perrinelson

Abigail Adams nailed it in 1783.

"What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind." --Abigail Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, 1783

That’s what I want from my children. That they be wise. That they be virtuous. That they be benevolent, and that they be kind. That’s not too much to hope for is it?

I wonder how many parents end up being disappointed that we don’t get that from our children? Fortunately, while there’s life there’s hope.

“Weird Al” Yankovic has a fun song named “Virus Alert”. In the song he describes a particularly noxious computer virus that can do all sorts of terrible things both inside cyberspace and outside. This improbably powerful virus is described in one of those popular chain emails and has absolutely ridiculous capabilities. The email within the song warns you to “tell all your friends” and finishes with the words “hit send – right now!”.

Virus alert!
Delete immediately before someone gets hurt!
Forward this message on to everybody
Warn all your friends, send this to everybody
Tell everyone you know, tell everybody now
What are you waiting for?
Just hurry up and forward this to every single person that you know!
Hit send right now!

Weird Al is making fun of the people that send these emails out, always believing the worst things they read and feeling the need to warn us all, whether what they read is plausible or not. Those emails spread like a virus themselves. The only way to stop the pandemic spread is to toss them to the junk mail folder or delete them without forwarding them on. … but, how do you know when the threat of a virus is real or not?

I’ve been working with computers and the internet for nearly thirty years now. In that time I’ve had to deal with three viruses and trojan horses. It’s not fun when it happens, believe me. Both viruses and trojan horses can be blocked from accessing your computer, but you need to help to keep your machine safe. Anti-virus software isn’t enough.

This morning I received two suspicious emails. One purported to be from “Manager Stanley Davila [delivery@dhl-usa.com]” and the other from “The Facebook Team [service@facebook.com]”. Both of these emails carried an attachment. The attachment was a .ZIP file.

I’ve had dealings with DHL and with Facebook in the past, and neither of them have ever sent me attachments like this. UPS typically will send mailing labels as attachments to email, but they come in .PDF documents. DHL has never sent me a mailing label. Facebook was telling me that my account’s password had been changed and that the new password was contained in the attached document. That in itself was suspicious.

Normally, when an infected attachment comes with an email, McAfee’s anti-virus software flags it for me and leaves an attachment that contains a description of the virus. That didn’t happen this time. I saved both attachments to files on my computer. Then I ran a virus scan on each. McAfee still didn’t find anything. I opened the .ZIP files and found that they both contained executables. I stopped there and didn’t run the executables. Instead, I copied the executables and scanned them. McAfee still didn’t report a virus.

To tell you the truth, opening the .ZIP files like that was probably a dumb thing to do. I got lucky – I think. The files are really .ZIP files and nothing seems to have taken advantage of any flaws in the software I used to open them. But it could have, and if it did I’d probably be writing a very different article right now. I guess I’m not quite paranoid (Is it really paranoia if they really are out to get you?) enough yet. There’s a better way I could have handled this, using software that runs a “virtual computer” on my system.

Microsoft’s Virtual PC is free software. It allows you to create a simulation of a computer on your computer. There IS a version available for machines running Windows XP (that’s where the link goes) but Microsoft’s latest version is only available for Windows 7. Strangely enough, on the same page that contains a link to details about Virtual PC 2007, Microsoft says “No. Windows Virtual PC is an optional component of Windows 7 and is not available for Windows Vista or Windows XP-based PCs.” Trust me. I’m running it on my Windows XP-based PC right now. Windows 7 wasn’t even released in beta when I installed it.

Anyway, one of the features of Virtual PC 2007 is called “undo disks”. This is a special type of virtual hard drive that you can use with your virtual computers. When your virtual computer is running with undo disks, a shadow copy of the original configurations is stored. If you close your virtual session, everything you did to the virtual computer’s hard drive is discarded and your original configuration is restored, unless you choose to commit the changes to the hard drive. Naturally this requires more actual space than the virtual hard drive’s capacity, but then there isn’t any such thing as a “free lunch.”

So the right way to open an attachment that you aren’t sure about is to do it inside a virtual machine session on a virtual machine equipped with “undo disks.” That way, if the attachment is infected, you can discard the changes made to the virtual machine, discarding the virus. It’s sort of like using the Write-Protect tab on old floppy disks.

The only down side to this is that you have to have a license for the operating system you run on the virtual machine, as well as for the one you run on the host machine. Getting an FPP copy of Windows XP is probably a bit difficult right now. I fortunately have several extras laying about the house that I use for my virtual machines.

But, back to the email. Like I said, McAfee didn’t report any viruses, either in the .ZIP files, or in the executable files that they contain.  That doesn’t mean too much. Malware authors are always looking for ways to get around anti-virus software, and if they don’t use a recognizable virus signature that doesn’t mean that the programs they create aren’t malware.

Alan Turing proved a long time ago that it’s not possible for a computer program to tell what another computer program will do, except by running that other computer program. This applies even to anti-virus software. It can’t tell what a particular program will do, it can only recognize viruses by their signature. The signature of a virus is a particular pattern of bits contained within the body of the virus. Anti-virus software scans to see if there are any recognized patterns of bits and if so flags the file being scanned. A virus that hasn’t been seen before will probably contain an unrecognizable signature, and so anti-virus software won’t flag it.

In other words, anti-virus software can recognize known viruses and warn you about them, but it can’t recognize viruses it hasn’t seen before. Just because a scan turns up negative doesn’t mean you’re safe! So still not feeling to secure about running these attachments I decided to do a little more investigation (after wiping the attachments from my hard drive).

