Flower Time

I call this "Potential" or something like that, then I cut the flower part off.

Just kidding, lol.







Here was a purple flower as seen through our fall foliage.

How I'm Surviving the Second Bay Bridge Closure of 2009

I don't know if any of you watch the national news. I only see it at the gym, but I did get to see that the Bay Area made national news a couple times. The big one is big, and might just complete our trifecta of transportation issues this year. A few weeks before Labor Day, we had the threat of the BART strike. The night before it was due to start, the state and the union reached a deal and trains ran on schedule. Disaster averted. A couple of weeks later, the Bay Bridge was shut down and we all forgot about the BART issue.

It is an El Niño year this year, and this last week has been hella windy. Tuesday night must have been really incredible. I didn't hear the traffic reports that evening, but somehow, by the next morning, I knew full well that pieces of the new Bay Bridge had been blown apart during rush hour on Tuesday. A few cars were damaged, one person was insignificantly (I think) injured, and the Bay Bridge was shut down. Not for repairs - no. It was so the engineers could figure out how to fix it.

The San Francisco Bay Area lives and breathes by its bridges, and the Bay Bridge is like shutting down the aorta of our traffic flow, carrying most of the East Bay out of the MacArthur Maze and into the city. Since the bridge went out on Tuesday night, the BART has been running longer trains and they even added a second ferry across the bay. However the other bridges are packed.

Its nice because there is no back-up to the one east bound lane of the Caldecott tunnel, but the traffic on 680 negates any time saved. I run right into all the Martinez, Pittsburg, and Concord people that usually take 24 to the Bay Bridge all rushing down 680 to get to the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges before... well, before nothing cuz those are clogged and we made national news.

I don't know how things were after the Loma Prieta quake, but the recent 20 year observances made it clear to me that all hell did break loose during that time. The traffic issues with the Bay Bridge were likely dwarfed by the chaos that engulfed the area. They may also have been just as bad, but people were probably so shell shocked by the 15 second nightmare that caused it to barely care.

I'm lucky that my only concerns with this shutdown are not knowing which ways are the best anymore and that I don't work in the city. Some of my co-workers live in the city and commute out to San Ramon, but I don't know what they are doing. If it was me, I might think about packing a bag and staying with a friend that lives near-by instead of trying that commute. I don't work tomorrow, but I am not sure if it is a Furlough Friday or not. I hope it is - or maybe the state should trade them. I can only imagine the money our state doesn't have that's being spent. I wonder if the money lost on those tolls is being made up on other bridges, ferry fees, and BART tickets. I also wonder if the BART will run 24 hours in order to have some kind of traffic along that vessel.

We Need a Miss Manners for the Internet

I have absolutely no sympathy for the person that sends an email to me, either as an individual or as part of a large mailing list, with a demand to be taken off an email list. I have some respect for the request if I happen to be in charge of that mailing list, but if I'm just a user, especially if the email is to me directly, that person can kiss my ass. This week, I got one sent directly to me, and rather than respond or forward, I hit the delete button. One of my co-workers suggested I send the person an email saying that I did remove them from the list, and while I like the way that guy thinks, I opted for deleting rather than causing more havoc.

I know that people get on lists that they later realize they don't want to be on, and I also know that many lists are on other lists - signing up for the Hmong Student Association got me on the hotline to all the major API groups at UC Berkeley - and there may even be people out there that sign up group email addresses on those mass sign-up sheets that groups have out during festivals. It happens and the best way to get off the list is to ask someone to remove your email unless you happen to be at a university with a university account and can remove yourself.

What bugs me are the demands and the comments along with the demands about how they don't care about the subject at hand or the group in general. I liken it to being in a room where a conversation begins, then loudly shouting how you dislike everyone there and can't find the door. There are more polite ways to extricate yourself from a situation without making an ass of yourself and without insulting everyone else.

Now, the email that I sent out was a response to two other people. The email that I got back stated that this person was not interested in this group and wanted to be removed from the list. I was just about as able to remove this person as any of my grandparents are and I happen to have a very high opinion of the group this person was talking about. I might have forwarded a message that read something like "Hello, I don't know how I got on this list, but I would like to be removed. I contacted the other two people in this thread as well but they have not responded. If you cannot remove me, could you forward this message to someone who can? Thank you."

My mother always says that I'm constantly complaining that people do not say things correctly, and its true that I hold people to a high standard of decorum. Being as emotional as I am, I react strongly to rudeness. I have thin skin (metaphorically and literally - well, its transparent and burns easily), but I'm a human so I problem-solve and try to figure out how someone could achieve the same ends without acting like an ass. So if you're on a distribution list that you don't want to be on, do as Urs says, use please and thank you and your request might actually work.

