By popular demand

Several regular readers have asked for (demanded) pictures of the house. Here are some, from various stages of progress:

This is the front room, early on, cluttered and full of stuff:



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In the two bedrooms, previous bozos (owners) had put in asbestos popcorn-texture ceilings. We had them tested, and it was really a very small concentration of asbestos, and it was of a type considered the "better" of the two major types, crystotile, rather than amphibole, which is believed to stay in the lungs longer and therefore result in increased toxicity.

Nevertheless, we decided to drop false ceilings in both of the bedrooms, and seal it off. We went through all the analyses about sealing vs. remediation vs. removal, and decided for overall health concerns, both ours and any workers we'd have coming in to do actual removal, that sealing it off made the most sense.

To do it, we put up 2x4s across the ceiling, and then finished, primed 1/4" plywood:

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Before dropping the ceilings, we decided to provide a warning for future owners who might be tempted to tear out the ceilings and popcorn:

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Here is a big whole in the wall from crumbling plaster in the back bedroom that J re-plastered. The plaster-on-lath construction was in remarkably good shape in most of the rooms, but certain parts needed repair.

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Here is J repairing small holes in the front bedroom:

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Here is the rear bedroom after extensive painstaking scraping, multiple layers of wallpaper stripping, patching small holes and gouge marks, and cleaning the remaining crap off of the walls. Much of this work was done by A over a not-so-entertaining Thanksgiving visit.

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Here I am painting yellow onto the walls in the front bedroom. I like to sit down. I tire easily.

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Here are the rear bedroom walls after being primed with tinted primer (tinted a sort of bluish grey so that the main paint, called Dill Pickle, will go on easier. My conclusion after using four different kinds of primer in different areas is that all primer sucks. I mean, it helps the paint stick better, which is nice, but it sucks, and peels easily, and is generally just a pain in the ass to work with.

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Here are the beginnings of the abovementioned Dill Pickle, in the rear bedroom:

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The floors have endured about 93 years of abuse, and here is one example of what the looked like (this in the rear bedroom):

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Here is me laying the foam underlayment for the laminate flooring, which provides both a moisture barrier, and some cushioning under the flooring (which makes it really pleasant to walk on.)

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Here is the result of all the hard work of painting and laying underlayment:

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And here is the front bedroom, with a stack of flooring acclimating to be laid in the front room (a big task, as the front room is 15'x26'.)

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Here is a glass block wall that I built for the tub/shower. The bathroom is designed in a really peculiar way, with the sink next to the window (on the other side of the glass wall in this photo), then the tub/shower, then the toilet next to the door. It's kind of ridiculous to have it laid out like this, but moving all the plumbing would be a very expensive and in-depth operation which would require a plumber, so we're just making what we have look nicer.

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And perhaps most importantly, here is the fuel for all this hard work (this is an actual photograph of our fridge at the house, without any special arrangements made.)

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A story about December 19, 2004

I got a phone call a year ago today from my brother, S., which he has said since he doesn't remember. He called from my parents house and said "I've got some bad news." I had just talked to my mom that morning, about another brother being sick, so I thought I knew what it was. I said, "Yeah, I know, I talked to mom this morning." He replied, "Oh, no, some other bad news." I knew instantly what he was talking about.

My dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer eleven days prior. Bad cancer: staged at least at "IIIb", and according to the pulmonologist, very likely a stage "IV". Even now, talking about the details is difficult. Last night, I laid in bed with my wife until 1am, talking about him, looking up at the ceiling, crying, remembering. I chose to talk about the happy things, the funny memories. The details of the cancer and the death: some are still too raw.

I got to spend several weeks with him in the weeks just prior to his death: J and I went up for Thanksgiving, and it was clear that I should stick around. While numerous medical appointments stand out in my mind, the better memories are sitting in his office, talking, reminiscing, getting information, talking about what he wanted to happen when he died.

A bittersweet, but funny exclamation happened one day, in the midst of a conversation about distribution of ashes. I asked him if he wanted his ashes to be spread anywhere, and after something thinking and some discussion, we came up with two places he wanted: Monterey Bay, where he spent much of his adolescence, and Galway Bay, where he spent much of his imagination as an adult. In response to one or another of these questions about ashes, and who he wanted to be sure was invited to his wake, he exclaimed, "HEY! You're planning MY GODDAMN DEATH, aren't you!?!" We laughed, since, horrifically, that's exactly what we were doing.

Laughing was so important, so therapeutic, especially in those last weeks. We did a lot of it: sitting around in the family room in the house I grew up in along with my siblings, we'd start making a joke out of something or other relating to death, and dying. My dad loved, loved to laugh. My entire immediate family loves, loves to laugh. We still do it, about my dad, when the grief gets to be too much, or even when it doesn't. I was sitting around in that same room, playing poker with three of my brothers, a few months later. My father's ashes were sitting on the table we were using, and S., the same brother mentioned above, said, "Goddammit, c'mon, dad! Bet or call!"

I honestly don't know if all this laughter is to forestall the misery, the grief, of losing a father (a husband, a brother, a best friend) too early, too young. Or some other kind of coping mechanism. Or because he loved to laugh, and we all learned a lot of our laughing skills from him. I hope that a lot of it is the last.

Busy, busy

So, I just got some shit from a disgruntled regular reader, who shall remained unnamed, but who has previously been known in these pages as TGS. The really ironic thing about the aforementioned shit I was dished is that it pertained to my failing to regularly update this blog. This, from TGS, who has put her blog on hiatus! The hypocrite!

As I write this, I'm so damn tired I think I might fal asleep typing. Happily, leonard Cohen is crooning me awake. The snow is falling fairly heavily outside, really only the second real snow of the season.

We've been busting our little butts on the house, and it's starting to really come together. We have both bedrooms close to done: painted, laminate flooring laid, and ready to move stuff in to.

Now we only have a few things to do: the front room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the dishwasher installation, putting in a new toilet, fixing the leak from the current toilet that is old enough to have developed a stalactite in the basement, and on, and on. The joys of home ownership!

I'm just hoping that when I pull out the toilet that I don't find that the leak has damaged the subflooring. That would really, really suck.

The project I most look forward to, and which feels farthest away, is building a little wine cellar in the basement. I'm thinking I'll get to that in about 2026.

Here's a neat map from the BBC about the beautiful trend in South America towards leftist governments. There is hope!

Off to bed now, hoping that I don't fall asleep while brushing with the electric toothbrush.

p.s. Tomorrow will be one year since my father died, both too quickly, and too fast. It gets a bit easier as time passes, but not much.

Somewhat better

... is how I'm feeling. It no longer feels like I'm swallowing glass when I swallow, but rather mere gravel. We have two ceiling panels up in the house, with about seven to go. Two of the ones going up today are hassles, since they require me re-wiring the ceiling light fixtures through holes I cut in them.

The happy upshot of all of this is that the lead paint test came back negative as to interior paint. A positive result would have made scraping and stripping all the layers of paint and wallpaper a genuine nightmare.

I'm hoping to post some pictures later of the work in progress. The ones I'm really looking forward to posting are, of course, the "after" pictures.

coxsackie virus and home renovation: not a pleasant combination

Named after Coxsackie, New York, where they were discovered, the coxsackie viruses are part of the enterovirus family of viruses (which also includes echoviruses, polio, and hepatitis A viruses) that live in the human digestive tract. ( reference .)

All I know is that this is what Dr. Smartypants thinks I have, and that I have a miserable, awful sore throat, so bad I can barely talk above a whisper without seriously aggravating it.

We're working hard on getting the house ready to move in to, including dropping false ceilings in two bedrooms, laying laminate flooring, and painting nearly every interior surface outside of the kitchen and bathroom (which will come later.) It's a huge amount of work, but we're doing it right, and remediating the sloppy work of 93 years of bozos who didn't do it right. (Example: on one bedroom wall, there were at least SIX layers of wallpaper and paint that had to be removed to get down to the plaster.)

We have had multiple moments where we had to make a decision along the lines of "do we really want to do this? are we really going to stay in this house long enough to make it worth it?" Each time, we've decided to do the right thing, which always means more work. I think we'll be glad we did in the medium and long term, but it's a real shit of work right now, and I feel like we're personally contributing to the retirement plans of Home Depot executives every day.

All of this is made more of a pain in the ass by my sore throat/coxsackie virus, which I've been medicating with near constant applications of chloraseptic lozenges and throat spray. Even with this, it often feels like I'm swallowing glass shards.

I couldn't resist:

Talking a little more about Initiative 901, which I wish California would follow suit on (since, as this article notes, the statewide smoking ban effectively made the patio seating at most restaurants death dens, which Washington's 25 foot buffer will hopefully prevent.)

But here is my favorite quote from the article:

"I'm a phone call away from selling," said Alan McWain, owner of The Spar Cafe and Tobacco Merchant in downtown Olympia. "The general public doesn't appreciate my type of business, and my type of business caters to smokers. If you can't go to a smoke shop to smoke, where the hell can you go?"

Yeah, NEWSFLASH: the general public DOESN'T SUPPORT YOU, OR your type of business. Did you really just figure this out? Really? And oooohhhhhh, threatening to sell your merchant of death business? Oh, gosh, say it ain't so! As for your rhetorical question, I hear that in Christian verions of hell, smoking might be a distinct possibility. Give it a shot!

a new morning in america!

