New Technology = New Thing For George To Destroy

Our theme at the Wednesday Weight Watcher's meeting was, I don't know, something about exercise and fitness. I tuned most of it out because exercise is soooooo boring.

However, I did pay attention to the discussion of tracking our activity. In theory, people are supposed to take at least 10,000 steps a day. For a desk jockey, that's a lot. You could track with a simple pedometer and they were promoting a Weight Watchers product that would not just count steps but also tell you how many points you've earned.

One of my compadres said she used a doohickie called Fitbit. She said it was tiny and accurate and you could sync your results online for free. Free! That was unlike the Weight Watchers product which required a monthly fee if you wanted to store your results online.

So, I checked it out and what sold me on the Fitbit was that it also records your sleep patterns. How? I don't know, maybe magic.

This Is Not A Chew Toy

The nice thing about having an Amazon Prime account and an Amazon warehouse in your town is you get things next day. So, I came home last night to find my Fitbit One on my doorstep. After a fairly trying attempt to install the software on my PC, I had to go with the Mac but then all was well.

I tested it out with having it latched on to the top of my pants and also to my tank shoulder strap. The former was more accurate in step counting. I'll probably leave it in my pants pocket so there's less chance of it falling by the wayside.

And, of course, I tried it out as I was sleeping last night. Not surprisingly, it said I woke up a lot. Seventeen times, in fact. However, I got a sleep efficiency score of 91%. I have no idea if any of that is good or bad so more research is needed.

George has shown a great interest in it all. In fact, as I put the Fitbit on my nightstand after I woke up this morning, she was immediately there to inspect. And, I suspect destroy. Those kitty teeth were out. A loud, "Mommy just spent $100 on that!" got her to jump down.

Clearly, it will have to be well hidden unless it's on my person or the demon will have it as a snack. Sigh.

On The Soapbox - Let's Talk About The REAL Issue

It's already started.

The folks against further gun control are talking about the recent Texas stabbings at Lone Star College. Their comments are along the lines of, "So, where's the demand to outlaw knives now?"

The folks for further gun control are also talking about the stabbings but with a different view. "Fourteen stabbed but none dead, imagine if he'd had a gun?"

The folks against further gun control make the argument that, if someone is determined to wreak havoc and cause injury, they'll find a way even with further gun restrictions.

Those folks are correct. Someone can use a knife, a car, a baseball bat or a chain and hurt a lot of people. Unfortunately, guns are just a much more effective way to kill a lot of people in a short period of time than those other methods.

What keeps getting lost in this huge, often vicious debate, is that it's not the guns, it's not the knives, it's not the baseball bats that are to blame for these mass actions.

It's Seriously Mentally Ill people who are responsible, right? They are the ones seeking out the weapons and attacking others.

Actually, that's not even true. We're to blame. We're to blame because care for these folks is criminally underfunded and underutilized and we sit back and let this situation happen.

We don't want to raise taxes to provide medical care. We don't put in place checks to prevent medical care over-billing and inefficiency so medical costs keep rising to the point where many can't afford it.

We attach a huge stigma to people with mental illness in our society so that they and their families are ashamed to ask for help. Or, even admit to themselves that there's a problem.

I know this is completely naive, but wouldn't we all be better off  if the millions upon millions of dollars being spent to lobby for and against further gun control were instead funneled to providing mental health care?

I also know that this will never happen because we've let the issue get too big to handle. It's easier to attack others with opposing views than to actually attack the problem.

Continuing Education

If I ever went back to school, I'd be all over studying human behavior. We're just not rational, y'all, and I think it's fascinating to know why.

Since I don't have the funding to go back to school, I read up on the subject. I loved Made To Stick by the Heath Brothers and I'm on their email list. Last week, I got an email from them about an online course to be taught by Dan Ariely called A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior. I've already read Ariely's book, Predictable Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and thought it was great. The science was presented in an understandable manner and the dude is funny. I would love to sit next to him on a plane for a long flight.

The class is six weeks long, has about two hours of video lecture that's broken down into manageable chunks and some heavy reading. Psychological abstracts ain't for the weak hearted.

But, it's FREE!

There are two quizzes each week, one on the lectures and the other on the reading and you get up to 15 tries for each to get a perfect score. There's also going to be a writing assignment at some point.

Somehow, without much thought (hmmmm), I signed up and committed myself to 6 to 8 hours of work a week. In a life that's already overly committed, that seems crazy. However, I will find time for something I love. (Anyone up for poker? It's been too long.)