Email is a wonderful thing. It’s cheaper (once you get past the cost of the hardware and connection to the Internet) than physical mail. But, there are people out there that like to pretend that they’re other people. I receive between 40 and 100 pieces of email a day. Some are due to having subscribed to one or another email lists, others are due to commercial relationships I have with various online enterprises, and others are from friends. The rest is spam. Anti-spam software works in a similar fashion to anti-virus software. It looks for recognizable patterns and flags some mail as spam. Even so, a lot of spam gets past it.

I have three layers of anti-spam software helping to keep the junk mail out of my inbox. My ISP filters out the most obvious spam, so I never even have to download it. McAfee has an anti-spam feature as well that flags a lot of spam and moves it to a spam folder in my email client (I use Microsoft’s Outlook out of habit and because I can get Microsoft’s software at an (ex) employee discounted rate). Finally, there’s anti-spam protection built into my email client as well. I check at my ISP occasionally and find that they flag about 20% of my incoming email as being SPAM. I have yet to see a legitimate non-spam message filtered out by them, but it could happen, so I check from time to time. McAfee’s anti-spam feature almost never flags anything as spam – I don’t know why, but it’s essentially useless. Outlook moves about 40% of the rest of the email I receive into my junk email folder. Every couple of days I go through that and retrieve one or two messages that aren’t spam and delete the rest.

Even so, about 10% of the rest of the email I receive is never flagged as spam. I have exception lists set up so that I trust email from specific people – unless they include an attachment, and I trust email from myself (my web site sends me email from time to time when certain events take place). Most of the uncaught spam I get comes from people impersonating me. If I send you email from my primary email address, it will always be digitally signed. If it’s not, it’s not from me. I don’t usually send email from my secondary or tertiary email addresses, so if you’re not sure, send me email at my primary address and ask me to re-send the original mail. If the return email contains my digital signature, then I probably sent the first one as well. If it doesn’t, it’s NOT from me.

Occasionally spam manages to get around all of these safeguards, such as the two messages today. Using Outlook, it’s relatively easy to do a little extra checking on your email. Simply select the message in the message list, right click on it, and select “Options…” from the context menu. A dialog will appear something like this…

The important part of this dialog is the scrollable box labeled “Internet headers”. One of the first things I looked at was the “Return-Path” header. This tells the email client were to send replies. You’ll notice that it’s different than the address of the sender. “educationq5@verymove.com” is not the same as “service@facebook.com.” That’s a real good clue that this email is probably NOT from Facebook's customer service. That’s reason enough right there for me not to trust it any further. We can check further though, to see where it might have come from in the first place. Often spammers will put a fake return address as well as a fake sending address, so you can’t just stop there.

The “Received” headers give you nearly the complete path that the email took to get to your machine. You can see here that my ISP’s mail server was mail5a.brinkster.com, and that it got the message from mta2.brinkster.com. What you can’t see are the other “Received” headers. To do that you have to scroll down in the box. Brinkster receive this email from a machine known as “datacenter-30-159-92-77.sadecehosting.net”, and that machine received it from “mxs1.saleandpartners.com”. Facebook was never in the chain of senders. This mail is obviously fraudulent.

One final clue. There are “X-” headers included in the message. These headers are usually added by the email software that sends the mail in the first place. Spammers know how to fake headers, and this email includes some faked “X-” headers as well, purporting to have done an anti-spam check and similar things. But the original email client also included its own “X-” headers. The original email client was “Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180”. So the sender was probably running Windows XP, and using an older version of Outlook Express, associated with Internet Explorer version 6.

Most people have no idea that they can examine the Internet headers associated with email to determine whether it can be trusted or not. Since some spammers are pretty good at even faking those, using custom software to do the email sending, you can’t even be certain that the Internet headers tell the whole story. You can’t be certain that email you receive is actually from the people it purports to be from. Anti-virus software doesn’t do much good at detecting viruses it hasn’t seen before. There are people out there spreading malware, whether because they’re the type of people that just want to see the world burn, or because they want to steal from you. No matter how hard you try to protect yourself, there’s someone out there trying just as hard to slip past your defenses.

This is NOT paranoia. Read the news. Examine your own email. But most importantly…
NEVER
TRUST
EMAIL
ATTACHMENTS

They are trying to get you!

"Just hurry up and forward this to every single person that you know! Hit send right now!"

At least that’s what it looks like… according to reason.com. Go ahead and take the quiz yourself.

I suppose I should have expected this when I posted last night. After all, I did check the forecast and it did warn me. The plan for the day was to change the brake fluid, bleed the brakes, take the car once or twice around the block and then wash it inside and out so I could take it on a shake-down cruise tomorrow.

But, it’s raining (Ach, tha an t-uisge ann).

I’m not about to change the brake fluid in the rain. Getting water in brake fluid is definitely not a good idea. The stuff is hygroscopic enough as it is – which is one of the reasons it needs changing.

I guess I’ll do the work tomorrow morning and take the cruise in the afternoon. It’s forecast to be a cloudy day, but not a rainy one. Oh well, what’s another day after five years?

Three and a half weeks ago I wrote about cars, the street rod I want to build, the Mustang I’m still trying to get titled, and my Corvette. If you recall, I had just pushed the car out of the garage and washed it. The car had been sitting in the garage for five years, and there was a lot that needed to be done to get it ready to drive again. One of the first things I did was wash the car. Well, after sitting in the driveway for three weeks, I need to wash it again. I also need to clean out the interior again. There are a few minor leaks, and the interior has gotten musty – not to mention the other reasons for cleaning it out. So, tomorrow it’s time to get out the upholstery cleaner and clean the carpet, and to dust off the dashboard and wash the interior glass. I’ll also need to freshen the air a bit, but I don’t think I’ll use one of those pine scented cardboard trees.

The exterior needs another wash too. It’s time to take the clay bar to the paint and strip off the old wax as well as some of the more stubborn dirt. I need to apply a bit of rubbing compound in a couple of places too and polish away a couple of minor scratches. And then I get to apply the wax.