Most of the day-after-election-days in the last decade have been profoundly sad events for me. Today is a delightful change in this trend: Guvna Dumbfuck (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) saw all of his outrageous, stupid powergrabs lose in the utterly unnecessary special election. (And as an amusing aside, the stupid fucker almost wasn't allowed to vote.) Lucky for him, when he's denied his right to vote, unlike normal citizens, he merely has his handlers pull out a cell phone: "a quick call to the Los Angeles County Registar-Recorder Office confirmed that he had not voted previously, and he was allowed to vote by normal ballot, said Kristin Heffron, chief deputy for the office."

Despite Dumbfuck being able to vote, better informed and more intelligent California voters (where were these people when Dumbfuck was elected?) turned down his sillyass initiatives for a state spending cap, to restrain union politics, to lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure, and in a breathtaking power grab, to allow three retired judges to take over legislative redistricting (to get them DeeMoCratz out of running Cowleefornyuh.) All of the remaining four statewide initiatives were also rejected, including one requiring parental approval for a minor's abortion. Yay! Democracy! Really, the only bummer loss in California for me is Prop 80, which would have done a somewhat mediocre job of re-regulating the energy pirates.

In other beautiful news, Washington state voters passed Initiative 901, a change which will actually let me go into the formerly repulsively smoky bars of Seattle starting in thirty days. Called the nation's most stringent smoking ban in public places, the more I could ask for is: ban smoking entirely, everywhere, within state boundaries. No: I don't think it's okay for people to smoke in their cars or homes, around their children and friends. No: I don't think it's okay for the rude, disrespectful people who live in the apartment directly below me to smoke and blow it our their windows, into mine. No: I don't think it's okay for the people at the Tractor to smoke out on the sidewalk in front of TGS' squat.

In other great election news, the democratic gubernatorial (why has that word eluded the newscasters this morning?) candidate in Virginia won. Now, I don't much care that Democrats won, but the race was being cast as a referedum on President Dumbfucker's presidency, since he made a last minute campaign stop for the republican. (Note to strategists: stumping by the stupidest, least effective, most dangerous president in recent history: dumb idea.)

PJs

Two words: gingham check.

Subject: Questar's Peeping Toms

[dangr ]
[our address]
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
(801) our-phone, [dangr ]@yahoo.com


Questar Corporation
180 East 100 South
P.O. Box 45433
Salt Lake City, UT 84145-0433

Thursday 20 October 2005

Subject: Questar’s Peeping Toms

To whom it may concern:

I am thoroughly disgusted with the persistent behavior of your employees in the parking lot which abuts my home, and the homes of about thirty others, though only half of us have the grave misfortunate to be direct neighbors to your parking lot.

The regular racket of the parking lot is, frankly, quite enough to make you a bad neighbor: the incessant and unnecessary car alarms that begin as early as 6:30am, and continue into the evening hours. The people who sit and idle in their cars for five, ten, or twenty minutes at a time, ignorantly spewing their car exhaust into our windows. The exceptional rudeness of people who stand outside their cars, and therefore under my windows, and smoke cigarettes, ostensibly because they don’t want to pollute the inside of their cars, but have no problem polluting my apartment. The roaring and revving of your diesel trucks in the morning.

This morning, though, gave me not one, but two vivid experiences with easily my least favorite example of your employees: the peeping toms. There are many, they are consistent, and this has happened dozens and dozens of times in the last three months.

Specifically this morning, I am referring to one of your employees, who arrived in a Questar marked Chevy 2500 HD 4x4 truck, marked “Exploration and Production,” with Utah plates 078 LSV, which he parked in space 115. He was a white male, wearing a green jacket and dark pants, with close cropped hair, carrying a bag over his shoulder. He got out of his truck, and while standing near the door, looked directly into my bedroom window, directly at me, as I stood there. He continued looking for several seconds, and then, while walking away, turned his head and looked some more while walking away.

Disgustingly, when I went to my window minutes later to determine the number of the parking space of the first voyeur, I was met with the direct gaze of another voyeur: your parking lot security guard. This is a white male wearing black pants and a white long-sleeved shirt with a dark tie, with balding grey-ish hair in a circular fringe, carrying a clipboard. Your parking lot security are perhaps the worst intruders into our privacy: these people regularly look directly into our windows. Let me assure you that nobody is parking illegally in my bedroom or living room, and there is no need to look into my windows.

It happened this morning that I was half clothed, and did not yet have a shirt on, when I received the first and second looks from the driver of Utah plates 078 LSV. Some mornings, we have been unclothed, other mornings, fully clothed. It is apparently in part this potential for being in various stages of undress that your employees find so interesting, as the lascivious looks seem to peak in the morning hours, between 6:30am and 9:00am, while the afternoon voyeurs seem to be more in the stripe of half-interested, opportunistic perverts. Your security guards, on the other hand, do not seem to discriminate based on the time of day, but instead are vigorous peeping toms at all hours that they patrol the lot.

To clarify: these are not stray looks, while generally looking around the area: they are intentional, direct looks. They are looks calculated to invade our privacy, and see into our home. They are looks which numerous of your employees, sometimes as many as a half a dozen in a given day just that I see, cast into our windows while they walk to and from their cars. Whether motivated by prurient interests, or out of general disrespect and nosiness, I am unsure, and don’t really care to look into their minds to find out. The bottom line is that these looks are patently unacceptable.

For your information, Utah’s version of the ‘peeping tom’ law is codified at Utah Code
§ 76-9-702.7, which is classified with other “Offenses Against Public Order and Decency.” Section 76-9-702.7, titled “Voyeurism offenses – Penalties”, specifies, in relevant part:

(4) A person is guilty of voyeurism who, under circumstances not amounting to a violation of Subsection (1), views or attempts to view an individual, with or without the use of any instrumentality:
(a) with the intent of viewing any portion of the individual's body regarding which the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, whether or not that portion of the body is covered with clothing;
(b) without the knowledge or consent of the individual; and
(c) under circumstances in which the individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Let’s apply Section 76-9-702.7(4) to our situation here: your employees do view, and regularly attempt to view, without use of instrumentalities (cameras, etc.), our bodies, regardless of whether they are then covered with clothing. These viewings and attempted viewings most certainly do not occur with our consent or knowledge, and we most certainly have a reasonable expectation in our privacy in our bedroom and living room, and in our bodies while in these spaces. Section 76-9-702.7 continues, in subsection (5): “A violation of Subsection (4) is a class B misdemeanor” which is punishable by imprisonment up to six months, and a fine up to $1,000, or both.

Notably, the Utah Legislature amended the peeping tom law in 2004 to remove the element of the offense which required that the actor have intent to invade the privacy of the victim. So, it doesn’t even matter whether your employees intend to invade our privacy: the fact that they look into our windows, into spaces in which we have reasonable expectations of privacy, and view our bodies, in which we have reasonable expectations of privacy, is sufficient. It merely makes the offense more disgusting if they intend to invade our privacy, as one can reasonably conclude they do, when they look day after day, and turn for extra looks as they walk away.

I look forward to your written response. I assure you that these behaviors, if they continue, will not be met in the future solely by a letter to you, but rather by calls to the police department, and letters to the District Attorney’s office requesting prosecution. Please: do something about your employees, and their un-neighborly, disgusting, illegal behavior.

Sincerely,

[dangr ]

My new favorite radio baseball announcers:

are the Chicago White Sox radio announcers, John Rooney and Ed Farmer. Snidely commenting last night on the absurdly long seventh inning stretch with its inane singing, they said (very paraphrased):

"Well, the seventh inning stretch is FINALLY over...
They sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame, then they sang some more, they sang god Bless America...
they could publish an album here...
What's next: Jingle Bells?...
...
Yeah, Tanya Tucker was singing, she finally left the field... I think some of these people [at Anaheim] probably came just to hear her... Man, they could publish an album..."

In addition, they are great at screaming with enthusiasm for big ChiSox plays, and they unabashedly cheer on their side, the perinially homely-until-lately White Sox. (I hate the silly veneer of neutrality that some announcers think they have to have. It's why I love Jerry Coleman and Ted Leitner of the Padres radio broadcast, in addition to Coleman's trademark "Ohh Doctor!" and "You can hang a star on that one, baby!" calls, and Leitner's "My Padres"/"Your Padres" dichotomy.)

Confidential to TGS:

January

China:
Tsingtao is pretty much swill. It's affiliated in some sort of marketing/distribution arrangement with Anheuser-Busch, if that tells you anything. Might want to look for Tsingtao Dark or Tsingtao Premium, which I haven't had either, but they couldn't suck any worse than regular Tsingtao.
"Sedrin beer" is described here thusly: "Weak as piss-2%, drank from thimbles, slight musky aftertaste, tolerable and drinkable in high dosages. How many bottles can you get down? 5 to 6".
I'd probably look for this Chinese liquor: "The most famous Chinese liquor is Maotai, a 55% spirit made of wheat and sorghum that, for centuries, has been produced in Maotai Town, Guizhou province." I presume 55% means 55% alcohol, which would make it 110 proof, so go slow and low, eh?
Take-home: let me know what you else you find in China, but take your flask, okay?

