Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in ms_0's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Friday, December 4th, 2009
3:17 pm	Those annoying political phonecalls Do the politicians really think they'll get my vote by pestering me with robocalls, or even real phone calls from their supporters? I didn't put my numbers on the do-not-call lists (state and federal) because I like being bothered by phone spam. I know that those lists don't apply to political calls or charity calls, but if those people have any sense, they'll figure out that they're not likely to influence me the way they want. In any case, when I get a political call, I keep track of the politician and make sure I don't vote for them. When a charity calls me, I politely inform them that I don't respond to telephone solicitation, and make sure I don't contribute any more to their organization for the next year. Current Mood: annoyed (Comment on this)
Monday, August 31st, 2009
10:38 am	flu shot Well, I got my seasonal flu shot today. Relatively painless. That's so I'm ready for the swine flu vaccine when it's available. Don't want to infect my granddaughter, after all. Current Mood: calm (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
6:39 pm	Mount Lafayette So, yesterday I went hiking in the White Mountains with my brother and his friend John. The plan was to hike up Falling Waters and down Old Bridle Path, a round trip of 8.9 miles, with a maximal elevation change of 3900 feet. Mount Lafayette is just under a mile above sea level. The weather was not too hot and not too humid, although it had been raining heavily if not steadily for the previous week or more. The trail up has a number of stream crossings, and with all that rain they were spectacularly beautiful, but somewhat under water. While some fellow hikers turned back, we eventually just bit the bullet and got our feet wet, except for John who stayed dry because he had hiking boots (my brother and I had sneakers). Once we had done that, we were committed to doing the entire route, or having to redo the crossings in the opposite direction. The FW trail is relentlessly and steeply upwards, although at one point John had us take a spur to a good view, which was only .1 miles but significantly downwards (which meant more upwards to retrace our steps). John is an experienced and enthusiastic hiker, but my brother and I are amateurs. We were pretty exhausted by the time we got to Franconia Ridge. Even though walking along the ridge is much less steep than FWT, there's still lots of ups and downs as we went from one little peak to another. I like downhill (gravity is my friend, and I really don't like fighting it), while my companions had the opposite view, particularly my brother, whose bad hip doesn't help. I slowed us up on the way up, but my brother was the laggard on the way down. Starting the hike at 10AM, we arrived at Mount Lafayette's peak about 6 hours later. The trek down we did in roughly another 3.5 hours, so we made it well before dark, which was a very good thing. Muscles and joints I didn't even know I had were complaining, and it wasn't easy getting into the car. We stopped for dinner at Gordi's (I wonder who Gordi was), and the salad bar posed an additional challenge (the changes between sitting and standing). I was dropped off at home at 11:30PM (having initially been picked up there at 7:30AM), brushed my teeth, and crashed. When I woke up in the morning, I was surprisingly not particularly sore, but managed to nap most of the day. Current Mood: tired (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
11:48 am	Things off my todo list, but not priceless Shower is fixed. Took the plumber about ten minutes. I highly recommend Joseph G Perry Plumbing & Heating. (They've always been very competent and reasonably priced, although in this case they came hours later than they said they would, and the plumber reeked of cigarette smoke. No one's perfect.) In preparation for the plumber coming, I put up a bookshelf to contain some of the things that were piled super-high in the bathroom, and actually cleaned the bathroom a bit. Found some interesting items, some unidentifiable. Brass rat is found, in another state. Car is inspected. Only cost a couple of thou so that it would pass. (The work was not unexpected, but the price was a bit higher than I would have guessed, even knowing that car repairs always cost more than one expects.) Should I have just bought a new car? Job search is begun, sort of. (I suppose this means that it's still on my todo list. Oh well.) Next item on list: Dig out septic tank and get it pumped. Current Mood: agitated (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
