hopes from a cursed year

• a new pair of oakleys.
• some of the newer, smaller-me denim of proper origin.
• another, thicker, and longer, scarf.
• a set of sways, bushings, and springs for the sti, from eibach. (the whitelines are cooler, sure, but the eibachs are great and a whole lot less)
• new monogrammed pencils & pens for the sfr staff (to include me :( ).
• some friendly monetary gifts or investments in spun.
• a holster for my 1911.
• bjarke ingalls group looking over my own designs for a renewable hangar with exhaust exits, plane storage and rotation, offices, and a small area for overnight stays. (big.dk)
• more books from my favorite authors and prettier book shelves to keep the books on.
• a single, edible and not-unpleasant tasting, device to give me all of my drogas diarios in a single, maybe muffin-sized fluffy prescription goodness. po is so old fashioned, ya know?
  

A follow-up to an old post of my own

It would appear that more people than solely myself have noticed the epilepsy-suicide-bipolar-or-major-depression comorbidity. The latter study points out that among folks with bipolar disorder, four percent of them attempt suicide in a given year. That's terrifying if you think how many people that is, and how little is actually done to prevent it.

Minus the details (but still overly long)

short: where has teh alex been for all this time? why is he cranky, not returning emails or phone calls, and sleeping twenty hours a day? It's all right here. If you dare. I wouldn't. There are some fairly cool links throughout if you're the type to try to learn from the interwebs.

It is easiest simply to say that a week ago I experienced something very like a stroke, on my right side, and was admitted to the hospital (VHC) for observations and more tests. Like every neurological event I've ever had, all the results from EEG, PET, CT, MRI, ECG, were all normal. They kept complaining about my "pulse-ox" (I don't know what that's actually called) hovering about 88-89, which is normal for me. I don't breathe very deeply, and I don't breathe very often. It's just how I'm built. So, left to my own devices, my blood is not incredibly oxygenated unless I'm working hard on something (to include thinking hard about something; the latter is usually harder on my body than physical exercise for the same period of time). The last blood pressure reading they took before releasing me was 117/70. So, while I am a bit overweight, I'm not the least bit worried because, apparently, I'm the picture of health.

Except that little stroke thing. My neurologist has asked that I come back for a "nerve test" (he did not use any other term for this; I can only think EEG or EKG — which I've had — but maybe he has something in his neurologist toolkit I haven't seen (hardly). That's tomorrow.

As for now I am mostly back to normal, trying to get exercises done and stretching to stick to the PT regimen, though I have missed a set of routine toradol injections, and one session of PT. My arm and hand are working again. Writing is a bit of a chore as the "pads" (the area used in a fingerprint) of my fingers alternate between "pins and needles" and "numb", as though I had a blood problem in my brachial artery or something. This has, according to ER staff, been ruled out, but I've also been told I should start thinking of myself as a heart patient and do the possibly-effective 85mg of aspirin a day, but again, my pulse is rarely over 70, my BP almost never exceeds 130/80 (migraines).

The doctors fiddled with my "normal" meds (mostly stuff for headaches and my recent back injury) and told me that "stress" had caused the event. Well, if the MD could just write me an Rx for $85k, I'd be a happy camper and probably be a lot less stressed. But as it is right now, I am not even sure I could go back to being the Unix Samurai on duty because of the injuries both to my head and the rest of my body. So, taking stress out of this is hard to do, and I am getting SAFT (notice I've been using the term for a very long time, but I think the author of that definition or discussion has a fair claim on "coining" it as the jargon and other "lingo" or "vernacular" sites/lexicons don't have it, really) of these "surprise!" neurological events.

To deal with some of the pain in my back (my very upper lats, just underneath my scapula, and just above my sacrum on either side of my spine — which is actually the location of a broken vertebrae), I have been using a TENS unit which seems to work fairly well. It's really not unlike having a taser zap me continuously for about thirty minutes at a time to desensitize nerves that are screaming that I should really not be walking around the Udvar-Hazy center, when really, people should be required to do so:

