I recently started watching TV again. It's amazing. I have three particular observations:

1) Cable TV actually has more advertisements than regular TV. This doesn't make any sense. What am I paying for?
2) They relentlessly show the same advertisements over and over and over, so there are 4 or 5 ads that you see almost every single commercial break all day long.
3) Comcast (my cable company) constantly advertises for itself. I guess the idea is that once they've got you as a customer, if they constantly tempt you you'll upgrade more easily. Or perhaps they just fill empty ad space with house ads.

I've been meaning to write the whole trip up in epic fashion to suit its epic nature, but for now, enjoy these photos I took while on the road from San Francisco to Chicago - CLICK.

So... people are a flutter about the negative effects of High Fructose Corn Syrup and it's inclusion as an ingredient in, well, practically everything that's been processed in any way. Given that it's a more refined product than naturally occuring cane sugar, and given that reliable sources back it up, I'm inclined to conclude that HFCS is generally something to avoid. Still, having just spent 30 minutes reading wikipedia and the links that it recommends, it seems that small amounts of it are probably not a big deal, and that high amounts of any sugar will likely lead to trouble. So... "cane sugar" is marginally better, but keeping sugar away in general is the best move. In the US, it seems even most bread, including top-brand whole wheat bread is packed with added sugar of varying forms. So is almost anything, including things labeled "natural". It takes a long consious effort to go back to less-sweet foods, but once you do, you realize how ridiculously sweet everything had been before and discover all sorts of new appreciation for food.

(graph swiped from wikipedia)

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On xmas eve 1998 I found myself in a town in Argentina called "Perito Moreno" with a bunch of Isralies camping out at the edge of town. Along came this British guy who introduced himself as Karl. In typical traveller's custom we discussed where we were from and where we were heading - me south, him north. I asked if he had a vehicle and he casually said "no, I'm walking". He then explained that he had spent the last month walking north along the highway from Punta Arenas, Chile bound for...drum roll... London. Yes, London.

Obviously, this led to a lenghthy conversation. This guy had managed to get some sponsorship from a shoe company to set him off, and had this cart-thing that he was towing behing him to carry his gear. I'd heard of people making epic treks like this before, but exactly how the heck he inteded to cross the ocean was the nagging question. So... Karl explained that quite simply, he would walk to North America (passing through the dreaded Darien Gap along the way), then another long slog up Central America, Mexico, the flat plains states and provinces, the Alaska highway, the Alaska interior and ... then, with sufficient sponsorship, he would wait for winter and WALK across the bering sea to Siberia... then casually continue across Russia to Europe and stroll through the Chunnel to a glorious welcoming in the streets of London.

I've gotten periodic email dispatches from time to time, including a harrowing account of the Darien crossing, but nothing has suprised me more than this news: Karl made it across the Bering Sea! [ARTICLE HERE] and is now stuck in jail in Russia for failing to have the right paperwork. He was accompanied by another guy named Dimitri Kieffer and apparantly had to swim a few times wearing some kind of protective suit.

Unbelievable! Bravo Karl!!! If he can get across the Bering Sea, I'm sure a little Russin bureaucracy isn't going to slow him down for long. Keep your eye on this guy, looks like he's going to make it all the way!!!

Ha! Early Wednesday morning (1:02am) the time and date will be 01-02-03-04-05-06. A truly momentous moment to watch out t for!

Megha gave me these photos tonight. They're fabulous. From Burning Man 1999 ... I can't believe how much time has passed. Featured here are Alex B, Chad B, and Sue G!

Switching to Outlook from Thunderbird was one of the biggest computer related mistakes i've ever made. It took almost an entire workday to make the transistion, and Outlook has been beset by performance problems ever since (see below). To make matters worse, returning to Thunderbird has become almost impossible as it crashes every time I try to import my email back from Outlook, which is going to force me to continue using Outlook until I have time to switch, and thus loose a huge number of archived emails. Worse still, MozBackup seems to fail to restore my older Thunderbird email because I upgraded to version 1.5. Awesome!

Confusing? Use Gmail. If you're a casual user, it looks like Gmail is the way to go. If you're like me and want an offline client, then Thunderbird is clearly still the winner, just NEVER EVER try to mess with Outlook or you'll be up the creek.

There is a "church" in Kansas led by a "Rev. Phelps" who claims that the United States is falling apart as a result of homosexuality and he aims to solve it by, and this is the really weird part, showing up with a bunch of crazed zealots at the funerals of US soldiers to mock their deaths as being punishment from God. If it weren't so utterly evil it would almost be funny for it's complete insanity. (CNN Article). My always optimistic take on it is that this kind of idiot will help to discredit the religeous right in general, and in the long run make reasonable religeous Americans come to their senses.

I recently because frustrated with Thunderbird’s lack of a task list feature, occasional bugginess, and most importantly – lack of a calendar. So I bit the bullet and spent an astonishing 6 hours migrating my email from Thunderbird to Outlook. The outlook calendar does indeed seem to work pretty well, and the task list has been useful. I also like the *idea* of the vcf calendar cards, though no one seems to be using them. I also like the spell checking. The problems, however, keep mounting….