11:21 am	phony fable So, this weekend pwaa had trouble calling me because my landline barely managed to ring--it gave out after the tiniest of strangled ringlets. Luckily she tried again and I realized I wasn't imagining the sound and picked up the phone. Heard some crosstalk on the line as well. Those symptoms, together with the fact that there's a contractor digging up the street to replace the water main who's already ripped up the electric cable (causing a power outage which has now been repaired by the electric company), caused me to conclude the obvious, and I called up TPC first thing Monday morning to ask them to fix the problem. This morning at work, TPC guy called me to let me know that he didn't need to get into my house (duh!) and would be working on the street. When I told him I expected that because of the aforementioned contractor issues, he told me that the contractor denied having encountered any phone cables. LOL! Hopefully it will get fixed so I can receive the eagerly anticipated call when I'm at home. Current Mood: expectant Current Music: soundtrack from "Rosemary's Baby" (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 10th, 2009
10:14 am	Back in Acton Well, my Hawaiian vacation is over, with the temperature in the single (Fahrenheit) digits here, and a snowstorm looming for tonight. The last day in Hawaii was spent hiking Kilauea Iki (again), even though the weather started out pretty nasty (very windy, cool, and wet). Of course, we had to pack up, drive back to Kona, and get on a plane, so we didn't have a full day. Ray did a lot of driving, including the upward section of the Saddle Road between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Which eventually we were more-or-less able to see as the weather cleared slightly. The plane flights home, for each of us, were uneventful, and I marveled that the weather seemed completely clear on the trip back (although I was sleeping a lot of the time), as opposed to the solid bank of clouds on the way over. Lots of good views from the air of San Francisco's bridges, the coastal range, the Sierras and the Rockies; lots of snow cover in the mountains and eastward. The only hitch in my travels home was that my car was dead, after having spent a week unused outside in Boston's winter weather. Luckily, the parking lot was prepared to give me a jump, although unprepared to know where the battery was on my Prius (and I didn't know either, never having had to worry about it). Eventually, a second parking lot employee found it in a corner of the trunk, and I was on my way, though not before discovering that I couldn't find the little ticket they had given me when I drove in and which they at first insisted I must have to leave the lot. (Happily, they were able to find the record of my arrival and so let me out.) Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Friday, January 2nd, 2009
12:18 pm	Hawaii, continued Yesterday started after breakfast with a driving practice session for Ray, with me riding shotgun. Eventually, we had Ray drive us to Akaka Falls, where it was actually sunny. We then went to a decent Chinese restaurant and drove to what used to be a beach around what used to be Kalapana. We hiked into a lava field near the coast, intending to see lava flowing down from the east ridge of Kilauea. (At breakfast, some people said new lava flows had just appeared.) We did see steam coming up in lines on the hillside, and were going to stay until evening, where the red glow would be visible, but it started raining and the visibility became negligible, so we decided to punt and go back to our accommodations, eat dinner, and play bridge. It was pouring all night, and the forecast for today isn't great. But all in all, we've been pretty lucky with the weather. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
3:17 am	More on Hawaii Well, I would have posted yesterday, but the wireless was in a wedged state. Anyway, yesterday we went to Waipio Valley, which was a very long drive for Charlie, in the rain. While Charlie and Radia had lunch, Ray and I walked down the steep road to the valley, walked to see the waterfall, walked back through a very puddly and muddy road to the beach, and almost all the way back up before we met Radia and Charlie on the way down. We were happy to wait for them to make it to the valley and back, but they decided to punt. We would have gone to Akaka Falls on the way back, but there was a huge traffic backup caused by a three-car accident, so by the time we got to the road to Akaka Falls, it was raining and almost dark, so we punted. Today Ray drove us to Volcano House, and we hiked down the Byron Ridge Trail to the Kilauea crater (but not to Halemaumau because that trail is closed due to volcanic gases), then to the Kilauea Iki Trail so Charlie and Radia could do it, back to Volcano House where we had the "horrible buffet". Then Ray and I hiked on the Crater Rim Trail to the Steaming Bluff, and back via the Sulfur Banks. We met up with Radia and Ray back at Volcano House, and then Ray drove part of the way down the Chain of Craters Road. Charlie drove the rest of the way to the end of the road, where we walked on the blocked off portion of the road and just a bit past where the lava from an earlier eruption had buried the road. We could see the current activity in the distance. Ray then drove us back home (with Radia in the back seat whining continually). We got home just in time to get the keys to the utility cabinet in the house, so Charlie could successfully reset the wireless router. Then played bridge for a while. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