Vietnam:
Their primary beer seems to be Saigon, or Saigon Export (as had in the U.S., so it's not guaranteed to taste like this at all. I haven't had it. Saigon Beer has a website , which, to my great relief, indicates that their "333 Premium Beer is now... widely accepted in The United States, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Australia."
And WHOA! There's a BREWPUB in Ho Chi Min City! To wit: Hoa Vien Brauhaus Restaurant, 28 Mac Dinh Chi Street, District 1, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, phone: 84 8-8290585, Hours: 7:30am-midnight. TGS: you will be SEVERELY punished if you don't check this place out. ¿Claro?
Here is a somewhat boring article about brewing in Ho Chi Min City. The author indicates that in Vietnam "The omnipresent draught beer is Tiger, which is your standard issue light lager - average but quite refreshing after walking around District 1 in the heat of the afternoon." He writes about designing the brewhouse for "Diplomat Garden Restaurant & Brewhouse, a German-themed restaurant and brewpub. Things German carry a lot of cache in Vietnam." I couldn't find any information whatsoever about this apparent brewpub startup, but his article was only from March 2005, so it may not really exist yet.
Maybe try the local liquor made in Yen Van village called Ruou Van, whose recipe has been kept secret since the 18th or 19th century and is passed on only to male children and daughter-in-laws." Locals claim that "Van liquor never gives drinkers a headache." Please report back on this.

Laos:
While Beer Lao is alleged to be among the betters beers in Southeast Asia, that says very little.
You should probably just check in to Lao Lao, the fermented rice "strong local liquor [made] in Ban Xang Hai village, Laos". It's also known as Ban Sang Hai. A much scarier image of Lao Lao distillation can be found at the bottom of this page.

Cambodia:
Angkor Beer sounds pretty dismal, but give it a shot, preferably on tap. You should be hotter than hell by this leg of the SE Asia trip, so you'll need some cold beer. The same company, Cambrew, makes a beer more worth searching out called Black Panther Premium Stout , apparently an 8.0% ABV beer. Definitely look for Angkor Extra Stout, which sounds better.
Take-home advice: ALWAYS seek out the dark beers when traveling internationally. This applies when traveling in most parts of Europe too, Belgium (and perhaps France) notwithstanding.
Liquor: as a believer in the rights of all living creatures, I can't endorse what appears to be the local liquor, a rice wine cocktail made with fried/mushed spiders, specifically, the "a-ping" - a breed of palm-sized tarantula." Fuckinghell.

Indonesia:
Primary beer seems to be Bali Hai, and some sort of piss apparently made by Heinekin called Bintang.
Local liquors are discussed here :
"mildly alcoholic tuak (palm toddy), brewed from various palm sugars a month before consumption, provides you a mellow slow-motion high. Tuak is prepared by filling a length of hollow bamboo with palm juice, then burying it for a week to allow fermentation to take place. Very popular in non-Muslim regions of Indonesia. Brem, usually home-produced, is rice wine made from glutinous rice and coconut milk. Old brem (more than three days old) is sour and contains more alcohol; new brem is sweeter and packs less of a kick. Badek is another fermented liquor obtained from rice. Tipple arak is an insidiously potent distilled rice spirit made from fermented molasses. Tourists like to drink arak with Sprite or 7UP."

To be continued...

February
Oz/NZ:
India:
Nepal:

March
Tibet:
Mongolia:
CIS:

April-June
Russia:
Baltics/Eastern Europe:
North Africa:

July-August
Central America:
Venezuela:
Colombia:
Bolivia:
Argentina:
Chile/Patagonia:

Dell tech "support"

I'm so goddamn irritated with Dell right now, that I can barely stand to explain it any further. I'm pasting in notes below on my FOUR interactions with Dell tech "support" today: three on the phone, one online. The best thing that can be said is that the online chat support guy didn't hang up on me, transfer me inappropriately, or fail to call me back as "Jennifer" (the first phone person) promised to.

All in all, this began Friday 10/14/2005, starting ~1:30pm MDT, and completing ~6:30pm MDT

Call #1: At least "Jennifer" had me run the (worthless) Dell diagnostic
tools. But then since the hard drive scan function was taking so long, she
insisted that she had to call me back, in "precisely" thirty minutes. Of
course, she failed to, despite having my cell phone and home phone
numbers.

Call #2: Random male was completely mystified by the problem, and without
telling me or asking me, transferred me to the pay-for-support number.

Call #3: Random woman was of even less help than before, and seemed
boggled by the idea that I did not possess an original Windows XP cd. I explained,
patiently, that new computers haven't (to my experience) shipped with
Windows XP CDs in years, only "recovery" CDs. I also explained to her that
when I'm using wireless, the wireless indicator light occasionally goes
off, even though the connection keeps working. She told me, vaguely, that
we'd fix that too. Ha, ha.
She mostly ran through the Power Options control panel, and had me do the
same things I did a month and a half ago when I spoke with a phone tech
service person. She hung up on me shortly after.

Next: online "chat" with technical support. "Abhishek_Punj" had me do the
same things in the Power Options, mostly, and ultimately told me:

{Abhishek_Punj 7:22:40 PM} Not to worry.If the issue is not resolved
then I will give you a system exchange if you want.

HA, HA! I somehow doubt that Abhishek_Punj is, himself, authorized to give me a system exchange, but I sure do look forward to THAT conversation.

Just in case you don't want to read through the entire snoozefest, I have bolded my favorite parts. I also suggest the latter parts, after about 7:04pm, as the best reading.

Welcome to Dell Chat. Please wait for an available agent. You will be notified when your chat is accepted by an agent.
The session has been accepted.

{Abhishek_Punj 6:43:26 PM} Thank you for contacting Dell Consumer Hardware Warranty Support for Portables. My name is Abhishek. Please allow me a couple of minutes to pull up your system and the warranty details.
{ 6:43:48 PM} Sure.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:44:12 PM} I request you to please elaborate on the issue.
FOOTNOTE: I had typed in, in detail, the issue when I requested the chat session.

{ 6:44:48 PM} When the laptop goes to Stand By mode, it sometimes fails to work, and the hard drive keep spinning, and the fan keeps spinning, and it gets extremely hot.
{ 6:45:08 PM} When I try to open the lid to restart, it fails to restart, and has to be hard-shutdown (by holding the power key for 7-10 seconds).
{Abhishek_Punj 6:45:10 PM} Please give me a minute to review your question and in the mean time can you please verify the system shipping address and the telephone number.
{ 6:45:27 PM} [**** Blanketyblank Ave, Sometown, CA 99999
1-999-555-5555
{Abhishek_Punj 6:45:47 PM} Thank you for the information.Please stay online.
{ 6:45:52 PM} Okay.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:46:05 PM} If I understand the issue correctly your system is getting hot.
{ 6:46:11 PM} No.
{ 6:46:18 PM} The problem is that the Stand By doesn't work correctly.
{ 6:46:24 PM} And so it gets hot.
{ 6:46:30 PM} And doesn't restart correctly.
{ 6:46:39 PM} But the problem is that the Stand By mode doesn't work correctly.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:46:54 PM} May I provide you a website link through which with the help of some simple steps this issue can be resolved?
{ 6:47:03 PM} Absolutely not. Out of the question.
{ 6:47:07 PM} I have tried, and it's worthless.
{ 6:47:11 PM} No Help whatsoever.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:47:24 PM} Okay.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:48:24 PM} Please allow me a couple of minutes so that I will be able to provide you with the best resolution.
{ 6:48:29 PM} Fine.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:49:54 PM} Please click on start icon---click on control panel------click on power options.
{ 6:50:24 PM} I am there. Want me to click on the Hibernate tab?
{Abhishek_Punj 6:50:39 PM} Yes.
{ 6:50:45 PM} What next?
{Abhishek_Punj 6:50:50 PM} Click the Start button.
Click Control Panel.
Click Performance and Maintenance.
Click Power Options.
Click the Hibernate tab.
Click to select the Enable hibernate support check box.
Click the Apply button.
Click the Power Schemes tab.
Click the drop down arrow next to System hibernates and select the amount of time to wait before the system hibernates.
Click the Apply button.
Click the OK button.
{ 6:51:54 PM} Did all that. You do realize the problem is with Stand By, and not Hibernate, right?
{ 6:52:11 PM} By the way, Hibernate has ALWAYS been enabled on my computer, since the day I got it.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:52:46 PM} Daniel, hibernate and stand by is the same thing.
{ 6:53:13 PM} Okay, if you say so. Suspect that Microsoft would create two different functions to do the same thing, but okay. What next?
{Abhishek_Punj 6:56:10 PM} Under the Power Schemes tab, change the setting for Turn off hard disks to Never by clicking on the .
Click on OK .
{ 6:57:09 PM} Okay -- for "Plugged In", "Running on Batteries", or both?
{Abhishek_Punj 6:57:29 PM} Both.
{ 6:57:35 PM} Okay.
What next?
{Abhishek_Punj 6:58:03 PM} Please restart the system to resolve the issue.
{ 6:58:40 PM} Okay. I'll restart.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:58:59 PM} Please let me know, are you chatting with the same system?
{ 6:59:09 PM} No. I am on another computer.
{Abhishek_Punj 6:59:16 PM} Okay.
{ 7:01:37 PM} Okay, it's restarted. What now?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:02:02 PM} Please confirm if the issue is resolved or not?
{ 7:03:00 PM} No, it isn't resolved.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:03:08 PM} Okay,
{Abhishek_Punj 7:04:44 PM} [dangr], we need to perform the repair utility to resolve this issue.Is this comfortable with you?
{ 7:05:26 PM} Not if it's the same stuff I already did earlier with the phone representatives. What, specifically, is it?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:06:36 PM} Daniel, this utility is specially designed to tackle with the loopholes in the operating system and to handle with the errors and drivers conflicts.
{ 7:07:07 PM} Fine. How do I get to it?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:07:26 PM} May I provide you a website link through which with the help of some simple steps repair utility can be performed?
{ 7:08:08 PM} NO. ABSOULTELY NOT. You asked me this before, and I said no. The same answer applies now. Help me if you can, or tell me who I talk to next if you cannot help me.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:10:36 PM} Perform the Repair Reinstall
1.Reboot your computer with the Windows XP CD in the CD drive.
2.The following message will appear on a black screen with white letters:
Press any key to boot from the CD.
3.Press the to boot to the Windows XP CD.
4.After several moments of initializing some modules, the Windows XP Setup screen will appear.
5.Press the key.
6.The Windows XP Licensing Agreement appears.
7.Read the license agreement.
8.Press the key to agree.
9.Setup will search for previous versions of Windows.
10.Press the key to repair.
11.Click the Next button.
12.Setup will continue to install files.
13.After several minutes the Welcome to Microsoft Windows window appears.
14.Click the Next button.
15.Click the Next button.
{ 7:10:59 PM} Fine. Please hold while I do these things.
{ 7:11:06 PM} NO!
{Abhishek_Punj 7:11:08 PM} [dangr], I have typed the steps for your satisfaction.
{ 7:11:15 PM} Actually, I don't have a Windows XP CD.
{ 7:11:28 PM} It has been years since WIndows XP CDs shipped with computers, and this is no exception.
{ 7:11:35 PM} I did not receive a Windows XP CD.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:11:45 PM} Not to worry.I will send you the cd to resolve the issue.Is this comfortable with you?
{ 7:12:43 PM} Okay. To be honest, no, I'm not happy with this or comfortable with this approach, but I seem to have little choice, since it appears to be a mystery to Dell tech support that XP CDs don't ship with Dell computers.
So, yes, send me the CD.
{ 7:13:03 PM} Want my address?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:13:08 PM} Please provide me the following details,
1) Complete address (with zip code)
2) Land line telephone number
3) Cell phone number if the landline phone number is not available
{ 7:14:19 PM} [dangr]
12345 Somestreet
Apt. #**
Salt Lake City, UT 841**

