3/26/2015 #
Sketching the Ichthus
My work-issued laptop (Vista 32!) has degraded to the point that fixed-width fonts no longer render properly. I was going to screenshot what it looks like typing this blog entry in a fixed-width font, but my screenshot tool is fudged as well and requires a reboot to work. This in turn seems to block the Print Screen button from working on my keyboard.
I told IT this just to hammer home the point that (1) I know what I’m doing, and (2) this is utterly abhorrent to be dealing with this in 2015. The guy looked at it and mouthed, “That would drive me insane” and then wished me luck contacting hardware support via an un-monitored mailbox. Maybe this time next year I’ll get a new computer.
If I’m lucky.
3/9/2015 #
Specific Tools
I found out about basin wrenches a few weeks ago on Ask This Old House, which I’m sure was a contributing impetus to replacing my kitchen faucet yesterday. It was worth $20 (plus the cost of the new faucet!) just to see a specific tool do a specific job exceedingly well. Then I found out my new faucet had actually improved upon the normal tighten-up-a-nut-impossibly-far-up-underneath-your-sink design with a clever little screw-against-washer number that rendered the wrench unnecessary for the new install. It was still quite handy for the removal of the mild atrocity of design that previously occupied the space.
The “minor annoyance, expensively fixed” is quite the money trap as a homeowner, but sometimes it feels good to scratch the itch.
I remember the time when it felt so unpalatable to carry around general-purpose devices like smart phones. It’s fallen back a lot with time, but for a time one of my highest-PageRank blog entries was this little ditty, which admittedly has not aged well (and - I’d interject - carries a bit more of the mid-naughts blog acerbity than my current preferred blend). But it remains logically sound that you just couldn’t see the 4”-6” screen thing coming, with QWERTY options that avoid making you look like a drug dealer, and that purpose-built workhorses were the only thing approaching a usability threshold under those limitations.
There’s still a quaintness to the Sansa Clip, which has avoided whiz-bang/gee-whiz features like heart rate monitoring, mood ring coloration, pedometer functionality, and the like, despite it being generally fastened onto or close to your person. It’s nice to use something that can get caught on a tree branch and go swinging without eliciting existential terror. Battery life is fair, and every hour burned on it is an hour unburned on the phone.
I remember a time when an iPod Touch actually looked pretty good to me, kind of at the end of the high water mark era of the iPod. Now an iPod Touch is basically your previous cell phone without a SIM card. I would expect to use my Moto X as such a device at times, but in truth it will probably stay in the drawer as a backup phone most of the time.
And with all the charm of dedicated solutions, seeing something like this Radio Shack ad makes it clear that all-purpose has generally won, even to the point that the commercial momentum of tablets seems to have stalled in light of improving screens on phones. Pretty incredible how quickly it shifted.
2/3/2015 #
If I Had an Orchard...
What’s my name, what’s my station, oh, just tell me what I should do I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you Or bow down and be grateful and say “sure, take all that you see” To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me
And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?
1/16/2015 #
By the Numbers
The alarms honk by the numbers. The blood pressure is an alarm, but they tell you it is not a bad one. The bleating continues in arrogant defiance of this fact. The temperature is an alarm but only because of the lights. The lights are on because the Bilirubin is too high. Only good blood-work results can turn off the lights.
The TPN is a stew of numbers. The label has his name on it, or at least the hospital’s name for him. “Share a TPN with BABYBOY,” you imagine the Coke can saying. But don’t, because the TPN is keeping him alive.
The CPAP went from 8 to 6. It could have gone back to 8. When you ask them the unit of measure, they have to think before they answer that it is centimeters of water. The water is bubbling next to the IV pole. The reality of this is simultaneously off-putting and welcome.
The milk is first gravity-fed at 11, and then they adjust down to pump-fed at 5. The 5 would fit in 2 sewing thimbles. On another floor, the babies are drinking 2 or 3 or 4 in a sitting, but these numbers are 60 or 90 or 120 on this floor. An hour’s snack is a day’s sustenance, a floor apart.
~ * ~
The unenlightened nurse speaks by the numbers. This was that and now it is something else. It fell, then it rose. It is okay now.
The competent nurse says to ignore the numbers and watch the squiggles. The kinks in the squiggles say the numbers are no good. Watch the squiggles, don’t go by the numbers.
The beautiful nurse says to ignore the numbers and squiggles and look at the baby. You feel a chill go through you when this nurse goes off shift. You imagine her walking down the street in a jacket, eating a granola bar, chatting on the phone about getting a pair of pants altered the next day. You wonder how he will do, now that he is back to being numbers and squiggles for twelve more hours.
~ * ~
The beds are arranged by the numbers, but most are not really beds. They are seed-pods, husks, formative material that will be shed in better days. You want to pick these things off like a scab.
The NICU is a point in space and a vector of change. You say “A-17” but you think “A-17, and getting better.” “A-17, and maybe transferring out soon.” “A-17, and they smile now when they talk to us.” “A-17, and the social worker wasn’t so persistent this time.” “A-17, and they haven’t mentioned the chaplain since check-in.”
You can’t avoid looking down the rows. The older babies are a curiosity; the private rooms are a riddle. You see doctors in the half-poncho scrubs they always wear on television when doctors work on babies. You want to shoo these people away, these totems of severity. Don’t do your procedures around my child; my child is getting better.
~ * ~
The overnight housing is assigned by the numbers. “How far away do you live?” “How many children did you bring with you?”
They say there is no food allowed in the Ronald McDonald House, but you can eat in the waiting rooms if you want. The man with the big, sweet-smelling bag of food looked hollow when they told him the rule. A fallen french fry sat at the base of a short staircase for a few hours one night. Maybe one of his kids dropped it.
~ * ~
Raising babies is measured by the numbers. The time between feedings, the focal distance of the eyes, the change in weight, the increase of height. These are numbers that could be printed above pictures of smiling people in glossy magazines.
Every problem in a healthy baby is wrapped around a blessing. The piercing cry comes from a pair of healthy lungs. The spit-up comes from an overfull belly. The stinking diaper comes from a motile intestine.
Amidst the honking alarms, the bubbling machines, the sanitization protocols, and the visiting rules, the NICU is quietly growing these bundles of potential, these radiators of sweet heat, these evokers of joy, these generators of worry. May it be unnecessary for all of them as soon as it can be.
1/8/2015 #
Ol' Hoot Owl is Callin'
There is a specific type of slow day at work that involves me getting Randy Travis’s “Honky Tonk Moon” stuck in my head, slowed down to maybe 85% speed. I can’t find the appropriate GPMAA station to counteract this.
This is perhaps my #2 worst song to get stuck in my head, preceded by ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses”. I’m afraid to type those words most of the time.
12/2/2014 #
Recommendations
Amazon’s gift guide game is not so strong this year.
Men in the 25-55 bracket appear to be interested only in e-books, novelty mugs, blenders, Keurig machines, and pretentious whiskey glasses.
12/1/2014 #
Lights Out
I bought a plug-in staked spotlight for our new wreath and was unable to hook it up because it had a three-pronged cable and my light cord is not grounded. What gets me is it’s a metal-housed light that stakes into the ground. Tempted to just connect the ground prong to the housing of the light.
Looks like a lot of the three- to two-prong adapters have a little metal ring that you can connect to ground. I’ll probably solder a wire to that and to another little metal stake on the other side and off we go. Safe!