All of that though is merely cosmetic work. Sitting in the garage for five years has resulted in the need for other work too. For example, the battery was completely discharged. It had been drained to the point where it wouldn’t even hold a charge overnight. I replaced that last week.

I changed the oil and the oil filter a couple of days ago. That’s trivial work – except that I broke my filter wrench when I tried to remove the old oil filter, so I had to go get another one. One new filter wrench, a new filter, and five quarts of fresh oil later and I was ready to try starting the car. Or so I thought.

Of course the gasoline in the tank was bad. I expected that though. Instead of siphoning it off, I put some additives into it to stabilize it and remove the water. Since the tank was between half full and three quarters full, I put some fresh gasoline in to add some of the more volatile chemicals back in and bought a can of starting fluid (ether). This isn’t the best way to start a car after that long, but disposing of eleven gallons of old gasoline isn’t exactly straightforward. You can’t dump it down the drain, and even if it’s lost most of the volatile compounds you still can’t just set fire to it either. I have no idea where to recycle it.

Anyway, the car just wouldn’t start. Oh the motor would crank over, but it wouldn’t run. With the starting fluid the engine would run – but only so long as someone kept spraying it into the carburetor. The fact that the car would run at all was proof to me that the ignition system was working, and with the air cleaner removed so that the starting fluid could be applied it was clear that the engine was getting air. That left just one component of the combustion triangle missing – fuel.

So yesterday I went to look it over again. The fuel hose between the hard line and the pump was old and brittle, and there were obvious cracks in the smaller hose leading to the evaporative emissions canister. There weren’t any obvious cracks in the supply line, but it too was hard and unyielding. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I had found the problem.

So tonight I went and bought some fresh fuel hose. I took off the old hose and it was dry as a bone on the inside. There was no fuel in it at all – of course there wasn’t any getting to the carburetor, the fuel pump was sucking air. I noticed a lot of cracks in the old supply hose, but none that looked like they went all the way through the rubber. I replaced the hose anyway, since I had a fresh one.

Once the car was off of the jack stands, I fired it up. At first it only ran for a second or two. I wasn’t sure it was going to keep running. The second time it fired right up and ran independently. I put the starting fluid away, and waited. It kept running. I put the air cleaner back on and sealed it up, got in and kicked the idle down with the accelerator. The idle dropped to 800 RPM, right where it was supposed to be and it sounded good. I looked, and there are no fuel leaks.

I wish I could say the same about how it smelled and looked. Ugly white clouds and foul smells were emanating from the exhaust pipes. Happily though the white clouds cleared up after only a few minutes of idling. I think that most of that was moisture in the exhaust pipes. The smell is still bad, but I don’t think that will change much until I burn through this tank of gas.

I let the car sit there and idle for about twenty minutes, warming up. Then, I checked the transmission and added a bottle of transmission fluid treatment. This stuff basically replaces the additives in the old fluid and re-conditions the seals and bands. I’ve used it before and it really works.

I still haven’t quite got the car ready to drive though. After sitting in the garage for five years, the brake fluid needs replacing. I’ll be replacing that and bleeding the brakes tomorrow afternoon. Then I’ll drain the old coolant and replace it with new coolant and take the old fluids down to the parts store for recycling. By Saturday it will finally be time for a shakedown cruise. The car is already tagged and insured.

By next Saturday, the car will be ready to see some regular use. After five years it’s about time.

Yes, I know the picture is dark. What can I say? It’s late. I’ll have something better to show once the brakes have been taken care of and she’s been around the block.

My wife and I are football fans. More specifically, we’re Seattle Seahawk fans. We used to hold season tickets back when the team played in the old concrete hamburger known as the King Dome, and while they played at Husky Stadium, and for the first season in the new stadium. Then we dropped the tickets because they kept getting more expensive and the quality of the play kept getting worse.

It took a long time for us to lose our disenchantment with the team, but we were outraged at the officiating in February of 2005. The Seahawks have given us a bumpy ride, including one of the worst seasons I can remember last year, but we’re still fans. We just stick to watching them on television or listening to the games on the radio. We don’t even keep track of the schedule anymore until the last minute.

For some reason, we were under the impression that today’s game against Chicago was in Chicago and that the game would be played in the morning (Pacific time). So as we set up to watch the game in a bit of a groggy state (hey, it’s the weekend, and I sleep in), we were disappointed to learn that the game was actually in the afternoon. Well, only a little disappointed. After all, we are still going to eventually move east to Tennessee, and the Titans are playing the Jets in New York this morning.

At least, that’s what we thought. We turned the television to the Titans game and settled down with a cup of coffee and bleary eyes. When enough of that precious liquid had flowed down our throats for my eyes to focus properly confusion set in. For a moment I thought my color perception had somehow been altered. The blue of the Titans’ uniforms was pastel. The green of the Jets’ uniforms had gone brown.

A closer look revealed that the Houston Oilers were on the field, playing against a team that looked like the Cleveland Browns. The labels on the screen definitely said Tennessee and New York though, and the commentators were talking about players from those teams. When a player made a play, the name on the uniform matched the name given by the announcer, but the uniform was totally off.

What the heck?

In vain, we searched for an explanation, until I came upstairs to check out the game description on the Web. Apparently the NFL is celebrating the 50th season of the American Football League, merged into the NFL as the American Football Conference in 1970. Today’s game is one of sixteen AFL “Legacy Games” and the teams are playing as the Houston Oilers and the New York Titans.

Well, it’s not so confusing now that I know what’s going on, but it was a shock and total chaos for a few minutes in the Nelson household as we tried to figure it out. This is what I get for not paying attention.