landline phone: 999-555-5555
cell phone: 999-555-5555

{Abhishek_Punj 7:15:44 PM} Thank you for the information.Please allow me some time so that I will give you the dispatch number.
{ 7:16:01 PM} I'll wait.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:16:44 PM} Thank you for being online.
{ 7:17:13 PM} It was not a pleasure.
Is that all?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:17:07 PM} The dispatch number is 063****** and you will get the cd with in 48 hours.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:17:51 PM} Is there anything else I may assist you with today?
{ 7:18:22 PM} Not unless you can actually help with my problem, short of me having that CD. Can you?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:20:01 PM} If you want then i can call you back after when you received the cd to confirm that if the issue is resolved or not.
{ 7:20:37 PM} Ummmm, yeah. Sure. Go ahead. I'll be absolutely shocked if this solves the problem, but sure, call me back. I look forward to it.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:20:57 PM} Please provide me your contact number.
{ 7:21:44 PM} Did you not get it when I provided it seven minutes ago?
Here it is again:
landline phone: 999-555-5555
cell phone: 999-555-5555
{Abhishek_Punj 7:21:55 PM} Thank you for the information.
{ 7:22:12 PM} I'm tickled to provide it. Call the cell phone number first, okay?
{Abhishek_Punj 7:22:40 PM} Not to worry.If the issue is not resolved then I will give you a system exchange if you want.
{ 7:22:59 PM} That would be lovely. Thanks. I look forward to your phone call.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:23:29 PM} Thank you,Daniel.It was a pleasure chatting with you.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:23:32 PM} Thank you for visiting Dell Technical
Support online chat and allowing me the opportunity to assist you. I have
included your case number to reference our interaction today. Please keep
this on file; it will assist you when contacting Dell Inc in the future.
Also, feel free to visit us again at
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/blahblahblahblahblahblahblah.html
{ 7:23:44 PM} The pleasure was all mine.
{ 7:23:49 PM} Really.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:24:13 PM} Yes, you are our privileged customer.
{ 7:24:32 PM} I'm ecstatic to hear that. Here, I thought I was just one of millions.
{Abhishek_Punj 7:26:06 PM} Thank you ,[dangr].
{ 7:26:26 PM} No, no: thank you, Abhishek_Punj.

At that point, I asked him if he'd noted in my case reference file that he'd offered to replace my computer if this didn't work, but, surprise surprise, he disconnected as I was sending it.

Liver, don't fail me now!

Last night we went through, in a little over two hours, two six packs between two of us. That included one quarter of one movie, following me shutting her out in Trivial Pursuit, six to no. In her defense, the questions were slightly, vaguely, a tiny bit difficult.

Earlier in the evening, we had the fantastic IPA Junior at Red Rock, only to be shattered in our brilliant designs of a growler: it's on nitro, and they won't do it in a growler. Fuckers.

I spent much of the weekend looking at houses (the outsides) and today sent a list of seven to our realtor that I'd like to see the insides of. Mostly east side: the things on the west wide in our price range are either too damn far west or north, or varying degrees of yucky.

The babbling, prattling, and generally rude noise and cell phone usage in the SLC main public library continues to amaze me: people seem to think it's a fucking bar, except with no alcohol, and lots of books randomly strewn around.

Never too busy for consumer protection

The movers showed up today (with only two days advance request from me!) with all of our stuff, so our main front room currently looks like a storage unit. Thus, I don't have a heck of a lot of time to blog. BUT: I'm NEVER too busy to blog consumer protection. Here is the first non-response (excepting automated replies) from Albertson's:

Dear [dangr],

Thank you for contacting Albertsons Customer Care. We received your email regarding the produce at our 200 South store in Salt Lake City.

Please accept our apology. We want all of our customers to have a good experience when shopping with our company. We take our customers’ complaints seriously and have forwarded your complaint to the Store Director. For your records, your case number is 1*****.

Keeping you as a customer is important to us. You will be contacted with feedback regarding your case within 24 hours.

Again, thank you for contacting Albertsons Customer Care. If we can provide any information or be of service to you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail or by calling 1-877-***-****.

Sincerely,

Allison M.
Albertsons Customer Care Representative

What a thunderous silence this represents. Let's see what the next 24 hours yields.

Surprise, surprise: the shitty produce goes to the poorer neighborhoods

Here is the text of the message I just sent to Albertsons:

Frankly, I'm really pretty disgusted with Albertsons right now. On Saturday night, 9/3/05, around 7pm, I bought a lot of groceries from my local Albertsons, including a lot of produce.

This included two heads of fresh garlic, for a total of $1.00 + tax. The next night, 9/4/05, preparing dinner, I started peeling the garlic for a pasta sauce. When I came across one clove beginning to go bad, with extensive brown spots, I didn't think much of it, and threw it away. Then the next one also had lots of deep brown spots. Then the next one was actively rotting. Then another with brown spots. In the end, at least half of both heads were actively rotten, or getting very close to it. I stopped peeling, cooked the sauce without the garlic, and put it all in a ziploc bag.

When I took it in within an hour to Albertsons, I asked to speak with a manager. I didn't just want a $1.00 refund; I wanted to talk to someone who would actually look at this disgusting garlic. At 7:30pm, I was told no manager was in the store for the rest of the night. This for a store open until midnight? Operating for four and a half hours with no manager or managerial personnel?

I was instead approached by the produce clerk, a young man who was pleasant, and apologized, but seemed mystified that I wanted to talk to someone about it, and why a simple refund wasn't sufficient. He told me that "sometimes this just happens" and that while that garlic should have been thrown away when it was being stocked, it sometimes just gets through. In short, he basically dismissed my concerns, and blew me off.

My concerns, which I tried to explain to him (notably, in a calmer tone than this e-mail contains), were this: this produce wasn't just bad, it was TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. It wasn't just a fluke: I've had bad produce on numerous other occasions from THIS Albertsons. In the past, I've just tossed it out, and written it off to "these things happen", as the young produce clerk blandly posited. I have now realized that it's a regular theme at this location:

And this is what is most irritating: the produce at this store is CONSISTENTLY worse than any other Albertsons in Salt Lake City that I have been to: older, less fresh, often bordering on rotten. It is also worse than Smith's supermarkets, the local competition. As I said to the cashier who gave me the refund, "Show me garlic like this in Sugarhouse". (Sugarhouse is a more affluent neighborhood, a few miles south from my downtown Salt Lake City neighborhood.) The cashier was very polite, and without obviously agreeing, silently ceded the point through body language.

So, I write to ask you several things:

1) Is there neighborhood profiling going on about where the old/nasty produce is sent, and/or how long it's kept on the shelf for sale? That is, do you send the bad stuff to the downtown store? Or the best stuff to the Sugarhouse (or other more affluent) stores?

2) Is it imaginable to you that no manager or managerial personnel would be present anywhere in the store from 7:30pm to closing (midnight)?

3) Do you find acceptable the explanation that "sometimes this just happens"?

I look forward to your response. E-mail is fine, as is paper mail.

