Rusty's Blog

Most of my friends are people who have read Robert A. Heinlein at some time in their lives. For many it may be nothing more than Starship Troopers, or Stranger in a Strange Land. For others it may be the juvies, Starman Jones, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, or even Podkaine of Mars. Quite a few will have searched out and read just about everything he has ever written. I’m not quite there, but what I’m short on is generally not in print any more anyway. But that’s not really important at the moment.

Any writer who has been writing a while, at some point comes up with some sort of a timeline for the stories that he’s written. Heinlein was not really different. You will find the timeline in the compendium Expanded Universe if you are interested. One of the things he did in the timeline is described or predicted what the political climate of a few periods of time would be like. In that, we are close to the end of the ‘Crazy Years.’ As many I know would comment, “I hope so!” That’s not really the purpose of the time line though. For that we need to go to ‘Time Enough for Love.”

In TE4L we are introduced to the character Lazarus Long. Lazarus has been around for a while. At the beginning of the book he has decided that he’s been around ‘long enough.’ But that doesn’t sit well with others, so he ends up in a hospital, surviving the situation. One of the discussions that comes up is that the rest of humanity could learn from what Lazarus could tell them from experience. Lazarus scoffs at this, and points out something that as near as I’ve been able to tell is absolutely true. His response was that Humanity as a group does not learn from what anyone says. Humans as individuals in general, do not learn at all. When Humans do learn, it is not through the tales told by someone else, it is through their own experiences. And even that is exceptionally rare. He did agree that having something to try gave you a working starting point where you might have a better chance of learning something, and the end result was the Notebooks of Lazarus Long.

Notebooks of Lazarus Long appears within Time Enough for Love, and if I recall also at least in part in Expanded Universe. However the treasure is to find the stand alone book of the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, which ends up in a somewhat odd format. If you can find one intact, they did something a little bit different with this compared to most science fiction. Notebooks is sort of like a book of quotes. Some of these seem self evident, ‘Always store beer in a dark place.’ Others have a humorous bent, “Be wary of strong drink, for it can lead to shooting at tax collectors… …and missing.’ And there are several with specifically romantic intents, ‘Rub her feet.’ and ‘I came, I saw, She conquered! – the original latin seems to have been garbled.’

The one that seems applicable to me tonight however is ‘When the time comes, and it invariably does, a man must be prepared to shoot his own dog. Turning it over to someone else to do does not make it easier or better. It makes it worse.’

At some level the quote can be applied to almost any activity where there is a distasteful element to completing a task, or ensuring the survival of the group. No one wants to shoot their dog. But there are many reasons one may have to. If a dog gets infected with Rabies, it does not matter if that dog was the gentlest of creatures before, it will have to be destroyed. The thing is that Lazarus or Heinlein was not talking about dogs specifically. He was referring to pretty much any pet, animal or otherwise.

People talk about Pet Projects. And some of those end up being things that would be best killed off, by the person who thinks of it as theirs.

In any case, there are problems for many people today with “shout your own dog.’ At the very least if you live in most major cities today, shooting your dog is liable to result in an ‘unlawful discharge of a firearm’ charge being levied against you. In many places it is also difficult or impossible to find a place to bury your dog. In the greater view this is equivalent of rigging things so that you can neither do the job that is your responsibility, nor are you allowed to take care of the mess.

In most places the solution is to take your dog to a veterinarian and based on quality of life observations, the veterinarian may work with you to put your dog to sleep, and then either the ashes from cremation can be returned to you, or they can be cremated in a communal cremation with no ashes returned.

The time came for Mindy to go. There were some signs that she might recover, but I didn’t expect her to fully recover, and what recovery she was making very well could have been a temporary situation. She was also in some pain as she would put no weight on her left rear paw. I did not see any damage to the paw itself, no obvious thorns, or broken toenails or the like, but in combination with her inability to go up stairs on her own, I suspect that there was pain in her hips or elsewhere. Walking was a labor for her, as was getting up. No more the four paws extending as one movement and we’re walking along. First came the struggle to get up on the front paws, almost impossible to accomplish on hard surfaces, then a major struggle to get up on the back legs.

And no, having someone inject a sedative, then a general anesthetic to put your dog to sleep is not better. But at the moment it was the best that I could do for her.

So after approximately 10 years and 3 months, it is just me and Nicholas again. He is old as well. He was 3 when I adopted him in in October of 1998. That means he is 14 now. So he is closing in on the end as well, but for now still has plenty of life left in him.

