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Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Babbled
at 11:30 PM
At 7:40 AM this morning, my telephone rang.
I didn't pay it any notice, since Bear was up to go to work early. I heard him pick it up and I rolled over, dropping back off and figuring that it must be his family calling for some reason. I didn't think anything of it.
At 8:00 AM, my telephone rang again. I rolled over and mumbled a curse at it, and let the silly thing ring. If it wasn't someone that knew me, they deserved to be ignored for calling at such an unholy hour. It rang a bit then stopped, and I went back to sleep, thinking I had thwarted a telemarketer.
At 8:30 AM, the telephone went off again. This time, I got out of bed, not bothering with my glasses or my robe, intent on giving the person on the other end a piece of my mind before turning off the ringer and stalking back to the bed again. I stumped out, mumbling, and picked up the phone. Hello? Even I could hear that my voice was husky with sleep. I expected to hear a fax machine tone, or an unfamiliar voice.
I did not expect to hear Corey's voice saying, "I'm sorry to wake you up but you have to turn on your TV."
What in the hell is she talking about? Does she have the faintest idea what time it is here? I didn't say that. Instead, I think I just said, Okay, why?
Her words came out in a rush that turned into something of a panicked mush in my brain. "Because they've attacked the Pentagon and bombed the State Department and both the World Trade Centers are flattened and they've hijacked planes." I paused.
My first thought was not profound. There are two World Trade Centers? I think I'd confused it in my sleepy mind with the UN Building. But slowly, the mush seeped in. Pentagon. State Department. World Trade Center. Bombed? Air strikes? Aww Jesus. Someone's attacking the USA, and I was asleep?
I didn't say that, either. I didn't say that I still didn't really understand what she was saying. I turned on the TV and squinted at it, putting my ear to the speaker. I could hear the mumblings about airplanes, and as the tube warmed up, I could see New York covered in smoke. Okay. Let me go get my glasses.
I put down the phone and walked back to the bedroom, trying to blink the sleep out of my head. I picked up my glasses, and the clothes I had piled on the dresser the night before. Habitually, I peeked in on the kids. I let Dingo out of his crate. Then I made my way back to the living room, not feeling ready to pick up the phone.
I tucked the phone under my ear as I opened the back door to let the dogs out. Okay, Corey. Catch me up.
The rest of this morning, I watched the news. And I was grateful when I got Brie up, grateful when she wanted to see Blue's Clues, because I had an excuse to stop watching that airplane slam into that building over and over again. But it didn't stop me from wondering, and pondering, and wishing desperately that I had the answers so that the awful, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach would go away.
I think I win the award for stupid fears. I let the dogs in today, not because it was hot, but because I worried about them being outside. I wouldn't let my cats outside to roll in the dirt. When I went out to get the mail, and turn off the water on my roses, the air was still and quiet. No airplanes were flying overhead...and it was eerie. I wished desperately that Bear could come home from work and be here. My town probably was never even considered a target, but that didn't matter. I wanted him home, where I could see him and touch him. I wanted him home where I knew he was safe.
After the President's speech tonight, our local news turned in to the sermon a preacher at a local church was giving. And I turned it up...I listened, drinking in every word. One of my favorite sayings is, "If you are strong in your faith, then other faiths can bless you." Today, we all needed every blessing we could get, and I cared not a whit what God that man was praying to.
I don't want to think about the people on the planes. I don't want to think about the people in the buildings. I don't want to put myself in their shoes and imagine what I might have felt in those moments. I want to see buildings of mortar and glass, airplanes and cars, and ignore the fact that in all of those, there were people. But I can't.
Violence begets violence. I hope everyone in the world tonight remembers that. Running off and bombing something will not solve this. It really will not make us feel any better. Oh, don't get me wrong...I want the bastards that did this to see justice like they've never seen before. I want to watch as Karma shows her face. But I want justice. Not revenge.
Ma Jaya said today, "Bring the thought of peace into every thought of violence. Let violence die with the negativity of ignorance."
Please. Everyone, be safe. Saturday, September 08, 2001
Babbled
at 2:59 AM
A reminder to humanity:
As we've all known since the initial airing of Star Trek, space is measured in light years. A light year, or the distance light travels in one year, is approximately 6 trillion miles. (That's 6,000,000,000,000 for people who like zeros in a line.) In metric, that's about 10 trillion kilometers.