Sincerely,
[signed, dangr]
Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah

Ding, dong:

... the fucker is dead, the fucker is dead, ding, dong, the rotten fucker is dead! The news, on one hand, is a cause for celebration: he was a really rotten son of a bitch, who probably did more to fuck up the federal judiciary than any other single person in history, though Shrubfucker is giving him a run for his money. From his being one of two dissenters in Roe v. Wade, right up to his engineering the annointing of King Shrubfucker, Rehnny has been fundamentally harmed our country, and the world, perhaps beyond all recovery. Oh course, the last several years of the intentionally styled Anti-Warren Court have been surprisingly unhorrifying, but only in comparison to the nonsense that issued from the high bench for decades under the asshole. I guess after Shrubfucker v. Gore, they had to scale back their long insincere "states rights" jurisprudence.

I can only hope that he died in pain, and that, since he ostensibly believes in hell, he is now there. With any luck, his appointed torturers in hell will be card-carrying ACLU members, black hooded anarchists from Eugene, women who actually want to retain some say over what happens to their bodies, and other people who love civil rights and individual liberties.

On the other hand, the result of this has been a rather frightening acceleration in Shrubfucker's continuing campaign to remake the third branch, long a stalwart of sanity in our government, in the image of a Rapture staging area. His nomination of Johnny Boy, a former Rehnny law clerk, to take up the big reins, was no surprise to me, but definitely ups the stakes. We'll have to see if the Demopublicans bend over and lick the boots of big money and power once again on the now even more problematic nomination of this lockstep partywhore demagogue.

And what will we get next? Will Shrubfucker engage in some insincere, manipulative, condescending racial pandering (ala "¡Viva Bush!", or the making of Condipo his Secretary of State) and nominate Alberto Gonzales or Emilio Garcia? Or maybe some equally disinginuous gender pandering (uhhh, Condipoo?), and nominate one of the Two Ediths: Edith Jones, or Edith Clement? Or will he murder two birds with one stone and go with Janice Brown? And on the topic, how many more stealth nominees does he have lurking beneath rocks? Stay tuned: this should get really, really ugly.

Katrina comes home

J was deployed yesterday to New Orleans to work on establishing a public health command center. Details are sketchy, but I talked to her this morning, and she was doing okay. They expected a long drive from Atlanta to New Orelans due to the need to avoid I-10. They expect to be camping at a naval air station, so they should be plenty safe.

I don't want to post many details here, since while I know very little, I don't now how much of it is public information.

Meanwhile, here in Utah, 600 (or more?) Internally Displaced Persons have been housed at Camp Williams, in Bluffdale, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. (see the definition for IDPs: they are probably not considered refugees, which requires that they have crossed an international border. Wikipedia goes on to clarify that "Environmental refugees (people displaced because of environmental problems such as drought) are not included in the definition of "refugee" under international law.") Finding clear information on volunteer opportunities is difficult; while I appreciate cash is more valuable than anything else right now, I, as usual, have more time than cash.

Confidential to TGS :

What's up with all the self-indulgent whining and moaning? Get your ass our here for some BEER.

My response to the Dell Service customer satisfaction survey

I recently had to talk to Dell's incompetent service techs on the phone, as my new Dell 700M laptop has an anoying problem: occasionally, and without an easily reproducable set of circumstances, when I cause it to Stand By by closing the lid of the machine, the hard drive keeps spinning. This is really bad, since the fan keeps blowing, and the machine gets REALLY hot while sitting in a stuffy little laptop bag, or other bag. Dell's primary advice? Don't use 'Stand By': it's a bad feature. Oh, and they don't like Hibernate either. He told me that if I'm going to not be using the computer for more than 40 minutes, I should ALWAYS shut it all the way down. Huh??? What the hell are the Hibernate and Stand By features for, then?

And yes, for the curious: the problem HAS occurred when I've had it on Stand By for less than 40 minutes.

Since they send out e-surveys which invite narrative comments on what they can do better, I wrote this:

Having technicians who know only how to follow problem solving algorithms, but lack in-depth knowledge of the systems they purport to provide service for, does Dell a great disservice.

Further, having technicians who tell me that the "Stand By" and "Hibernate" functions included in EVERY modern Windows based computer are dangerous and should be avoided is ridiculous. It is utter nonsense that "Stand By" should never be used longer than 40 minutes, as the Dell technician told me.

We'll see if they bother to respond.

Zion National Park

Was lovely... except for the obnoxious, stupid, loud, boorish tourists. Most of these were so obnoxious because they couldn't understand that not everyone within a half mile wanted to hear their stupid, stupid conversations. The campground (Watchman Tent site) was pretty great, though, in terms of people being respectfully quiet, that is, after the pickup soccer game being shreikingly played on the road outside the bathrooms.

Confidential to the approximately 75 camera toting Japanese tourists in the large group at the Museum of Man on Sunday morning: what the fuck had you done by 10 o'clock in the morning in your loafers and chinos that it seemed necessary to get into a massage train?

I will say, however, that people badmouthing Springdale, Utah, the town just outside the park's boundaries, seem pretty misguided. We were there on a weekend at the end of high season, and the place was pleasant, easy, and nearly deserted. And The Mean Bean coffeehouse kicked serious ass: friendly, pleasant, politically solid, fun people selling great coffee, and great sandwiches.

We enjoyed our hiking at Zion, limited though it was, and were lucky enough to stumble into doing it at the best possible times: late afternoon (after the loudmouths have gone to their RVs and hotel rooms), and early morning (before the loudmouths have awoken.)

Cedar Breaks National Monument, just an hour away by car, is a world away from Zion in culture and pleasantness. The hiking trails were quiet, nearly deserted (though this could have been partially due to the hailstorm that I hiked through the beginnings of, and the fact that I visited on a weekday.) The views and photography opportunities were fantastic, and the loudmouths seem to stay away.

Current value received from the $50 National Parks Pass in the less than one month we've owned it: $34 ($20: Zion NP; $4 Cedar Breaks NM; $10 Arches NP).

Selling your whole life on ebay

This is suspiciously similar to bet between Charles & Ben, and later joined into by me. I have to ask Charles where he got the idea, since it now doesn't appear to be precisely original. Of course, that bet has gone nowhere, but this project is distinctly going somewhere:

allmylifeforsale.net . Here is his ebay site where he's selling all his stuff.

I'm almost tempted to bid on this item, it's so funny:
"pay the Speeding Ticket I got on Tuesday morning"
current price: $1.00
shipping costs: Calculate
time left: 6d 11h 28m

Or maybe I'm just sympathetic due to the $341 (grand total cost) speeding ticket that I got for 42 in a 35 just after i turned 18 (the next day, actually) in Sacramento. My family will remember all the fun (ahem) I had going to Laughs For You And Traffic Too Traffic School, which was a chunk of what made the damn ticket so expensive.

Brian Thompson's allmylifeforsale.net project, which has netted $1054.58 as of 8/13/05, is based on an earlier project, John D. Freyer's AllMyLifeForSale.com (capital letters are mine), which led to a
really cool book of the same name. Freyer's project, according to his book, netted $4,906.52, though I suspect the royalties from the book are paying more handsomely than that. That prior link to Freyer's book has a good description of Freyer's project, and links to booksense.com's excellent engine for finding books through independent bookstores.

What a great couple of projects!

The bet, by the way, had somewhat less artistic intentions: Charles was going to list every single thing he owned on ebay, at a starting bid of $50,000. If any single item sold, he had to pay Ben $1000 or something like that. Obviously, it was an essentially risk-free bet for both of them, except for the significant listing fees that Charles would have incurred on ebay (which seem to be limited to $4.80 per item for basic listing fees, for any item over listed with a starting bid over $500.00.) The kicker for ebay would have been the infamous Final Value Fee, which would amount to roughly $7378, or thereabouts. Then again, since that would leave $42,622 minus paypal or other service fees, the deal would work out okay. I just can really see someone dropping 50 grand for, say, a broken guitar string.

Confidential to TGS :

You done yet?

Salt Lake miscellaney

The free wifi at the library is lovely, but consistently and annoyingly buggy. There are ethernet jacks at every table and all over the place in the floor, but so far from testing, only about 10% work. Pisser, especially when trying to make a camping reservation for Zion National Park for this weekend, and having the stupid stupid stupid wifi drop right at the "Accept" page. Looks, fortunately, like it only went through once.

We made an offer on a house, which turns out to be in short sale, so it'll take a while either way (since all leinholders/banks have to approve any sale.) It's a pretty sweet place, with lots of room for visitors, and probably considerably undervalued, largely since it's filthy, and the dopes don't seem to be aware of the hardwood under the filthy carpet. More when we know, which will likely come in dribs and drabs over the next several weeks.

Momma is taking the train to come see us for four days; should be fun, and she will get the chance (with me) to visit her childhood best friend, who lives in Orem, about 40 miles south of SLC.

Lotsa travel planned for the fall: it's getting a little ridiculous, and a little hard to keep track of. Roughly: Brian Head and Zion NP this weekend; Boston from August 26 to September 1; probably Denver for GABF September 29 to October 1; New York City for a friend's wedding October 6 to 9, then heading up to Boston from October 9-13; fly to the bay area for the beer and cooking class with CKI on October 24, then very briefly back to SLC for dinner with my lovely partner on Oct 26, then on to Seattle, only to drive to Portland for the NLG convention, then drive back to Seattle for another friend's wedding reception; then flying back to SLC November 1. Then to Georgia for the SOAW vigil Nov 17-22; presumptively to Sacramento for X-Giving; then likely to Vermont for X-Mas. Phew!

Okay -- need to check some mortgage rates!