Nick and I went for a walk today. He was bounding where he could, at the end of his lead. Investigating Goose droppings, and enjoying the attention.

My favorite experience with Mindy was one time when we were visiting my dad. The cat in the house had either been playing with or ignoring a mouse that was annoying to my dad. She may have even brought the mouse in, she had been known to do that in the past. Mindy and I were in the family room, I think I was reading, she was just laying there near me. Suddenly she leapt up and tore into the kitchen. A couple of moments later she walked back into the living room. I had seen the mouse run along the wall into the kitchen, but figured that as quickly as she came back that the mouse had escaped under a cabinet or the stove, and thought nothing more of it for a while. About an hour later my dad walks into the kitchen to discover that there is a dead mouse on the floor. While neither of us attempted to do any sort of an autopsy, there was no obvious damage, such as a broken neck or anything. The cat in the house was totally black, and Mindy as a black lab cross at the time was the same coloration. We figured that the mouse saw Mindy and died from shock at the sudden increase in size of the cat.

So why is this my favorite? Hunting dogs and cats that go after small creatures tend to be fascinated by laser pointers. Nick is no exception, and most people have learned that with their cats and other dogs. Mindy never took the slightest interest in laser pointers. Either she was blind to the light, or more likely she had learned at some point that it was not a good idea to chase after such a spot. But from a good 15 feet away she heard or spotted a mouse, and responded the way we would like all our cats and dogs to respond to a threat to the household.

I’ll leave with that. This story has taken a rather odd route for some readers. I don’t happen to agree with some of Heinlein’s positions. But I will admit that there is value in working through some of the ideas and learning from the experience.

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If things go as I expect, this will probably be the last time I blog about Mindy while she is alive. We have an appointment to see the vet tomorrow afternoon, and I’m not really expecting to bring her home, though I would very much like to.

You’ve probably met Mindy if you’ve been reading my blog. There are even pictures of her and Nick around here from this summer.

The last couple of weeks have not shown significant improvement. The last two weeks she has not climbed the stairs to get to our floor and only one or two times has she gone up the entry steps. She strongly favors her left hind leg now, she’s not putting any weight on it for the most part, but when walking will use it. She has collapsed a few times when she stumbles over something, or goes to do a few things she historically has done as part of being her.

We’ve been pretty solidly on canned food for the past week or so. Initially I was mixing canned food with dry, and that was going down, but about one in 5 days she wouldn’t touch it. Then almost every other day. After switching to canned food I’ve left out a dish of dry for each, and Nick has eaten some of that, including I think some that was set out for Mindy.

Mindy has never been a waddler. Even when she was a good 10, 20 or more pounds overweight. But now she is a wobbler. Going down the stairs I try to be there right next to her when she gets to the bottom, because I know she will need a moment to recover from the change in direction, and she will lean against me then. Usually just long enough for me to re-arrange holding the leads so that I can open the door.

I spent some time cuddling with her last night. Feeling ribs is one thing, feeling the cartridge along the edge of the rib cage is a different matter.

There is a possibility that she may be coming home with me tomorrow night. The major problem she is having is that what food she is eating does not seem to be being digested and taken in. She has thrown up a lot of what she has eaten and what she drinks. (No visitors expected for Thanksgiving by the way.) The odd part of this is that the usual reason for a dog throwing up food, especially labs, is an obstruction in the stomach. It is possible that an obstruction can be easily found for her, and removed and she will come home with me, hungry and be on a road to recovery. I’m not laying any money on that possibility however. She’s over 12 years old after all, and I’m pretty sure recovery is not a likely expectation at this point. That said, if I have to carry her up stairs for 2 months to get her to recover her strength to the point where she is able to go up and down on her own, I would.

Mindy has been a significant part of my life for the past 10 years. She has had characteristics odd for a lab. Some of that her history from before me, others may be genetic, but she has always had a good, friendly and playful attitude. That is typical for a lab of course. The only time I’ve ever encountered a lab, or labs that were not friendly folk was when they had gone through significant levels of abuse. And while there are a lot of people who think it’s a state that can’t be recovered from, my own opinion is that a well treated lab will be friendly and loving even if she or he has had problems in the past.