12:07 pm	Hawaiian Adventure, continued Yesterday we hiked in the park, at one point getting a great view of the snow-covered Mauna Loa. But I hadn't brought my camera. Ray and I also hiked half of the Kilauea Iki trail before we all had lunch at the Volcano House buffet. Even mediocre food can appear good when you are hungry. After lunch, we drove to where they let you view the lava entering the ocean. We were probably a kilometer away (Ray's estimate), so we only got to see a gigantic plume of steam, water spouts in the nearby ocean, and occasional rock exploding up in black and gray silhouette on the white cloud and blue-gray sky and falling down in apparent slow motion, with individual boulders occasionally discernible. (Ray estimated the height of the explosions by timing the descent of the rocks: d = .5*g*t**2, and then estimated the distance by the subtended angle.) As night approached and fell, the steam plume turned much darker and was bathed by a red glow. The black and grey silhouette of exploding rock turned into bright red fireworks, and we could even see occasional red boulders land on the ground and continue to glow. We'll see if any of my pictures, some with telephoto lens, turn out. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 29th, 2008
9:32 am	Hawaiian Adventures Getting here was half the fun? We're finally in Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island. The adventure started on the way from SFO to KOA, where about an hour into the flight (on United), the captain announced, as he turned the plane around, that we were heading back to SFO because our backup power supply wasn't working and federal regulations require a working backup when flying over open water. I later found out that he knew just after takeoff, but had to burn off sufficient fuel to land. So, three hours into a four hour flight, we were back at SFO, wondering if we were going to make it to Hawaii. Luckily, there was a plane already waiting for us. Unluckily, one of our original flight crew had enough hours and decided they wanted to spend the rest of XMas on the ground. So we had to wait for a new crewmember and didn't take off for another three hours. So we managed to arrive in Kona six hours late, and more than 24 hours after I started my journey from Acton. United didn't even offer us food vouchers when we were back at SFO. While I was at SFO the second time, I attempted to use my new cellphone to let Radia know about the delay, but mostly couldn't figure out how to use it, although I did manage to leave a message (although I was quite unsure at the time if I was successful). When I arrived in Kona, I got Radia's message that I should call Charlie or Radia and they would pick me up, which managed to happen at around 2 AM. In Kona, we spent three days, mostly relaxing and playing bridge. A few walks in lovely weather. And we had a very nice fish dinner at Huggo's with a woman Radia and Charlie had met on their Russian eclipse tour and her daughter (Ray's age). She treated, much to our discomfort. So Radia offered her daughter a free trip to San Diego (with frequent flyer miles). On our last full day in Kona, we went to a timeshare presentation and in return got a discount on a sunset dinner cruise on a glassbottom boat. The dinner was surprisingly good, the entertainment was hokey, and the underwater viewing was disappointing. But we did manage to see a whale and her calf as they dove from view! As we were leaving Kona, we stopped at a Walmart to buy some supplies for hiking, at which point I realized that I had left my film in the refrigerator where we had just checked out. So Charlie and I went back while Radia and Ray went shopping. At the condo, I retrieved my film, and as we arrived back at Walmart, Charlie discovered he had lost one of his wallets, with money and credit cards, although not his driver's license. So, as I headed into Walmart, Charlie started looking in the car for his wallet. Eventually, we managed to buy what we needed, reported the missing wallet in case it showed up at Walmart, and headed back yet again to the condo to look there, unsuccessfully. Happy ending: when we finally made it to Volcano Village and our accommodations, Charlie found his missing wallet while unpacking. Last night we had dinner at what, according the Radia and Ray, is the only decent place to eat in the area. It's a Thai restaurant in Volcano Village, and it was very good. We'll probably eat there a few more times while we're here. One mildly disturbing fact: while we were eating, the rain was coming down furiously; if this kind of weather persists, hiking won't be much fun. I suppose we can always play some more bridge! I zonked out at around 6 last night, while we were watching a movie, and got up at 3 this morning, which is 8AM EST. It's now 5. We're at a bed and breakfast facility, so breakfast will be in a few hours. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