The Milky Way, which is the galaxy the Earth is a little planet in, is 100,000 light years in diameter. I lose count at trillions, so I'm not going to try to put that into miles. But you have to figure, if a single light year is 6 trillion miles, 100,000 of those things lined up is probably more vast than the human mind can comprehend.
But that 100,000 light years is just our galaxy. There are other galaxies out there. Other galaxies that are bigger than ours. And in between those galaxies are places in space where there's nothing for light years. Nothing, til you find another galaxy that's 100,000 light years across.
The diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years, each light year measuring 6 trillion miles.
The diameter of the Earth is 7,926 miles.
Over six billion people live on the Earth.
Humbling, isn't it? Friday, September 07, 2001
Babbled
at 5:48 PM
Scombroid - resembling a mackerel.
Your new off-beat insult for the day.
No, don't ask. Really. Thursday, September 06, 2001
Babbled
at 1:31 AM
I would log more, but I am constantly running to the potty.
No, I don't have another bladder infection. Finally, after all this time, Brie has opted to start her potty training, thanks in large part to my mother, who will never read this but will get public thanks anyhow. I've been discussing my frustration on the potty training issue with her for some time now, and she finally hit upon the answer.
I knew that, if I could just get Brie to go in her little potty once, I would have it made in the shade. Brie responds beautifully to positive reinforcement, especially wild cheering, applause, and rounds of "Good job!" If I could only make her do it once, I could cheer as if she'd won the Nobel Potty Prize, and she'd catch on.
Once is an elusive thing.
She'd sit on the potty. She'd sit on the potty naked. She'd wear Pull-Ups instead of diapers, so that she could get them on and off. But she seemed to see no reason at all why she should do anything there. It was as if she saw no reason for the Rules of Potty as we know them to apply to her.
And then, one of my mother's friends told her that she'd gotten her child to train by buying fancy panties. Yes, buy the fancy panties, and the children will go. Panty them, and they will go. So my mother went to Wal-Mart and got several packages of panties, with Scooby-Doo, the Powerpuff Girls, Winnie the Pooh and Blue's Clues on them.
She gave them to Brie on Monday when she had the kids. She told Brie that she had "phat loot" for her. And she handed Brie a bag with four packages of panties in it.
(Yes, folks, we taught Brie to say "phat loot" at Christmas last year, not realizing it would keep for more than a day in her little brain...and when my mother bought her a book a couple weeks ago, she beamed and said, "Phat loot!" My parents think this is hilarious, and actually encourage her to say it. Who knew?)
Then we left the kids there so that we could do our thing. And bedamned if my mother didn't somehow convince her to go on the potty. Mom called us, absolutely jibbering with excitement, to say she'd gotten her to do it. And we were deliriously happy.
A friend offhandedly asked if I was jealous that my mother'd gotten Brie to do it. I told my friend, very simply, that I didn't care if my mother did it, I did it, or if Brie had a handwritten note from God saying she could do it. Just so long as Brie was using the potty, it didn't matter which villager in the village that's raising my child had success. We all win this way.
And it's been no turning back thus far. Each day, Brie asks to go potty now. And she runs in, pulls down her little panties, and does her thing. I cheer like she'd won the lottery. Everyone leaves the bathroom happy. At least the first time...
Unfortunately, Brie refuses to potty without one of us watching. We have to drop what we're doing and go back there with her. We have to stand there. Logan's asleep, and I need to rock him to keep him asleep? Too bad, Brie's gotta pee. In the middle of combat in DR/EQ? That critter had better wait, because Brie has to potty. On the phone? Too bad, drop it, Brie's gotta go. And she has a little bladder. And she drinks a lot in our Arizona heat.
Thus, up and down, up and down, wearing a path back and forth to the bathroom. I'm wondering if I should cheat and bring the little training potty out to the living room, at least for Logan's naptime, but Brie's aim is sort of like a shotgun: scattered and totally unpredictable.