As with all stories, there are both conclusions and pieces that go on. Whether it is tomorrow, next month, or a year or two from now, Mindy will pass away. My life will go on, and for a while I expect that Nicholas will continue to be a part of it for a while, but he is nearing the end also. I make no statement that I will be ‘OK.’ at least not for the immediate future, but I expect to survive. Who knows what the future will bring.

Well sort of.

I have been wearing corrective eye wear since I was in either first or second grade. As a point of oddity, my first glasses were bifocals. Lenses with embedded lenses for a different prescription for near vision. I didn’t think anything really odd about it at the time, but then I was 6 or 7 at the time, not exactly the most experienced glasses wearer at the time.

About 10 years ago I commented that I was going to hold off on getting Lasic done until I had 10 times the cost of the procedure saved up. Might have bee 100, I don’t know. At the time the procedure was going for around $1500 give or take a bit, and they really were only talking about one procedure as being available.

The first variation of Lasic that I saw documented didn’t even involve lasers. It was a procedure where they actually sliced off a portion of your cornea, froze it with nitrogen, then used a lath to sculpt the inside of the portion they had removed, and actually stitched it back into place with one or two stitches. I forget what the procedure was called.

Another procedure that was done was called Radial keratotemy. (sp) For this they did not remove the cornea, they simply placed a guide over the cornea and either excised portions of the cornea, or put slices in the cornea. Either way the procedure involved a time of healing where the result was corrected vision, though not always down to 20/20. I would actually suspect that it was usually not even at 20/40, but for many people it was sufficient to either reduce their dependence on glasses, or if they were lucky get them to a ‘normal’ vision state. Whether it is fortunate or not, the limits on the procedure amounted to a fairly middle of the road prescription. If you had a correction in the -2 to -5 diopter range, it might have worked for you, however the amount of work to correct vision for someone with a stronger correction was beyond what vision professionals would feel comfortable doing.

Following that was some of the first generation Lasic procedures. One of those is actually the procedure that I am going to have done, but more on that later.

The basic process for Lasic has been to cut a flap of the cornea away, similar to the earliest procedures, but the cut does not completely remove the piece of the cornea. It simply provides a sufficiently large area for the laser to re-sculpt the exposed portion of the cornea (not the flap) and the flap is lain back over the re-sculpted area, sealing it in a new shape. The new shape corrects for the distortion of an elongated eyeball so that the lens of the eye can correctly focus. In early procedures the shape of they cornea was taken and a calculation was made as to how much of the cornea had to be removed to correct that to ‘normal’ vision. The more recent versions can actually correct for more distortion, removing astigmatism, and correcting for other issues. In theory corrections could be made in such a way that if you have a bad spot of vision on your retina that can be taken into account and corrected around to give you nearly complete vision after your brain has re-trained itself to the way that light is received.

In one of Spider Robinson’s books or book series, possibly written with his wife, which suggests possibly the StarDancer series, he has a character who has decided to ‘improve’ his vision by giving himself special goggles that increase his peripheral vision. It starts with just increasing it beyond the near 180 degree peripheral vision we often see, perhaps to 270 degrees, then he moves on to full 360 degree vision with a full wrap around appliance. There isn’t a lot of explanation of how that’s accomplished, but I suspect that it’s essentially distorting the full circumference into a patch that fits within the retina. There isn’t a lot of explanation of how to do that, and what we know of vision at the moment suggests that having a ‘screen’ within an inch of they eye isn’t going to do the trick. If I recall he may have extended the vision beyond 360 to include full overhead, as well as something on the order of 50% of what is below your horizon. Makes it tough, but not impossible to sneak up on the character, but that was not the part that I found interesting.

The suggestion was made that there was about a 2 week retraining period at each stage. There was some ‘common’ material that existed, but since it was in a smaller area than before, it may have seemed ‘less important’ and over all the new material that the brain had available to process. That said the brain was mostly just adapting remembered experiences to new perceptions. It never happens all at once, and for some people it never happens completely at all, but if you are comfortable with relearning how to perceive, it can work out. I’m not sure that I would go that route. Sure it’s nice to know if there is a threat approaching from behind, but it seems a bit much.

Back to where I am going. One of the problems with the ‘standard’ Lasic procedure is that it leaves a ‘flap’ that could be disturbed. If you are interested in being a pilot in the Air Force, do not get this done. First of all you are young enough that you will probably have to have the procedure re-done at a later date. Secondly the fact that there is a flap that could be disturbed by high speed winds and such will leave you with the potential problem of not being able to see in an emergency situation. Not the time to start learning how to perceive the world in new and wonderful or not-so-wonderful ways.