My long time friend Colin (who can recite Ezekiel 25:1 in lolcat speak!) and I looked at the Enola Gay, and had a discussion on the aircraft. To behold it from the second story, you kind of get a picture of how enormous the vehicle it is from up there, and you can see the clearance between the props (yep, no BUFFs back then), the colossal wingspan, and just how beautiful a plane it is. We took the stairs to have a look at it from below (mind you, I see this very aircraft 2-3 times a year, sometimes more, because the Udvar-Hazy annex to si.edu is kind of like a calling to Mecca/Makkah to me). It really does touch the soul to see the work of humanity to defy gravity and defy the air, tame it, blaze trails into space, and the ingenuity that goes into the infinitude of engine configurations…I'll stop now.) and you are again struck by just how enormous this bird is, but how meticulously she was cleaned before being put away and how shiny she looks with her, ahem, checkered past. It's very hard to separate an absolutely beautiful aircraft with a similar great name, Enola Gay (which would even make a great name for a boat) from the horror of what she wrought on Japan. In Burrows' work, Deep Black and in Schell's The Fate of the Earth, no fewer than a million casualties were wrought between both bombs, and while we are staring at this beautiful, strikingly feminine-appearing B-29, Enola Gay (picture above via Flickr via afagen and Creative Commons license) it is impossible to extricate the million or so people who were vaporized, poisoned, or otherwise very rudely and painfully killed. This is not to say whether the decision was right or wrong (most people don't know that the insane general Curtis LeMay — I keep wanting to write a counterfactual short story about this fucking tool of a man — actually suggested "warning" the Japanese by detonating a "trinity"-sized weapon over Tokyo Bay. Doubtless, there would have been large casualties, but perhaps LeMay himself might have cut the war short.

At any rate, I have digressed because the subject of the aircraft, its mission, its aesthetic, the men who designed and flew it, the men who designed and built the "gadgets" which the Enola Gay and what could be called her "sister in crime," Boxscar which was similar incidentally to the byeman name (actually OXCART) of the later SR-71, A-12 — especially in this case, which the Agency referred to as "Archangel", "Avenger", "Black Shield", and of course the "official" but not as, you know, fear of death inspiring: OXCART — but the CIA A-12 program was scrapped for SR-71's. The final part of the strategic reconaissance conflagration, was the D-21 drone, which was clever, until you realized it was a great way to kill pilots and break very expensive plaines. Anyways, this digression is just for the (very) for the curious.  Sometimes, it seems that these byeman names aren't chosen as randomly as they are supposed to be, and it's not uncommon to hear flights of long-range bombers flying out of Nellis with the callsign "Death." Flash-Video-Container link, but relevant quote is thus:

These 2 B-1's departed LSV at 8:20PM with a callsign DEATH and climbed to assigned FL190. […] obviously they are afterburners, just because the wings aren't swept back doesn't mean anything. You can see his flaps are still down showing that he is still trying to get some lift. Try and picture a B-1 taking off with its wings swept at such a slow speed. And another thing, the small things you see in the front of the B-1 are canards not the landing gear […] I shot this from between the RWY's during Red Flag 09-2. […]  Also, don't forget to check out the channel for videos of Military exercises, Fly Bys, Air Shows, Spotting videos, and regular flying ops at Nellis AFB. All of the new videos will be in full HD! Some or all of my videos may have pictures to go with them, to see them visit my website at http://www.nellisspotters.com

[Edited by myself; original text with youtubespeak and bitching and moaning at above link]

I really have no idea how all this stuff came together into one huge post other than to say that I've sustained a brain injury (another…) and it all kind of made sense as I traipsed from a stroke to the Enola Gay to Mojave to the Boxscar to OXCART, Byeman Names (which nobody even seems to know the name of — the naming process, not the names themselves) and so on. The D-21 is kind of a sad moment in this great bird's history. I'll be posting a comparatively large update to Spun, as we had a board meeting this week and have some interesting new design ideas. More vegetables.

daft.google.com

I loved froogle when it first came out. I could buy things like 4-HO-DIPT (before it was scheduled) but never did. What I liked it for was it aggregated stores so I could actually see what the relevant prices are/were. Now, it lets me add them to a list! So on my list I has:

1. clutch and pressure plate kit (exedy)
2. exedy "stage 1" flywheel (14lbs) - the original was torched.
   