9:47 am	I voted this morning For the first time that I remember, there were actual lines at the polling place when I arrived at about 7:05. I was done in about 15 or 20 minutes, and the lines had become longer. (But there was no line for the other precinct that also voted in the same place; I have no idea why.) I did not vote for either mainstream presidential candidate--I don't believe Obama has the courage needed to lead the nation in these times, and I can't forgive McCain for supporting Dubya--and voted against our sitting senator for endorsing the wrong candidate in the primary, but other than that my voting was conventional. Current Mood: content Current Music: Hail to the Chief (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
9:53 am	Again I ask: Can't anyone write decent software? Thank you for contacting Points.com. The reason your US Airways account will not validate is because, if you have a ZIP+4 (nine-digit) ZIP code, you cannot use all nine digits in your Dividend Miles® account or Points.com will be unable to confirm your account registration. To fix this problem you will have to contact US Airways Dividend Miles customer support. The toll-free number is 1-800-428-4322. When you reach them, ask them to confirm the ZIP code they have listed for your account. This code should only contain five digits. If Dividend Miles has recorded a nine-digit ZIP+4 code, you will have to ask them to remove the final four digits. Once this is done, we will be able to complete registration of your Dividend Miles account. We really appreciate your visit to Points.com and look forward to your return. In the meantime, if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us. Do not reply to this e-mail, which was sent from an unmonitored account. Instead, to contact us browse to our Support page and click the E-mail link. Note that if you are a Points.com Gold member, you have unlimited access to live, real-time customer support over the phone or through Internet Chat. If you are not a Points.com Gold member, it's easy to upgrade. Thank you for using Points.com. Jo Customer Support Representative Current Mood: resigned (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
8:37 am	Super Tuesday Well, I voted. As "unenrolled", I had two decisions to make: which primary and which candidate. But of the four top candidates, the one I think would make the best pres is Hillary, so I voted for her. Anyone who thinks she doesn't have a lot of relevant experience hasn't been paying attention. And those who think she doesn't learn from said experience need only look at how she's changed her approach (but not the goal) on health care since the disaster at the beginning of Bill's administration. And anyone who says she hasn't run anything has never been a working mother. Obama? Lots of glitz. Not much substance. And I remember the last time we had a candidate who said he was a uniter, not a divider. He may be inspirational, but that doesn't always work out so well. While JFK inspired us with "ask what you can do for your country" and "the moon and back before the decade is out", he also brought us the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam. McCain? I can't forgive him for supporting Bush. Romney? Don't trust him in the slightest. Funny how all his views have changed, depending on what he was running for. Now, my pet peeves for the season. All the politicians are falling all over themselves to give out "free money" to everyone. But it's borrowed money, placing our children and grandchildren in even greater [national] debt. Meanwhile, the fed is furiously lowering interest rates. As the rates go lower, so goes the value of the dollar, and dollar-denominated prices will surely surge. What's the cure? Why don't we just let the recession happen. Why don't we not bail out people and companies who have made mistakes. Let's teach the lesson that risks are really risky and mistakes have undesirable consequences. How can anyone learn from mistakes otherwise? Current Mood: resigned (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