While I don’t expect to get going at the speeds that the Air Force is concerned about, I do ride a motorcycle at times, and I can very easily see the potential for something like that to be an issue. There is a solution however. It’s just not quite as ‘fast’ or simple. As an alternative to slicing a flap and lasing the inner surface, an approved solution is what is called PRK. In this procedure they actually use the laser to sculpt the outside surface of the cornea. There are some issues with this. The first is that the outside surface of your cornea is a coating that protects the inside of your eye from infection and related effects. Since the standard PRK procedure destroys this layer there are two solutions. The first is to cut and peel this surface and re-lay it back into place after the lasing is done. This takes longer and is potentially prone to some of the same issues as the flap produced in the Lasic procedure. The other solution is to place a zero correction contact lens over the lased area for a week to give this layer a chance to regrow. Not protecting the lased area can lead to infection and scarring. Neither of which is good for your long term vision health.

The other down side to PRK is that the recuperation time for your eye is longer. With standard Lasic you can essentially walkout of the procedure and you see ‘normally’ again. With PRK it takes about a week or two for your vision to stabilize. As a result Lasic can be done to both eyes the same day, but they prefer to do PRK one eye at a time, with a recuperation period between the two events.

That actually works to my advantage. You see I don’t have 10 or 100 times the cost of the procedure saved up in my retirement fund. Oh, I’m closer than I was back when I made that suggestion, but no, I”m not there yet, and don’t really expect to be there for a couple more years, at least. However I do have a medical spending account that I work from. The last couple of years I under-estimated the amount I needed to set aside for various procedures. This year I set aside the maximum amount that I was allowed to, and I have sufficient available to have the PRK procedure done to one eye this year, and plan to have sufficient to get the other eye done early next year.

Does it pay for itself? That’s a good question. First of all I do not expect to have to go without vision screening in the future. I’m diabetic and one of the ways that early awareness of issues can be spotted is through vision screening. However my requirement for glasses should be vastly decreased. I will need reading glasses. I already use them when I wear contacts. However I can pick up reading glasses that provide sufficient assistance almost anywhere for less than $20. If I break them, or discover I need stronger or weaker correction it’s not going to break the bank.

Compare that to the alternatives. First up glasses. Whether I add in contacts or not, I still need to have a pair of glasses in my current prescription. Fortunately this doesn’t change significantly on a yearly basis, because my insurance coverage only provides for new lenses every two years. There is also an allowance for frames then. (Most companies that will grind lenses will not put new lenses in old frames, because the fit is important, and the effort involved in cutting lenses to an old pair of glasses is often as expensive as new frames anyway.)

With my correction I’m spending about $500 on a pair of glasses every two years. A lot of that is covered by my insurance program, but not all of it. Some of the expense is due to the fact that normal glass or plastic lenses for my prescription would be uncomfortably heavy, so I use one of the high index plastics. There are a couple of coatings, but I don’t do tints at this point.

Add to this an annual expense of about $300 for contact lenses. Let’s be generous and say that it’s $250. (makes the numbers easier to remember) So every 2 years it’s about $1000 just in glasses. That turns the return time for Lasic or PRK to be between 10 and 15 years. If I just gave up contacts, we’re looking at a return time of 20-30 years. However ‘giving up contacts’ is really the purpose of the procedure as far as I’m concerned.

So from my estimates a 15 year payback time is more than sufficient.

Adverse reactions. As with any medical procedure, there are potential and likely adverse reactions. A complaint to Lasic that is not entirely uncommon is the ‘sands of the Sahara’ infection. This feels like there is sand in your eye. It’s usually a result of an infection that is preventable. A side effect to this, and some other infections can be scaring which may need to be corrected for down the line.

The first few hours after the procedure is very uncomfortable for many people as well. This is understandable, you’ve just had something done to your eyeball, and your eyelid needs to learn the new contour of your eye. Oddly enough, that is an ‘overnight’ resolution procedure. Because of the fact that there is so much that you do have to recover from, the procedure involves taking a Valium, which means _NO DRIVING_ to and from the procedure. That’s what cabs are for, right? Well, that or friends who are willing to suffer the imposition of an hour of their time at some ungodly time of the day. (I’m planning on taking a cab.)