I celebrate two (actually three) very important occasions today. OK, one day (actually two) of importance to only a few, and one that should be important to us all.

Today, I turn 50. That’s right, I’ve been wandering about this planet now for half a century. I’m sure there was a time when my parents wondered if I’d even make it half that far. That’s probably only important to a few people.

Three days ago, my 18th wedding anniversary passed. Due to a family illness we couldn’t actually celebrate it then, because my lovely bride and I were in different states. We hope to rectify that tonight, and then to celebrate. Again, that’s probably important only to a few people.

Much more importantly for the rest of the country, today marks the 222nd anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. That’s right, nearly two and a quarter centuries ago a group of men hammered out what is arguably the best system of government possible for mankind.

Now THAT’s something to celebrate, and it should be of importance to at least three hundred and sixty million of us. Sadly, probably less than half of us are even aware of the importance of today’s date. And of those, probably only about two thirds even know what’s in the Constitution and it’s twenty-seven amendments.

That’s why I believe the marking of Constitution day on the calendar is an important thing. It’s one of the few occasions when public schools take awareness of our history in a positive way. Congress mandates that there be special lessons made available about this important document.

Personally, I hold it to be among my favorites, and I have a recommendation for everybody today. Today, if not at any other time of the year, READ the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, not to mention the other 17 amendments. Even at the dismal reading rate shared by so many of today’s public school graduates it should only take a little while. Who knows? If you read it and understand it, it might reshape some of your political thinking.

I know it did for me.

Imagine this scenario… You’re out with a group of friends or family sharing a friendly drink, and sharing your opinions about politics and the like. The discussion is animated for a bit and you make a comment regarding a particular statistic. This particular statistic doesn’t exactly fit the world view of one of the participants in the conversation. How should you handle it?

Say, for example, that the statistic in question has to do with energy policy. Now we know that there hasn’t been a new refinery built in the United States for an awfully long time. It’s also well known that we consume a large amount of gasoline in this country, and that we simply don’t have the refinery capacity to meet the demand… Oh wait… that doesn’t fit the liberal world view… or at least the world view of some liberals. So if you say that we’re importing gasoline, not just raw petroleum but actual refined gasoline, you’re apparently picking a fight. After all, a good liberal knows  that gasoline is explosive, and we wouldn’t import explosive products.

Never mind that gasoline is merely very flammable, not explosive. Never mind that the Department of Energy says that we imported 878,000 barrels of gasoline per day during the last week of August this year. We just don’t import gasoline because that would be too dangerous. And if you say you do, you’ll be shouted down, told you’re an idiot that doesn’t know what he’s talking about and otherwise ridiculed by a drunken liberal. He’ll challenge you publicly to find evidence to support your assertions. Never mind that for the week ending August 28, 2009 the U.S. Total production of Gasoline was 9,157,000 barrels and that we imported 878,000 barrels or nearly ten percent of what we produce (yes, I was off in my estimate by a factor of six, the point is we still import refined gasoline because we can’t produce enough to meet the demand).

It’s probably not a good idea to go look this information up. You don’t want to expose your friends for the belligerent ignoramuses they are. After all, facts don’t matter… only opinions. It’s better to look like a fool yourself and allow them their petty victories.

But it still rankles.

I participate in opinion polls from time to time. One of the polling companies sends quick results of their polls to panelist via email after every poll is complete.

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about President Obama’s call to have Rick Waggoner, GM’s former chief executive resign. I can scarcely credit it. Even the most ardent supporter of monarchy in the days of our founders would never have dreamed of the President of the United States telling a private citizen where he could and could not work.

And yet, according to the poll I participated in yesterday…

Percentage who think the president's plan for Detroit is "fair"	58%
Percentage who think the president's actions with regards to the GM CEO were "appropriate"	51%

Either the American people have completely lost site of the purpose of government and are willing to give up their liberty for something as transitory as money, or I'm hallucinating. Over half of the people think that it’s “appropriate” for the President to dictate to private individuals regarding their employment. Over half of the people think that it’s “fair” for the federal government to be involved in the day to day operating plans of private enterprise.

Two and a quarter centuries ago, brave men and women fought and died for the right to pursue their own happiness in liberty. Today, we sacrifice that right for “economic stability.”

The founders would be ashamed of us. I know I am.

The Star Wars series of movies is a well known part of our popular culture. As most of you know (unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the past thirty years or so), the series began in the middle with Episode IV: A New Hope. As I recall this was advertised as coming “from the adventures of Luke Skywalker,” although The Internet Movie Database gives some of the working titles as referring to “Luke Starkiller.”

A short time after the series began, Berkeley Breathed featured a strip in his Bloom County series where Opus and the gang were fleeing from the Death Star, or AT & T’s logo. The entry from Wikipedia about Bloom County remarks…

A common gag in early strips was to have Opus and other characters riding on Cutter John's wheelchair, often in parody of Star Trek. One strip featured the gang turning and fleeing from the AT&T globe logo of the 1980s, calling it "the Death Star!" Bloom County was the first major pop culture outlet to point out the resemblance between the AT&T logo and the iconic Star Wars space station, and the analogy stuck for many years.

If I can find it (I have several of the books) I’ll see about posting a scan of that cartoon in an update to this post. Probably sometime later tonight.

Anyhow, the Death Star’s incredible ability to destroy planets has obviously struck a chord with someone at the Patriot Post. With our country set to run up trillion dollar deficits for the foreseeable future, they present “The Debt Star.” This incredible creation of government may well destroy our children’s inheritance, leaving them bereft of hope.

Where, oh where are the Jedi Knights when we need them?