Salt Lake!

Been in town for about 24 hours now, and impressions are favorable. Not a lot of time to write, but there is free wifi (and apprently wired access, and outlets, and comfortable tables) at the gorgeous downtown Salt Lake City public library, with sweeping views of the mountains.

Our new home/condo is beautiful. Three bedrooms, two baths, hardwood floors in the huge main room, dishwasher & laundry in the unit, for starters. And $800/month, with most utilities paid by the owner. Not too damn shabby! The parking stinks, but otherwise it's pretty damn nice. Oh, and did I mention that the building is on the National Register of Historic Places ? Just search down for "Hollywood Apartments".

Okay, time to head back home, to my refrigerator full of Gale Force IPA, and think about feeding myself. With something in addition to the Gale Force, that is.

Confidential to TGS: had to use your previously mentioned gift, but it remains entirely functional. And it's coming in handy: thanks! Call if you desire details. No progress made yet re: other discussons about... ahem. Uncle.

Hotlanta eats and drinks

My primary hope for today is that it rains. Now, suspend your disbelief for a second: no, it's not that I'm excited when it dips down to the high 80s during rain, nor do I like the flooding that inevitably results from rain in overdeveloped Atlanta communities.

Rather, it's because they pour $1 house beers at the Park Tavern on rainy days, and I want to try them without paying full price, since they have received somewhat mixed ratings online.

Mostly what we do in Hotlanta in our free time, besides look for places with air conditioning and free wireless, is eat. Last night, we made a serious mistake of eating at R. Thomas Deluxe Grill, which has a fun menu for vegetarian food, but serious, serious problems. Let's start with the vegan burger being cooked on the same grill as the meat. And our server not washing his hands after going to the FILTHY bathroom. And our server being awol for much of our dinner. (It got to where I made sure to be ready to whip out a credit card the next time he came by, for fear we'd be sitting there another 20 minutes.) And no, the place wasn't at all crowded for dinner at 6pm. Then we can pick on the smaller problems, like the wrong food being brought out, but nobody coming by for 30 minutes so that we could try to have it fixed. Basically, the place just sucked for service, and we won't go back. It's fun to have a 24/7 place that serves vegetarian food, sure, but not like that.

This morning, we had better luck at Radial, which definitely provides a preferred alternative to the pricey and ridiculously busy Flying Biscuit location in Candler Park. Radial's menu is better, simpler, somewhat cheaper, and makes it possible to actually eat breakfast with coffee for under $10 after tip. Unfortunately, the $1.95 coffee was abysmal: truly, almost as bad as McDonald's. The decaf I switched to was actually quite a bit better. I was so unimpressed by the horrible coffee that I won't ever order it again. We'll definitely go back: better food, same drive, and parking available as Flying Biscuit.

But we'll get coffee elsewhere, such as one of my favorite places in Atlanta, JavaVino . They have fantastic coffee, a very pleasant and nicely priced wine list (especially the specials!), free wifi, and are super friendly to boot. I'm gearing up to take them up on their Thursday special, the $18 bottomless glass of wine. Hah!

South

Free wireless has been spotty of late, hence the limited (okay, non-existent) posting. I've been in Hotlanta for about a week, and am wandering now. Today's trip has me in Greenville, South Carolina (a delightful, picturesque town) and continuing on to Charlotte, NC.

Lunch at the Blue Ridge Brewing Company in downtown Greenville (with free wifi all over the place!) has an excellent Total Eclipse XXX Stout: roasty, chocolatey, full, thick, and dark. (And I think it might be $2/pint for Throw Down Thursday!). Better have two. 4.25/4.5 ... YUM!

I visited the Shoeless Joe Jackson statue, and am headed to his gravesite after lunch on my way out of town. Weird, you say? Well, hell, his birthday IS on Saturday.

After that, on to Charlotte, and hopefully tonight's AAA baseball game between the Charlotte Knights and the Indianapolis Indians won't be rained out by the thunderstorms that Hurricane Dennis brought, and Hurricane Emily seems intent on perpetuating.

Then I fly out of Charlotte tomorrow to earn Delta Silver Medallion status with one flight: a ridiculously easy way to gain priority boarding (and in some cases, extra legroom seating and free upgrades). As importantly, though, it was a good justification for a fun road trip.

Greenville is remarkably pleasant so far, at least to my unstudied tourist eye. It's slow, but not dusty, and all the people so far have had (more apparently genuine than in Hotlanta) southern charm. Critically, it's a little cooler than anywhere I've been in Georgia or Tennessee in the last week.

Oh! We went rafting last week with the group on the Ocoee River in southern Tennessee. It was an excellent time, and seven of us had a great time camping the night before in the national forest. Well, it was great until the Russians showed up. A screaming, drunk, tweaking pack of Russians, about eight of them, wandered in to the campsite around 11pm and started wreaking absolute fucking havoc throughout the overflow camping area. They screamed and yelled until about 2am, when they decided to go back to their cars in the (very nearby) parking lot and blast techno music. After a member of our group (too) nicely asked them to turn it off, they did, and retreated to their campsite, where they screamed, yelled, played music, and broke things for another hour or two. Turns out they only sort of vaguely quieted down after one of their group stepped barefoot into some of the broken glass they were creating. Around 4am. Nice.

Anyway, it's more baseball for today, and trying to find some decent beer in the south, always a challenge. This has been a huge score so far: $2 pints of everything, though they are out of the Colonel Paris Pale Ale, so it's another Total Eclipse XXX Stout for me. And the $7.95 oven roasted vegetarian sandwich was excellent, with mounds of goat cheese, and excellent fries. They make their own amber ale ketchup, and apparently their own spicy grainy mustard, both of which are outstanding.

Confidential to TGS :

Oh, I already have such a crackspot scheme, and will be in Atlanta from July 7-24, excepting July 14 and 15 (when I'll be on another crackpot errand to gain Silver Medallion status on Delta, by journeying to Charlotte and flying back to Atlanta, staying just long enough to catch a Charlotte Knights game.)

Start a'lookin'!

San Dee-egg-e

So I'm down in the land of the eternally humid summer for a little less than 48 hours, to do some federal grand jury work.

I arrived early on United, thought repeatedly why I like them so much as an airline (I walked up five minutes before the flight before mine was boarding, and they gave me a boarding pass for an aisle seat with an empty seat to my right.) I mean, they do plenty wrong, but they, more than any other airline I fly, make it up by doing enough right.

On arrival in PB, I parked the car at the library that didn't open until noon, and walked over to the beach. I was just going to walk down the boardwalk, but then the temptation was just too great: I took my shoes and socks off, and walked in the ocean. It was delightful, bordering on transformative.

This will sound ridiculously cliché, but the immense stress of the last few days seemed to just melt away: moving (again) to SLC after relocating to Atlanta for only the month of July; a tumultuous divorce in the family; coming down here on last-minute notice; the closing the practice stresses. All gone, if only for a short time.

I'm now enjoying the public library's free wifi (at every location!) here in PB, and preparing for a 3p client meeting.

More soon. Tonight, a $35 hotel room via Priceline in the heart of the Gaslamp -- that's right, only $12-$13 more than sleeping in the hostels around the corner!

Earthquakes and California attitude

being born and raised in California, it has long been a source of amusement to me the fear, dread, and sometimes terror, that many transplants to the Golden State feel about earthquakes. While not foolproof, it's often a way of identifying people not really from California, much like people who say "Cali". (Note to those from California: if you were born here, and raised here for any significant portion of your life, and you still say "Cali", well, you're stupid.)

Many of us from California regard earthquakes, both as potential threat, and when they happen, as something to be fairly glib about. Now, don't misunderstand me here: people who have lived through the 1989 Loma Prieta quake (which interrupted the start of Game 3 of the Bay Bridge World Series), or Northridge quakes, probably feel somewhat differently about them, likely similar to people who live in the high desert of southern California, which gets earthquakes pretty constantly. But those of us in most of California tend to find the idea of earthquakes borderline entertaining.

So this morning, I felt what I thought was an earthquake at 11:47am. I'm going to go ahead and admit the slightly embarassing circumstances that probably made it possible for me to feel this particular seismic event: I had only recently woken up, and was sitting on the toilet, reading.

I felt like the toilet (and, by extension, me) were wobbling forward and backward, and I looked down at a water bottled that was sitting on a perch of several books on the floor, in whcih the water was sloshing around a bit. By the time I looked at my watch, it was basically over.

So, Dr. Smartypants, who likes to follow earthquakes, soon after came upstairs to chat, and I sent her down to check on this potential earthquake. Sure enough, there was a magnitude 4.8 earthquake 5 miles N-NW of Tahoe Vista, California at 11:45:58am, about 95 miles away as the crow flies.

Whoopee! I was right! See what I mean? It's just fun to feel earthquakes here most of the time.

Sure enough,

I think Jim Tracy is angry. What a great picture.

More on how the Spankeez suck

Phew! I was wondering if I was going to have to post an eat-my-words e-mail after the Spankeez pounded the (lowly) Devil Rays yesterday 20-11, and Centimeter Jeter went 5-6 with a homer, and A-Rod, Twitch, Matsui, and Posada all homered, with a ridiculous 13-run eighth inning (including back-to back-to back home runs.)

Good news! The hated Yankeez (37-35) got spanked today by the even lowlier Devil Rays (26-47). Jeter was 0-5, Williams 1-3, Matsui 0-3, Giambi 0-1 (pinch hitting). Only Twitch Sheffield had a good day, 2-4 with a home run.

