I first learned of The Ghost Map from a posting on Kottke. Once the book was released I picked up a copy and read it from cover to cover. It is a thoroughly fascinating look at science, myth, cities, disease, and people. Steven Johnson is rapidly becoming the Tracy Kidder or John McPhee of my generation.
Rating: If you like fresh drinking water, read this…
In the past whenever I have had to be gone for more than a day I have asked a woman in the apartment office to empty the litter for me. This a person that Michele had become friends with and who always gladly takes on the task for me. Last week in preparation for being out of town for nearly five days I asked her once again to stop in and check on Taz and empty the litter.
She explained that she would be off Friday through Sunday, but that she’d have one of the girls in the office stop by and take care of it. I agreed and left it at that. Yesterday, Saturday evening, I called my voice mail at home and received a message from one of the “girls in the office” telling me that they had been “too busy” on Friday to check my cat and might be too busy again on Saturday to fulfill their responsibility.
Getting the message that my cat was being ignored, and having that message delivered in a rather cheerful, cavalier tone, while I was 400 miles away did not set will with me. After stewing for several minutes I called the office and left a rather terse message on their voice mail system. In no uncertain terms I expressed my displeasure that the responsibility they had been entrusted with had not been met. Their machine actually cut me off in mid sentience and I had to call back and leave a second message.
We debated returning from Illinois in the middle of the night, but once I had vented over the phone I was able to convince myself that Taz would be okay, and that even if the two litter boxes were full, that the worst she’d do is crap on the carpet somewhere. After a long and somewhat restless night the return trip to home was uneventful.
Shortly afternoon I received a new voice mail message on my cell phone from the apartment office explaining that the litter had in fact been emptied on Saturday. It would have saved me a long night, and whom ever took the messages this morning a scalded ear if only they had thought to call back and leave a second message.
In the end Taz was fine, the litter was clean, and the apartment in good shape. I intend to stop in the office tomorrow after work and talk to my friend there and put a final note on this episode. In the future when I am going to be gone, if the person I know can’t personally attend to this favor, then I will have to seek out a better solution. I feel a strong responsibility to my cats, even if the “girls” in the office don’t.
For too long now I have been ignoring a lack of style sheet on the individual category archive pages. Tonight I finally tackled the intricacies of MoveableType tags and CSS and built a proper page to display all the entries for each of the categories on my site. As a bonus these pages now include the code necessary for my page tracking system to track their views.
Of course now I am itching to revamp the entire site.
Participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) has been an interesting challenge. Trying to come up with some thing to say every day, and then remember to capture it here before midnight has been interesting. I don’t really mind, but I am glad that it isn’t NaBloPoYr.
The readership numbers for zanshin are up a bit as a result of the traffic from the NaBloPoMo randomizer. Already, with still six days to go in November, this is the fourth largest month for unique visitors, and the eighth largest month for total page views in the last twelve. While my readership numbers aren’t huge (we’re talking dozens not hundreds) there has been a jump in daily visits. Fifty or seventy visits a day is now common, whereas fifteen or twenty was common before.
I’d like to think that at least some of those visits are from new regular readers, but I guess only time will tell. Come December will my numbers dip back down to where there were twelve months ago, or will they stay at their new, higher level?
On this day of thanks giving here in the US I am truly thankful. I am healthy, happy, and glad to be alive. While the past year has been filled with challenges it has also been filled with good.
I hope that all of you are with family, friends, or the people who are most important in your life. Further that you can tell them, one and all, that they are important to you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
This year for Thanksgiving we’ll be traveling to Illinois to see my father. Dad had knee replacement surgery just a week ago, and by all accounts is recovering very quickly. His home health care agreement restricts his ability to travel so rather than going to my brother’s house, as has become the tradition in recent years, we’ll be staying close to his home for the holiday.
I’m not sure we’ll be having traditional fare, but I am certain there will be plenty of good food over a long relaxing day. The rest of the weekend will likely be spent sightseeing, with maybe a visit to my brother and his family.
