Disorderly Content

I just got off the phone with my father, who told me my uncle Sanford died a couple of days ago. It was hardly a surprise; Sanford Wexler was 91 years old and in failing health. But it's still hard to accept. Of all my relations, he was the one I thought of as immortal.

My mom's family moved from Bowling Green, Ohio to Savannah when she was a baby. And despite their unfortunate beginnings in the Midwest, it's hard to imaging a more classic bunch of Southerners. Sanford was the picture of the Southern gentleman, down to the seersucker suits and an accent you could cut with a knife. He was feisty and funny, the favorite of all of his nieces and nephews. And, as we all spread far and wide, he was the one who could bring us all back together. Funny that the bachelor uncle became the patriarch.

He wasn't perfect by any means. But he was a kind, gracious and warm man. I can't imagine a world without him in it.

I'll miss you, Sanford.

Okay, so Windows Vista is out. And to no one's surprise, Microsoft is treating this thing like it's the second coming of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But does the rest of the world have to go along? Watching Bill Gates on Monday's episode of The Daily Show, all I could think is that all those billions can't improve the basic dorkiness of such a special person.

And you just gotta love Microsoft's marketing department. I mean, who picked that slogan? The "Wow" Starts Now? C'mon, where's the wow in this thing. Other than, "Wow, they want how much for this crap?" Or "Wow, how the heck do I make sense of all these different versions?" Or "Wow, when the hell did I give Microsoft ownership of my computer?"

But the best "wow" moment has to be the launch. In the photo on the Mac Daily News website, you can see just how wowed a bunch of industry execs are at the chance to share a stage with Microsoft. Not a "wow" moment, is it? More like a "whuh?" followed by a clunk as they fall, senseless, out of their chairs.

BTW, it's entirely a coincidence that this is my 666th blog post. Really.

Update 02/01: This is rich! Apparently, it's possible to attack a Vista system by getting the owner to download and play an audio file. If speech recognition is enabled, it'll hear the commands spoken by the file and do what it's told, including deleting files, shutting down the system and who knows what other kind of destructive behavior. Read about it on George Ou's blog at ZDNet.

Am I the only one who thinks this is the coolest thing in ages? It's a USB hub that looks (and sounds!) like the Tardis. What better complement to my limited edition Godzilla-clone Firewire hub?

Via Boing Boing, which got it from Gizmodo.

Please be warned: what follows is a political rant, and one that uses bad words. Okay, it uses one particular bad word. It just uses it a bunch of times.

When exactly did Republicans get the idea that they could demean their opponents by controlling what they were called? And how exactly did those opponents not see what was happening, and not move to keep it from happening? I refer not to the demonizing of the word liberal, but to the way Republicans have in recent years taken to calling the Democratic Party the Democrat Party. It may seem like a small thing, but I am convinced it is not.

Why do they do it? And why does it so offend me and, I hear, plenty of other Democrats who have noticed? First, I imagine, they don't like their opponents being called Democratic, perhaps in the belief that it makes them by definition undemocratic. (Well, if it quacks like a duck...) Second, I find the phrase Democrat Party hard on the ears. Maybe it's those particular consonants right next to each other, but it's just unpleasant sounding. As for why I'm offended, well, I still want to know how the other guys get to decide what my guys are called. It violates my sense of fair play, and right and wrong, in much the same way the last six years of Washington politics tend to do.

Even now, with the Democrats in possession, loose though it may be and only until people like Joe Lieberman get a better offer from the other guys, of the reins of power, with the president looking to sound conciliatory, like he gives a damn about what people who don't agree with him think, he can't avoid doing the one thing pretty much guaranteed to set Democrats off. At the State of the Union, he couldn't resist making reference to the Democrat Party. Demonstrating, at least to me, that his willingness to be a uniter is as nothing compared to his instinct to be a dick.

