Daily Diversion Archive for August, 2000

8/25/00

I was taking care of some business in the backyard last night. You know the drill: Mow the lawn, weed-whack the weeds down, pick up the dog poop... that sort of thing. Anyway, the guy from across the street drove by in the alley to shoo his kids back in for dinner. We stopped and chatted for a while. He was driving a new SUV and he had mentioned that he had gotten rid of his Mustang convertible to get it. He's owned a long line of late model sporty convertibles, and I asked him when his next one was due. He said that since his kids were getting bigger, he needed something a little more practical to haul them around in. He also wanted something to travel in because they go down south every summer. I remember him renting a big SUV thingy to make the trip last year and he said that it was the perfect thing for long distance traveling.

I admire the guy for taking care of business and getting a practical vehicle, but darnit, he was almost my idol when it came to having a "garage car" as he puts it. A garage car is one you keep in the garage or in storage and just take it out for the summer. Convertibles, sports cars, antique cars and those sorts of things are the "garage cars." My relatives on the farm would call these their "Sunday cars" or their "church cars." I can't believe that he of all people would give his convertibles up. How will I ever know when summer is officially here? I could always tell when it was time to put the air conditioners in the windows. His green Camaro convertible with the boom stereo in the trunk would be pulled up outside crankin' out the funk. This almost always meant that I was going to need cool air to sleep in very soon, and something to make noise to drown out the boom from the cars on the street. What am I going to do now?

I'm officially taking the whole of next week off from writing this column. I'll be back on September 5 with more stuff. Until then, take it easy.

8/21/00

I've been a busy bee lately. I've been studying things, writing stuff, and installing strange, new softwares. Yes, I've been dabbling with LINUX.

Linux was a tough install on the Frankenputer I threw together the other week. It's a lame little box: Pentium 133 with 32meg of RAM and SCSI everything except the floppy. Therein lay the problem. The darn thing wouldn't boot to save my life with the first SCSI card I tried. The second one worked out just fine. Odd thing, this. The second card I tried was the very same card that Windows NT wouldn't see no matter what I tried. What can I say? Computers can be difficult.

I didn't give up and on the 5th try, I was able to get Linux installed. Now what? I'm not sure what I'm going to use it for, nor am I really sure I even need a Linux box. I think I'll use it, but I think that in order to save my sanity, I'm going to have to purchase another monitor, keyboard, mouse and modem. It seems I don't do much with computers at the house unless it's internet stuff. Like this very column.

I acquired another bike this last Sunday. It's a rough looking '74 Honda CB550. My neighbor was having fueling problems with it. Fuel was literally gushing out of the thing when it was idling on 2 cylinders. We'll see what happens with it. I think it will be needing a battery and carb cleaning before any attempts at restoring it happen. I'll definitely keep the board posted.

Well, if you've not seen Survivor yet, then this link will mean nothing to you. My pals have gone "national" with "Suburban Survivor", a spoof on the popular TV show. Check it out, it's funny.

8/14/00

Well, we've returned from our little weekend getaway with all our friends. It was a good time, except for the fact I got sick on the last day. This is the usual thing. Last year and the year before that I was very ill on Sunday morning and it had very little to do with alcoholic libations. It was something of a cold and I'm still feeling it two days down the line. I feel much better, but I can't help feeling like a schmuck for having to take a day off to recover from VACATION!

I did have a pleasant time. The weather was nice, our hosts were very gracious, the guests were our pals and it was good to see everybody. I didn't geek out too much, although I caught myself talking engineering and Linux a couple of times. I have a really hard time shutting down the infoquest part of my brain. It just doesn't take a forced vacation.

I rode a power boat and it reminded me that I must get back to work on mine if I expect to have it going by the end of the summer. I swam in the lake and it occurred to me that I'm in much better shape than last year. It was impossible for me to get on the floating dock last year. This year I did it several times, even when I was tired. Cool. There was much screwing around in the water this year and even some swimming. I now am the proud owner of a mild sunburn around my shoulders and upper arms. This is proof that I had a good time when I felt allright.

As for getting back to updating this on a daily basis, I'm still hard at work trying to improve my lot in life. This takes up a fair bit of time and effort, so don't go looking for DAILY updates. I'll try to keep it new a couple times a week.

Caio for naio.

8/8/00

Yes, it's been a while since I've sat down to write one of these crazy columns. I'm going to be taking it really easy with the column this month. Call it a summer break that I richly need and deserve. Sometime today I'll have last month's archive up as a downloadable Palm file and as a HTML. That'll have to be enough for a while. I need a bit of time off to restoke the creative fires. I'll try to get here once a week, but as I said before, this month will be very hectic. Thanks for your patience. Tim.

