In a Marie Antionette moment, a Bush campaign worker suggests those stuck with the small slice of the economic pie pop a Prozac instead of kvetching about their low-paying jobs.
Had to get my bp taken again yesterday. I have to give credit to the nurse on this one:
1. When I pointed out that she would *not* get an accurate reading from the machine, she did go manual.
2. And when she did get two bizarre readings off the small cuff, she went to the large cuff.
Now, if she had started with the large cuff, the repeated inflations and deflations of the first tests could have been avoided. I don't know what's so difficult about this--the small cuff barely wraps around my upper arm, and that should be the hint they need to bring out the large cuff. Is it some denial that I could possibly have biceps and triceps *that large*?
Result? Well, no I haven't suddenly reached steady state bp--I really do have a systolic and diastolic that are 50 pts apart, instead of the 20 pts the bogus taking showed--you just have to use the right equipment. And it was 10 pts lower on the systolic and 20 pts lower on the diastolic side. You know--that's enough to make the difference between a high bp reading and not.
But I always wonder--hey Alwin--if someone came into the house of pain with a bp reading of 150/130 and a resting heartrate of 58, wouldn't *someone* be asking questions about that?
From the Tour de France blog--OLN was roasted for not showing Armstrong's finish in the final stage of the Tour. The joys of a shared feed, guys--you show what's being uplinked. And there was more going on with the last stage than Armstrong's finish for that particular stage.
And then from one of the comments, OLN, for the evening re-broadcast, did insert video of Armstrong's finish, but then deleted all the award ceremonies *except* for Armstrong's. For the record, there was the stage win, the spinter award, climber (aka "king of the mountain"), under 25, and team award.
And they didn't show the T-mobile team shaking Armstrong's hand after they took the team award.
You know, I'm not sure if they would have shown other awards if a US Postal member had won, or if a US cyclist from another team had won. I'm really hoping this was a "Lance is the story" marketing decision, instead of a "viewers are only interested in the US winner" story, especially given they didn't show the handshake. Combine that with the constant anti-French bitching and moaning among a good chunk of the US media during the Tour, and you have to wonder if someone decided to downplay the post-race sportsmanship to make their own political statement.
Another trip to Seattle. You know, when the TSA person at the Alaska Airlines gate at SJC recognizes you, you have to pause.
This trip, I was treated to a bulkhead seat on the plane. What that meant was one of the bags I would have put into the overhead ended up getting flight-checked. That means the bag is waiting for you when you leave the plane, but it's still a little disturbing, especially when you hadn't parsed things out between two bags. If the bag leaves my immediate area, I'd like a better back-up than knowing where the closest Bon and Nordie's are. But everything arived in one piece, and I headed off to the hotel. Nothing like a room overlooking Lake Union to create a good attitude.
As one of the engineers said "This is the weather that makes you forget the other ten months of the year". Gorgeous, glorious weather--absolute postcard stuff. A good time to check out another neighbourhood. This time I took the driving tour through Ballard. Ballard's an interesting mix of a lot of older houses sprinkled with some updated and new housing. They seem to have escaped the "monster house" problem of new houses being built on old lots, and being so large that they turn them into zero-line lots.
That pretty much finished off the north end of Seattle, and besides, I had baseball the next night. Not the Mariners, but the Everett Aquasox, their short season rookie league team.
The Aquasox play in a high school field that's been "enhanced" a bit. When I first went to an Aquasox game, the players were dressing in the high school lockerroom, and the umpires were dressing at the motel. I think the umpires are still dressing at the motel, but there are some facilities these days.
First I had to get to Everett, though. Okay, I found out first hand about the Seattle to Everett commute. That's pretty ugly. I probably could have taken the 99 and done about as well. As it was, it took about an hour to drive 22 miles up the I5.
If you're looking for a way to take the family out to a ballgame and not spend $200 doing it, minor league baseball is the way to go. The most expensive tickets were $10, which puts you closer to the action than if you were standing on the field on most major league parks. Food's cheaper, and the Aquasox appeared to be attempting to make sure that no kid walked out of that park without a prize. Not only were there kid-friendly contents between innings, but there were giveaways galore. There's also a supervised play area, to burn off the cotton candy and Red Ropes.
The baseball? These are kids who are playing their first pro ball. Two months ago they were either at high school or at a JC somewhere. Short season is sort of like orientation for pro ball--they learn about pro ball while they are learning pro ball. The play isn't major league caliber, but it's entertaining, and you can always say you saw the next big star play way back when....
Wednesday was a quasi business dinner at The Kells in Post Alley off of Pike Market. It's one of those places that you either stumble upon, or are told how to find, because it's not on the main drag. The food is excellent, and the beer selection (hey, I'm not doing an Irish pub/restaurant and drinking wine) was also quite nice.
Amazing what a little dinner and drinks can do for moving a concept forward.
All in all it was a highly productive and enjoyable trip. More on that later....
While I was in Seattle (more on that later) this week, the ads reminded me that it's berry season, and it isn't berry season for very long.
So, today was off to Webb Ranch, to grab some flats and get some berries into the freezer. I decided that as long as I was in the "neighbourhood", so to speak, I'd also wander by Kepler's and grab a copy of the Sunday Seattle Times/PI.
My first hint that this was not going to be a Vanilla trip was the coyote trotting next to the 280. Yeah, I know coyotes are everywhere--I just don't expect them at 10AM on a Sunday, taking a walk next to SLAC .
Onward...
You know, I *know* that Menlo Park has a Sunday farmers market, and Santa Cruz Ave can get a little insane. What I didn't know was that there was a full blown event going on, and I'd have to seriously detour around to get to Kepler's.