Oh well. At least, finally, I have an assurance that she will be potty trained sometime before she graduates high school and wins the "Least Likely to Potty Train" award... Friday, August 31, 2001
Babbled
at 12:32 PM
Myself, I think that Bruce is asking the wrong questions. Sure, a Little League pitcher's age shouldn't really be over national news of that import. Having written in to a news station to complain about them putting sports scores over the story of a murder in my area (in which my roommate's bicycle had been locked up in the crime scene and he couldn't get to it), and then having been called by one of the news anchors, who wanted to apologize and explain, I'm the first one to say that the important stuff comes first.
My question isn't about the news, or about the feelings of the other kids on the team. My question is this: When the hell did Little League become so important that parents began falsifying birth certificates so that their kid could pitch? Come on! It's Little League! These aren't the drafts, or even a minor league. It's kids whacking a ball with a stick. What is with parents today?
I've heard stories about kid league sports teams that refuse to strike kids out, or refuse to call them out, or other similar rot. Why? Because they don't want to "make their children feel like failures" or they "don't want to discourage their kids". Folks, I have news for you. Life is tough, and discouraging sometimes. If we don't teach our children this, when and where are they going to learn it? Likely, not at a time when it's as easy to take as not making it to first base in a playground game.
I was always the last pick for sports teams. I generally struck out, or was tagged handily out at first. I found sports, on the whole, to be rather discouraging and boring. But I still remember the day I hit a triple in fifth grade. I stood proudly on third base, thinking that maybe I could do this after all. I never did anything like it again, but it didn't matter. I'd succeeded once, and that was what counted. That hit meant something to me.
If we don't strike our kids out, when are they going to learn to feel a real triumph? How are they going to learn that it takes work to achieve, and that the world isn't just going to give it to you? And how are they going to figure out that, if their parents feel it's okay to falsify paperwork for a sports team, dishonesty and cheating are not okay?
It's one thing to tell the cashier that your twelve-year-old is eleven so that you pay the kids' price for a movie. That's still not okay, it's still a lie, but it's one of those fuzzy white lies that I'm not going to beat someone up over. (And admittedly, will probably do myself if I'm strapped for cash and want to take the kids somewhere.) It's quite another to fake a birth certificate.
Maybe it ain't the kids we need to worry so much about these days. Perhaps, instead, we should take a two-by-four to the parents. Monday, August 27, 2001
Babbled
at 2:39 PM
I have DSL.
It's taken at least four years for the service to reach our area. When we moved back to Arizona from Missouri, DSL was available in our town, but not this far away from the switch boxes. Only recently has it come up to our neck of the woods and we watched it crawling here, inch by agonizing inch. We knew, instinctively, that our cable company would never get off it's butt to get cable modems ready for us.
When the letter arrived in our box saying that DSL had come to our area, we signed up nearly immediately. When the letter arrived saying that our order had been delayed, we became homicidal. And when a third letter arrived saying that the delay was over, and we would be getting it in about a week, we cautiously allowed ourselves to hope again.
Over the weekend, our router and other equipment sat on the kitchen counter, just waiting. I stared at it for a good three days, just waiting. So when I couldn't sleep this morning, I hopped up and began the installation. It all went smoothly until the installation of the command software for the DSL modem. And then I hit a snag. It wasn't detecting what it needed to from the modem.
The equipment came with two fairly large manuals, so I delved into the paperwork. I looked up my problem. But the solution was probably my least favorite thing for a support manual to say: "Call technical support." Call tech support? Isn't this manual supposed to be tech support? I don't want to call tech support! Tech support doesn't want me to call them!
Ranting at the book got me nowhere, so I unspooled my thread and started wading through the telephone labyrinth, looking for the Great Techie Minotaur that would tell me how to fix this damn thing. Push this button. Listen to this message. Enter your telephone number. Your estimated wait is seven minutes, but this is in some other measure of time, because you'll really wait for about a half hour. Listen to horrible hold music. Twiddle thumbs.
When I worked at America Online with tech support, they taught us about keeping control of the call. Act confident. Know what you're talking about, or at least sound like you do. Keep a firm hand on what the person on the other end of the phone is doing. All these things will make for shorter and less frustrating calls.
The tech never had control of this call, not from the moment she gave her name and badge number. Sort of like a dog sniffing, sensing fear, I could hear her hesitance and confusion. She may have been a new tech, she may just have been stupid, but whatever the case, I knew I wanted another tech the second I heard her voice.