9:11 pm	And which side is that? "...all of the forces of civilization...need to understand that this is a battle against freedom and tyranny, worldwide; that the good guys need to be on one side." --Fred Thompson, on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Wednesday 5 September 2007 Current Mood: amused Current Music: Hail to the Chief (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
5:25 pm	Kmart's gotten on my list I went to Kmart this morning to get a couple of clothing items on sale. One item (shoes) they no longer had in my size (it was the last day of the sale); I eventually asked an employee if they had any hidden away and they said everything they had was already out on the floor. The other item I came for I absolutely couldn't find amongst the haphazardly arranged similar items in the store, except for two not in my size. Again, I eventually asked, was referred to yet another employee, who agreed to let me have a similar item from a different manufacturer for the sale price. Anyway, I went to customer service with the wrong-sized shoes to get a raincheck. After going through several employees, I ended up talking to the manager, who, after verifying with two other employees that they didn't have any more of those shoes, explained to me that the UPC was different for different sizes, so the best she could do was to give me a raincheck for that wrong size. Of course, that's not completely useful because their notification system would let me know they had the wrong size, but wouldn't let me know if they got in the right size! But it would lock in the sale price, so I agreed. Then she told me she couldn't do it at all because the system was down! Functionality AND reliability, an excellent combination. At that point, I said I'd take a hand-written note, which she graciously agreed to after warning me that it wasn't official and quite possibly wouldn't be honored. Of course all this took a lot of my time, making it clearly not worth bothering with, but at least I had a perverse sort of fun. Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
10:25 pm	staring up at the sky Wednesday evening 21:21 EDT the shuttle and spacestation were supposed to appear in the WNW at 45 degrees elevation. And sure enough they did, moving in synch almost directly overhead (ouch, my neck!) and back down low in the SE before they disappeared. It was actually rather awe-inspiring to realize that my species, despite all its faults, managed to put up those big, complicated pieces of equipment, with actual people in them, into that hostile environment. (Of course, they were just bright points of light--my unaided eye had no hope of resolving anything more; I think I'd need a telescope with adaptive optics to really see anything, even though they were only a couple of hundred miles away at zenith.) Makes one think something like the Enterprise could be built someday, if our species somehow manages to avoid committing collective suicide first. And we have so many choices--biological, nuclear, chemical, environmental, AI, to name a few. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
11:20 am	Today has been pretty good so far Sort of. I just had my '01 Prius serviced on Friday. Monday evening, on my way home, the CHECK ENGINE light came on. Luckily I didn't need to be in early this morning, so I dropped by my Toyota dealer. Turns out they had to replace part of the exhaust system, and it only took an hour and a half. The really good news is I was still 40 miles shy of the warranty expiration! Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 11th, 2007
3:05 pm	TIVO sucks! Well, I have a series 1 TIVO box, and apparently TIVO doesn't really care about their early customers any more. They've had plenty of time to prepare for the new daylight savings time schedule, but, lo and behold, I awoke this morning to find my TIVO running an hour slow. So I forced it to make a daily call, which is supposed to reset the clock and get any updates, but, sad to say, it was still running an hour slow after the successful call. Of course, this wouldn't really be a problem if the UI allowed you to manually adjust the clock, just like every other video recorder in the world. Since the clock on my [Philips branded] TIVO normally runs slightly fast, I've had to make extra calls just to keep it synched with the real world. Terrible engineering. Anyway, I tried to find out about the daylight time problem on their website, but the page in question refused to load (maybe too many people were trying to look at it?). So I called them up, and they cheerily told me that the problem would be fixed on April 1 (which I believe is when daylight time had originally been scheduled to happen before the new schedule). So I asked the simple question: is this a permanent fix, or will it be a problem again at the next transition? The customer service people don't know--they haven't been informed. I'm guessing that TIVO just won't support the series 1 and it WILL be a problem at every transition, until everyone throws out their old series 1 boxes and replaces them, hopefully with some other company's product! I suppose when we are forced to abandon NTSC for HDTV, the boxes would be obsolete anyway. Current Mood: pissed off Current Music: Chopin funeral march (Comment on this)
