Blog
September 2008
I’ve had it. Up to here and then some.
Like far too many people in the US today, I eat badly and don’t exercise enough. And, like far too many people in the US, I’m overweight as a result.
This is not something I’ve always struggled with; it’s relatively new (the past four years or so), and all the more annoying for that. I know better. I have had better habits. I’d like to blame genetics, but I really can’t. I got myself into this, and, frankly, I’m sick of it. I’m getting myself out.
Of course, I’ve been telling myself that for the last six months or so, with no result. So this time, I’m pushing my own buttons. I actually signed up for a gym membership and some sessions with a personal trainer to jump start me. I know it will drive me insane if I’m paying for it and not using it, so hopefully that will help keep me on track.
It’s ok—I can see the look of disbelief on your face from here. No, I don’t really think that “I paid for it” is going to be enough motivation. I have a better motivation: for all that I talk about TBs, what I really, really want to buy is a pony. I’m short enough that I would fit a large pony just fine, if I were at a normal, healthy weight.
Only fifty pounds or so between me and that “if”, and six or seven months to make it. That’s doable, as long as I stay serious about this.
We’ll see. The only one who can make this happen is me. Let’s find out just how fed up (ha ha) I really am.
Ike, or something like it
As Ike barreled down on Houston, I tore myself away from the ever-fascinating NOAA imagery to make a decision about evacuating.
The eye of the hurricane was projected to pass east of us, putting us on the “good” side of the hurricane. My apartment is well out of the surge zones; I would have to worry about wind damage and maybe some minor water damage if the apartment complex’s drainage is as bad as I suspect. In all honesty, the worst I expected to deal with was the lack of power after the hurricane.
So, while at work, I decided to stay. Then I went home, looked at all the trees and telephones in the parking lot, and looked in my car. My car is the single most expensive thing I own. Although it’s insured, I wasn’t keen on trying to get it repaired in a city suffering major infrastructure damage, as I expected Houston to be after Ike passed.
I decided I would leave, provided I could take the cats out with me and would not be in the way of people who legitimately needed to evacuate. Some friends in San Antonio were willing to put the cats and I up for a couple days, and that left only the question of how to get out of town without interfering with the real evacuees.
Before I left my apartment, I checked the traffic, which showed I-10 to be moving freely. I thought that was too good to be true, but who was I to argue with technology? Turns out it was too good to be true—I-10 was a parking lot. It was just that the traffic backup didn’t start until past the sensors. I had no desire to sit in that traffic, must less add to it, so I took advantage of my GPS system’s best feature: the ability to avoid certain roads. It reprogrammed my route to go on Alt 90. As I drove the back roads to get to Alt 90, I decided that if this route was also busy, I would stay home.
Alt 90 was clear, clear, clear, so I hopped on it and headed west. I think this is the major flaw in evacuation plans: they put everyone on too few roads. It seems to me that if you want to get a lot of people out quickly, by spreading them across multiple routes you can reduce traffic and the infrastructure load (gas, accident response, etc) across a much wider area, allowing everyone to move quickly. But what do I know? I’m just the one who got to San Antonio in half the time it would have taken on I-10, passing numerous open and busy but not overwhelmed gas stations.
The cats and I spent a couple days in San Antonio—enough time to let Ike pass and then give first responders a chance to make the trip to Houston without having to deal with me as excess traffic (e.g. the convoys of utility trucks and water/food). Then I waited a few more days to hear if my apartment had power. That was the hardest part, really—not being able to find out the situation on my apartment. Although I was reasonably sure it had come through without damage, there’s a difference between “reasonable sure” and being sure.
The complex did lose some trees, although it doesn’t look like anyone’s cars were damaged. I probably could have stayed and the car would have been fine. But in a similar situation, I think I’d go again.
If I’d had a horse? That would have been tougher. You can’t throw the horse into the back of the car the way you can toss cats, and it’s much harder to fine a place to take in horses. You also have to balance how well the horses travel against the relative danger at their home location.
Coming back, it’s clear that it’s going to take Houston a long time to recover. There are still places without power, and I don’t mean in just the devastated zones on the coast. My office building doesn’t have power yet, and we’re working from home as best we can. My phone and internet service has been unreliable, making my ability to work spotty. My local gas station had gas this morning, the first time I have seen it open in a week.
All of which, frankly, is merely inconvenient. I’ve been lucky, and you won’t be hearing anything else from me on Ike for that reason—there’s nothing for me to report. And although I expect to be out helping some people who were not so fortunate this weekend, they can choose to tell (or not) their story in their own way.
I make a lousy race horse trainer
I had the opportunity this weekend to play one of those games where you breed your race horse, train it, and then race it.
I lost, badly.
Here’s the thing, though: I finally understand why horse games don’t make any money. It’s because they just aren’t realistic for people who actually know anything about riding.
Take “my” little race horse, for example: poor guy was born wasp-waisted and with hind legs on steroids. When the program showed him walking off a trailer, it looked like his entire hind end was collapsing. Despite the fact that is was only computer graphics—and bad ones at that—it was still painful to watch. (Although it would explain why my horse ran so poorly; he probably needed some serious chiropractic adjustments).
