Sunday, November 30, 2008

Hawaii, etc.

Well, I'm back. Quite well-rested and very overfed. Given the calories I consumed during the last week, I shouldn't be eating for a week!
We gave ourselves a send-off before the cruise by having an early Thanksgiving dinner at Caroline's place. And yes, that is the back of my head after Megan got through French-braiding my hair. As some of you know, I've always wanted a ponytail, but never had one even during my misspent youth. So now I'm growing one in my misspent retirement. This is a look at our floating home for a week, Norwegian Line's Pride of America. It's quite the feat of engineering and organization. It's like a small city, with it's own power plant, water and sewage systems, and even telephone and cable. For this trip, it was home to around 3000 cruisers and 1000 crew.


Our first stop was in Maui. We went into town for a walk, and came across this concert of Hawaiian music and dance. This was the real thing - performed for the locals and not for tourists. It was very entertaining. The white guy, the leader of the group, had a great voice, as well as looking a lot like Sarah's old friend Ryan.
This dancer was fascinating to watch. The moves all seemed quite simple, but they were graceful and somehow fascinating to watch. Also fascinating, and very beautiful, were the flowers in her hair.Our next stop was the Haleakala crater at sunset. At an elevation of about 10000 feet, it was a cold, beautiful and very foreign landscape. Our viewpoint was above the Haleakala observatory complex. As well as a variety of telescopes, this is also the American center for tracking all the manmade junk and debris orbiting the earth.

On our last day in Hawaii, we rented a car and took a quick tour of the island. Here we are with Mom on the North Shore, not far from Sunset Beach. The surf was pretty incredible. It's hard to imagine going into that stuff voluntarily.
This is a shot of Mom taking on a sugar cane plantation tour on Kauai. Here are Mom and Marian in full cruising mode.



Probably the most interesting part of the trip was cruising past lava flows on the Big Island into the ocean at night. We were quite a ways off shore, but it was pretty spectacular nonetheless. There wasn't enough light for conventional pictures, but this video should give you some idea of what it was like. One thing the video can't convey is the smell of sulphur we got as we passed downwind of the lava flows. Neat stuff!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

A Kona in Kona

Coffee that is. Martha, Marian and I came into town via shore tender to check things out. It would have been almost impossible to get Mom on the tender, so we left with a book on the balcony of her room. She'll be fine till we get back.

We arrived here this morning after a memorable trip last night. We sailed past a point on the island where the lava is flowing down the mountain into the sea. Spectacular!! A bright red firey streak down the mountainside ending in clouds of steam at the water's edge. The boat was probably a couple of miles off shore, but we were close enough to smell the sulphur. I've got some video that I'll try to clean up and post when I get back to civilization.

I'll post more, with pictures, next week.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Maui

Blogging will be light this week because the internet on the boat is outrageously expensive - 50 to 75 cents per minute, depending on what kind of plan you buy. So here I am at a rather forlorn outdoor mall on shore that doesn't have much to offer other than free Wi-Fi.

Yesterday was a rather long and annoying day, starting with the $15 per bag charge for checking a bag on Northwest. Then the trip through security at the airport. Like a dummy, I left my $90 sailor's knife in my backpack, and the geniuses with Homeland Security found it. I wasn't about to donate it to them, so I went back out, and at a small kiosk, mailed the knife back to myself for $9.00. With the second trip through the security lines, I barely had enough time to make the plane. But I made it. Then a rather uneventful flight to Honolulu with zero free food service. Not even any crappy pretzels. The sandwich and salad combo cost $10, but I passed because it looked so crappy. Martha did succumb, and she did confirm my suspicions about the quality. When we got off the plane, we were met by a Norwegian Cruise line rep, who tried to get us to the minibus on the lower level of the airport. We walked a long way to the elevator (remember Mom uses a walker), only to discover it was out of service. Another long walk, and eventually a wheelchair, was needed to get us to working elevators. The cruise ship reception was in a giant old warehouse with long lines and more incompetent security. we eventually got on board, but they lost one of Martha's bags. She didn't get it till late last night.