There are altogether too many similarities between the universe of Star Wars and our own political situation that this reminds me of. Our nation was founded as a republic. In the beginning of the Star Wars saga, that distant galaxy’s government was a republic. Financial considerations, politics and the lust for power turned that republic into an empire. The majority party today is using an economic “crisis” as an excuse to grab power and implement many of the agenda items that they were unable to implement because of politics.

Will it take a new rebellion to rescue our Individual Liberties from the socialist empire that our federal government is becoming? Surely there are a few conservatives that haven’t yet turned to the “dark side,” aren’t there?

Or are we just a nation of droids?

http://perrinelson.com/2009/3/17/1325.aspx

This is the latest I personally have ever seen it snow in Washington. Well, except for a few years ago when I ran into a snow-shower on Tiger Mountain in June.

I love snow, especially when I’m watching it from indoors and don’t have to drive anyplace. Sidney loves it too. Earlier today she was out on the deck throwing handfuls of snow for fun.

It didn't take too long for those fat flakes of snow (more like clumps falling from the sky) to stick to the rooftops and the lawn. I'm just glad they didn't stick to the streets.

We had snow in the forecast again last night, and sure enough we got it. We got maybe two inches of snow, although nowhere near that much of it remained on the ground. It started snowing pretty heavily about 10:30 PM.

This morning, when I got ready to start my day, this was the view out the window of my home office. It's not much snow, just barely enough to cover everything and still be visible. Still, this is as late in the winter as I remember snow since I moved to this state.

One of the dances we're working on in the classes we're taking with the Plateau Scottish Country Dancers is The Bees of Maggieknockater. Here's a pair of videos showing what the dance looks like. The first one is relatively short, but shows several sets of dancers performing it. The second one shows a complete runthrough of the dance in what looks like a practice session. It's really a pretty cool dance.

While I was wandering through the Scottish Country Dance Videos, I found this video of Posties Jig — performed by none other than the Plateau Scottish Country Dancers! This is another one we've learned recently.

I'm looking forward to dancing with this group at the Seattle Scottish Highland Games and Clan Gathering this summer in Enumclaw!

This from my friend Brad…

A man named Jones applied to a finance agency for a job, but he had no experience. He was so intense that the manager gave him a tough account with the promise that if he collected it, he'd get the job.

Two hours later, Jones came back with the entire amount. “Amazing!” the manager said. “How did you do it?”

“Easy,” Jones replied. “I told him if he didn't pay up, I'd tell all his other creditors he paid us.”

Now That’s Thinking Outside The Box!

Pachelbel's Canon in D is pretty popular. My wife loves it. Here are three different takes on it. First, the Tartan Terrors play it on the bagpipes.

Next, FunTwo plays a variant on JerryC's updated rock version.

My dad sent me another email that I found funny and worth sharing, so here it is (with just a minor amount of re-formatting).

JOB - URINE TEST

Like a lot of folks in the U.S.A., have a job. I work hard for my money (kinda), then they pay me for my hard work. I pay my taxes (lots of them) and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. But, in order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem at all. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.

Shouldn't someone have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check?

What the heck, I mean I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand, I have absolutely no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a big problem with helping someone who is just sitting on their BUTT, doing drugs, while I work… Can you imagine how much money the states would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?

Guess we could title the program, “Urine or You're Out.”

I believe I've mentioned before that my wife and I have joined the Plateau Scottish Country Dancers in order to learn Scottish Country Dancing and to have a good time. Last month, we attended the Burns Night celebration hosted by the Tacoma Scots Pipe Band and some of us (the more experienced members of the group) performed.

Not being one of the ones dancing, I took video and decided to host some for the group. I figured why not share it here too, so here's video of two dances —Posties Jig and Rothesay Rant.

How many ways can there be to say that something's either good for us or bad for us? I know that some issues arouse a lot of passion, but eventually reading dozens of rants about the same subject gets dull and passion wanes. This isn't necessarily a good thing. Some topics need to be kept hot, simply to keep pressure on the opposition.

But if the only people who are reading your rants are of a like mind, what good are they? Perhaps they serve as moral support, but somehow I think that sort of ranting might be more of a way to feel as though you're contributing something of meaning to the dialog, despite the fact that everyone you vent to already knows the things that you have to say. Or maybe it's a way to get validation for your ideas from the like minded.

Maybe, that's why some of us have the perception that the political dialog in our country is becoming more and more polarized over time. The left has its echo chamber with its strident voices, and the right does too. If you only pay attention to the voices from one side or the other, your views can become more extreme over time. Sure, this might arouse your passions for a while, but if all you hear is your own voice repeated over and over you aren't learning anything.

I wasn't always a conservative. I started life with a fairly conservative upbringing. My dad's pretty conservative. My mom on the other hand is more of a moderate with liberal leanings, but compared to today's liberals she was a staunch right winger when I was growing up. In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it and my own cantankerous nature I was an anarchist at thirteen.

I was in full rebellion against the principles I was raised with. Not long after that, largely due to the influence of my “friends” in my own little teen-age “underground” which was mild compared to the attitudes I see in some of today's youth. In college I was attracted to the “romanticism” of the counter-culture — wishing for a protest akin to the foolishness of the sixties. I even ended up supporting (with my time and money) some rather dubious causes, like the “student” effort to depose the Shah of Iran.

As I got older, and after I moved out to the Seattle area I became a fairly committed liberal. This probably had more to do with the people I was exposed to and the release of restraints upon my behavior than anything else. Even through this though, I remembered a few basic things that I believed in. But, I wasn't really able to resist a good argument, and people like Dave Ross spreading his “drive-by wisdom to the masses, one listener at a time” kept me snowed and thinking like a liberal.