And, I am loving it. I've already found some things to apply to work and some of the material has made me reconsider how I'm making some personal decisions.

The class is through a group called Coursera. It's associated with a bunch of Universities and there are all sorts of classes. They already emailed me with four more suggestions. I have to admit they looked interesting but I'm at an activity saturation point.

It's been a long time since I've had to think, "I better get my homework done." But, it feels good.

Home Improvement

I've had a paint sample card up on the cupboards that face into my dining room for, well, years. Literally. I originally put it up so I could look at the four different shades and decide which one I liked. Then, I kept it up there hoping it would inspire me to actually paint.

Clearly, it wasn't very effective as an action inducer.

However, a few Fridays ago, I was sitting at home and clearing off my DVR when I sent Steven at text message. "I'm thinking of painting the dining room tomorrow." His response the next day was something like "That was the wine talking, wasn't it?"

Guilty.

But, without wine I decided on Saturday that I actually had some free time on Sunday. Why I thought that since I had to work and also go to my parents' house for dinner, I don't know. But, I got up early and headed to Lowe's for paint and supplies.

While I was in the "make things nice looking" mood, I decided to replace the hardware on my cupboards and drawers. I sent Steven a picture message of the two I liked. One was $3 and the other was $5. Guess which one got picked? 23 new handles later...

Goodbye 1973! The new one on the bottom is a burnished brass.

Here's how it looked before I started.

Please ignore the clutter

Here's how it looks now.

So bright and pretty!

Why purple? Because of something my Godmother made that's hanging on the wall to the left of the cupboards.

Also bright and pretty!

She quilted this hanging for me. It's so Arizona and also my favorite color (she knew) so I wanted something to tie into it. I think it works well.

The only downfall of this project is that it's making me want to redo all of the kitchen cupboards. That requires taking down doors and hinges and, well, a lot more work. 

I guess I need to put up some sample cards and it will get done in a few years.

Zocalo Event - Goodbye Mr. Chips

My friend Stacey found an organization called Zocalo Public Square. Here's their mission statement:

Zócalo Public Square is a not-for-profit daily Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. We foster healthier, more cohesive communities by tackling important contemporary questions in an accessible, non-partisan, and broad-minded spirit.

Zócalo, a project of the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and the New America Foundation, is based in Los Angeles and Phoenix, and roams across the country. We explore connection, place, big ideas, and what it means to be a citizen, be it locally, regionally, nationally, or globally. We are committed to welcoming a new, young, and diverse generation to the public square.

She found an event to be held in Phoenix at the Phoenix Art Museum featuring Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel and Valley of the Sun business icon, and Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University. The topic was Move Over Moore's Law - What Comes After The Silicon Computer Chip?

It seemed like an event right up our alley. Being in IT, the topic interested me and we love learning and we love learning for free. As an added bonus, there was also free wine and beer served afterwards.

You can see the presentation in full and read a recap of it here.

The topic strayed from the title. For those that don't know, Moore's Law is named for Gordon Moore, another previous CEO of Intel who said that the number of transistors on integrated circuit chips doubles every two years. It was later refined to 18 months because of the increased number of transistors and their increased speed.

It was somewhat of a casual conversation.
Certainly nothing fancy.

We expected a pretty in-depth tech talk on what the vision was for the new "chip". What we got was more of a history lesson and philosophical discussion on the United States future as a world technology and business leader.

I didn't care because I decided I could sit and listen to Craig Barrett for hours.

Some of the things we thought were notable:

• Barrett's stellar career came down to applying to the Metallurgic Engineering program at Standford because his buddy was doing the same and that Sputnik caused the US to put a ton of money into engineering and science while he was in school making Stanford into a highly productive research school. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
• Barrett believes that the US needs a quality primary and secondary education system (among other things like venture capital) and that we're failing to provide that. Without that base to get kids interested in science and college, we're not going to progress as we have in the past.
• An education in Engineering teaches you to problem solve and Barrett believes that ability is the key to many corporations success. I don't know if it's true but he said the majority of CEOs come from Engineering.
• Both Crow and Barrett believe that Crow's approach to making ASU a significant research University is critical to ASU and Arizona's success.

After the event, we chatted with another attendee then ended up in a conversation with Zocalo's founder. He thought we were delightful and we peppered him with questions about the organization.

