Boo Hiss

Bush Calls for an Amendment Banning Same-Sex Nuptials

Okay.

1. Don't we have more problems to deal with than the supposed threat to marriage that same sex unions pose? You know, things like, oh, I don't know, a war with no exit strategy????
   
2. Why muck with the constitution to use it deny rights, when traditionally it's more likely to use an amendment to expand them?
   
3. Heterosexuals have pretty much brought marriage to its supposed endangered status
   
4. I would argue that marriage is not endangered, just that it has evolved to meet society's needs. It other cultures, marriage has varied in terms of whether divorce is allowed (an ancient institution, not a recent development), its oeconomic benefits have often been more important than love, etc., etc.
   
5. People aren't avoiding that leap of hope that marriage is forever and that marriage is for love. It's just not the most realistic of ideas, but still a worthy one.
   
6. I'm really tired of Republicans, who have pretty much mucked up everything since they got control of the White House and Congress, using gays to try to fire up their constituents to ignore their failings.
   

'No one needs permission from Adobe' except Microsoft, apparently

Bowing To Adobe, Microsoft Strips PDF Support From 2007 Office

Microsoft will still have a patch available to users who wish to export data into PDF or its own XPS format, and is removing the bundling of XPS from Windows Vista in Europe to keep down controversy over product bundling which has gotten them into problems before. But they wanted to provide access to Adobe's de facto standard, too.

I know Microsoft is the evil giant of the computer wars, but it's brilliance is it's attempt to provide everything a user needs at his or her fingertips. I think it gets a bum rap sometimes for this. This might be one of those cases. And it's not like Adobe is a little fish in the market, either.

A normal Saturday night

Listening to: 'Hate Me' by Blue October; 'Unwritten' by Natasha Bedingfield; 'Where'd You Go?' by Fort Minor (a rap song I actually like, since it also involves music and good lyrics)

I worked a rare 8-hour Saturday shift today, and although I did take a nap afterwards I wasn't really wiped out like usual. I got to use my Spanish today when helping a man with a phone card. I could read the card's fine print and was able to direct him to a Mexican restaurant in broken Spanglish. I explained that I could read Spanish and understood him, but didn't really speak it well. He appreciated it a great deal and shook my hand, then went on his way. And before any of you say anything about how people in this country should know English, he was using every bit of his English and trying very hard to be understood, and had a phrase-book where he could show me a word he didn't know. It wasn't that different from how I'd be a tourist in, say France, except he was probably more fluent than I would have been. :) If I could just get over my embarrassment at speaking Spanish, I think I could do pretty well with fluency. I always hated getting up in class and speaking, even though I had a decent accent and did really well. But now that I'm rusty, I'm too hung up on making mistakes. I really should go to one of the bilingual cafes they have over at the Village Branch library and practice more to get my confidence up. And I'm not like this just with Spanish...German is the same way. Also, I think the part of your brain that you use for second languages must be slightly different from your native tongue...sometimes I find I go to think of a word in one language and can just remember it in another one, not English. Of course, my grasp of English is somewhat idiosyncratic, too. :)

It was also our day to be a honest-to-goodness service station. The guys hepled change a tyre for one woman who was stranded and then one of them gave another one a jump right afterward. Oh, and I got to be a Good Samaritan yesterday by giving someone water for their radiator when I was out driving. I still had water from working on the battery, and she was stranded without any more. What can I say, what goes around comes around.

Well, I think I'll play on the computer for awhile. 'Night.
So, I'm home now and having had some cheap pizza (Little Caesar's hot-and-ready cheese carryout deal for $5 can't really be beat when you're hungry and not wanting to spend a lot) and a nap I'm listening to the radio and watching Cerys roll on the floor. She's doing much better today; the limp is gone completely and by yesterday evening she was leaping from the bed (which may have been the problem in the first place). She's being cute, putting her muzzle up on my leg. :)

The computer is apparently fixed. Yay!

Tomorrow there isn't a game (long story to that which I won't go into here; suffice to say it's on hold until I can solve a technical problem with my e-mail, of all things), so I think I'll do some work for distance learning so I can go in Monday with both tapes I've been working on and exchange them for some more and maybe do some things around here. Cleaning my bathroom seems a capital idea, for example. Or maybe I'll do some reading. Anyway, I think I'll play on the computer some and then head on to bed. 'Night.

I miss the gym

Isn't that funny, in a woman who weighs about 270 lbs and never was good at sticking to diets or exercise? But I miss working out. Now that I have a chequing account (and more importantly, the almighty CheckCard, which allows you to set up monthly payments as if on a credit card (oddly enough, I got the CheckCard today, the cheques yesterday, even though it was supposed to take the card half the time...I guess the holiday threw things off), I'm going to check into signing up again.

Of course, timing is everything; I need that sort of debit to come out around the 25th of each month so that second paycheque from the hospital has had a chance to hit. So, it'll be about three weeks until I can sign up--assuming nothing else happens to the car or computer. And of course, on top of bills, I hope to go to the new vet. Cerys is limping a little today. It could be a mild sprain...she is having so much trouble getting on and off the bed these days. I'm going to keep her off her feet mostly and see if it clears up in a day or so. If not, then I may be going to the vet sooner than that. I hope it's nothing serious. She did this once a long time ago and then switched feet, making us realise that she was faking for attention. But with her age, I doubt she's feigning this time.