So: ugly, unrealistic (even scary) graphics. At least I could handle the care and training part, right?
Nope. Feed the horse some hay, and he wants a carrot. Give him a carrot, and he wants some hay. Horse is sad? Try to cheer him up, and he walks off in a huff. Horse does a good job and you praise him? He walks off in a huff. Punish the horse? He walks off in a huff.
I know that once you sort out the algorithm, the game would be easy enough to win, but who wants to spend all day trying to figure out how to make a computer horse happy when you could be making a real horse happy?
Your browser is an arthritic Shetland pony
Imagine if someone handed you a big, beautifully-moving warmblood, showed you an immaculately-groomed dressage area, and said, “Go ride the test of your life.“
Wouldn’t that be fun?
Now imagine they said, “But whatever test you ride, we want you to duplicate on this 12hh arthritic pony. Duplicate exactly. Down to the stride length and everything.“
Sort of sucks, doesn’t it? Especially when you say, “Hey, the warmblood is trained to do piaffe and passage, but the pony isn’t. Can I add that in in just the warmblood’s test?“ Absolutely not. No way. No upper-level movements for you! Stick to only what the pony can handle.
That, seriously, is my life. Those of you who use IE6? Your browser is the pony in this situation. Maybe you are using it because you’ve used it for a long time, and it’s familiar and comfortable for you.
Allow me to reassure you: unlike real ponies, browsers are inanimate objects without any feelings whatsoever. You don’t owe browsers any sort of retirement. Please, put yourself out of your own misery and just upgrade. I don’t really care what you upgrade to—and goodness knows there are plenty of options—just upgrade.
(If you think that scenario was bad: I was once given the job equivalent of “We want you to ride this arthritic pony in this immaculately-groomed double-sized dressage ring and ride this beautiful warmblood on a steep mountain slope at midnight in the pouring rain in a round pen. Now make both rides look exactly the same.“ That was fun. By “fun,“ I mean “painful.“)
Sorry for this post. Google just launched a new browser, which is an interesting idea although the thought of having to design around yet another browser’s quirks is depressing. More to the point of my IE6 vent, I spent all day telling people, “You can do this, but not in IE6 unless you want to do X, Y, and Z workarounds” only to have them look at me like I’d lost my mind. They wanted to know why they couldn’t do whatever more easily than that.
The answer is simple: it’s because IE6 is an arthritic Shetland pony that simply cannot keep up with the big-moving warmblood browsers. Trying to make it do so is cruel. Well, not to IE6, which has no feelings, but to the developers who have to make it work.
To me, ok? To me. Like everything else on this blog, this post is all about me.
Save a developer. Upgrade your browser. Please. I can’t spend the rest of my life pulling out my hair.
August 2008
Gustav must have made the national news
As I was about to head out to a Labor day barbecue today, my mother called. Apparently Gustav made the national news. She was worried.
We established I have a plan in place. I got a couple numbers from her of people I could stay with in a couple different cities. I reminded her that there was the possibility of the cell phone towers losing power (I hear they did when Allison hit) and that if she couldn’t reach me, that was probably the reason why. I did not say “it won’t be because I’m floating in a ditch somewhere,“ because parents have no sense of humor about some things.
When my aunt called twenty minutes later, I did tell her I wouldn’t be floating in a ditch, and she laughed. She had some additional contact numbers for me. It appears my mom called her. Oh, joy. Apparently my mom is still worried. Once my aunt, who lives in Hawaii and goes through this sort of thing all the time, established I had a plan and it was reasonable, we talked about important things, like politics.
Given my mom’s sudden worried call, I thought maybe I missed something on the news. Had Gustav turned towards Houston? I stopped watching the news because the newscasters were driving me crazy, and I really only check the NOAA site morning and evening because there’s no point in checking it more often than that right now. I didn’t think I’d missed anything, but who knows? I checked; I hadn’t. Luckless Louisiana is still the predicted target. That might change, but it doesn’t seem likely.
I am a little relieved that I don’t have to worry about a horse right now. Out of curiosity, I did some Googling to see what resources are available to horse owners. I’m a little surprised at how decentralized the information is; you almost have to know the answer before you search. Otherwise, you have to pick through lots of general articles, hoping they’ll mention a specific organization or location to contact for assistance. That’s… not helpful. Don’t get me wrong—there is a lot of very useful information out there. But the decentralized nature of the information makes it hard to find, especially for someone in a hurry. You might argue that horse owners can’t afford to be in a hurry—should be planning days in advanced where to go and how to get there—but you know everyone doesn’t do that. If Gustav takes a major jag after Cuba and centers on Houston, I am positive there will be people freaking out about where to go with their horses and how to get the horses out, and how are they going to find that information?
So, we’ll see. I hope my aunt called my mom back and calmed her down, since apparently I didn’t do such a good job.
Incidentally, I keep waiting to hear one of the presidential candidates has jumped off the campaign trail and headed down to the Gulf. Maybe they’ll wait until after the storm hits, so they can tour the disaster area and get some photo ops taken doing some volunteer work. Handing out bottles of water, that kind of thing. Gosh I’m cynical. Want to take bets on who gets here first and how long it takes them to arrive?
I have to go do something productive now. Like laundry.