3. front and rear sways (20 & 24 mm) with urethane bushings from whiteline
4. stainless brake lines (f/r)
   
5. stainless clutch line
6. front and rear brake pads - Hawk HPS (the porterfields don't do so well when cold)

Aaaaanyhow, this is great for google, because I specifically chose all those vendors because they offer Google Checkout. But, and this is a big but, as they say, I cannot purchase the aggregate of all these items, about $1400 worth of kit, in one swell foop. In fact, I have to go to each manufacturer or reseller and buy them through Google Checkout on their own stupid, frequently buggy, sites.

So since google is ever so good at aggregating things into useful lists, how is it they have such an obtuse approach to Froogle? It's like selling a car without doors. Hey, it's fast as shit, and it's all slick and Viper or Z06 looking, but, if you can't get into the goddamn car, it's totally fucking useless. So, google, thank you for today's story of Fail. I am sure since you've tacked your ever-present "beta" sticker on it, you may indeed change the site to not, how to say, inhale the donkey.

But I ain't holdin' my breath.

Saw the new boondock saints movie.

Go see it. Seriously. It was a great movie. (desert eagles notwithstanding)

Drives, MTBF (lies), Redundancy, and presents

Sandy has purchased for Thunder (the Mac Pro) four 1.5tb drives, which should comprise two separate 1.5tb mirrors, depending on how SL Server handles LVM.  I could be in for a surprise. Still no goddamn zfs, which makes me sad, but there's also no OCFS, which I'd be equally as happy with. Instead, AAPL assumes users are stupid (well, they're kinda right, but still) and don't need complex LVM. By god, it's Unix, people. If you want to format in XFS and have RAID 23098420, you should be able to.

So provided I manage to get the data off the drive looks kaput, we'll be moving it to the new array and decomming the older drives. 7200rpm ain't the best, but it'll work, and I'm hoping Apple will latch onto the Sunacle bandwagon and give us a 64gb flash card on the PCI bus for instant boot, leaving the drive for more important stuff.

We shall see. I fucking hate doing data recovery when it's a) my data and b) very, very valuable.

Holy wow, batman!

I was the only kid I knew who came home from school and started a fire so she could take a bath that night.

Via…

It's a sad day but everyone was alive and got home safe.

I had to send an email to someone I love very much today that was so full of assertive, pointy and serrated verbs, and not much time to catch your breath. It had to be done. I feel terrible about it, but I think sometimes it takes something like that to get someone's attention. Unfortunately, due to distance, it was an email rather than a personal visit.

Over the last almost ten years, I have yelled at my wife ... twice, I think. I'd never harm her in any way. I'm just not that kind of guy. But because I keep everything in reserve (here used in the military sense of the word, like keeping your 5th Cav in reserve), when I stand up, look directly at her and say, this is not okay. You cannot do this. You must listen and understand that this has long since lost any relevance to the discussion and has become an exercise in attrition and you need to understand this is not okay, it's not the way people relate to eachother, let alone spouses, so let's ease off a little bit here, and figure out what we're talking about and talk about it. We don't need to yell. You need a glass of water? A hug? Soppy and melodramatic it may sound, but I'm incredibly thankful that my wife understands that I'm being forthright and want to reduce casualties. I know people who haven't or aren't willing to accept that sometimes, you don't have to blame anyone. We can both look at the crater in the road and figure out how to fix it without trying to figure out which eleventy billion raindrops caused it to collapse. I've actually written a couple of published essays on the subject.

So it breaks me up terribly that I had to "yell" so very loud to get this person's attention, and I was very worried that said person would be livid because I had the audacity to … For me it felt so precarious. There are basically two ways people can react to that, especially with email. They can defy it and you and launch into a tirade of ad hominem attacks and generally huffing and puffing and threatening to blow the house down. They can also realize that I'm not trying to hurt anyone, and I want to work through the problem. This takes something important: a leap of faith or a thimble-full of trust. Afterall, I could in fact be lying. But I generally don't when I can avoid it. Basically there are two paths diverging from the one we were on together. One on which we are still together, and one on which we are apart.

I got a thank-you. Boy, I was really worried. So thankful.

hurrah!

i has a famous.

Maybe I just need to fly the coop.

(no, you probably don't want to read this.)

Moving out to California (as much as I rather dislike their politics, gun laws, and taxes), especially to Mojave, would actually work out pretty well for me. I'd get the solace that I find in little pockets during the day, and at night when the brain just stirs, stirs. Zen tells us confusion is a good thing, in the snarky roundabout sarcastic way that it does tell us things.

