Journal

prelude to autumn

The weather is absolutely fantastic outside – 68°, sunny, low humidity, breezy. I want this every day of the year.

I wonder if I'll do anything with it today.

long live Israel

Stupid Zionists.

post-Eudora

As all of you probably don't know, my beloved email client, Eudora, moved to open source earlier this summer and will no long continue new development or support.

Apparently, Mozilla has picked up on it under a project called Penelope.

Maybe that's a good sign – I couldn't move to Eudora for Mac because I couldn't convert my Windows mail correctly (and all the special things attached to each message, like labels, wouldn't carry over), but since it's named after our budgie, it'll magically fix all the gripes I've had in trying to use a native program.

But it might be interesting to see if I can hold out and use it for another 10 years (on emulated software!). 20 years of using the same program has to be a record of some sort.

fever

If I was ever sick for more than two days, I don't remember it. But somehow, I've managed to be sick for the last four.

Yes, Asma was sick last weekend, and I have been under a lot of stress at work, but it's not a new situation, because there have been a few other times in the last two years where Asma was sick and I was sick of doing TCC stuff.

Something bad is happening to me… I was talking to Hasan a night, and even he commented that I never get sick. Maybe it's old age. Lack of nutrients? A new effort to stay as vegetarian as possible? My legendary immune system is breaking down. So sad.

Friday night, I was on the sofa for over six hours. Trying to sleep, trying to watch tv, etc. At one point, I really, really wanted dessert. It took over 30 minutes before I could get myself to get dressed, but I walked a mile for a piece of tiramisu from la Madeleine.

I also had a fever.

As of yesterday I'm mostly better. Painful coughs every once in a while, itchy, runny nose. But I managed to jog 3.2 miles.

Last night (or this morning) I had a dream that I went to Target and was able to slide across their floors wearing socks. I did all these slick maneuvers, but had to rely a bit on running into walls to stop myself. It's almost similar to the built-in rollerskates kids have in their shoes, minus the obnoxiousness of it.

Our kids are never getting those.

toeiny

I can't get enough of watching Mishti lying down on her favorite little pink blanket (like right now). She's also started sleeping in a tiny Tupperware container (which she fits snugly and perfectly in) we put in a week ago that doubles as her dust bath.

I'm so happy she's alive.

the chicken or…

I have a strong affinity for diner/cafe-style scrambled eggs. The fluffiness and creaminess and simplicity of it all is too much to resist when it's within reach.

But, I've never been able to make it at home. In fact, I never tried to research it. I thought there had to be something special in their batter and gave up at that. Still, it's been slowly gnawing on the back of my mind (and bites every time I go to the AARP cafeteria for breakfast).

Another thing that has recently been keeping me from making eggs at home is the smell. I had a theory on that a couple of weeks ago and learned that I'd been totally overcooking them – they're done before they start to brown.

Anyway, this morning I wanted awesome scrambled eggs, so I search and found this recipe (the tips above it help). As the egg started to solidify in the pan, I noticed that they looked exactly how I wanted them to.

I should've turned them at that point and gotten them on to a plate soon after, but I still managed to 'overcook' them. Despite that, it's the best scrambled eggs I've ever made. So I need to get it in my head that eggs take even less to cook than I thought: 30–45 seconds tops.

No more 3-minute scrambling sessions. Now I can make a happy breakfast every weekend and not envy IHOP.

feet

I am slow to address health issues.

My feet have been hurting on and off for the last four years, mainly from either running or walking too much (sometimes, just because they want to). This usually resulted in my shins hurting and also in muscle irritation in my lower calves. And when I started exercising regularly back in February, my left knee started to hurt in a strange way: I couldn't stretch my quadricep because there was too much pain trying to pull my lower leg back all the way. I just figured I messed it up doing squats.

I made an appointment with a podiatrist last Thursday, and she told me I had low arches, which is the root of all my problems (except for the knee, which I didn't mention). She gave me a referral for feet X-rays and told me I needed orthopedic inserts.