One of the things I’m doing that is a bit different is that I will be having the procedure done just before I go to bed. With the odd hours that I work, being up overnight on a non-work day is not that big of a variation from my normal schedule. A side effect is that I will be immediately sleeping with the correction done, and be waking up having an eyelid that has recovered for the most part from the change in eyeball shape.

Next stop on this journey is the 22nd of December. Sort of a Christmas present for myself. Oh a couple of things that happen before that, eyedrops and lid wipes on the 21st, no contact in that eye from the 8th (2 weeks before) so I’ll be wearing glasses I suspect. All in all we’ll get things worked out. I’ve got just over a month before I have the other eye done, so I’ll have some time where I can wear a contact lens in one eye and nothing in the other, but I’ll also be wearing glasses without one lens for a couple of weeks as well. That or go with single eye vision for some parts of the day.

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Declaring e-mail bankruptcy is often a guilt ridden process. You were important enough, or your thoughts were considered important enough for all of these people to send you a message, and a large percentage of us feel that it is important to respond to each message.

I currently have [n] messages within my in-box. If I do nothing except read each message, and reply it will take me [n/20] hours of time to do that if I presume that a reasonable amount of time to devote to that process is 5 minutes per message. This amounts to [n/480] days of my time. During which time I can reasonably expect to receive [n(1) = messages received yesterday] new messages, including responses to the messages I’ve sent out. That is also time that I can not eat, sleep or spend time with family or friends. If I simply devote 2 hours per day to nothing but responding to e-mail messages, I can personally expect to processing approximately 40 messages a day. You may see a bit of an issue here. I know that I see a growing issue, and need to address that issue now.

While there are be many messages that I would briefly look at and dispose of, some messages will require additional research and may skew the average time per message significantly longer. The thing is that I am already filtering out a number of messages that fall into the category of ‘I’ll spend less than a minute on this’ which means that 40 messages is a very optimistic estimate.

I hereby declare e-mail bankruptcy. I am notifying you because you are one of the senders of the [n] messages I have not otherwise been able to get to, and I want you to know that I was not able to get to it, and will not be reviewing or responding to your message otherwise. If you sent me a message that still requires my attention, I will be happy to re-receive and respond in the future.

Thank you,

Before I get too far into this, I’m not a big football fan. But before you start thinking that it’s some decision on my part about being ‘better’ than football fans, or something like that, remember that Carl Sagan was a football fan.

When I say that I’m not a ‘big football fan’ I’m not saying that I dislike football, hate it, or have any form or animosity towards it. I like watching the occasional game, and I have a lot of friends who are fans of the sport.

My reason for not being a big football fan has to do with the fact that I am not the target market for the game, or for the drama surrounding the game. And in Minnesota right now, there is drama around the game, as well as on the field.

So far this season we have lost one game. If I were to predict the outcome of the season, it would probably be that we will loose another two, maybe three regular season games. I do expect that we will make it to the post season where we will win two or perhaps three games. I don’t happen to expect that we will make it to the Superbowl, nor do I expect that we will win if we do make it there. But who knows, the game ain’t over till it’s over.

Thus ends 2009. Which probably doesn’t help you with why I asked that question in the title of the post. So Allow me to pull my predicting cap on a bit more snuggly. we’ve got to start thinking about 2010. There will be a lot of talk and excitement through the spring and summer about Viking Football. Farve has to decide will he be healthy for the year? How did play go in 2009? Farve really wants to get to the Superbowl again, and take home another Superbowl ring. Hi’s contract is only through the 2010 season, so he’s only got this one more year to go.

And the season will go fairly well. Farve will play hard. But the team will have changed a bit. Will Peterson be able to sit out every other run? Will we have to trade away some receiver for a prospect who looks great on paper, but well, he’s really only received from quarterbacks who have lofted the ball to him, and he can’t handle the burning throws from Bret. It’s a little harder to predict a season away.

But that’s not where the problem lies. The problem is with 2011. Farve’s contract is up. I’m willing to bet that for 2011, Wilf is not really interested in throwing another 12 million dollars into Bret’s pocket. Even if we make it to the superbowl in the 2009 and 2010 seasons, 2011 does not look to me like a year with Farve on the team. In fact I’m reasonably certain that there will be a lot of turnover on the team, and the mix won’t be quite the same as we have now.

