Me:”Hey, you dressed up for something or just need to do laundry?”
Him: “Laundry.”

I’m pretty sure it’s a good measure of what complete and total geeks Michael and I are that when watching TV shows on DVD, were are likely to call out things like, “Hey! It’s Admiral Leyton! or “Wasn’t she one of the Ziyals?

That said, we’re really enjoying Season One of Six Feet Under. Though I’m sorry that they don’t have more of the commercials that they had in the pilot. Those commercials were what made us decide to keep watching.

And Netflix is definitely one of the best inventions in the past decade, second only to the upside down ketchup bottle.

Thanks to Michael, at the top, right corner of the page you’ll now see random quotations. Unless of course your browser is too narrow, in which case the quotes will be between the header image and the first post. I’ll check some different computers and see how annoying that is.

And like the rest of this site, they are definitely random.

ADDENDUM the First:
Refresh (F5) will bring up a new quotation.

And now for something completely different.

I’ve actually had a hard time finding a book to keep my interest recently.

My current bed time books are Vellum: The Book of All Hours by Hal Duncan, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, and The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history by John M. Barry. All three are good, but none of them have yet engrossed me (though Labyrinth is getting there.)

I’ve also started and put right down several other books, including:
Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, Book 8) by Jim Butcher (Harry was really annoying me), The Coffin Dancer (A Lincoln Rhyme Novel) by Jeffery Deaver (I wasn’t really in the mood for reading about people getting gruesomely killed), Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries) by Dorothy L Sayers (I read a forensic thriller last week–all I could think was “he is totally contaminating the crime scene”), and Shadows in the Darkness (Changeling) by Elaine Cunningham (Is there going to be boinking in this book? I don’t want to read any boinking right now).

So none of these were what I was in the mood for. Which meant I was all the more impressed that Mister Monday pulled me in immediately, since nothing else has seemed to be doing that right now.

Now I have to see if any of those will pique my interest, or if I’ll I should pick up another book on the pile: Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy (Bloody Jack Adventures) by L.A. Meyer, 30 Days Of Night: Three Tales (30 Days of Night) by Steve Niles & Jeff Mariotte, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories by Liz Williams.

Unless of course I pick up one of the other unread books lying around the house…

Back to another of my favorite subjects: The way that the Bush administration is caring for soldiers and veterans.

There are two excellent pieces out right now about how the care that our soldiers and veterans are receiving.

The Washington Post has an excellent article on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the increasing number of solders who are suffering from TBI after being near the explosion of an IED–even if they walk away from the explosion.

Here’s why IEDS carry such hidden danger. The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point of explosion and travels hundreds of yards. The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain against the skull. The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by the “secondary wind”: a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again under high pressure. No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.

It is these sudden and extreme differences in pressures — routinely 1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure — that lead to significant neurological injury. Blast waves cause severe concussions, resulting in loss of consciousness and obvious neurological deficits such as blindness, deafness and mental retardation.

The article uses a term that I had not heard in a long time in describing what is happening to these soldiers: Shell Shock.

There is also a discussion of the fatality-casualty rates in this war as compared to the Vietnam War.

It’s a very interesting piece.

The second piece is in US News and World Report, and looks at the rates at which veterans are being denied disability benefits.

…the U.S. military appears to have dispensed low disability ratings to wounded service members with serious injuries and thus avoided paying them full military disabled retirement benefits. While most recent attention has been paid to substandard conditions and outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the first stop for many wounded soldiers stateside, veterans’ advocates say that a more grievous problem is an arbitrary and dysfunctional disability ratings process that is short-changing the nation’s newest crop of veterans. The trouble has existed for years, but now that the country is at war, tens of thousands of Americans are being caught up in it.

Before we went to war with Iraq, there were complaints about the veterans’ administration, especially regarding the underfunding of programs. Things are not getting better.

What I’d really like to see is all those jackasses with “Support Our Troops” magnets on their cars actually do something to support the troops–like paying higher taxes so we can afford better care and benefits.

Okay, my day job is software support, so I know how difficult the job can be.

But.

Our DSL has been giving us problems. It’s intermittently up and down. Although this could be due to a problem in the line somewhere, chances are, the DSL modem is going bad.

But that didn’t seem to occur to any of the tech support people we spoke to this weekend. We received a variety of suggestions, none of which worked. At last, we received the helpful suggestion that we call back when the modem wasn’t functioning. (It wasn’t functioning during the first calls we made) . Of course by the time Michael called, the modem would start working again.

So, after multiple phone calls we still don’t have a stable DSL connection. Perhaps if we call during the week we’ll get someone actually capable of solving the problem.

And I get yet another reminder of why people hate dealing with tech support.

BTW, there’s a new addition to the Fables series, Jack of Fables.

That, Ex Machina, some supernatural fantasies, and a Victorian mystery are some of what I’ve been reading.

It’s 28 degrees and still snowing.

Just in case you were curious.

It’s still snowing.

Just so you know.

For those of you who are not complete geeks, WV Public Radio has been doing a very good series recently on the VA hospital in Beckley. (See the WVPR News page, but go quickly as the articles probably won’t stay up long.)

Apparently Senator Rockefeller has been complaining about the VA facility in Beckley for some time, but it was only with the the revelations of what was happening at Walter Reed that people have started to pay attention.

A brief synopsis is that the VA facility on Beckley cannot keep doctors, and Senator Rockefeller believes that these problems are due to the administration at the hospital.

The hospital administration, of course, denies that there is a problem.

I do take issue with one thing that was brought up by the reporters–they were kicked off hospital property by security, who claimed that reporters were not allowed on federal property. (I think that is correct.)

Okay, I understand that reporters should check out these places, to make sure that patients are being treated correctly. But. This isn’t just federal property. This is a medical facility. Patients have privacy rights, and I am not certain that bringing a TV camera (and my understanding was that she had video recording equipment in addition to audio recording equipment) into a medical facility meets with those privacy standards. How can you guarantee that you are not accidentally getting someone on camera who does not want to be on camera?

I don’t know.

And let me make it clear that I very much appreciate the work that WVPR is putting into researching this issue, but I can also understand why video equipment could be a problem.

So, I hope that bringing this issue to light helps veterans. And I think making the public aware of the care our veterans are receiving should be a priority for all news organizations. But I don’t think that bringing to light these problems should trump a veteran’s right to privacy.

ersatz \AIR-sahts\ adjective
: being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation

The is one of those words I’ve never been able to pronounce, because thought I’ve read it multiple times, I don’t remember ever hearing it.

Yup.

It snowed.

Here’s a reminder of why I check Defective Yeti every day, even when he isn’t posting regularly.

Internet Access Captchas

Make sure you refresh, because he made more than one.

Like this was a big surprise.

I’m a literature nerd.
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