Now, I could have been nice myself and forwarded the message, no matter how rude, but the person insulted my group, so &*#$ them. I mean, hell, I'm not a computer.

Another Quote

Over at Pandagon, I don't care for the bloggers that quote a lot because I want to read their analysis. I read the blog because I like the writing and opinions of the bloggers, so reading a bunch of quotes bores me. But, I'm not as skilled a writer as Marcotte, or this writer, so I guess I have to quote.

The fourth point: If you fail to respect what women say, you label yourself a problem.

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

For women, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.

-Sweet Machine

Here is something that I already realize, but I did not have the capacity to put it into words. Fortunately, I can leverage the words of someone else and use this to put words to instances in my own life.

We Do Not Exist Just to Breed

Something is said to be alive if it is an item that grows on its own and creates identical items that grow on their own. So it happens that the life patterns of humans would include a period of growth, then procreation. A major difference between humans and other species of life is that we don't just stop at making copies of ourselves. We create and build, we discover and invent, we fix and improve, sometimes never stopping to have more than one or two children.

But many people have it in their heads that our purpose is to breed, they may be forbidden by others from preventing pregnancy, and many are unable to resist sexual contact. In the past, the human population stayed stable because we were unable to keep a large segment of babies from dying shortly after birth. The population was further held down due to disease, war, and in Europe, witch burnings killed a significant portion of the young adult population. These days, science gives us the technology to limit the number of people we create and to take good care of the ones that we do create.

But now and then, the past comes back to haunt us. Will we make the right assessment of the problem and fix it? Will we discourage religious dogma and encourage contraception? I hope we do.

Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus

Two cute Christmas mythologies, both that people commemorate with little displays of the story every year. Only one that millions of people actually think is true past their childhood. My parents had a ceramic nativity scene that we would display under the eastern window in the dining room. We put some books down to act as a platform for the barn, then put a felt cloth over that, and placed the ceramic figures. We put fiberglass down next as the "snow" (or maybe that went down first).

When the Decorators in my house went atheist, we put the nativity scene away and used the space for other decorations. In college, I bought my parents some little snow-people -- two big ones and two little ones -- and they sometimes go there. I don't know the Christmas decoration plans this year though. The nativity scene and angel ornaments were the only casualties of our atheism, but now there is an angel on the top of the tree, where before we always had a star.

Today, at the Ashby Flea Market, I stumbled on this, and then haphazardly bargained it from $15 to $7.

The books (or rather, paperbacks in the dust jackets) have been there for a while, and this was the perfect location in my living room.

I Love You, Caren

So...by not going to SC and getting herself hurt or killed, Michelle Obama is oppressing the freedom-loving, conservative patriots who just want to express their “dissent” to her personally. Is that right?

On that note, I’m pretty fed up with theocratic assholes who think that their First Amendment right to be free from government impediments of speech means that they are allowed to force any particular person to listen to them.

Chicago just passed a law creating 50 foot buffer zone around abortion providers’ workspaces. Within 50 feet of the building, you cannot approach someone closer than 8 feet without her permission. The ACLU is actually on the theocrats’ side in this, evil socialists they are, b/c it’s hard to leaflet from 8 feet away.

Anyway, tons of screaming about how these wonderful people who never harmed anyone and have saved countless baybeez are being discriminated against and not being allowed their freedom of speech.

You can talk. You just can’t talk to a specific person if they don’t want to listen: that’s called harassment.

Specifically to this post, no one is stopping anyone in SC from dissenting. If they can’t behave like civilized people or like Americans, then it’s their own fault if they can’t have nice things like a visit from the First Lady.

-Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes

Here is My Cat

This is Kitty Amin, she lives in the barn at my parents' place in Wisconsin. My dad blames our family's acquisition of her on me, so she became my cat, but as I recall, I just wanted to give her some kitty treats, it was Dad that let her in the house.

See, when I was home after my brain injury, things were a bit boring. Splotches, the only cat we had at the time, was not very exciting since she was never really a people-cat. One day, as I was trying to pet Splotches, I saw a cat walking down the driveway. I called to my dad about the cat and he replied, "yeah, that's the cat that comes over and eats the left over cow feed!" I went out to give her some treats and then Dad let her come in the house. We thought she was pregnant because her belly was so big and she looked otherwise starved. But the gestation period for kittens came and went and no kittens. I had some friends that were on a dictator-cat-name theme, so I decided to call this cat "Kitty Amin". Her size fits her namesake perfectly, though I wasn't thinking about that when I named her. She is a very friendly cat, which is problematic because she smells like the barn.