Friday, January 5th, 2007
2:10 pm	CVS/Kodak sucks! I went to my local CVS last night to get some 35mm film from my Maui trip developed. They had a Kodak lab right in the store, and would do it in about an hour. Big Mistake!!! Two of the three rolls ended up with each frame of the negative having what appeared to be a tiny irregular pinhole. Actually, the pinhole position slowly advanced through the frames, so there were a couple of pictures that were OK, presumably because the pinhole appeared in between frames. So the resulting pictures had an ugly irregular dark spot. I ordered a CD of the pictures for each roll as well (despite the fact that their digitization is only 1.5 MPixels, far less than the film resolution), and of course the problem appears on the digitized pictures as well. Minor additional problems are that the order of the pictures on the CD is reversed, and some of the pictures on the CD are upside down, which means that the picture->CD process is not completely automated. I didn't check to see if anything was mirror-imaged. But I did get everything back in about an hour, and the technician told me I took really great pictures (so much for privacy) [maybe because she knew she had screwed up?]. Current Mood: annoyed (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 31st, 2006
9:45 pm	Got just back from Hawaii Hawaii was a lot of fun, but the travel is gruelling. And not being able to find the hotel when we arrived at night in the rain and being dead tired after close to 24 hours of traveling was a real drag. Apparently they weren't expecting us at that time, so the gate was locked, and the gate didn't have any sign that there might be a hotel there. (They now have a sign; probably they put it up because of our nightmare.) Luckily Ray was able to use his cellphone effectively, although the number we had was a place in California. I was just really worried that the whole thing was a scam and we didn't really have accommodations. We went to some nice local hikes the first day (near Haiku [Maui] along the coast) and to the Io Needle, where Radia met some fellow nerds, went out past Lahaina the second day, where Radia signed up for a timeshare presentation in order to get discounts on snorkeling and a luau, and saw a big blowhole. We looked for whales but didn't really see any. The third day we did the snorkeling, timeshare, and luau. I thought I was going to drown doing snorkeling, but managed to survive (although I suspect that's where I contracted a cold, unless it was from Ray). I definitely prefer aquariums where the fish are where they belong [in the water] and I'm where I belong [not in the water]. The luau was really hokey, but I suppose it's something you just have to do once in Hawaii; the finale was an impressive torch juggling/dancing act. They had continental breakfast on the boat before the snorkeling, and cookout during the snorkeling; the timeshare presentation had lunch too, and then there was the luau. I think we ate enough that day. The fourth day we did Haleakala. Although the clouds only occasionally broke, that was a lot of fun, and I was amazed that I could hack a three hour hike at 10000 feet, with lots of elevation changes. The fifth day we did the road to Hana and beyond to the Seven Pools and some very impressive waterfalls (a four mile round-trip hike). It was here that Charlie hurt his leg while assisting Radia, who is not a fan of narrow bridges and water crossings. I was starting to get sick. The last day, we took it relatively easy, and just went to the aquarium, which is a really nice place, although somewhat pricy. They have a big shark tank where you can walk above, below, and through a glass tunnnel. There's a big jellyfish tank which is neat, a petting zoo for sea urchins and cucumbers, a turtle tank, and lots of reef fish. We actually met someone Radia and Charlie know while we were there. We ate at IHOP the first two days [I really like IHOP, others are not so enthusiastic], a Thai restaurant which was OK, a food court a couple of times [dismal, IMHO], and Mama's Fish House twice [very good but very pricy], once on the Haleakala day, and once by Ray's request on the last day [I think he wanted to try another decadent dessert]. On the last day, we also managed to play a little bridge, some outside at the hotel's gazebo (after we checked out) and some at the airport (after we checked in). I'm very glad to be home, and about ready to crash. Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)