Why? Because the Mall of America Dome formerly known as the Humphry dome, has a contract with the Vikings to play through 2011. And the stadium is ‘showing it’s age. as they say. The kicker though is that there is no project in the works to provide a new home field for the Vikings in Minnesota.

Not one of the proposed stadium ideas has gotten the approval of the Minnesota senate, or the various cities it’s been proposed to. No one is talking about breaking ground for a new stadium. We’re in a ‘down economy’ at the moment, and no one wants to raise sales taxes again to cover the new stadium. Or increase property taxes, or have to deal with the traffic. Not here in Minnesota. Nope. Not here in Minnesota.

Now in LA on the other hand. You know in a state with an unemployment rate another 3-5% higher than here in Minnesota. A state that votes democrat nationally, but has a republican governor, who has just raised taxes. Now in the city of LA, they are building a stadium. Or will be shortly. They break ground in 2010. The first professional game is going to be played in 2012. What team will be playing there? Well according to the wikipedia article:

The National Football League is not planning on expanding
and the developers of the new stadium stated on their website
that their tenant will be an existing team "that needs to move
because they cannot build a new stadium or financially they
are not successful in their current market. We can not disclose
which teams we are talking with."

As someone I work with asked: “I wonder who that could be?”

Oh the wikipedia article does list several other teams, and it’s possible that one of those other teams is in serious negotiations for moving, but I would like to point out a minor detail that isn’t being talked about much these days. No one is talking about proposing a new stadium in Minnesota any more.

They guy down the street from you? You know the guy who painted his mail box purple and replaced the flag with a gold ‘horn’? Yeah, him. He doesn’t need any convincing. A new mailbox only costs a few bucks. Or at least less than a quarter of what he spent on a tickets to a game this year.

Yep, one of those tickets that I can’t see myself affording.

I don’t expect that LA will have one weekend of regularly scheduled home games that are not played at their new stadium in 2012. None will be missed.

I also don’t expect that Minnesota will have a home football game in 2012. After all the lease at the dome will have expired, and well, I think you’ll find out that there are already serious plans for that property.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that having a football team is a significant draw for outstate football fans. Oh, there are some, and many are very dedicated fans, but I strongly suspect that the Mall of America brings in more tourists from around the world for one and two day tours on a Monday and Tuesday than there are people coming into the twin cities for a game of the Vikings against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

And while LA is going to reap short term wins for jobs in building the new stadium, I would point out that a significant percentage of the people who built the new Twins stadium were not people who were living here 6 months before they started doing their job, and those same people will be gone long before the Twins play their season opener this next year.

If building a stadium is great news for the community, and is going to result in lots of new construction, you should see it by going to a high spot looking over downtown Minneapolis and counting tower cranes. Perhaps we will see them in the next few months. I’m not expecting to though. Are you?

The Vikings are about as unlikely to be in the state of Minnesota in 3 years as the Minneapolis Lakers are. Actually, I think less likely. The Lakers might end up visiting to play against the Timberwolves. But there are not going to be any teams for the Vikings to play against for a long time. In fact I would not be surprised if the team we call the Vikings are called something else entirely. The LA Vikings does not sound like a team name that rolls off the tongue. But perhaps it is a requirement that the team name remains the same other than the city or state portions of the name. I don’t know. After all the Minnesota Northstars became the Dallas Stars, which was a partial change in name.

That makes the ‘local’ team the Green Bay Packers. Of which there is no shortage of fans in Minneapolis. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me however if the next closest team became the new Fan Favorite, which would be the Chicago Bears. I suppose there will be a few people who will continue to follow the team formerly known as the Minnesota Vikings, but who knows.

In any case, enjoy. I’ll still be contending with traffic to get to and from work, though it will probably be a combination of normal rush hour traffic, and the odd Wolves game. Who knows.

Who do you expect to be following in 2012?

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First, Thanks Mike for the invite. Much appreciated.

I’ve added a link, somewhere around here, to a guide that Gina Trapani and Adam Pash have written on Google Wave. Since I don’t believe that the links I add are tossed out to the rss feeds, I figured I would add a blog entry as well.

http://completewaveguide.com/guide/The_Complete_Guide_to_Google_Wave is the direct link to the book online. The anouncement of the book was made on Twit.tv/twig this last Friday, so if you would like to know a little bit more, like perhaps why the book isn’t a Wave itself yet, that would be one place to look.

