, and securities and banking regulation.

Spooky coincidence

2009-07-21T16:38:35Z

alistapart this week published an article by Joe Clark about the difficulty of encoding some types of docs as HTML. The example he uses of a difficult document is a screenplay, and he includes one page from a typewritten MS of the screenplay for Die Hard II (from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/unwebbable/):

A couple of weeks ago when I got my new TV, I happened to tune in no more than four minutes of that same movie, and those minutes included exactly that page.

WoooooWOOOOOOOOOooo spooky.

Blast from the Past: An Internet posting I made 24 years ago

2009-06-29T19:54:04Z

I have no memory of this, though I remember reading the book back then. But this is sure funny. Found it on Google Groups: <input ... > <input ... > <input ... > <input ... >


	Mark A Johnson		Jul 26 1985, 7:55 am

<CHOMP>

"'Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he
was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful.
Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Graves' bull.
Ever'body was out but Elsie Graves, and Elsie wasn't
bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin' red an' he
couldn't even talk. Elsie says, 'I know what you come
for; the bull's out back a the barn.' Well, they took
the heifer out there an' Willy an' Elsie sat on the fence
to watch. Purty soon Willy got feelin' purty fly. Elsie
looks over an' says, like she don't know, 'What's a
matter, Willy?' Willy's so randy, he can't hardly set
still. 'By God,' he says, 'by God, I wisht I was a-doin
that!' Elsie says, 'Why not, Willy? It's your heifer.' "

--- John Steinbeck in THE GRAPES OF WRATH
(co. 1939 by John Steinbeck; Penguin Books Edition, pp. 74-75.)

Read the book!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

----
Mark A. Johnson -- Eastman Kodak Company -- Information Products
UUCP:...allegra!rochester!ritcv!husky!mj W:(716) 726-9953 H:(716) 227-2356
(The Name Says It All)
"Lived here all your life?" "Not yet."

Birthday card from my brother-in-law

2009-06-21T01:51:46Z

Thanks, Richard!

That's how I roll

2009-06-06T19:41:01Z

Just say "more"

2009-06-05T21:54:24Z

Here's why in a portlet containing a list of things, the anchor text for the rest of the items in the list should be just the word "more", instead of "more whatever":

Look at the image to the right.

What's in that box? A list of things, right? Find the link that would show you more items in that list. Found it? Good.

Do you read Chinese? Probably not. (If you do, pretend the text is Devanagari or Naskh or Klingon or something.)

Did it take you more than a second to find that link, or did you even have the slightest doubt about what it means? Again, probably not.

Want to guess what "更多" means? (Hint: it means "more".)

The take-home here is: it doesn't matter what's in the anchor text if the design communicates it for you. You probably can't even read that anchor text, yet you know what it is for.

In this case, the old rules about complete sentences, adverb-object, and so on don't apply. Adding stuff to the anchor text in an attempt to be precise can only introduce confusion. The interface is effective without the words, so drop the extra words.

The anchor text doesn't matter because it's not a label. It's an affordance. It's just "the thing you click", right where you expect it. Anyone who wants to see the other items in the list, and has two neurons to rub together, is going to find that link and click it. Even if the link says just "更多" instead of being completely explicit or grammatical and saying "

更多的宇航员穿着口红" or whatever. (That makes my point about only introducing confusion: it still makes sense *unless* you know what the text means. So, again, minimize the text.)

If the user doesn't already understand "more what?", the problem is that the content or the context isn't clear. Adding words to the "more" link will not fix that problem, and isn't the place to try.

On the web, less is more. Just Say "more".

Do bacteria have noses?

2009-06-04T15:12:31Z

Back in March when Zoe had her forehead injury, she had an interesting question for me.

"Daddy, do bacteria have noses?"

"What?"

"Bacteria, do bacteria have noses?"

"No, honey, why would you ask that?"

"Mommy said that bacteria eat the medicine and so they die. But if they don't have noses how do they find the medicine so they eat it?"

"Oh... no, honey, they're covered with the medicine. It just goes inside them and kills them. They don't have to find it."

I could just imagine what she was imagining: little bugs sniffing around, looking for tiny pills to eat, and then dying because the pills have medicine.
---
Last night Z&I were at the video store looking for a movie I thought she and Kayla would like. (We ended up with "A Bug's Life"--now she wants to play Bug's Life and be a bug.) At one point she suggested "Meet The Robinsons", which looked like it had maybe a bit too much action for a 5-year-old. So I said, "But I think that one looks a little bit scary."

"That's OK, Daddy, I will sit with you."

Is this a dead chicken?

2009-06-01T20:44:15Z

I'm home sick again today--day eight and counting--and Zoe's out of school now. So I took her to Pollo Campero for lunch. She waved a piece of chicken at me.

"Is this a dead chicken?"

"Yes, honey."

"How did it die?"

"I don't know exactly." True enough. I don't know exactly how they, you know, "do it".

"Is this chicken?"

"Yes."

"Why is it brown and wrinkled on the outside?"

"Oh, that's a kind of bread they put on the chicken before they cook it."

"And this part inside, this part's the chicken?"

"Yeah."

"I think they have a long thing, like a kind of knife thing, and they take the chicken and WHACK!"

"And then what happens to the chicken?"

"They die. And then they take them to a special place, and they put that stuff on them that you told me about, and then we eat 'em."

"Yeah, I think that's pretty much it."

"Daddy, is the beak in there?"

"What?"

"Where's the beak? If this is chicken, there should be a beak."

"They take that out, honey."

"Why are you laughing?"

"Pretty much nobody wants to eat the beak."

"What about the feathers?"

"They take those off, too. Nobody wants to eat feathers."

"YUCK!"

Somebody's trying to tell me something

2009-05-30T02:31:41Z

Last week, Marina said Zoe told her that her daddy was getting old, because he was losing his hair. "But that's OK," she said. "He can get a wig."
Friday night, I took Zoe and Charlotte to Manoli Cannoli for pizza. At one point Charlotte looked at me and said, in her consistent high-pitched yell), "You got a big belly."
Sunday at Elaine and Michael's, a four-year-old was walking around saying, "I'm the mommy." She looked at me and said, "You're the grandpa."
Zoe is fascinated with her Susan doll. She pointed to it yesterday and said, "Daddy, look, she has boobies just like you!"

I told this to Maria Fernanda, when she was here this week, and she laughed and said, "Entonces, gordo, viejo, y chichudo!"

After I get over this flu or whatever I have, it's time for some changes!

My Great Dad

2009-05-30T02:25:59Z

Zoe today gave me a paper she did at school entitled, "My Great Dad". It's a questionnaire that the teacher helped her fill out. Here it is, with Zoe's answers underlined, as they are on the page:

My Great Dad

My Dad is 6 years old.
My Dad is 5 feet tall.
His hair is gray and his eyes are blue .
My Dad likes to relax by sleeping .
He likes to cook patai . (The teacher didn't recognize pad thai.)
My Dad fixes his own things around our house.
He likes to watch grownup shows on TV.
When my Dad shops, we likes to buy stuff we don't have .
My Dad always tells me I love you, Zoe!
I love it when my Dad takes care of me!

My Dad is the best!

And she signed it herself. :-)

In case there's any doubt...

2009-05-29T03:00:29Z

Damn, I'm even sicker tonight. I think I'm worse than Carolina got. Or maybe she's just less of a whiner.

If there was any doubt about how sick I am, check out the peepers:

The throat pain is worse than tonsillectomy. Really. Viruses SUCK.