Asma and I spent much of Saturday looking for running shoes (she's gotten interested in pursuing running, and I just need something that won't cause damage). We finally settled on a pair on Sunday, and results were pretty immediate: though I still had some muscle irritation in my right calf, my feet didn't hurt from the run, and my left knee's pain miraculously lessened.

I still probably have months to go to undue the damage of the last four years, but the dramatic change is surprising.

Lesson? Protect your feet. They're your roots.

I'm doing another sleep study on Monday using a CPAP device. And I'll be getting one of my own soon after. I'm excited!

trojan horse, back doors, etc.

I finally investigated the spam attacks I've been receiving, and it was really simple: they were coming in through trackbacks. I always felt like there was a way they were getting through the normal channels, and now I know.

Not too difficult in the end. It means that no one can trackback to me, but no one does, so no loss.

truly lucky strikes

Yesterday, WSO celebrated the alpha launch of the new AARP site. We went Lucky Strike and had a bunch of teams bowling. A couple of the lanes had really small teams, so they went through their ten frames pretty quickly.

I took the chance to use the fairly empty lanes to practice while waiting my turn, because I suck at bowling. I managed to correct my form, I thought, and had two strikes in a row. A couple of frames after that, though, I hesitated right before releasing the ball, and in my attempt to stop myself from crossing the line, I was hopping on my right toe for what seemed like several seconds before the slick lane got the best of me.

I went crashing forward, slamming my left elbow and knee into the ground. Good thing Yonas witnessed the whole thing and fell down laughing, because as soon as I got up I started laughing too.

But because of the fall, and over-extending myself and my entire right arm, my body is just sore overall. And I think I pulled some muscles in my fingers. Bowling is tough.

Catering was delicious and fatty, and the pinot grigio was actually good (maybe the food had something to do with taking the edge off the alcohol). And I think everyone had a good time, which was nice to see. It's been a stressful and tension-filled year for most people, and this is one of the few moments where the collective could just chill out and have some fun.

favorite command of the month or year

smbclient -L \\host -U username

I have been trying for months to map some directories from work to my laptop. On my desktop in the office, I checked out the properties and looked at where the network drives were pointing to, then tried to use those same addresses on the MacBook.

In a couple of cases, it worked. But for another directory (which, admittedly, I rarely need to go to, except in cases like now where I'm covering for my old supervisor while she's on vacation), it failed in a couple of different ways.

So tonight, hoping to get some work out of the way, I got fed up and started searching for ‘smb on unix’. Which led me to find a few different programs that work with SMB (that either come standard or were part of the package). Which led me to the above command, which lists, from the looks of it, all the shared servers and directories on the domain.

After going through a couple of scrolls of the output, I found that there's another way to get the directory I've been wanting, and it works. Yay!

The end.

SBUX and harm touch, together at last.

Back in May, I noticed that Juan Valdez Coffee went out of business two weeks after the fact. I passed it every day for months and always saw people inside. Why would I assume otherwise?

Well, there's a Starbucks directly across the street.

Oh, there's also another Starbucks two blocks up, near the metro. And guess what happened when I went to Shimba Hills, the only other coffee shop alternative near work, this morning?

Nothing, because it went out of business.

I can't wrap my mind around it: there are Starbucks littered across this area, across the U.S., in the same way McDonald's is. But McDonald's has competitors. Why is it that Starbucks is driving out practically every other coffee shop near it?

It's really upsetting. I haven't gone to Starbucks in three months, and I hope not to ever again. They burn their coffee and espresso, anyway.

Speaking of which, why can't most coffee shops make a good espresso? They've got the expensive, heavy-duty, pressure-driven machines, but practically no one knows how to use them. It's equivalent to all these ungrateful assholes who drive expensive cars and think the road is theirs.

What a waste.

humans suck, july 28th edition

I guess we won't have any gorillas to kill if this keeps up. 700 in the wild? Too many.

my little doozer

Last November, as an anniversary present, Asma worked furiously in the babies' room to transform it into a clean and organized office room. I was separated from Shirin, Papaya, and Elton for a couple of days, kindly following an 'off-limits' policy while Asma did her thing in secrecy. There was a lot of hammering and shuffling of things.