I 'spect if I went further to the east, to LANL, someone would have me and I could do the old homestead of the frontier thing, keep to myself when not otherwise busy, and work on my space program. That, in itself gives me goosebumps; the fact that it raises no "wow" or surprise; that now, just saying "my space program" is just that, nothing special.


When I was younger, I loved the Mojave. I went out every time I could, party or no. I remember incredible moments under moonless nights, and hour after hour of misshapen purple lumps of hills when the moon was full. We took rentals out there. I also didn't think love was any more than a big pile of chemicals gone wrong in the brain.

Life, as it has frequently and always painfully, straightened me out. I now understand the nature, but it is hard to maintain a separate me, and a separate her, and hope that the synchros are still meshing and the lot. I'm not feeling too terrific about these things now. It's so unfortunate I didn't really figure myself out until I was in my twenties. Being me, today, is almost a hostile act. I can't simply say to someone, pardon, I'm over here being introspective, or rolling a turbine between little ganglion fingers, unfolding it, watching it, figuring out where the turnips grow. Please, someone, just turn it a little down from eleven so I can think the thoughts that my head is swimming in. No, "Me," indeed, is a thing most people don't like. Which of course is entirely different than saying "Sophie doesn't like [me, alex]". It is a very different thing.

It makes me sad to think that the only real reason I can come up with for that "Me" for someone else is not suitably set up for them to spend time in. Hence my saying that I want to step out and aside and just think a little is interpreted as an affront; I am happy with my Me, while you, I guess, are not. I've told people for as long as I can remember that I don't really care about specifics. I don't care about politics, be they marital or Nanc'yth Nug Shothoth-al-addin Pel'osi. You know, I'll just keep being me, by myself, and you, really, can go do whatever you were doing. Really. As I tell my cat every night, "I am not going to eat your dinner. Don't sit there and look at me like I might take it! Have I ever eaten your dinner? No. Instead, I am going to read a little before bed, and you are going to eat your dinner. Is that acceptable?"

She seems to agree, rotting fetid ball of cat filth she is, every night. And yet, the next day, the confrontation comes back. Listen, cat, I'm going to feed you. Don't worry about it. I am far more concerned about that book I'm reading, or muscle spasms.

Listen, folks. Just because I am happy being by myself does not mean that I must always be by myself. There's no link between wanting some time to yourself and a mutually assured destruction. It's just time. Maybe we can walk off into some sunset somewhere, and be Us, be together.

Perhaps that's why I have become so very disinfatuated with Washington DC. It's full of vile people that defy my vocabulary's ability to describe them. Indeed! Do give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses! DC is full of people that cannot even describe freedom to yearn to breathe free. Instead, we indeed do have wretched refuse on our post-teeming shore. Homeless, un-free, and afraid of their own person. What a state! To be so very afraid of yourself that somebody who isn't is automatically categorized as a threat.

I yearn to breathe free. And yet, as I do, I am fairly certain I shall be subjugated by myself or someone far worse.

(this is really, really, not an emo #fml sort of thing. i spew forth all manner of shit you're welcome to consume if the taste strikes you.)

You dont say?

There is no financial incentive to keep patients healthy.

I think I have ranted about this for years, going on and on about the pharmocracy and health institutions not having any reason to prescribe the appropriate dose of the appropriate meds to the patient. As it stands, it looks like I'm not the only one to have noticed it.  The New York Times (your truth may vary) published an article written by a man with more degrees than anyone on the planet. That man is Clayton Christensen.

I know it's a little bit cheeky to complain about a guy who sees my point (which of course is his point as he's never read this sham of a website, nor has he met me, nor have I even seen him speak), but if you add up all the degrees and the amount of time it must have taken. I mean, have a look at his record. It's not like he skimmed through college with a bong and a suspiciously good spate of luck. I mean he has five published books, and his education, apparently starting in the early 1970's, would have had him booked solid through at least the early 80's, but at that point, it looks like he rested a little and started up again in 1984. Yeeeesh.

So the guy is brilliant, but it seems to me that he's spent more time in school than out, and his brilliance has made it into the books, and he's charging $largesum to just show up somewhere and talk.