Yesterday I set out to pay some bills online. Most of the creditors I have sport payment pages on their web site making it easy to point, click, and pay. One loan, however, proved to be the exception. Several years ago, when purchasing the two Apple computers I own, a line of credit was established at MBNA. The old MBNA site had a mildly complicated but still navigable online payment process that I used to make payments. Recently however, MBNA has been merged into Bank of America, and the online payment experience just isn’t working anymore.
Directing my browser to mbna.com resulted in my being redirected to Bank of America branded page that explained the merger. In the left side navigation there is a link to sign into your account. Click that link results in a textbox for your online ID and a drop down list cryptically labeled: “Account In”. Turns out they want to know what state your account is “in”. Is that the state where I live now? The state where I lived when the account was established several years ago? Or the state where the payment stub gets mailed when I pay by check? Or a fourth state unknown to me? Taking a wild guess that it was the state I lived in I selected Kansas. No dice. Adding insult to this process, once a state is selected you cannot select another one. A cookie is set and you are now forever trapped in the wrong state.
Subsequent tries with different browsers using Illinois and Delaware also failed to gain me access. Searching the payment stub revealed a different online address to try. This site asked for my account number - all fourteen digits of it, my zip code, and the last four digits of my social security number. After typing all of this in and hitting the enter key I got an error message stating “There was a problem accessing your account. Please call 1-800-XXX-XXXX.” Typing the numbers in a second time just in case I’d finger-fumbled the first time resulted in the same error.
The helpful customer service drone at the other end of the 800 number asked what the due date on my account was. “December 12” I replied, only to have him explain that since the account wasn’t delinquent I could not pay online. Huh? “You mean I have to wait until December 13 to pay online?” More or less the answer was yes. He did offer to take my payment over the phone but then his computer started having trouble so he transferred me to his manager.
After identifying myself to the manager (name, birthday, last four of social security number, and address), she said she could take my payment but there would be a $15 fee.
Excuse me?
A fifteen dollar fee.
I said you want me to pay you $15 because your web site won’t let me make a payment online until my account is delinquent? Without batting an eye or any trace of embarrassment she said “Yes.” I said, “You are certainly making it very hard for me to give you my money. I’ll waste a stamp and mail the check to you instead.
Unbelievable.
Recently I have started to pick up a few words in another language. Except for a disaster called “Latin I” in high school, and a smattering of dojo Japanese, I don’t speak any language except my cradle language. Perhaps it’s a failing of being an American, but I haven’t ever had the need to speak a second language.
What I have come to realize is that learning another language isn’t about the words per se, but rather about the concepts and constructs they describe. My language, American English, allows me to describe the concepts of my life and my world in a manner that makes sense to me. Learning German or French or Swahili isn’t just about the words, it is about learning to describe those concepts using new thought patterns. Speaking a second language isn’t about just saying the words; it isn’t about translating them in your head, word for word, as you go along. It is about actually thinking in that other language.
On Friday, after work, I stopped by the tire store and had a conversation with the manager there. Armed with information about the speed rating of the tires Lexus recommends for my car I hoped to talk them in to switching the tires from “H” to “V”. The manager proved to be very easy to work with and we were able to negotiate a solution.
This morning I took the car in at 9:00 and they put new “V” rated tires on the car, only charging me the difference in price between the original tire and the new one. As I had managed to put just over four thousand miles on the tires since they were put on, I thought this was a very generous deal for me. The store was surprisingly busy for a Sunday, and he didn’t call to let me know the car was ready until nearly 3:00 this afternoon.
The ride home was smooth and without wobble. Of course the highest speed limit between the store and my apartment is 45 MPH, the speed at with the problem only started. After dinner this evening a brief ride in the car demonstrated that there is no more wobble, even at highway speeds. While I am sorry about all the frustration and stress the first set of tires caused in just a month’s time, I am glad that I finally have the proper set of tires on my car once again.
Here in Kansas City a new trend in McTastlessness. Several of the local burger chain are now sporting spotlights on their roofs. At night when you are driving you’ll see a searchlight panning back and forth across the night sky, and if you follow it, you will end up and Ronald’s place.
How on earth did McDonald’s convince various local municipalities to allow them to further pollute the night sky with searchlights just so wayward teenagers will know where they can “get some fries with that?”