Rarely do I pass along links that are just pure entertainment, but when it's an animated version of Tom Lehrer's amazing song about the elements, how can I resist? Back when I was doing the ACM programming competitions, it was a point of geek pride among some of my team members to have this song memorized.

New feature test

Testing another new feature of my upgrade -- the ability to post via
email. If you see this, it worked. If you don't, please let me know. ;-)

Tonight is for Billy Bragg. I'm very excited. Billy is one of several
artists that Marjorie introduced me to who I may now like even more than she
does. Opening act -- Ian McLagan. Anyone heard of him?

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To follow up on Marjorie's post, I too am starting to freak out a little. The culture shock will be a little rough to deal with. And I'm worried about the toilets, too. Especially since my love for the cuisine of the region is -- how shall I say -- unrequited.

We're going to make mistakes, sometimes, and be taken advantage of, occasionally, and be uncomfortable, frequently. But we're hardly the first person to visit there, and I think we do better than most tourists, because we're generally respectful and we don't expect people to cater to us or speak our language just because we're Americans or anything.

A photo from our wedding in Key West, courtesy my sister-in-law. Thanks, Kim! Here Mark demonstrates his drinking problem with a bottle of Schnitzius wine.

We've just got a little more than a month before we leave on our trip. My mood swings wildly each day between extremely excited and happy about our upcoming adventure, to terrified and hysterical that we've commited ourselves to a journey that will surely lead to one of our deaths. Anyway.....at the moment I'm very optimistic as I've spent the last hour looking up beach resorts in Vietnam and Thailand. It really will be an adventure in the truest sense, and hopefully we'll enjoy ourselves. The scariest part is giving up creature comforts like sit-down toilets and the relaxed ability to trust that ice cubes won't give you Cholera. Frighteningly, up to this point, Mark and I have never even managed to go camping together (in spite of several planned then cancelled attempts). So far, roughing it for us has meant staying in a hotel that doesn't have an iron or blowdryer in the room. I really think the most important thing that either of us can bring on this trip is a sense of humor.

Freaky coincidence last night. I was out with some friends, and happened to play a really obscure Stones song -- "Dear Doctor" -- on the jukebox. I actually picked it because I had no idea what it was. Well, when I got in my car to leave, what should come on the radio but that very same song. (It was played on WRAS's Tuesday night country show, "Cowtipper's Delight"). What are the odds? That's a really obscure song.

I'm not one to put much stock in coincidences, though. With all the billions of things that occur in life, they're bound to happen...

Messing with the image uploads now. The only picture I could find on my computer right now that was worth uploading was this. This is what happens when you drink too much around my friends. At least there was no make-up applied (that time).

Getting down to crunch time. Yesterday I picked up a copy of all my medical records. Today I got my eyes examined, and some new contact lenses. Also made an appointment for a checkup. And Marjorie made us an appointment to get more shots and malaria pills.

IraqJournal.org deserves a look. It is a news site that breaks ranks with the mainstream press on the Iraq war issue. The slant is decidedly anti-war -- as am I, but I am not endorsing all the views presented there. I just think they deserve credit, and a link, for presenting an opposing viewpoint.

Some words on the sniper situation in DC, in a roundabout way.

When the Gainesville serial killings were going on back in the 80's, I was living in Orlando, about an hour south. There was phenomenal pressure on the police to find the killer. They responded by finding a scapegoat, who as it turned out was completely innocent of the crimes (but admittedly had his own issues). I remember this so well because the scapegoat was the brother of a friend of mine. I won't post his name; you can look it up. The family was dragged through enough unwanted publicity as it was. My friend ended up having to drop out of school, and her brother had his rights basically trampled. They convicted him of some other crime that should never have gone to court, and gave him the maximum sentence for that, solely because he was a suspect in these horrific murders. There was no public apology when the killer turned out to be somebody else.

After I moved to Atlanta, history repeated itself in the form of the Olympic Park bombing. Again, there was enormous pressure on the police to come up with a suspect. And they singled someone out, and trampled his rights. Even worse, they used dirty tricks to try to get him to confess (actually, they probably did enough of that in the Gainesville case too). I won't post his name either. He too was completely innocent.

These incidents were particularly galling, not only because of what happened to the scapegoats, but also because they gave the public a completely false sense of security, while the real perpetrators walked around free.