8/2/00

What do you drive? Why do you drive it?

All the cars I and my wife presently own have been given to us for free. Yes. they didn't work, but that's not such a huge issue for me because I get sort of a charge out of fixing things.

We have a 4 door sedan (Calais), a personal luxury car (Thunderbird), a sporty little 2 door sedan (626) and a beat up old mini-pickup (Freetruck). The Calais is my wife's car. It is the most comfortable, reliable and classy ride we own. She commutes to work in it. The 'Bird is our spare car that we keep around for those times we need another car. The 626 is our assurance we will not be left without a car should something bad happen to the other two, and Freetruck is my tool for carrying bikes, boards and other junk around town. It is a tool.

We do not own an SUV. We do not have car payments. We do not drive these vehicles as a statement of our class. If anything, these cars are totally invisible in our neighborhood.

The truck, however, sends quite a message to the police of this fine city. It's like wearing a "STOP ME" button. The cops see a "hoopdee" truck like Freetruck and immediately assume it is:

A) Uninsured

B) Driven by someone who probably is doing "bad" stuff.

C) Probably deficient in some sort of equipment requirement and therefore should be stopped just to get it off the road.

I've been stopped numerous times in this truck in our neighborhood. There was a big article on racial profiling in this Sunday's paper, but I think there is another, unrecognized profiling technique being used by the cops. Class (or the appearance of it) profiling.

Yep, if you aren't embracing the trinkets of today's conspicuous consumption addled economy, you're up to something. You'll probably be voting for Nader, and thinking for yourselves. Boy oh boy, we can't have that. Says Officer Friendly, "I better pull this schlump over to see if s/he's up to something bad. This is a CODEFOR neighborhood after all. Perhaps then this dude can buy himself free of his ticket. That's what I call contributing to the economy..."

Class manifests itself in many ways. Probably the most visible and obvious signal of class is what you drive. Thank you, Dr. Obvious. It's funny, but having a nice car doesn't mean you're high class. It might have, once upon a time, when cars were "hand built." Nowadays, people buy cars to "prove" their upward mobility. It's funny what some people will sacrifice just to have a "stylin' ride."

Drive around our neighborhood and see all the SUV's and luxury sedans. Walk the dog around the early evening and see the owners of these vehicles loading their laundry baskets into them for a nice, "stylin' ride" trip to the laundromat. Priorities, people!

8/1/00

About a week ago, my wife told me she had just that day read some article about new research into why people are fat. Being a scholar of Public Health, it's her job to keep up on these things. This new research said that scientists somewhere thought they had isolated a virus that made some species of animals fat. This was in a scholarly journal, so it wasn't like it was just a bunch of crackpots trying to disprove the Holocaust.

Can you imagine it? An animal might be fat because of a virus. A virus. It doesn't take a big leap of extrapolation to think that perhaps this virus or one like it might contribute to obesity in humans. In HUMANS. US!

This is some pretty upsetting research. Just think if fatness was virally induced in humans. Could our society survive the paradigm shift to one that accepted fatness as a disease like the flu rather than a character flaw? It brings to mind the plight of alcoholics. It used to be that people who had alcohol problems were "bums" and "winos" and "drunks" and "lushes." Today they're Alcoholics. Alcoholism is viewed as a disease and is treated as such.

As a person who has been ridiculed as "fat" for nearly his whole life, I wonder what will become of me if a treatment is invented that will "cure" being fat. As with any virus, you will always have it, you either have to suppress it or get your body to produce antibodies to it. What will suppression drugs be like? Will they be fashionable? Will these drugs be the next Prozac? Will these drugs work? How long will one have to take them? Will there be side effects? Will people abuse these drugs and become too thin?

I will be willing to be that these pills when they come out will be about $25.00 each. This will cause the HMO's to choose whether or not to treat people with these drugs. If they do, they'll probably spend as much as they would have treating the problems of people who are fat. Who wins? The drug companies. You'd better believe that these treatments won't be cheap. They'll also come up against serious opposition from diet programs, fast food chains and other places who make serious cake off fat people. Imagine a world without Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine. Imagine the impact on health clubs when all of a sudden, the source of quick income that is fat people stops coming. I bet we'll see "image" advertising become even more pervasive than it is today. "Haven't you worked your abs into a washboard yet?!? For heaven's sake, why not?!? Are you some kind of ugly duckling weakling former fatty slob?!? Come on down to U.S. Fit and Swimup and WORK IIIIIIIT!!!"

Are we ready for this?