The 26 and 47 Devil Rays are now 6 and 3 in their meetings this season with the Yankees. Ha!

Confidential to The Good Senator:

Wanna go back to the south?

www.javavino.com:
ALL SUMMER: * THUR - $18 bottomless (wine) glass

Here is their wine list.

Oh, and they sell rainforest friendly coffee, and have free wireless.

nowhere, is where I've been

Blogging opportunities and/or energy have been limited of late, as I've been sifting through 142 file boxes from dad's storage, going through document by document, determining what needs to kept, what needs to be shredded, and what can simply be recycled (the overwhelming majority so far.) It's a god-awful fucking miserable task, and the house looks like shit with boxes stacked everywhere until I complete it, or at least make a dent.

That said, it has provided the opportunity to listen to plenty of baseball games on XM, and play lots of online poker, both of which I can do easily enough while going through files (often all three simultaneously.)

On the note of baseball, I was struck this morning by the San Francisco Chronicle's listing of the top 52 paid players in baseball. Don't ask me why it's 52, other than it might have been neat to them to list 52 since four players are tied for that mark, at $9,000,000 per year, and three of them play for west coast teams: Bret Boone (Seattle), Troy Glaus (Arizona), Ryan Klesko (San Diego), and Greg Maddux (duh: Chicago Cubs).

More interesting about the list though is how clearly it demonstrates the hated Skankeez (oops, Yankees) monetary advantage: they have ten players in the top 52 (the top 39, actually). There are 30 teams in baseball. Do the math.

What is pleasing, though, is that of the 34-32, 3rd place in the Al East, five games behind Baltimore, arrogant, nasty Skankeez overpaid player list, only one of them, Alex Rodriguez, is actually on the AL leader list in more than one category (A-Rod for runs, RBI, and home runs), and only a grand total of three Yankees are on the AL leaders list (as published in the Chron) at all: Hideki Matsui, not on the list with his $8 million salary, is fourth for doubles with 18; Randy Johnson, 15th on the salary list at $15,419,815, is second in strikeouts at 91 (30 behind the AL leading Johan Santana of the Twins, who will earn $4,750,000 this year.) (What a long, nasty run-on sentence that was. So sue me. Or get your own damn blog.)

Let's see what the other Yankees on the overpaid player list are doing, shall we?

4. Derek "Arrogance" Jeter, SS, $19,600,000: hitting .299, 6 HR, 26 RBI, 44 runs, 8 SB
5. Mike "The 19 Million Dollar Moose" Mussina, SP, 19,000,000: 7-4, 3.89 ERA, 61 K, 21 BB, 1.34 WHIP
11. Kevin "Angry" Brown, SP, $15,714,286: 4-6, 5.48 ERA, 45 K, 15 BB, 1.61 WHIP
16. Jason "Steroids" Giambi, 1B, $13,428,571: hitting .242, 5 HR, 20 RBI, 19 runs, 0 SB
25. Bernie "Backup" Williams, CF, $12,357,143: hitting .238, 3 HR, 20 RBI, 16 runs, 1 SB
27. Gary "Twitch" Sheffield, RF, $11,496,689: hitting .300, 10 HR, 41 RBI, 40 runs, 6 SB
30. Jorge "Bare Hands" Posada, C, $11,000,000: hitting .297, 9 HR, 34 RBI, 27 runs, 1 SB
39 (tie). Mariano "Pitched 25 Innings This Year" Rivera, RP, $10,500,000: 3-2, 1.05 ERA, 29 K, 9 BB, 15 saves

What a bunch of overrated, overpaid trash. Only Rodriguez, Sheffield, Posada, and Rivera are even coming close to having respectable seasons, and there is no way I will ever accept that A-Rod, currently placing in only four major AL leader categories (he's third in walks), is worth $25.7 million a year. Not when he also lists above the fold in strikeouts (46) and caught-stealing (3, when he only has 6 successful steals???).

Confidential to TGS :

> 1) Did too, between refills at the airport. It's not my fault you were too
> drunk off your ass to care.

Alright, wiseass, first off, there is a not insignificant difference between "to care" and "to comprehend".

> I was a little surprised you didn't make a bigger deal of it, though.

Well, next time, don't sneak it in around snipey comments about the crazy woman sitting next to me.

> Your response was, if I recall correctly, "WHAAAT?????!!! JEEEEEZUS
> CHRIST, give me that!"

No comment.

> (insert lunge for beer here.)

Talk to my lawyer. And get your own.

> 2. I did go to CVS yesterday and purchased a bright yellow, perfect
> storm-esque poncho for my backpack. You thought the plastic socks looked lame.

HA! HA! HA! What is the hip internet abbreviation for this? Oh, I know: LOFL!!!

> p.p.s. Are ya gonna let me know what it is first?

Hmmmmmmmmm... NO!

See, buddy, it's like this: you disappointed me while in search of (ahem), and so, unless and until I get a detailed report of (ahem), you don't get to know SHIT. ¿claro?

Gale Force IPA!!!

Today we bottled our brew-on-premises beer, named Gale Force IPA. See, the recipe we used was called Trade Winds IPA, but, well, we ignored the specified hop bill (Goldings & Galena for bittering, Goldings for "Flavoring", Fuggles and Cascade for aroma, and more Fuggles and Cascade for dry hopping.) Instead, we used Centennial and Galena for bittering, Columbus and Centennial for flavoring, Centennial and Chinook for aroma, and Columbus and Cascade for dry hopping.

Now THAT'S a hop bill. Heh.

Oh, and we put in an intentionally excessive amount of malt extract and specialty grains.

Short story: it kicks ass. Good, good, good stuff. Which the faithful readers of this blog will have first access to, whether I already know you personally OR YOU ARE A LURKER. Just e-mail me, and we'll talk about beer transferance.

Reader Poll

So, how do you all like (or not) my actually using capital letters to begin my sentences, and for most proper nouns? I decided it's somewhat more readable this way.

And for you lurkers, I know you're out there. This question is directed at you, as an easy way to tell me who you are. Find my email address at the bottom of this page in the links section, take out all extraneous characters, and respond immediately. Or I'll be upset.

Confidential To The Good Senator:

1) You didn't tell me you were going to fucking florida.

2) But congrats on being smart enough to bring a raincoat. Did you know that raincoats are made for people who live in ridiculous, barely inhabitable areas, e.g., Seattle and Florida, that are actually completely waterproof? You know, the yellow rubber ones that make you look like an extra in the movie version of The Perfect Storm?

3) Have you noticed that our blogs increasingly are almost like an email exchange to one another, with occasional entertainment value for others?

p.s. You are NOT permitted to travel to Cuba until this storm passes. ¿claro?

p.p.s. I still haven't drunk your first present. But I might soon. Like tonight. yum. I'll let you know how it is.

a funny thing happened on my way back home

Well, besides my getting violently airsick on the AcK flight into Seattle. What happened is this: I had a bomber of Elysian Immortal (confidential to TGS: no, this WASN'T your present), that I decided to transfer to a gatorade bottle solely because it was less prone to breakage in my carry-on. Ahem.

Anyway, it just so happens that it was an orange flavor gatorade bottle, which, while it was a lovely color match, imparted a rather bizarre orange flavor. I can't say, however, that it was altogether unpleasant, and now, two days later, I'm drinking it out of the fridge and rather enjoying it, even though it's as flat as a pancake. It's quite a bit like Buffalo Bill's Orange Blossom Cream Ale, actually. (Notably, the Immortal is a pretty lame IPA to begin with, so the orange flavor really didn't have a meaningful hop profile to compete with.)

Ahhhhh. Guess I should put the Elysian Pumpkin ale in the fridge for tonight's drinking (and no, TGS, that wasn't it, either. So neehh.)

sitting at the desk

with the shiatsu chair massager on, a raspberry imperial stout in the glass, a poker freeroll starting in 35 minutes, and baseball on the XM radio. life is good.

back from ak

two more pleasant first class flights (no, we didn't pay for them, we used miles) on AcK Airlines. typically, the first flight (ANC-SEA) was late, for two entirely different sets of stated reasons. at check-in, and only after inquiring, i was told it was potentially delayed to accommodate late-arriving passengers on another flight(s). then at the gate, it was annouced to be late just so that mechanics could check one little thing. i was left to wonder if AcK Airlines employees are just told to make up whatever will sound best at the moment.

and actually, the end of the first flight wasn't so pleasant: i was hit with apparent airsickess for only the second time in my life. (the first being when A was taking, ahem, liberties with the two-seater Piper Cherokee he was flying me around in in Massachusetts.) that first time wasn't bad, however, since i followed the directions on the airsickness bag, which told me to focus on the farthest away stationaryt thing i could. within about ten seconds, i felt better. yesterday, however, i woke up from drowsing/napping, and felt the violent need to go to the bathroom. while sitting on the toilet in the ridiculously cramped forward lav ont he 737-400, i was suddently glad for how tiny it was, since i broke into a complete body sweat, and sort of collapsed against the wall. within a few minutes, they announced we were in our final descent into seattle, so i had to struggle out.

we arrived home via a ride from mom's brand spanking new hyundai elantra 5-door hatchback, and i read for a while, then promptly went to sleep, with directions to J to not wake me up in the morning. i slept soundly until 11 this morning, finished my book, and caught the last few innings of the excellent Cubs -- Blue Jays game.