I get to Kepler's and head to the out of town newspaper rack. What would have cranked me was to find that the newspaper hadn't arrived. Nope, it was there....
all $5.50 of it.
Yoiks
I hadn't bought an out of area PI in about five years, but this was a bit of a shock, since the last time I did so, it was $2.00 for the late Sat edition with the Sunday stuffers (or the "Advance Edition", they proudly proclaimed on the front page). I'd seen the paper at the local B&N for $5.00, and let's face it, when most of the paper is available on-line, you have to wonder if it's worth it.
However, I'd driven 20 miles, and I wasn't going to leave paperless.
My early afternoon reading assured, it was off to the produce stand. Yup, we had berries! I bought a flat of blueberries and a half-flat of blackberries. If there had been black raspberries or marionberries, those would have gone into the cart as well. Some Rainier cherries and apricots finished the load.
You know, you'd think I hadn't been able to get to fruit last week (and WCD guys, if you're reading, there's about a pint of cherries in the dept fridge--please to eat!)
The drive home was uneventful.
And now I have lots of lovely frozen berries, and a couple of pints set aside for noshing this week.
I keep hearing people blaming Splenda for intestinal ugliness after eating a low-carb/calorie item. Before pinning the blame on Splenda, check the ingredients label. About the only products that have Splenda as the only sweetner are diet-sodas. Everything else you see on the market (the cookies, ice creams, meal-replacement bars, candies) will have a sugar-alcohol (no actual alcohol, this is an organic chem nomencalture) in the ingredients list. And those babies are well known for causing all sorts of gastro-intestinal ugliness.
Some people can tolerate all the sugar-alcohols. Some can handle only some of the sugar-alcohols, and some can't handle any of them. I can deal with xylitol and sorbitol, but mannitol and maltitol (one of the very popular sugar-alcohols) have to be dealt with in really small doses, and lactitol, I might as well be main-lining phenolphthalein instead. Serious unhappiness. Too bad, since lactitol tends to be used in sugar-free/low carb chocolates. A diabetic friend can chow down on lactitol based candies and not miss a step.
It's definitely a YMMV deal.
But before you cast aspersions on Splenda, make sure it's not one of the sugar-alcohols that's causing the problems.
Alwin over at code: theWebSocket noted that Amazon thought he'd like a copy of Clinton's new book because he bought a book on Radio UserLand.
I just bought a copy of Non-Uniform Random Variate Generation (out of print, so this one went through a dealer) and when I finished, they thought I'd like a copy of Clinton's book.
I think the marketing logic is that if you're literate, you'll want a copy of the Clinton book. Uh, yeah....
Searched on my Mac and the Windows box, and neither had this as a pull-down in any of their apps
Over the weekend, I updated my resume in geekfinder. Among the requirements were:
1. Job is in SJC area
2. Don't mind travelling, but let's keep it at 25%
3. Full-time only--I don't want to get into short-term contracting
And this morning I get email from a contracting house, telling me about a lovely BSA contracting job doing SAP out of Minnesota, and travelling 50-75% of the time to various locales.
Idiot....
Laurie
Chuq and I wandered by the Oakville Market in Cupertino, the latest offering by the Oakville Grocery people.
It's in the shopping strip on the corner of DeAnza and Stevens Creek, where the McWhorter's used to be. The sign outside the store cheerfully announces that they are in beta, but open for business. I expect that we'll see an official announcement by the end of July.
The Oakville Grocery was one of my favourite places to grab stuff for dinner after classes at Stanford. It was where I picked up the Boylan's root beer for the sugar-free root beer tasting back in April. Anything that cuts my drivetime by half makes a happy girl.
The store isn't quite stocked yet--there are bare spots against the back wall, and the floor space is a bit sparse. But what is there is very, very good. Everything from take-away salads to Niman Ranch beef and pork (something I sorely missed when WebVan went away, and Trader Joes doesn't carry a large selection) to my favourite gelato, to a bunch of ex-pat European and Asian goodies.
The prices are comparable with Trader Joes. They have much better prices on organic goodies than Whole Foods (one block away).
This one looks like a winner--I'll be back!
I was driving back from getting Reno/Tahoe washed off of my car, and I found myself behind a 3/4 ton bright red pickup. The driver of the car was alternating the directionals, drifting into lanes unrelated to the directionals, and waving her hands around. She finally set her blinkers to left, and made a right-hand turn (across the right hand lane) into a parking lot.
On the door of the car was an ad for "Nick's Body Shop".
Repeat customer, or drumming up business?
So, I'm having my weekly one on one with my director when some nice Russian gentleman *I've* never seen before knocks on my office door and walks on in....
(note--this is normal for my office. I'm lucky if people actually *knock* before they waltz on in. Given I'm in video/teleconference a lot, it leads to some interesting listening for the folks 900 miles up the road)
...and asks me what my profile is.
What?
Again, he asks--what's my profile. I asked him for some context, thanks, and it turned out that he was surveying to find out what sort of SAP R/3 access I needed to have.
Oh, okay...
And then he said, he didn't have mine because he's been all the way through the division, and no one claimed me.
Gee, that's nice.
My director then broke in and pointed out I reported to her, and I should have full access.
Okay, but here's the thing:
The guy went through the entire division, and no one bothered to tell him *who* I reported to--they just said I didn't report to *them*, and sent him on his increasingly worried way.
Makes me wonder what other blind alleys and dead ends are being created on the fly.
To receive a memo that says:
"We all know he's a total fuck-up, and he's going to continue to be a fuck-up. He manages up to his managers like no one's business, and therefor he's politically protected.
So, all the projects that have blown up in everyone's faces, the shit you're taking from your customers, and the rest of grief the division is going through?
Either stop caring like the rest of us, or get out, because *he's* not going away."
But you never seen one like that, even though everyone knows.....