There is as much pressure on the police in the DC sniper case as there was in the other cases I just mentioned. I have no doubt that they'd have a scapegoat already, EXCEPT that the ongoing nature of the crime is preventing this from happening. Anybody they take into custody will be pretty much exonerated by the fact that they're being held while the next day's incident occurs. So this must be particularly frustrating for the DC police (and all the other agencies involved). All I can suggest is that people lay off and stop pressuring them so much, unless you're the type who can somehow take solace in the police having a suspect who is quite possibly the wrong man in custody.

Let's just hope they get the real killer(s), and soon...

Woops, things might already be happening...

In an earlier blog I mentioned how perplexing I sometimes find my alarm clock in the morning. This morning was a classic example. When it went off, I awoke convinced that there was a numeric keypad on top of it where I'm supposed to key in the time that I want to get up. In actuality, all that's there is a snooze button and an off switch. I banged around on top of it for about fifteen seconds, totally nonplussed. This is the same alarm clock I've been using for (I think) over twenty years now.

Just for the evening Mark and I have apparently traded places. He's sweetly in bed, while I'm wide awake at 1am surfing the web. Today's Doonesbury is about web logs. I predict it's only a matter of time before everyone has their own. I wonder if we'll continue to keep one after we've finally decided where we want to live.

Some crazy people I knew in college used to do this. This was in 1987. Same yell and everything, assuming they didn't just make it all up. Looks like they were trendsetters...

I've just upgraded to Blog*Spot Plus, for the storage place so that we have a place to upload pictures during our trip. Beyond that, I have to say, the Plus doesn't add much. There's a stats page, telling us how many hits we're getting, which is mildly interesting. And you can password protect parts of your site, which I don't see ever using. Nothing beyond that. There are a few features promised "soon".

We're going to go eat Vietnamese food then go buy a new digital camera for the trip today. Maybe we'll stop in an internet cafe to see if we can upload some pictures from a strange computer later on.

I"M NOT ALONE!
Apparently lots of people, myself included,(see Marks "fun site") used to believe that chocolate milk came from brown cows. Someone in my family, probably my sister, told me that when I was a child, and I believed up to an embarrassingly late age.

I'm having one of those days where the inspiration to blog just isn't coming to me. I've had about three aborted attempts so far. So instead I'll just point you to a fun site. Enjoy your weekend.

Customer Service?
Bank of America Sucks! I tried to call them today to complain about late charges they've been applying to an account that's closed and they put me on hold for about 20 minutes before a recording stating "your call cannot be processed at this time" came up. Thanks for wasting my time folks!

As usual the Friday five is unfortunately boring so I'm going to skip it and instead use my time to call Bank of America back and bitch at some poor customer service representative (if I can ever get through).

Here's a little post I made a few months back to a mailing list I'm on, describing the experience I had just had that I alluded to a few blogs back... Posted here for posterity.

What a trip. I feel totally put through the wringer.

Today I went to court to contest a $25 parking ticket. I honestly
thought this was going to be like traffic court, where you just
describe what happened, and the judge makes a decision. Instead,
I found myself having to improvise my best Perry Mason.

I found myself scheduled in the BIG courtroom, intimidating
enough in itself. And, pleading not guilty, I was immediately
offered a choice: proceed without a lawyer and have the judge
decide, or schedule a JURY TRIAL. Over a parking ticket. Huhwhat?
I decided to just go for it without the jury, since by the time
they would've scheduled that, I would be out of the country...

They gave me a ticket on a street where there was NO indication
of "no parking" until well past where I parked. So I had taken
a series of pictures showing the layout of the street. But I
had NO idea how to submit them as evidence, and the prosecutor
jumped all over me for trying to do it at a time when I was
supposed to be cross-examining the officer. I still sat there
and questioned the officer for about ten minutes, with a whole
lot of hemming and hawing. I had some notes attached to the
photos, which the prosecutor also objected to, and I had to remove
them. Can you tell I was in over my head? The judge took some
sympathy to my deer-in-the-headlights look and gave me some
nudges in the right direction. There was still at least five
or six times that the prosecutor objected.

Bottom line was, the officer lied through his teeth about where I was
parked, and I couldn't contradict him, so I was eventually found
guilty. They waived my fine, though (I think out of sympathy).

Considering all the time I spent getting the court date, taking
the pictures, and going to the trial today, it was far from worth
it financially. But dammit, what's money without experience?
Today was an EXPERIENCE.

Phew. I need a drink.

Today's question to ponder: Would you be willing to undergo a DNA scan that tells you what you're genetically predisposed to, which might conceivably tell you how you are going to die, and at what age? This is a question we're all going to have to face, possibly even within the next year or two. Frightening stuff.

More on this morning's wreck can be found here, if you're curious...