So what can we Democrats do? Well, I know it goes against our belief system, but we could always try fighting fire with fire. How about if we decided to start calling Republicans by a name they didn't choose? Think it'd upset them? We'd have to choose wisely, but yeah, I think it might work. I even have A Modest Proposal, with apologies to Jonathan Swift. It even has historical precedent, back to the halcyon days of Watergate. Think Donald Segretti and those dirty tricksters working for Richard Nixon. Yes, I propose we start calling Republicans the Ratfucker Party. Say it with me: George Bush is a Ratfucker. Cheney's a Ratfucker too. (Be sure to capitalize it. Otherwise it's just rude.) And Tom Delay, although in his case it may work with or without the capital letter. (The man was an exterminator before he got into politics, after all.) We could even abbreviate it: the GOP becomes the RFP.

So that's my proposal. Think it'll catch on?

In my last post I mentioned my visit to Bisbee, Arizona. How and why I ended up there is a possibly interesting story, one which you're about to read.

I think I discovered Bisbee in an airline magazine, although it may have been a travel mag instead. Whichever it was, I read about this old mining town in the southeastern corner of Arizona that had been given new life by an influx of hippies and artsy people. It sounded interesting, so I kept it in the back of my mind for a year or so. And then, late last year, I started thinking about those free Southwest tickets I was accumulating. This last holiday weekend seemed like a good time to check the place out, and maybe get a few photos for my portfolio.

Bisbee is an hour and a half south-southeast of Tucson, so I flew to Tucson on Friday night, stayed near the airport and made the drive down in the morning. Tombstone is on the way, although the websites I read weren't wrong in describing the site of the OK Corral as being a lot less interesting than you might think. Even the original Boot Hill was a disappointment, what with all the grave markers being replacements. Guess the townspeople didn't realize the tourist value until it was way too late.

But Bisbee was another story entirely. The historic part of the town lies in a north-south canyon, with one street along the canyon and a bunch of smaller ones trying to head into the hills on either side. The town dates back to 1880, with the opening of an incredibly productive copper mine. And it almost ended in 1975 or so, when the last of the mining activity ended. Fortunately, those hippies, artsy people and other folks looking for a nice place to retire showed up in time to rescue Bisbee from the brink.

After driving the length of the town and then discovering the nervous-making joys of driving into (and out of) the hills on two way streets that aren't wide enough to be two way streets, I headed out on foot to explore further. I spotted a building that had the word Theatre painted on it and a banner outside announcing a show that evening. It was some sort of homegrown musical revue, so I noted the phone number and debated attending what was likely a cringeworthy way to spend an evening. Still, it was a dinner theater. And I had to eat somewhere.

In the meantime I needed entertainment. And at the south end of town I'd spotted the entrance to the Copper Queen Mine, which advertised a museum and tours. So off I went to buy my ticket, sign a release that absolved them of any responsibility if I were to, you know, die or something. And waited for the tour to begin. First of course I had to be outfitted: miner's helmet, raincoat of the type I haven't worn since elementary school, and a big belt to hold the heavy battery that would give me a little light. Although, being a "curse the darkness" kind of guy, that seemed superfluous.

And off we went, 1500 feet straight into the old copper mine on a little train that went through a tunnel just slightly wider and taller than said train and its passengers. Our guide was one of the old miners, whose talk about equipment and working conditions was fascinating, albeit a little hard to understand. Although I certainly got the word silicosis clearly enough. That's the local equivalent of the black lung disease coal miners get, better known as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconiosis by school children who are unimpressed by antidisestablishmentarianism. But I digress.

Meanwhile, back to the dinner theater. While waiting for the tour, curiosity won out over inertia and I called the theater to see about getting into that night's performance. Which I did. A few minutes after being seated, I was asked if I'd mind sharing my table with another single. Turns out Joy is sort of a force of nature in town: owner of a B&B, past owner and restorer of two classic hotels and involved with most everything of significance in Bisbee. I learned a lot more about my surroundings than I'd ever have discovered on my own, including the fact that the theater had once been the town's Baptist church, the original theater having been turned into a real estate office. I also got an invitation to breakfast at the B&B, where the other guests and I learned about restoring hundred year old buildings, before being taken on a fascinating tour of the town's architecture, history and culture. (Oh, and the theater performance? Both it and the dinner that preceded it were very good.)