I'm looking forward to their next events. They don't have one in Phoenix soon but I can see me watching the video of a few of the SoCal ones. By the way, I was quite impressed that they had the video and recap up by the next morning after the event.

It Would Be More Of A Hate Charm, Wouldn't It?

My Mom gave me one of those page-a-day calendars with cats on it. I love seeing the furry faces and reading the trivia. Here's what today's entry was:

Many people believe that cat whiskers bring good luck. The whiskers are a magic ingredient in many different traditions. Some people who create charm pouches - we won't call them witches - use cat whiskers to steer the course of romantic destiny. So if you see a whisker fall out, grab it.

I can't imagine what the course of romantic destiny would be if I used George's whiskers in a charm since she's a demon and all.

Leave Me Home Alone One More Time and I'll Steer You Back to One of  Your Ex-Boyfriends!

Can you say Titanic?

Hacked!

There I was, sitting quietly at my desk when my Yahoo inbox got 74 new messages. Most were delivery failures and it took me a few scroll downs to see a message with what was allegedly sent out that was getting the rejects and out of office messages.

It was some bullshit hack with the subject "news" and had two links in it. And, I say allegedly sent out because there's nothing in my Sent Mail. But, obviously it went to all of my (thousands) of contacts.

Argh!

I immediately changed my password but I really have no idea if that even matters. My old password was what they call "highly secure". It had both lower and uppercase, a number and a special character. I don't know how much more I can do to make it unbreakable.

By the time I had my password changed, the messages via FB, text and my gmail account were coming in from friends. "It looks like your account was hacked." I really, really appreciate the warning but after responding to 15 or so of them, I was like, "I FRAKKING KNOW!" Of course, they were just trying to help and I'm not bitchy like that so I just replied to the later ones with something like "I know. Thx".

I wish someone would tell me what the hackers get out of this. I sincerely hope that most people would see those types of messages and think, "I got this email from Kathy with just links and no explanation and it doesn't have her usual email signature. I'm just going to ignore it because it looks unsafe."

So, only a few people must click on the links and what do the links then do? I really don't know. Try to sell you enhancement drugs? Try to trick you into installing spy software on your machine? It's got to be something to make this all worthwhile.

BTW, I considered sending a new message to all my contacts saying, "Please ignore my last message. I was hacked and have changed my password." However, I'm pretty sure Yahoo would have decided I was a spammer and prevented me from sending that out.

Why they can't prevent someone else from emailing all of my contacts is beyond me. Get someone on that, Yahoo!

Movie Review - Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Apparently, a hoodie is the best disguise ever!

This was another I'm home sick and it was free. This time courtesy of Amazon Prime.

I've only seen the first MI movie, way back in 1996. As I recall, we watched after a night out at the bar so it's pretty hazy. I remember not following the plot at all. That could have been the alcohol or it could have been the movie. I suspect a combination.

I felt like I missed some of the plot from this one, too. Not from drinking, though. I paused it a couple of times to make dinner and that was enough to make me go, "Now, what were they doing again?"

There were some cool bits like Cruise climbing the skyscraper. The bit at the end with the car factory (display room?) was too ridiculous for words, though.

And, I don't care how much you're getting paid as a henchman. You're not going to help the guy who wants to nuke the world. Seriously. 

Great eye candy in Josh Holloway and Jeremy Renner. I could look at either of them all day long. I have to confess that Cruise is showing his age a bit but still looks damn good. Too bad he's bat shit crazy. 

I don't feel dumber for having watched it but I also feel no compulsion to go watch the two movies in the series that I've missed.

Movie Review - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Here's the deal. I was home, I was sick and it was on HBO. Otherwise, I wouldn't have watched this as I haven't even seen the first movie.

Here are some random thoughts:

• OK, I totally didn't get the "imagined with voice over" fight previews. They really didn't do anything for me. 
• I did like Watson and Mycroft a lot. How can one not love Stephen Fry? A naked Stephen Fry, no less.
• Were Holmes' disguises supposed to look good? Or, is the joke that they don't look good but still work?
• Lane Pryce was suitably creepy as Moriarty. 
• I can never get past these movies with mortal enemies. Seriously, if you have the guy right there, shoot him in the head and be done with it. Forget the "this is a battle of intellects" BS. Of course, James Bond would have been dead in the first book if everyone followed that precept so I guess it's good for the storyline.
• Watching this did not make me want to go back to see the first film.