And then, one day I started listening to “the other side.” I caught the Rush Limbaugh show one morning on my drive to work. After a few minutes I started yelling at the radio and turned it off in disgust. For some reason I tuned my radio in to Rush again a couple of days later, with the same result. Rush seemed to me to be an arrogant, self-centered, self-aggrandizing moron. Still, I couldn't stop listening, and listening made me think about his arguments.

I'd like to say that I did my own research and changed my mind about liberalism, but that's not what happened. Gradually, listening to Rush I was swayed by his common sense about conservatism, and his criticism of not just Democrats but of liberal Republicans as well. It wasn't until some time later that I really started analyzing what it was I believed in and why. Believe it or not, it was a liberal that convinced me to start doing detailed research. Karl (by no means a liberal) over at Leaning Straight Up and NW Bloggers is right. “Iron sharpens iron.” For some time on NW Bloggers there was a regular blogger that went by the moniker “Playin' Possum” who offered a couple of challenges to the other bloggers there. Taking him up on those challenges required the extra research, and it was worth it. It changed the basic nature of my blogging.

When it comes down to it, the underlying principles of conservatism are pretty simple. Limited government intrudes upon individual lives less than a massive government run by central planners. Morality matters. People work for a reason, and it's not just so they can have weekends. Personal responsibility is a way to attain peace and harmony both within oneself and at home. Rewarding success and punishing failure is nature's own way of selecting for behaviors that work. Rewarding failure and punishing success leads to weakness and decay. Helping others when they are in need by offering a hand up helps us all, but a hand out ends up being wasted (or getting the beggar wasted on more booze). Recreational pharmaceuticals may seem like fun, but they impair your ability to compete or to enjoy anything else when you get hooked.

Liberalism on the other hand seems to me to be all about feeling good. Helping others by giving them a hand-out, looking down on them all the while. Feeling guilty about what you've earned and so needing to displace that guilt onto people who've earned more. Preaching tolerance while quashing dissent and having no tolerance for those that believe in and support your own culture.

Thinking on these things, I believe that I'm a conservative and will always (from this point onward) be one. I like talking to conservatives. I like reading the things that conservatives have to say. I like listening to them on the radio. At the same time, I have come full circle and pretty much loath much of the drivel that I hear coming out of the mouths and the keyboards of liberals. To some extent, I've exchanged the liberal echo chamber for the conservative echo chamber.

That's not quite what I want. I'm not looking to convince other conservatives to be even more conservative. I'm not really looking to get personal affirmation by having people praise me for holding the same ideas that they do (although I do enjoy personal affirmation). The pithy “me too” isn't dialog, it's just another echo.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about conservatism. I've spent a lot of time reading and re-reading our founding documents. I've written a lot about my own understanding of what's in them. I've gotten a lot of echoes as well as some very insightful commentary from people on this side of the aisle.

I think it's time to start taking the message across the aisle. I've got accounts on some left wing sites. Perhaps its time to start posting some of this there. I doubt that I'll get very many echoes there. Now where did I put that fire retardant suit? I'm not really looking for a flame war after all, just a dialog.

If we want to convert other people to our viewpoint we can't just stay in the echo chamber. We've got to talk to the people that we disagree with. Of course, doing so will take a lot of time and effort. I think I know myself. I wonder if I'm up to it.

http://perrinelson.com/2009/2/9/1313.aspx

As you may recall, I recently experienced a trip to the hospital. It wasn't the most pleasant experience I've had in my life to this point. The bills for my lodging and care have begun arriving in the mail in the last week or so. I'm quite happy that I have a reasonably decent insurance policy through my place of employment. I doubt that I could afford the treatment I received without it, at least not without sacrificing a few of the many luxuries that I enjoy.

The thing is, I realize now that the entire episode could have been avoided altogether. Laying in a hospital bed tethered to an IV bag and pump gives you lots of time for reflection and prayer. Not knowing what put you there in the first place is scary. Working it out from the things the doctors say to you and the numbers the nurses and assistants pull when they check your vital signs gives you even more pause to reflect.

What put me in the hospital was ketoacidosis. Often ketoacidosis leads to a diagnosis of type-1 diabetes, because it is the first symptom of diabetes leading people to see a doctor, so it's not that uncommon among type-1 diabetics. Ketoacidosis rarely occurs in type-2 diabetics like me, and it is usually triggered by a severe illness. I know that for about four days before finding myself in the hospital I was suffering from nausea and unable to eat, after having vomited several times one night for the first time in over 25 years.

Since nausea and vomiting are one of the symptoms of ketoacidosis, I'm not entirely certain what the trigger was in my case. I may have gotten the flu or some other illness which could have caused the nausea and vomiting leading to the ketoacidosis, or I might have developed the condition gradually with the first major symptoms being nausea and vomiting. Since I had had a flu shot about a month before all of this, I think that in my case it may well be the latter.

I was diagnosed with diabetes several years ago, I don't recall exactly when, but it was some time before I started drag racing, which puts it in the 1990s. At the time I had no clue that there was anything wrong with me. My health seemed pretty much as it always had. My appetite was normal, at least for me — I've always had a large appetite, eating two to three times as much as most people around me. One of my friends and coworkers noticed that I was drinking large amounts of fluids, and getting up from board games and card games frequently to use the bathroom. I didn't think much of it, but he recognized the symptoms of diabetes and suggested I see a doctor.

My wife is a nurse. When I told her about what my friend had said, she obtained a used blood glucose meter and brought it home. We checked my blood sugar that night and it was somewhere around 360 mm/dl. That was enough to convince her, but I questioned it, having just eaten a fairly large meal on the way home. So she told me what the “normal” range should be and tested her own blood sugar level. I made an appointment to see a doctor, and he confirmed the diagnosis with some lab work. I was devastated. I went through denial, depression, and anger when I found out I had diabetes.