Oh, and did I tell you it's been cloudy and rainy since we got here? Things can only get better from here on in, right!? But then again, it doesn't really matter. I'll have a great time, just spending some good quality time with my Mom and my sisters.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Concrete Tables and Other Turkeys


Here's the latest version of my concrete table. As I said in one of my previous posts, I'm not totally pleased with the results, but I think I have a plan to salvage it. The good news is that my structural plan has worked out pretty well. The table feels solid and stable. The bad news is that in order for the pieces to fit together, the horizontal rods have to have a lot of tension on them. While tensioning the rods, it's easy to knock off chips of concrete where the pieces are misaligned before the tension pulls them into place. What I think I'll do is disassemble the table and reassemble it in my little backyard. I'll fill the seams and chipped-out areas with an epoxy/grout mix, and then grind and polish the table top as one piece. The seams will show, but I think the hex pattern and inner donut will have an interesting look, and the top will be smooth and seamless. The biggest trick will be to get the table into my condo after I'm done. I'll only have to move it a few feet, but the table weighs close to 400 pounds and will have to be tipped on its side to clear the doorway. The adventure continues...

Speaking of adventures, here's our early Thanksgiving turkey smoking on my Big Green Egg. Why an early Thanksgiving? Well, my Mom and sisters, Marian and Martha, are flying to Seattle tomorrow and are staying overnight before we all fly to Hawaii on Saturday. Once there, we'll get on a cruise ship and tour the islands for the next week, all courtesy of my Mom! So I figured that since they'll be here for one night, we should get the Seattle clan together with the Canadian clan and have a Thanksgiving dinner. And rather than just having the conventional boring roast turkey, I figured I may as well smoke one. I haven't done this since I smoked one a few years ago for Christmas, but as I recall it turned out really well and deserves an encore. If it doesn't turn out, we can always order in pizza.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

W.

Daughter Megan and I went to see W. tonight. It was OK, but certainly not great. I recommend that you wait until it comes out on Netflix. I'm not sure what Oliver Stone was trying to do with this movie. It wasn't particularly funny, and considering what it could have been, it wasn't really all that dark. In fact, in a weird way, it was actually quite sympathetic to Bush. It doesn't portray him as evil or stupid or used by those around him. It portrays him as a guy who could never live up to his father's expectations and his family name. But even with that approach, he doesn't fill in the characters or really give you a reason to care. James Cromwell did a decent job as Bush Sr., and Ellen Burstyn was a passable Barbara Bush. Laura Bush is as vacant as she appears to be in real life. Condolezza Rice comes across as a real ditz; Colin Powell is a guy with serious doubts who caves in because of loyalty to the chain of command; Rumsfeld isn't much of anything. There's a bit of menace in Richard Dreyfuss's portrayal of Cheney, but even that is somewhat muted. Rob Courdrey, formerly of The Daily Show, in a relatively small role, did a passable imitation of Ari Fleischer.

I think that Stone missed whatever mark he was trying to hit. I'd give W. 5.5 on a scale of 10.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

GM and all that bailout talk

With an eclectic bunch of neighbors, I live in a development of 12 modest, but kinda cool, townhomes in Fremont. We're not exactly upscale, but we're not destitute either. We're mostly a bunch of aging (40 and 50-something) yuppies who've done and are doing OK. What do we drive?

I took an inventory of the cars in our parking garage. There are 3-BMW's, 2-Mercedes, 2-Nissans, 2-Volvos, 2-VW's, 1-Isuzu, 1-Mazda, 1-Audi, 1 aging Jaguar, 1-Mini, and 2-BMW motorcycles. So we've got everything from economy cars to entry level luxury cars. And nothing from GM,or Ford, or Chrysler.

If GM, Ford, or Chrysler built cars that appealed to reasonably thoughtful people like us, but had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, I'd be all for some taxpayer-funded assistance. But why would I want to support companies that build stuff that reasonable thoughtful people like us don't want to buy?

Second thoughts about my table project



I'm beginning to have some doubts about my table project. It has not gone smoothly so far. I poured the top twice because the first mix was too dry. I burned out the Flex wet grinder that I used for my countertops. Then I burned out my other grinder that I jury-rigged to be a wet grinder. Yesterday I bought a new Makita wet/dry variable speed grinder, and it's working great so far. But there are things that in and of themselves aren't deal-breakers but taken together are making me wonder whether it will all work out or not. First, I wanted the forms to be be more precise and have cleaner edges to the pieces. I didn't get my layout right on when I built the forms, and therefore the segments aren't all exactly the same size. But because of the way the forms were made, the pieces fit together perfectly, so it might be OK. I thought the sheet metal I used to form the inner donut would naturally make a better circle than it did, but it didn't, so the donut is quite visibly lopsided. Now that I've polished off the top layer of the table, I'm seeing a lot of small holes left by bubbles in the concrete. I guess that even the second time around I didn't get the concrete mix wet enough. Today I applied a skim coat of epoxy filler to fill those holes and will see what it looks like tomorrow after another round of polishing.

I haven't given up yet, but I'm not stubborn enough to put something I really don't like in my house. Who knows, given the fact that it's made out of concrete, stainless steel and aluminum, it could be a pretty cool outdoor table. Does anyone out there need some patio furniture?