1) Junk mail filters are a disgrace. Utterly useless. I don’t even want to start explaining other than to say that I have outlook 2002, and that’s probably the main problem, but I’m certainly not going to pay for an upgrade given the following.
2) Zero support except the god-awful paperclip creature from hell. Thunderbird has amazing community support – for free!
3) SMTP (Outgoing Server) problems are even worse than with Thunderbird, You have to change them in multiple places instead of just one (if you have more than one account) and if they fail, your messages do not remain in the outbox, but rather fall into an ether from which it is extremely difficult to retrieve them. At Denver airport I paid $8 to send a bunch of emails. I played with the settings for 20 minutes until the last call for boarding all to no avail.
4) Just as buggy as Thunderbird, Outlook has crashed twice recently and took over 20 minutes and multiple restarts to fix. Sometimes takes 5-10 minutes to start up.
5) Does not have nifty “junk button” to toss unwanted emails without a click-drop down menu
7) Email look up is incredibly slow, and often “lies” to you, claiming someone is in the contacts list when they are actually not, and you have to go digging around for their email. Thunderbird, unfortunately, has the habit of remembering too much and giving you loads of bunk addresses. So this is a toss up.
8) Won’t show image attachments in the email so you have to open them in another application
9) For some asinine reason, uses Microsoft Word to edit emails, as if I wanted to open a word doc! This is slow and repeatedly crashes. Then word “recovers my documents”
10) Labeling is no good. Thunderbird lets you label things with various colors easily
11) Send/Recieve with Outlook takes 5 to 10 times as long as with Thunderbird, especially at start up.

The Junk Mail and the Outgoing Server problems are really the only two that are destroying my affection for this program. The question is… do I bite the bullet and invest MORE time in outlook to try and solve those problems, or go back to Thunderbird and continues using post it notes for my calendar?

True, Thunderbird is a massive memory hog. And it lacks a Calendar. This is a horrid, horrid flaw. But I'm not sure how much longer I can take the added agony that Outlook has given me. What to do?

I have recently become aware of a disturbing medical phenomenon. Occasionally the nerves in my right thigh vibrate slightly for no reason. My friend Jason S calls it "The Phantom Vibration"... it's the feeling that you have an incomming phone call when the phone is not actually ringing. Sometimes the damn thing isn't even in my pocket, but my leg actually twitches.

The Phantom Vibration seems to be triggered just by *thinking* about getting a phone call. Or maybe it's triggered by a slight movement in the pocket which makes you jump to the conclusion that "Oh my God! Someone's Calling Me!" which causes the sudden need to reach for the phone. Could it be a physical manifestation of unhealthy obsession with connectedness? I have deliberatedly switched the pocket in which my phone sits in order to try to mitigate this somewhat.

What does it take to become a luger? I mean, there's certainly some skill involved... you need to run really fast, and stay stiff and straight and know when to adjust the steering and brakes, but how long does it really take to get good at it? To qualify for the olympics? And for that matter, what about a member of a bobsled team? Especially the guys who just run then jump in the middle and sit there, heads down?

I'm sure there's something involved, but if I had a bit of savings and could pay for a trainer and take a year or so off work to hang out in Park City, for example, could I become a bobsledder? How many contenders for the US olympic bobsled/luge/skeleton teams are there? I may have to investigate this....

Merci is a phenomenal photographer. Her selection of photos from our Mexico trip are here!

And on Flickr! Merci's photos - My Photos. Subtle differnet photo styles... fun to compare!

I've been bad about posting pics from trips lately, but here's some cool ones from the new year's Mexico road trip. We went up to Guadalajara then to Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico. It's sort of a "Tahoe" type place, minus the snow, where a lot of people (Americans and Canadians in particular) have gone to retire. It's really quiet and really beautiful.

Anyway, it's also been a local catalyst for environmental action. Much like Mono Lake and the Aral Sea, industrial and urban water diversions have massively shrunk the lake from its normal levels, increasing the concentration of pollutants and wreaking havoc on the fishing industry. Introduction of the non-native water hyacinth has complicated matters as the devious plant is known to cover half the lake from time to time in a massive green carpet of un-navigable matter. It's also really shallow (about 15 feet), so many people feared the lake was literally on the verge of death.

Have a look at these Google Earth photos (click for full size). You will see the towns of Chapala and Ajijic, their respective piers, high and dry, and in the case of Ajijic, what appears to be a racetrack carved into what was once lake-bottom - indicating the assumed permanence of the dry condition.

THE TOWN OF CHAPALA:

THE TOWN OF AJIJIC:

I don't know when those satelites flew by, but this is what we saw a few weeks ago:

Has anyone EVER sent a "numeric page"? Since 1985? There is nothing that makes me quake with fury more than having someone's cell phone chatter on for an eternity beyond that person's indended outgoing message. I cannot think of one time, nor can anyone I know, where the computer voiced "post message" has had any utility whatsoever other than to chew up your time and sanity. "For! more! options! press 5!" ... what options? I just want to leave a message! like the good old days, when the thing just beeped and you started talking!

Now I need to listed to the computer tell me about all the idiotic things I can do other than just start talking. It's madness. A classic example of information overkill, the scourge of our times.

Some cellphone companies let you skip the whole thing by pressing "1", which, if standard, would be a godsend, but you never know what company you're dealing with and sometimes pressing "1" forces you to listen to the whole thing over again, or even hangs up with an insipid dismissal: "One! Is not a recognized option! Good Bye!" I quiver with helplessness knowing there is nothing whatsoever I can do but wait...wait....wait....

The only thing I can think of - this is all a conspiracy to burn more minutes. Who wants to start a class action lawsuit for the benefit of us all? At the very least, there ought to be a way to force your message to spare people the agony of listening to the robot... but alas, we must suffer.

(I wrote about this before, but having stumbled upon the Everyday Hogwash website, I decided to revisit this horrible issue in hopes of having it printed there)