My doctor prescribed an oral medication called glyburide. Oral diabetes medications are generally only useful for type-2 diabetics. This is because type-2 diabetics generally still produce insulin in their body. Oral medications like glyburide can stimulate the pancreas to produce more insulin as well as lowering insulin resistance in the body's cells. Insulin dependent diabetics don't produce insulin, so oral medications aren't effective for them.

Lucky me, I didn't need to give myself shots every day. With regular testing of my blood sugar and the prescription for glyburide, I managed to keep my blood sugar levels under control for quite a while. Gradually though I needed more glyburide to do this, and so my dosage was increased. Soon enough though, other factors came into play.

One of these “other factors” is simply my own personal failings. I'm lazy, and I also like to eat more than I should. I don't know that these problems quite rise to the level of “sloth” and “gluttony” (you know, two of the seven deadly sins), but they're still problems. They're also not the only weaknesses that I am plagued with. I also liked to indulge in recreational pharmaceutical products and intoxicating botanicals. And, as we all generally know, one of the “side effects” of substance abuse is “paranoia.”

I call paranoia a side effect of substance abuse, but I don't think that what I'm referring to was actually paranoia, nor was it caused by substance abuse. Rather, I think it was simply the rather healthy fear of getting caught having used illegal drugs. After all, there are consequences to such behavior — from incarceration to unemployment or other lesser problems. I didn't want my drug abuse showing up in laboratory tests, and so I stopped seeing doctors.

When my prescription for glyburide ran out, I had also stopped checking my blood sugar on a regular basis. I fooled myself into thinking that there was no problem, that “diet and exercise” had mitigated my need for treatment. Because of my denial I went untreated for a while. I knew this wasn't good, and I tried to quit my drug habit. For some time I managed to do just that. After a few months, I returned to the doctor and ended up back on glyburide, and on a new (to me) diabetes medication, metformin. Once again my blood sugars were under control.

It didn't take too long though before I returned to my bad habits (yes, all of them). I again stopped the careful monitoring of my blood sugar. Why would I quit testing my blood sugar levels? Well, I can't really claim ignorance, but I made excuses to myself all the time. Testing your blood sugar involves puncturing your skin and drawing blood. The most reliable site for doing this is your fingertips. Pricking your finger once doesn't hurt so much. Doing it several times a day leaves your fingers rather tender though. You have to choose a different finger pretty much every time or your testing will leave your fingertips raw.

That minor pain isn't really a good reason not to check your blood sugar though, and newer meters have made it even easier. My current meter lets me test my blood sugar on my forearm. There's a very minor instant of pain involved with that, but compared to pricking your fingers it might as well be painless.

At some point, I went back to see the doctor, and ended up taking insulin and metformin. Sometime after that, I finally managed to kick my drug habit permanently. I've been clean and sober for many years now. I still enjoy an occasional glass of a fine single malt scotch or a beer but never enough to even become “tipsy.” In the process of cleaning up, I ended up suffering a clinical depression.

Lots of things went along with that depression, including an apathetic attitude toward my health. At the same time I ultimately ended up quitting my job, looking for a change. There were a lot of other reasons involved with leaving that job that I won't go into here, but one of the side effects was that my medical insurance lapsed. I could have applied for C.O.B.R.A. continuation health coverage when I left my job and continued to receive diabetes care and treatment. Remember though, one of my failings is laziness, so I didn't bother.

By the time I started looking for work after quitting my job (I had enough money set aside that I didn't need to work for quite some time) I was in an uncomfortable position. Not enough time had lapsed that I could obtain treatment for diabetes through my new health insurance, thanks to the fact that it was a “pre-existing condition” and that I no longer had coverage to transfer. That meant that I had to go without treatment for a while after that.

Most insulins are available by prescription only. “Happily” (or not) as it turns out, 70/30 human insulin is actually available without a prescription. Of course it costs more without one since insurance won't pay for it unless its prescribed. The cost runs about $60.00 to $80.00 per 10 ml bottle depending on where you buy it. Metformin on the other hand is available by prescription only. So I ended up continuing to take insulin while ignoring and letting the metformin prescription lapse. I was taking the same amount of insulin that my doctor had prescribed, but not taking the metformin. I also wasn't checking my blood sugar regularly.

When I finally had coverage for diabetes again, I saw a doctor, had lab tests done and received a new prescription for metformin to go with the insulin I was still taking. Again I resumed checking my blood sugar regularly and got it back under some control, although it wasn't nearly the tight level of control that I once had, and had abandoned on multiple occasions. This didn't last. Once again, I stopped regular blood sugar tests, and stopped seeing my doctor. Again I let the prescription for metformin lapse.

This was the state of my health care for a couple of years, and ultimately I think it's what put me into the hospital. Since I wasn't checking my blood sugar, I couldn't be certain that the insulin I was taking was keeping it under control. When I finally got sick and couldn't eat, I stopped taking insulin altogether. I did this out of the mistaken belief that since I wasn't eating anything, I couldn't have high blood sugar. It doesn't work that way though. Your liver continues to release sugar into your bloodstream even when you're not eating.

When I went into the hospital, they performed lots of tests on me, including a hemoglobin A1C test. The results of the test indicated that my blood sugar had been very high for at least two or three months prior to my ending up in the hospital. High blood sugar levels above 240 mg/dl can cause the body to start consuming fat and muscle in order to meet its energy demands. This results in an increased level of ketones in the bloodstream and, in my case, ketoacidosis. Whether I was sick with the flu and thereby developed ketoacidosis or whether it was the result of long term high blood sugar is of interest. I can delude myself, if I wish, into thinking that it was the flu that caused my problems, but I think we all know better. It was the lack of blood sugar control that put me into the hospital.