I explained my problem in clear terms. She paused several times, and got hung up on the fact that I was installing it on a LAN instead of on a stand-alone machine. "We don't support networks," she said, "but I can transfer you over to the people who do." Fine, please do that, I said, having a hope that I'd get a sentient being in the other department. Then she paused again. "Wait...it doesn't look like they can help you, because this isn't a network issue. It's an install issue. You'll have to disconnect your computer from your network so I can help you."
So, how will I then fix it when I want to use it on my network? I asked her. I got a bunch of "Uh, err, uhm" on the other end of the line. Needless to say, I was promptly escalated as an irate (even though I was perfectly calm) and got to speak to her supervisor. This was an intelligent woman who told me that if we could get it going standalone, it would more than likely work on the network too. I could accept that, and she handed me back to Jane Techie.
I am one of the worst kinds of people to troubleshoot for. By the time I call tech support, I have tried nearly all the basic and intermediate tricks, and am looking for the end game solutions that are only available in the tech support knowledge base, as well as the particular experience that only techies who support these problems every day have. So when she had me resetting my modem, I knew that she had not only not listened to me describing my problem, but that probably, I knew more than she did.
Jane Techie: Okay, I need you to unplug your modem and wait for two minutes and -
Gryph: I did that twice before I called you.
Jane Techie: [frantic typing is heard] Ahh. Okay, well, let me put you on hold, it'll just be three or four minutes...
Gryph: [begins to doodle]
Jane Techie: Okay. Next, let's try reinstalling the software and -
Gryph: I did that before I called you.
Jane Techie: [frantic typing is heard] Ahh. Okay, well, let me put you on hold, it'll just be three or four minutes...
Gryph: [continues her doodling]
Finally, it boiled down to the stupidest thing: the cord. Apparently, whatever CAT5 cords I had for our network weren't sufficient, so I'm being sent new ones. In the meantime, however, I could set it up singly on my system to use today...and of course, I did.
Thusly, I am in Broadband Heaven. And in addition to this, my CD showed up today. I've always noted how important music is to me, and I opened the box with trembling hands, staring at the album cover picture with which I was so very familiar from my childhood, only this time contained in a jewel case. I rushed to the stereo, putting the CD in, and queued up the song I wanted.
Then I sat there, eyes closed against the tears standing in them, and listened happily to the strains of Isa Lei. Each note was as I remembered it, even though I haven't really heard it for over a decade. Each swell and trill of Judy Henske's voice, each throb of the fretless bass, they were all perfect, and better than perfect in the restored CD sound.
It is, verily, a happy day. Thursday, August 23, 2001
Babbled
at 2:36 PM
Okay, so, my friends kick ass.
It's been a long month, full of medical issues, job changes, caffeine leavings, and other bits and pieces of stress, not to mention continual delays in getting my DSL. (Next due date is the 27th...it was supposed to be today...)
I've been downloading MP3s on the dialup anyhow, and it's been nice to have new music. But with the discovery of a new place to download MP3s, my neverending search for Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers continued. My download lists are strange enough as it is, containing a mix of my new favorite Wumpscut with things like the Kingston Trio and Sarah Brightman. But with all this, I had not been able to find the Whiskeyhill Singers, which is where Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio went after that group broke up.
They only put out two records, and they were records, real vinyl, put out before I was born. I grew up listening ot them, especially the song Isa Lei. It's currently the Fijan goodbye song, but it began as a lovesong written for a Fijan princess by the commoner medical student that loved her. It's a beautiful melody, and for years I've been searching for a way to preserve it, and hear it again, because turntables are so very hard to find, and vinyl tends to melt in the desert...
I mentioned it offhandedly to Bo when we talked one day. And you know what he did? He went out and discovered that someone put out the Whiskeyhill Singers CD last month, but he didn't stop there. He ordered it for me, so that I'll have it to hear.
So then I walk outside, and what do I find but a box from Amazon. Hmm? I was confused, but took it inside. And discovered that Susan had opted to make my month with a completely unexpected gift, making me beam uncontrollably while feeding my rose fetish.
Strange how my bad month was made better by the unexpected kindness from two people that I don't really deserve. You both are absolutely fantastic, and I really don't know how to thank you enough.
But don't you worry. I'll find a way.
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