I spent the rest of the day photographing all the sites Joy had pointed out: the local cemetary, a trailer park that was full of vintage vehicles, and more colorful buildings hanging on to the hills and accessible only by long stairways than I'd have imagined in a town ten times the size.

In brief, Bisbee was well worth the journey. As was the most-of-a-day I spent in Tucson before my flight home. But that's another story for another time.

I'm suffering from a bit of the above-entitled ailment. Spent last weekend in Bisbee, Arizona, about which more shortly. I got home late Monday night, only to have to return to the airport way too early Tuesday morning to go to our Chicago office for a meeting. How early? And how late? Let's just say that there were 6.5 hours between my arrival home from one trip and my heading out the door for the next. And let me add that I don't function at all well on 4 hours of sleep.

Anyway, I'm home now, and slowly trying to catch up. Still have a couple of hundred photos to retrieve from my camera and examine for good candidates for my stock portfolio, my Flickr gallery and of course this place here. Oh, and go through the mail, and do my expenses, and pick up some groceries.

By the way, in among the traveling and the exhaustion I managed to finish reading the manuscript for my friend Barry Eisler's latest John Rain thriller. Suffice it to say that the rest of you are in for a wild ride.

There's an old saying in the computer business that there are two kinds of people: those who have had a catastrophic data failure and those who haven't. Yet. For a while there, I thought I might have joined that first group.

My saga began when I started Quicken on my Mac, intending to enter my latest paycheck information. Except... Quicken couldn't find my data. Any of it. Going back more than two years. It was gone. Not currupted, mind you. Gone completely.

Okay, says I, not to panic yet. This is bad, but maybe my nightly backup will have a copy. Assuming of course that the file didn't disappear before my last full backup. (Yes, I'm stupid. Thanks for noticing.) So I brought up Retrospect, which has given me its own share of agitation over the years, and tried to restore my Quicken data. Except... it wasn't cooperating. Yeah, there seemed to be the right file, but not.

To make a long story a little shorter, I managed to coerce Retrospect into giving me back the file, which was actually a Mac OS X package, which is kind of a directory except not. Well, it really is, but it pretends not to be.

And then I had to figure out how to get Quicken, which didn't like the directory/package, to open the file inside with the real data. Which, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it did. And then I made a copy. And then I made the mistake of trying Quicken's backup option, which froze my machine for a while before I could get control back.

Anyway, all my data is where it should be. And I have a backup copy of my Quicken data, in addition to the ones Retrospect is making for me. And my heart is almost back to its normal beat.

I want one. I so want one. Heck, I'm even on the right wireless carrier for once. Anybody want a slightly used Nokia E62?

I haven't mentioned my stock photography hobby or side business or (let's be honest here) obsession in a while. Suffice it to say that I'm every bit as focused on it as ever. Maybe more so, truth be told. At this writing I have almost 1500 pictures in my portfolio. Which, you can imagine, presents a problem: what shall I photograph next? It's not like I can take long road trips whenever I want, what with my employer expecting me to - I don't know - work every now and then. So I'm always looking for interesting photo ops a little closer to home than Gallup, New Mexico or Page, Arizona.

Which is why, when I saw that the weather this morning was nicer than predicted, I decided to take a drive over to Treasure Island, that little bit of land between the two pieces of the Bay Bridge. I'd never been there before, largely because for a long time I didn't know that I could go there, what with it being home to a naval base until recently. Anyway, now that the Navy has moved on, there was nothing to stop me from wandering around and enjoying the views west to San Francisco and east to the Oakland side of the bridge. The weather wasn't perfect; a little too much moisture in the air for sharp pictures. But now that I know I can visit, I'll just have to do it more often. After all, how many years was it before I found all the good places to shoot the Golden Gate?

Nikon makes much of their Creative Lighting System, where each individual flash unit -- excuse me -- speedlight communicates with others to balance out the exposure and get things right. Intelligence is a good thing in a flash, right? Suddenly I'm not so sure. And I'm less sanguine about keeping my SB600 and SB800 in the same bag...