There have been a few other interesting wave related articles. Ars Technica posted a story about using Wave to play Dungeons and Dragons or more accurately online games at http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/10/google-wave-we-came-we-saw-we-played-dd.ars which made it to slashdot at http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/10/30/022242/emDampDem-On-Google-Wave?from=rss

An example of one instance of a wave that you may find interesting, especially if you enjoyed the movie is the Pulp Fiction wave. You don’t need to have a wave account to see the video, posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcxF9oz9Cu0 which also made it to Digg at http://digg.com/programming/Google_Wave_Cinema_Pulp_Fiction A minor disclaimer, if you don’t know, youtube is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google.

And while I”m adding it at the end of this post, lifehacker has posted the first wave search you need to know.

Hey, if you have a wave that you think a user may find handy, or a resource that someone wondering what to do with their new account, or perhaps if they should ask a friend if they should request an invite for them, feel free to leave me a comment.

You can even use your google wave login to authenticate for posting.

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…the system is conspiring to get me to write?

I got home today after doing my TCFMC newsletter mailing, and paying my rent, and when I went to call to pay another bill I got no dial tone. Hmm…

did the usual rituals, went and unplugged the cable modem, let it set for 30 seconds, plugged it back in, logged into the cable router, told it to try to get a new address, Joy, 192.168.100.2. a private IP space address. That means that the cable modem is not talking with the upstream device.

Grabbed the cell, called the cable company. When you call them, indicating that there is a problem with your cable internet, their system tells you if there is an outage in your area. I ended up being routed to a tech, who following the script had me unplug the cable modem and disconnect the cable from it. Did that waited 30 seconds with her on the phone, reconnected everything, and got the same results. She suggested that I check the cable connections and splitter, and see if there is any issues there. Of course all of that is hidden behind bookshelves, and stuff, not well lighted.

After finding a flashlight, I was able to get to the cables, I did find that the wall connection was a turn or two loose, but not sufficient to have caused any connectivity issues, (I think) and the technician was in the process of dispatching a field tech to have a look when her system announced that there is an outage in my area.

I get to call back in 24 hours if I’m still experiencing issues. If you see this before 5:00 pm on the 2nd of November, then the connection has been restored.

Meanwhile I’m going to start upgrading a system or two that won’t need an internet connection untill after the installation is complete.

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Some time back I added OpenID support to this blog. It is not enabled by default from WordPress, but is a single plug-in that can be added easily enough.

What this means for you.

If you have an account with a system that provides OpenID information, you don’t need to create an account here to post comments, and you don’t have to go back to facebook twitter identi.ca or any other place where you found the link to an article here to comment on it.

How do you know if you have an OpenID enabled account some place? Well if you added a link ot a provider to a page you maintain, you probably know that already. On the other hand there are a lot of people who have OpenID access who may not know it.

If you have a LiveJournal account, then you have an OpenID account. Digg and Yahoo have support as well.

Unfortunately I don’t know the URL format for each platform. However the basic concept is that if you have a ‘home page’ on a platform that supports OpenID, then putting the link to that home page into the URL field in the comment page.

If you want to try some ‘home page’ that you have, please feel free to add an entry showing what provider you use, and the format for using that provider.

Why this matters.

The alternative to using OpenID would be to have an account on my system. That means I need to mantain a user profile for you. That on top of trying to read and where possible respond to actual comments.

“just turn on …’ Sorry, won’t happen. Yes, I could allow you to just post an email address and a name. The problem is that the only ‘verification’ there is that it looks like an e-mail address. There are also e-mail servers out there that will agree that any e-mail address you claim there is acceptable. I don’t honestly trust an e-mail back to your provider as valid.

All comments are moderated. That means I review all comments before they end up being publicly readable. Hey it’s my blog, I’m it’s editor. If you want to comment, you’re basically writing a letter to the editor. The comment is still your own, and you are responsible for anything you say, but I decide whether it looks like SPAM or a troll. There are probably a few dozen variations on what I won’t accept. If I think it’s an attack on a user or platform, I’ll probably consider it a troll.

I’ve tentatively set up ‘locking’ on posts. If I blogged on it over a month ago, it’s probably not open to add more comments at this point. I may bump that up to 90 days if someone asks.

Contact.

If you need to reach me outside of the blog, feel free to send me an e-mail at rusty ta curry tod net. My e-mail does go through a few spam filters, so if you want it deleted, it’s not all that difficult.

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