That was the birth of Asma the Doozer.

Today, out of nowhere, the doozer returned and decided to make a little gift for me. Except that little now involves a trip to the art store, a few hours of effort, and installing XCode Tools and an application that runs .Net on Mac OS.

What the hell is going on?

This is like witnessing a very smart mouse doing something very sneaky and clever.

CPAP

I did a sleep study last night, my second in 12 years. It was uncomfortable, and I feel very, very tired.

Because I couldn't sleep well (at least I felt I couldn't get to sleep for long stretches), the technician couldn't determine if I had more than a mild case of apnea, so she couldn't put me on their CPAP machine for the remainder of the night. I'm hoping the analysis comes back saying that I need one, because medicines won't help.

It pisses me off, though, that not once prior to now did any doctor mention that I should look into a CPAP machine. I missed out on 10 years of good sleep. That really sucks.

If my sleep ever gets fixed, I wonder if any dramatic changes will come from that?

harry potter and hot browns

It was a grueling read-fest, but after a total of 17 hours, staying up until 5:15 for two nights straight, I have finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (Finished it at 2:15 PM yesterday, actually.) And yes, the line at Barnes and Noble was ridiculous for Bethesda. Took over two hours.

Overall, I'm happy with it. Lots of violence, many secrets revealed, always moving and surprising, etc. It's hard to wrap my head around some of the near-miss situations Harry & Co. got themselves into, but it's a story, so whatever. He's got some natural Felix Felicitis pumping through his blood. Whatever the case, J.K. makes it all believable, and ties up all the major loose ends (except for a certain incident at Gringotts, which I'll let go of for now). I'll give it another read in a few weeks, just to make sure I absorb everything.

I still wish magic was a more easily accessible thing.

Asma and I went to The Diner at 1 AM on Saturday night with her friend Cameron. I had a delicious dinner/breakfast/possibly lunch. HP #7 threw off my eating in a bad way. But I got by on brain energy for food.

Err, that's actually not good.

I was watching a recorded episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay tonight and found the favorite dish I never had: hot browns. Next steps include finding a restaurant in the area that serves them, or making my own.

This is plaguing my mind, in a good way:

Two things to note:

  1. Fat black lady being launched into a big cake? I like their humor.
  2. In the part where all the band members are snapping, the guy on the far left reminds me of Derek. Down to the facial expressions and head movement. And maybe even the snapping.

I feel burnt out with programming. Meh.

Mishti is back!

First, everyone should wish Mishti a happy birthday, because she turned one year-old last weekend. Of course, if the breeder lied to us, she could only be 11 months. But for now, she's one year.

Second, Mishti is back! Yesterday was her first day where she ate pellets at different times of the day. Not only that, but she's now downing Critical Care like a treat. She's looking so healthy.

Mishti napping

It's hard to believe that, just a month ago, she was near death and looking the part. She might still be fighting an infection (bubbly poop a couple of times, conjunctivis), but from what we can tell, it's all under control. Her weight has gone down a little two days in a row, and I'm hoping that's just her normalizing in terms of fat content (I was calling her trunk butt for a few days because the extra weight was going to her lower body) – if for some reason it continues to go down, she's going to need another vet visit. But that's still two days away before we have to make that call.

Mommy and daddy are happy. Shirin is anxious because she's hardly been let out in the last month (sorry, sweetheart!). New photos are up on our joint Flickr. And we are possibly going to wait in line [if Bethesda has much of a crowd at all] for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I'm sort of sad that Harry Potter is coming to an end. Maybe there will be good spin-offs?

Mishti!

are Jews really descended from apes and swine?

We have an interesting neighbor. He's Jewish, retired for a few years now, and he's just across the hall. We've been meaning to get together with him in a more formal way, instead of just some quick words going to/from the apartment.

The day Proudfeather died (and I think I even mentioned this in that post), he took me to the vet. It was really generous of him to take a few hours out of his day for that, considering neither of us really knew each other at all.