Ketoacidosis is scary. It can be life threatening. Laying there in a hospital bed and finally knowing that that was the problem made me realize how near things could have been. I might never have survived it if it hadn't been for the grace of God and the care I received in the hospital. I put myself there, but it took a while to understand that. Once I did, the importance of changing my life was hammered home.

When I left the hospital, the doctor gave me a prescription for an insulin only treatment regimen. That regimen included a long acting insulin called LANTUS® that I was to take before bed each night and a sliding scale for regular insulin that I was to take four times a day. The long acting insulin is intended to deal with the continual release of sugar into the blood accomplished by my liver. The sliding scale was meant to deal with post meal peaks. Under this regimen I had to check my blood sugar four times per day.

I'm sure it was an improvement over my pre-hospital control, but my blood sugar levels were still all over the map. In the first couple of weeks the were below 70 mg/dl twice (hypoglycemia), but more often they were well over 240 mg/dl and sometimes over 350 mg/dl (hyperglycemia)! Since complications from high blood sugar was what put me in the hospital in the first place, that was clearly not acceptable. The nurse working with my doctor taught me how to adjust the LANTUS dose, and asked me to check my blood sugar two hours after meals as well as the other four times a day I was already checking it (Oh thank God for a meter that lets me test in my forearm. Testing seven times a day on my fingers would have been a real pain).

For another two weeks, that's how things went. The nurse had me writing down the blood sugar readings, how much insulin I was taking, and comments about the food I ate. At my last appointment, my blood sugar levels were still out of whack, but they were starting to get better. But now the nurse had enough data to make some changes to my plan. She took me off of the sliding scale for regular insulin, and instead placed me on mealtime insulin using a rapid onset insulin called NovaLog®.

On a quick side note, for the past couple of years, I've listened to people talk about their friends and relatives with diabetes. One thing that struck me as odd is the attitude that some people have (and that I also held, remember, I was in denial) that diabetes isn't really that serious of a condition. Another was the notion that a person that adjusted their insulin dosage based on what they were eating was somehow “gaming the system,” or otherwise not handling their treatment correctly or taking it seriously enough. Part of this is, I suppose based on the warnings that diabetics are given not to make changes in their insulin regimens without a doctor's supervision, and part of it on the attitude that diabetics can only eat certain “diabetic” foods.

Well, I certainly found out that diabetes is a very serious disease with some alarming consequences. I'd known about potential complications like neuropathy, retinopathy, kidney disease, and heart disease, but always had that “it won't happen to me” attitude. Now I know better, in fact I'm taking lisinopril for high blood pressure (diagnosed while I was in the hospital) and simvastatin to keep my cholesterol low (it's actually normal, but my doctor is concerned because I'm a diabetic and my family has a history of heart problems).

The mealtime insulin plan my doctor prescribed for me is another eye opener for me, and it seems to be working although I don't have more than two days of data yet. I still have to check my blood sugar at least seven times a day for a while. I have to check it before every meal, and I have to determine how much carbohydrate my meal will contain. Then, I have to calculate the NovaLog dosage to take based on both values. I am supposed to take one unit of NovaLog for every 25 mg/dl my blood sugar is over 120 mg/dl, and one unit of NovaLog for every 10 grams of carbohydrates in the meal. Then I have to start eating within 10 minutes. That's right, I have to adjust my insulin dosage based on what I'm eating, and it's not “gaming the system,” it's the only way to get the correct dosage.

Two hours after every meal I'm supposed to check my blood sugar again, to make sure that the insulin dosage isn't bringing my blood sugar down too far. At night, I'm on the sliding scale still, but it's still NovaLog I'm taking — one unit for every 50 mg/dl my blood sugar is over 120 mg/dl. I go back to get my dosages/regimen adjusted again in two weeks, so this may end up changing and I may only have to test my blood sugar four times a day.

So far, this seems to be working. My blood sugars have been very close to the “acceptable” target range given to me by my doctor. They're still a little bit high, but they're very much closer than they had been.

Counting carbohydrates is a lot of work though. To do it, I have to read labels, and estimate portion sizes. If I go out for meals, I have to go armed with information about the food I'm about to eat, or ask for nutritional information pamphlets. It's all so much more involved than it used to be when I was able to take oral medications alone and control my blood sugar.

The doctor in the hospital told me that insulin therapy was the most natural way to control blood sugar for diabetics. After all, it's what your body does naturally when it's working right. It's also the only way to control blood sugar for type-1 diabetics. The interesting thing there is, most type-1 diabetics are diagnosed as children. They have to take check their blood sugar and take insulin their entire lives, starting at a very young age.

I'm forty nine years old. I'm alive. I've got nothing to complain about. My trip to the hospital really scared me. Like I said, it was an opportunity to reflect on a lot of things. I've decided that living beats the alternative. Although I do believe that the Lord is my salvation and that there's a better place for me in the end, I don't think I need to go before my time.

In the movie The 6th Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character considers buying a clone to replace his daughters dog. The company he approached for making the purchase was RePet.

Well, they say life mimics art. Now we know that it mimics science fiction…

“It truthfully is amazing to me that this process has come to be and that I am getting, if not my dog, certainly the essence of Lancelot and it looks so much like him that, well... He's a clone, so he should look like him,” said Otto. “Lancy was the first dog, commercially that they did clone because his DNA was frozen and very viable.”

Of course the movie was about human clones. Schwarzenegger's character was cloned, and the clone was attacked repeatedly by assassins that were also clones, and clones of clones — all to protect the business interests of a man that was himself a clone.

The adorable Lancy is cute as a button, but a clone is a walking controversy.

“People think that cloning dogs is a stepping stone to cloning people. Dogs are actually harder to clone than people,” said Hawthorne.

I only want to be here once. I've got other places to go when I shuffle off this mortal coil. Hopefully better ones.