the book, Fortunate's Rocks, by Anita Shreve, reminded me repeatedly of Dar Williams' lyrics from the unfortunately named song "Teenagers Kick Our Butts":
"We read junk novels on the plane..."
the book itself was fine, reasonably interesting, and an easy bit of intellectual junk food. i think Shreve was attempting to sympathetically discuss class consciousness at the turn of the 20th century, and in this she failed except for those who might be completely unable to do any bit of historical or class analysis. but it was an entertaining novel, albeit with an outrageously trite ending, which seems to be Shreve's forte. (i won't indulge myself in spoiling it, unless you want me to. e-mail me for details.)

beer and midnight sun

Saturday:
lunch at Bear Tooth: IPA
bus to airport, picked up rental car
drove to Valley
Regal Eagle in Eagle River looks nasty, changed, and so effectively closed (signs advertising Bud Select and Becks as beer specials)
lunch/early dinner at Great Brear in Wah-hah-sillo-ay: excellent Beary Strong (8% raspberry strong ale), decent Big Su Strong Ale (8%), excellent if slightly sweet Three Bruins Tripel, excellent Arskigger Scottish Ale (8%).
dinner & drinks at Moose's Tooth: '02 barleywine, then Cask IPA, then '03 barleywine

Sunday: samplers at Homer Brewing Co., bought half gallon soda bottle (best growler vessel EVER) of special Oatmeal Stout ($13 total)
lunch at Finn's pizza on Homer Spit, pint of Homber Brewing Company's Broken Birch Bitter (plus some Oatmeal Stout in the car)
dinner was picnic style in the car, cheese, onion, and mustard sandwiches from Safeway (plus a swig)

Monday: planned journey out to Midnight Sun BC to sample the wares, likely dinner at Moose's Tooth

Tuesday: likely lunch at Orzo, or, gosh, Glacier is right next door...
then flight home.

beer and airports

i would have blogged about it myself, but The Good Senator managed to describe our airport beer escapade with one of the best posts ever. so i don't have to.

wastin' away in Anchoraguaville

lookin' for, maaaahhyyy lost pint of beer.

it's been good to us. we've been to Glacier three times. the best thing is is a Cask IPA, and boy, is it a doosie. dry hopped with Crytsal and Amarillo, and it's a damn work of art. the standard IPA is also solidly drinkable, and the Jim Beam Bock is decent, but underwhelming.

Snow Goose has the same extraordinary views as always, though the beer hasn't been that amazing in two visits. the cask is Urban Wilderness (pale ale), and is pleasant, but just not in the same class as the Glacier cask.

Humpy Dumpy is pretty much nasty and smoky, as always, and the tap list just isn't that amazing for someone who lives in california; it's definitely not worth dealing with the repulsive smoke.

Humpy's sister bar, Sub Zero, is chic as all get out, and has a pretty extraordinary list of Belgians in bottles (i drank a lovely Roquefort 8, $12.50 for a well poured 333ml bottle in proper glassware). J had Chimay on tap, which was nice, and there were lovely free appetizers for First Friday, the downtown art opening. (their exhibit was the winners of the Anchorage Press' Post-It Note Art Contest.

we walked to Spenard and peered in on the Bear Tooth, but the movie availbility was weak, so we'll wait for beer until Moose's Tooth tomorrow, when we have a rental car.

speaking of tomorrow, we're thinking about waking up a little early for the farmer's market across the parking lot (i'll be on the lookout for nagoonberries), then picking up the car, after lunching at La Mex in Spenard (the downtown location is closed!). then we'll probably make a trip to the valley and Great Bear, and eyeball the ever-elusive Regal Eagle on the way back through Eagle River.

YUM!

anchoragua tomorrow!

game plan, in order of proximity to our hotel:
Glacier
Snow Goose
Sub Zero (a NON-SMOKING venture/affiliate of Da Hump)
Bear Tooth

then when we have a rental car, starting Saturday:

Moose's Tooth
Midnight Sun
Great Bear
Homer Brewing

oh, and maybe we'll do some hiking.

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more computer foolings

I successfully installed a DVD burning drive, in about fifteen minutes. The most difficult part was unplugging the power cord from the back of the drive in the cramped space of the mini-tower. Now I can easily backup the digital photography that has been occupying HUGE amounts of space on the 80gb hard drive.

XM satellite radio: how did I live without it?

I finally succumbed because of the baseball: every team, every game, all season. And I'm loving that. Increasingly, though, I'm enjoying the regular radio programming. Example: Ethel, channel 47, is one of the 100% commerical free music stations. Their last five songs: two Modest Mouse songs, then a Pogues song, then a random Sublime song, and now Primus. Fun stuff.

Jose Canseco's Big Shitty Book: Juiced

I just finished reading Canseco's 284 pages of whining, self ego-stroking, tell-all babble. What a piece of crap. I shouldn't even have bothered, and in fact, had no plans to bother, until I saw it sitting on the new arrival shelf at our local public library. I did have to snicker at his notes that he didn't care what people thought of his book, as long, of course, as they paid full price for it. Ha, ha.

He spends most of the book on a central theme: I'm a human, everyone is a human, but boy, am I just about the greatest human to ever grace baseball with my presence. He whines a lot about his performance not being what it could have been, had he not been injured, but he also whines about people saying he was always injured. He insists that steroids, properly administered (he refers to himself as The Godfather of Steroids, also The Chemist), don't increase risk of injury. So how does he explain his persistent injuries? Well, he doesn't: he mentions some of them, like the three back surgeries, but insists that steroids where why he recovered. He pooh-poohs, without any explanation or stated basis, the idea that Ken Caminiti and Lyle Alzado's deaths were steroid related. His only basis for this is a sort of contorted reverse logic: because there was no scientific proof that steroids caused either death, therefore, it is clear that they did not. Hmmmm...

Canseco repeatedly claims he was framed, then railroaded into taking a plea stemming from a barfight where he claims he didn't preally hurt anyone and acted only in self defense by putting his hand out to motion to someone to stop. (Context: he also mentions that he holds black belts in three martial arts: Japanese Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and Muay Thai.)

He insists that his probation violation for failing a drug test was clearly the result of someone swapping urine samples with him. This, at the end of a 284 page book extolling the magical virtues of steroids, and The Chemist's proud use of them?

He insists that he is not only the nicest guy ever, but that he is also not a domestic abuser. This despite admitting that during one argument where his then wife was sitting in the front seat, he reached in front to grab her by the hair to get her attention? That in another incident with another wife, he and she were driving down the road fighting and screaming in SEPARATE cars, and, oops, wouldn't you know it? Their darn cars collided.

He talks about being a fun-loving, easy-going, cuddly guy, then explains away his arrests for carrying loaded firearms on hospital campuses, beating his wives, and just happening to have a machine gun nicknamed "Street Sweeper" in his closet that he was going he kill himself with (he put the gun down on his bed, and decided to cuddle his infant daughter instead. It was left unclear whether he put away the machine gun before cuddling with his daughter.)

Canseco repeatedly refers to his own superhuman abilities, and how amazing he was, and at one point, says he was the greatest player in baseball. He's especially proud of being the AL Rookie of the Year in 1986, and of his 40/40 season: 42 home runs, 40 stolen bases, resulting in his being voted the unanimous American League MVP in 1988. Yes, this is something to be proud of.

But the greatest player in baseball? The most amazing physical speciem to grace the game? A poster boy for why steroid use is so great for professional athletes? HUH? Let's review his somewhat checkered and inconsistent career: he led the league in home runs only twice: 1988 (42) and 1991 (44). He hit over 40 home runs only one other time: 1998 (46), which placed him third on the league.

What else did he do in 1998, you might wonder? He led the league in strikeouts, with 159. (He struck out 1942 times in his career, in 7057 at-bats.) His career batting average is .266; in only three seasons out of seventeen did he hit over .300, and one of these, 1985, with a .302 batting average, he only had 96 at-bats in 29 games.

Canseco go on and on about his running abilities, especially for someone so large and muscular: for example, he brags repeatedly about running the 40 yard dash in 4.3 seconds, and at one point, makes the preposterous claim to have run it in 3.9 seconds (page 231). After those 40 steals in 1988, his next highest total was 29 in 1998, then 26 in 1991, and then only four other seasons did he have more then 10 steals. He was only in the top ten for steals one time, in 1988, when his 40 steals placed him fourth in the league.

How ridiculous are his claims about running? Well, for starters, he only lists his times in the 40 yard dash, a distance/event that the IAAF, track & field's international governing body, doesn't even recognize or record (The shortest distance the IAAF recognizes for world-record purposes is an indoor 50 meters, or about 54 yards, per this excellent article on the official site of the U.S. Olympic Team.) That article goes on to debunk the mythic 40 yard times that many NFL players put up.

In my research, I can't find ANY serious claims that ANYONE has EVER run the 40 yard dash faster than 4.15 seconds, even with extremely questionable timing methodology.

Oh, apparently, Canseco is explaining his ridiculous 3.9 second claim as a typo.

Even more fun/ny: in this article he's quoted as saying he ran a 3.39 second 40-yard dash!

This isn't to say that Canseco's book is entirely without merit: it did bring the topic of cheating through steroids to the attention of the public and the snoozing congress, it also speaks to the undeniable truth of racism in baseball. Sadly, though, Canseco is such a fucking ridiculous clown that the couple of important messages he has are lost in the fog.