One more point about my medical/pharmaceutical/industrial complex rant... If there were 8901 people taking drugs that cost $100/month for 19 months, the total cost of the drugs was $16,911,900. As a results, there were 109 fewer cardiac events. Therefore, it cost $155,155 to prevent each event. I wonder what the typical cost of a cardiac event is and wonder if anyone did a cost/benefit analysis on the use of this drug.




Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Medical Study Rant

Yesterday, newspapers headlined the New England Journal of Medicine study that showed that if healthy people took statins (like Crestor) to reduce their otherwise normal levels of cholesterol, their chances of having a cardiac event would be reduced by 44%. Good news, right?! Just take a $3 pill a day for the rest of your life, and you won't have a heart attack or stroke. This is one of those stories from the pharmeceutical/medical/industrial establishment that drives me crazy.

So, let's dig a little bit to find the deeper truth. Well, not much deeper. None of the facts reported were false, but the fanfare is way out of proportion with the actual results. There were 17,802 people in the study, divided into two groups of 8,901. One group took Crestor (big surprise - the study was financed by AstraZeneca, the makers of Crestor); the other took a placebo. The study was ended early because the results were so good. Here are the final results:
  • Cardiac events: Control group-251, Crestor group-142. Risk reduction-43%
  • Cardiac deaths: Control group-157, Crestor group-83. Risk reduction-47%
  • Deaths from all causes: Control group-247, Crestor group-198. Risk reduction-20%

This all sounds great, right? But put it in perspective. 251 cardiac events in a group of 8,901 is 2.8%. So if you fit the profile of the group tested (men over 50, women over 60, all in otherwise good health with no history of heart disease), you have a 2.8% chance of a cardiac event over the 1.9 years of the study. By any measure, that is a pretty small risk. Taking Crestor, at a cost of $100/month, lowers that already low risk by 43% to 1.6%. Another way of looking at it is that you've decreased your risk by 1.2 percentage points. Somehow that doesn't sound as good as 44%, does it? 44% might be worth $100/month, but are 1.2 percentage points?

Another way of looking at the manipulation of these statistics is that with no drugs, your chances of dying from something other than heart disease is 1.0% ((247-157)/8901 x 100). With Crestor, your chances are 1.3%((198-83)/8901 x 100).

So - your chances of dying of something other than heart disease is 30% greater if you take Crestor than if you take nothing. How would that headline sound? It would be perfectly true!

Friday, November 7, 2008

How'd I Do?

Most of the election results are in, so it's time to take a look at how I did.

For the Electoral College vote, I predicted 358-180 for Obama. It looks like the final results are 365-173. Hey - not bad! I came closer than super-duper poll watcher Nate Silver (fivethirtyeight.com) with his prediction of 349-189.

The popular vote turned out to be 52.5% to 46.2%. My crystal ball had forecast 51%-46%. I thought that there might be a small "Bradley effect" of a percentage point or so, but I was wrong. If there was a Bradley effect, it was too small to be measured, or was more than overwhelmed by all the new voters. Nate Silver's computer model was almost dead-nuts on with a prediction 52.3%-46.2%. His methodology has set a new gold standard for poll interpretation.

For the Senate, I called 57-41-2. The final appears to be 56-40-2, with Al Franken's seat and the one in Georgia still up for grabs. Ted Steven's Alaskan seat might be challenged as well. There are some serious voting discrepancies going on up there. The polls were right on everywhere except Alaska, where Steven's numbers went from 12 points down before the election to an apparent +2 point win. My guess is close in any case, and could be right on when everything is decided.

For the House, my tally of 255-180, was more of a wild-assed guess than anything. The final numbers are 254-173, with 8 still to be decided.

So, here I sit with a kink in my shoulder from patting myself on the back.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

A few more election day thoughts


Here's a shot of Hal doing his civic duty. The other two are from The Obama Pajama Party at the Garage MaHal.