A lot of our talk [or mostly his, as I just listened to him a lot] during the car ride related to Judeaism and Islam. It's difficult for me to try to sum up what he was saying, because I'm still trying to understand it myself, but I think I can say for certain that he believes that many (some would say most) Muslims have hate or ill-will towards Jews, and that it's an undeniable tenet of belief.

We ran into him a couple of nights ago, and he had an article from The Jerusalem Post he clipped for us – it was about a Bangladeshi journalist who's being imprisoned, and possibly executed, for treason, of all things. All because he's trying to promote dialogue and diplomatic relations between Israel and Bangladesh.

So in this context, he approached me (now twice) and Asma as if we had ill-will towards Jews. At least that's my sense of it. He loosely phrased it in this way: ‘If or when you ever have children, they'll be growing up in this world, and it's important for them to know what's going on. What they're taught will have a bearing on their outlook, and you don't just want to raise them and have them shut things out… You have a chance to know a Jew in the flesh and, you know, I think it's important that we're able to share our perspectives, and you have a chance to tell your friends about this.’

Not only that, he mentioned how he knows there are some Muslims that maybe feel conflicted towards their views of Jews, because on the one hand, they don't want to have any hate, and yet the Qur'an teaches them that Jews are descended from apes. As I gave him a confused look, he said, ‘Yup, it's in surah 2’.

That floored me. I've read maybe 1/10th of the Qur'an, including this surah, and never have I read anything close to that statement. It offended me, honestly.

I did some research, and this is the specific verse he must be referring to:

YUSUFALI: And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: We said to them: "Be ye apes, despised and rejected."
PICKTHAL: And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!
SHAKIR: And certainly you have known those among you who exceeded the limits of the Sabbath, so We said to them: Be (as) apes, despised and hated.

—al-Baqara, verse 2:65

Even out of context, there's no reference to anyone descending from anything. It's all metaphor: the fact that it goes beyond saying ‘Be [as] apes’ to give attributes to apes, namely ‘despited and hated’ in itself serves to underline the attributes and not the actual thing. Not only is it a metaphor, it directly addresses the Jews who disobeyed the Sabbath. (If you read the preceding verses, it also talks about the Jews just making a covenant with Allah.)

There is another verse that speaks directly of turning people into ‘apes and swine’:

YUSUFALI: Say: "Shall I point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil;- these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!"
PICKTHAL: Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road.
SHAKIR: Say: Shall I inform you of (him who is) worse than this in retribution from Allah? (Worse is he) whom Allah has cursed and brought His wrath upon, and of whom He made apes and swine, and he who served the Shaitan; these are worse in place and more erring from the straight path.

—al-Maeda, verse 5:60

Preceding this verse, the Qur'an speaks of Jews and Christians as despising and mocking Muslims. Even taking a literal interpretation of this, it only mentions people that incur Allah's wrath. Clearly, it's universal. No group is singled out here. (Of course, it gets extrapolated back to 2:65.)

(Asma linked me to this entry that goes more in-depth and more personally into the matter. It's worth a read if you're interested in what I'm saying.)

As is the case with any and every religion, it's a matter of interpretation gone bad. And it's not that simple, either, because despite the decentralized nature of Islam, there are core systematic beliefs that have taken root in interpretation (better termed exegegis, or tafsir in Arabic). It's bound by dissertation based on precedence, but, most importantly, those who stand to gain the upper hand in enforcing a perspective. So it's a mix-and-match, but it branches from a strange sense of literalism that reaches out to a large majority of Muslims.

But when an educated man in America – who doesn't live under a theocracy, who isn't forced to subscribe to a specific belief, who has access to large amounts of knowledge and different perspectives – holds such a simple and wrong belief when he could've easily grabbed a few translations and verified it himself, is it at all surprising that an uneducated, illiterate, impoverished, oppressed person could be led to believe in this nonsense? It's a struggle that has to be fought simultaneously on both ends, the non-Muslims armed with misinformation, and the Muslims armed with misinformation (often propagated and strengthened, or at least tolerated, through the community, or perhaps the community is afraid and avoids it all together).