Okay, enough blogging. Off to work.

I think I may have fixed the computer

I decided to go ahead and get a new power supply, since it was only $30. Installation went pretty well although I apparently knocked the hard drive connexion loose and had to tighten that up, and I sliced my finger open trying to pull out the connexion for the floppy drive. So, maybe with a little offering of blood, the automatic shutdowns will stop. I'm going to do some TV work (the video outlining) and if the computer stays on the whole time, I'll be very, very happy. Wish me luck.

My computer is still on the fritz

which is why I haven't blogged many detailed posts of late. Yesterday I managed to get about ten minutes in before it shut itself down. It looks like a power supply problem, so when I get a chance, I'll replace the supply. That may be in about two to three weeks, as I'm saving now for rent and payment for the transmission.

I'm doing pretty well, actually. Last night I had some me time and did a little reading, put on some soft music and lit some incense, and generally just relaxed. I'm reading Emily Craig's Teasing Secrets from the Dead. She's Kentucky's forensic anthropologist. She has an interesting background, beginning her career as an orthopaedic medical illustrator, then becoming a forensic artist, and finally forensic anthropology. It's a fascinating field. When I was a child, I loved Quincy, the TV show about a pathologist, and of course I watch things like CSI and Forensic Files, but being able to glean information from skeletons really appeals to me. I've read Dead Men Do Tell Tales, the book by another forensic anthropologist, William Maples, who works in Florida. I remember freaking out my friends by reading a description of the stratification of a body decomposing in a septic system, with various types of maggots and other creatures contributing.

Okay, so people think I'm weird. Considering the popularity of these shows and books, though, I'm not alone in my morbidity.

One of the things I liked first off about CSI was forensic entomology, the specialty of the fictional character Gil Grissom. As a child I loved bugs and studied them, considering a career in entomology. Even as a college student I started out in biology. If I had realised this field existed, I might have gravitated to it, because I am both fascinated by the world of insects and by the physiological processes of death.

Anyway, back to Emily Craig. I've seen her in the news of course, since she heads up the Commonwealth of Kentucky's (we're not really a state, you know) Medical Examiner office and she gets called out to a lot of cases. I didn't realise how much out-of-area work she'd done. But I wanted to get to know more about what she does.

Believe it or not, that's my idea of a relaxing evening. Tonight I'm going to work some more for distance learning, reviewing and outlining video segments, which is a little mind-numbing but I'm learning more about our class through it and how they define humanities.

That's all for now. Back to work, where I've been finding pictures of the Queen Mary for a patron (and you thought medical librarianship was boring).

An opportunity to do some good

The following request for medical books for medical providers from Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas was passed along by Lily Liu recently to one of our librarian lists. I'm posting with her permission. Soldiers are collecting medical books to send to Iraq to be used by Iraqi medical providers there. They ask for medical books published after 2000. No journals are needed at this point. There is no time limit, they will collect and ship them as it goes. You can mail books to the following address:

314 Medical Group
c/o SSgt Joseph Williams
1090 Arnold Drive
Little Rock AFB, AR 72099-4399

It's an opportunity to get books that may be extras or weeded from our collections to a place where they could be invaluable. Here's the original request:

Sir/Ma'am,

If you have any Medical Books that you would like to donate to Iraqi providers, please [send them to] my office....Any and all publications from basic to subspecialty are desirable. Basic science texts for medical students will also be useful. Iraqi medicine is educationally sophisticated but materially poorly resourced. All Iraqi doctors can read and speak English, so don't worry about a language barrier. It's ok if the books are a little old, or a little tattered. Books must be no more than two editions old. (Nothing published before 2000, please) These books will be sent on a C-30 ASAP to be used down range by Iraqi providers in practice. Many of the doctors there have lost their books due to bombings, fires, and civil war. We here at The Rock can make a big difference for Iraq, so please show your support.

Thanks,
SSgt Joseph Williams

What a tragic case of mistaken identity

Mistaken ID stuns crash victims' families

One family was told their daughter was dead. Another endured the uncertainty of their daughter's recovery from a coma, detailing her progress on a blog.

Now they have found out that the girls, who were remarkably similar in appearance and were in the same car accident, were in fact mistakenly identified...meaning one family has found their loved one alive, and the other must deal with the crushing certainty that the girl whom they thought was making progress actually died in the crash.

Details can be found at the blog for Laura VanRyn. The families have my deepest condolences.

Something you probably didn't know about catnip

ScienceDaily: Catnip Repels Mosquitoes More Effectively Than DEET

D gave me a 'grow your own catnip' mini kit that she got from N. I've soaked the peat pellet, planted the seeds, and let's see what happens.

It only reminds me that N is going away to work on her phD in psychology in Kansas in a couple of months. Hopefully by then there will be a catnip plant to remind me of 'cool Natalie'.

Overwhelmingly people believe that public dollars should mean research is accessible

The Harris Poll - Large Majorities of U.S. Adults Support Easy – and Free – Online Access to Federally-Funded Research Findings on Health Issues and Other Topics