And what a fine party it was - food and drink in a celebration of an historic election day with a crowd of like-minded friends and neighbors.
I arrived just before 4PM, when the first of the polls were closing on the East Coast. I fired up my baby laptop, and Dave had his going, so along with a couple of TV's and multiple websites, we weren't going to miss a thing. There were no surprises early on, but as more and more states were called I began to get concerned. Obama wasn't flipping any previously red states. Both of the early states I expected to flip, Virginia and North Carolina, were too close to call. But Obama was ahead in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and even Indiana, so my knickers weren't too tightly twisted. Once those states fell, it was in the bag even if the networks hadn't called it yet. At one point, the tally was up to 200 for Obama, with nothing west of the Mississippi included. A little quick math to add up the in-the-bag states - +55 California, +7 Oregon, and +11 Washington - made it a done deal. I'm glad that I was able to observe and participate in a good day and a good time.
I had listened to Limbaugh on Monday to hear what the lunatic fringe was spouting, and was somewhat dumbfounded. I thought he was supposed to have his finger on the pulse of some segment of the population, but it's got to be a pretty small segment. He ranted on and on about socialists, communists, Marxists and even Bolsheviks. Who the hell was he talking to? The Berlin Wall came down 19 years ago! You've got to be over 40 to have any memories of the Cold War. Is communism a real force anywhere in the world? Does anyone really believe in a communist international conspiracy anymore? I could have understood rants against the Islamo-fascist forces in the world, or a not-so-subtle racist appeal, but Marxism?!?!? And he's paid something like $40M a year for his schtick?! Unbelievable.
Obama's got to feel like the dog who was chasing the bus and then finally caught it. What to do now? He's inherited one hell of a mess, with two wars, the markets melting down, with no easy solutions, and no money or room to maneuver. Those problems are beyond the control of any mere mortal. I think the best he can hope for is to do no further harm and to use the power of the bully pulpit to give the US and the world enough confidence and optimism to somehow muddle through it all.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

My First Vote



Well, I did it. My ballot is in the box. My polling place is in the Baptist church a couple of blocks from my place. The line up was short and orderly and casual. No hassles, no problems. I thought I might have a bit of a problem because I never did get a voter registration card. When I checked my registration on line, there I was, with all vital statistics correct, except that my gender was listed as female. I had contemplated going in drag or telling them that I was "in transition," but there was no problem. I just put my mail-in ballot in the box, and was done with it. I was a bit disappointed in that there were no voting machines with levers to pull or ballots to punch or curtains to close. If there had been, I would have done it the old-fashioned way. Washington is going to all mail-in voting, so for my first vote, I wanted to actually go to the polling place.

I've lived in the USA for over 25 years and certainly done my share of criticizing presidents. Reagan was in power when we first moved to St. Louis, and I could never understand why he was such a popular president. He seemed totally clueless and out of it at times. He didn't know members of his own cabinet, and he needed cue cards for his lines when he met world leaders. He ran up huge deficits, allowed Iran-Contra to happen, and was responsible for the S&L mess and the first major Wall Street scandals. (Remember the good old days of Ivan Boesky and Michael Millikan?)

George Bush the Elder was OK, except for the way he handled the First Gulf War. I couldn't believe the way he made Saddam Hussein, a third-rate, third-world, tin-pot dictator into a modern day Hitler, and even more so, I couldn't believe the way Americans lapped it up. I got my first taste of America - love it or leave it- and my first taste of the blind bloodthirstiness that almost seems like part of the American character. I did admire the way he put together a world-wide coalition to throw the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The aftermath was a debacle. After calling for a revolution to overthrow the regime, he let Saddam have almost free reign to slaughter the Shiites and Kurds. Bush I left a truly sad and sorry mess in Iraq.

I never did like Clinton all that much. He was probably the best US politician of my generation, and I did admire him for successfully surviving the incredible attacks of the whacko right wing, but in the end I think he is a deeply flawed character who squandered his gifts for a blow-job in the Oval Office.

And of course everyone knows what a total unmitigated disaster George II has been. His flaws and failures are too many to list, and I honestly can think of nothing good to say about him.

The USA has been great to me on a personal basis. I've lived a life here that has been blessed (or maybe just really lucky) in so many ways. But whenever I travelled overseas and people asked where I was from, I'd say St. Louis, Seattle, or wherever I was living at the time, but in the same breath I'd say I was Canadian. Assuming that the election today turns out as it should and Obama is elected, when that question is asked of me, I'll be proudly American. The fact that I'm also proudly Canadian will come out later after the third or fourth breath.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

For What It's Worth

For what it's worth, here are my election result predictions:

Electoral College Votes
Obama 358
McCain 180

Popular Vote
Obama 51
McCain 46

Senate
Dems 57
GOP 41
Other 2

House
Dems 255
GOP 180

Unless there is voter fraud on a massive scale, it's hard to imagine how McCain can possibly win. He has to run all the states that currently lean his way, take all the "swing" states, and steal a couple more from the Demcratic-leaning states. Even then, he'd only win by a couple of Electoral College votes. I think Obama will get at least 300 EC votes, and could exceed 400.

With any luck, it will all be over in a couple of days.

Oh, and one more thing. Those darn Canadians are at it again...