In the way he said it was a mitzvah for him to help me out in an emergency, I think it's a mitzvah for me to set straight his misconceptions – he wants an understanding and mutual respect between Muslims and Jews, and this is one step closer to it. And as I'm making a conscious decision to try to learn and uphold the core beliefs of the Qur'an, I can't let others distort what's plainly in sight.

Religions rarely make a good person, but it can sometimes make a good person better.

conservative shitlist

How many times a brotha gotta be tired of people.

Mark was so proud that he got a recent YouTube video on Boing Boing within 30 minutes of sending an email to the guy (which I happened to start a shit storm with by saying, harmlessly, ‘you fuckin suck dude’). Underneath his post was a link to ‘Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening’.

I can't be surprised, but I still am.

This empathy for Klansmen first bubbled into the public domain this year when [Ward] Connerly was leading an anti-affirmative action campaign in Michigan. The KKK came out in support of him - and he didn't decline it. I ask if he really thinks it is possible the KKK made this move because they have become converted to the cause of racial equality. "I think that the reasoning that a Klan member goes through is - blacks are getting benefits that I'm not getting. It's reverse discrimination. To me it's all discrimination. But the Klansmen is going through the reasoning that this is benefiting blacks, they are getting things that I don't get… A white man doesn't have a chance in this country."

He becomes incredibly impassioned imagining how they feel, ventriloquising them with a shaking fist - "The Mexicans are getting these benefits, the coloureds or niggers, whatever they are saying, are getting these benefits, and I as a white man am losing my country."

On that note, here's a list that's been building in my mind. It'll always grow, for sure.

Kaiser's Conservative Shitlist, 2007.01

  • Dick Cheney
  • Ann Coulter
  • Dinesh D'Souza (if I ever come to resent my skin color, it's because of this fuck)
  • Saudi royalty and Saudi ‘religious police’
  • al-Quaeda
  • anyone who bends religion to extremes
  • Roman Catholic Church (on the fence)
  • Fox News
  • Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc.
  • Connilingus Rice
  • Albert Gonzalez
  • [insert your favorite neocon here]

Alright, not much of a list when it's written out. But it fills a lot of space in my head.

George Bush is a puppet/idiot, so he's exempt.

The time to be mad is over. Now it's time to drink tea, eat cake, let Mishti run around, and watch So You Think You Can Dance. Life is good in a wholesome bubble.

to be rickrolled

Mohammed enlightened me (or tricked me in) to an apparent internet fad despite me (and most everyone else) exercising this concept since we got online. It's called rick roll (or rickroll?).

On one of my earliest sites, and on many online convos, I frequently masked links that pointed to goatse.cx, among other things. It's…old. This is seriously a fad? Maybe the internet is following clothing fashion. All the old shit tricks are making a comeback.

Anyway, the side effect of this is that I now have Rick Astley stuck in my head, and it's annoying.

I was really surprised that the voice behind this song is white. I totally expected a black guy, and thought this video was a joke for the first minute. So lame.

So that's that.

Mishti had a spike in bloat Sunday night, but it's back under control, and for the first time in weeks, she was willing to eat [Critical Care] voluntarily (albeit only 1/4 of what she needed to eat). She was probably too hungry to fuss about it.

At around 5:00 this morning (after a weird dream, and waking up feeling overheated), I thought I heard some odd noises from Mishti. I was afraid of what it might be, and didn't want to check, but I got up a few minutes later and saw that it was nothing. I scratched her a bit, and she was whimpering (under normal conditions, that would just be her wanting to get out). I tried giving her some food but she didn't eat. I wish I could just bring her to bed and have her sleep with us.

She's so tiny and precious. I hope she knows we love her, and that all the force-feeding is for her own good.

possibly funniest mass email ever sent at work

Someone eating my food.

Hi all,

I just wanted to put this out there. A few weeks ago I had a box of cookies on my desk, that wasn’t open. Over night someone came in and ate 1/3 of the box. Quite irritating. Now yesterday I left a piece of cake in the fridge and someone ate half of it!! Why would someone just eat half of a piece of cake and leave the other half to be found half eaten?

This is really beginning to creep me out. I wonder if anyone else has had problems like this and if I should notify CARR?

Be careful of what you leave around,

D-------------