Hardware Heck

So, OK, I'm sitting at my desk this morning, reading my e-mail or whatever, just minding my own business, and the display on my brand-new laptop begins to slowly fade to white. It then gradually darkens to a kind of streaky gray.

Now, I'm not a hardware person, but this is not looking good to me.

It's not really a brand-new laptop, truth be told. It's refurbished. You know – just as good as new, but a lot cheaper. The place I used to work always bought refurbished machines, and the IT guys at a software company should know, right? Since they're the ones who have to fix them if they break? I've had pretty good luck with refurbished computers in the past. Although, now that I think about it, I did have the motherboard replaced twice on my last one. But that was a long time ago. It's run without a hitch since, and Scarecrow has been using it since his (refurbished) machine died. And fortunately the IT guys where I used to work also recommended buying the 1-2 day on-site repair service, you know, just in case.

So, after a long troubleshooting session with a very nice man who spoke impeccable English in a call center in India that needs a little better acoustic insulation between cubicles, someone will be out Monday or Tuesday to fix it. And, in the course of troubleshooting, the nice man suggested connecting the laptop to an external monitor, which I wouldn't have thought to do. Apparently the problem is the display; the computer works fine. The monitor makes the laptop somewhat less portable, but it beats being without a computer until sometime next week.

Isn't it wonderful the way technology enhances our lives?

St. Scarecrow

On the radio this morning I heard a piece about a guy who had an unfortunate encounter with an officer of the law. I wasn't really paying attention so I didn't catch the details. Apparently Bad Things Happened, and the guy got his head slammed into a concrete wall. He is now totally and permanently disabled.

I started listening when they talked about how his wife has to take care of him 24 hours a day. She has to feed him. She sleeps in the same room, because she has to wake up three times every night to turn him so he doesn't get bedsores. She's a saint, they said.

Fortunately the $10 million she gets from the lawsuit will make it possible for her to care for her husband for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately for Scarecrow, I did not have the foresight to acquire a disability that is somebody else's fault. He feeds me, he wakes up three times every night to turn me over, and he does a lot more besides; I will need this help for the rest of my life, and nobody is going to pay him $10 million to do it. Yet it appears he's willing to do it anyway.

He says I would do it for him if our roles were reversed, and while I like to think that's true, I'm not really sure I'm that good a person. He's just a good guy. I wouldn't say he's a saint. He doesn't believe in them anyway. But he's a really good guy.

So, in lieu of $10 million, I thought I should tell him that I love him and I appreciate everything he does for me. Since it seems kind of self-serving to tell him this while he was actually doing something for me, I wanted to wait for a time when he wasn't. The opportune moment, kind of thing. I had to wait a long time. I hadn't realized how much of his time he spends doing things for me.

The beginning of our care partnership was so gradual that I can't remember how it started. He just started helping me do things that were hard for me. Some tasks I did not want help with, no way, no how. (I can sometimes be a little stubborn that way.) He allowed me to struggle, and when I finally gave up and let him help, he never asked why it took me so long. The number of things I resisted assistance with were so few compared to the number of tasks that somehow Scarecrow assumed without my ever realizing it. When someone reads your mind so much of the time, how irritated can you get when they occasionally provide help you don't want?

As Scarecrow started helping with more and more of the things I used to do for myself, we evolved some very complicated procedures that I can't imagine anyone else ever figuring out, and even if they could, I can't imagine anyone but another ex-wrestler being able to perform. Even for $10 million.

I'm glad that woman and her husband were compensated for the injury that was done to him, but nobody's going to pay Scarecrow $10 million to take care of me. I guess he's OK with that.

Good Enough

Sometimes I read something that just stops me in my tracks. It might be prose so perfect, so beautiful, it's like music. It might be an essay that is so insightful and elegant, so well-written, so much better than anything I could ever do even if I worked at it for a million years, which of course, being a lazy slime weasel, I wouldn't do, that I'm embarrassed to be caught trying.

After I read something really good, I am not inspired to write anything myself. Quite the opposite. It takes a while before I feel like howling again. I can't come up with anything good enough. I don't really have anything much to say, and I'm not that good at saying it. I can't offer knowledgeable comments on events of global import, or pithy observations on the human condition, or erudite analysis of, well, anything. I rarely have exciting events to recount, even setting the bar for 'exciting' pretty low. Nothing momentous or noteworthy. I'm tired of writing about MS (actually, I'm always tired of writing about MS and MS-related stuff; it is, however, a regrettably abundant source of topic material), the dogs haven't done anything despicable (another regrettably abundant source of topic material), and there's nothing much else going on. Just life.

But, you know, it's my life. And I can write about it better than anybody else.

It's good enough.

As usual, somebody else already said what I think I'm trying to say better than I could.

A BETTER VOICE
©1990 Joel Mabus
originally on the album Firelake

Sometimes I wish I had a better voice
to sing my song for you -
A voice so brilliant, rich and clear -
Soaring and gliding through the air,
Hanging the melody in your ear
The way good singers do.
But my voice cracks like a back porch chair,
Growls and groans like a big black bear,
Full of whispers, kinks and snares
And I sometimes miss the key -
But nobody sings my song like me.

(Joel Mabus is an amazing musician, singer, and songwriter from Michigan. If you ever get a chance to go hear him, do yourself a favor…)

Well Now, That Wasn't so Bad, Was It?

Last Thursday night, Scarecrow went up to the high school to keep score at a wrestling tournament. And I stayed home.

It wasn't such a big deal, really. He wasn't gone that long. It was mostly an excuse to do what we've been meaning to do for years, but kept putting off. We had a home care person stay with me while he was gone.

Neither of us wanted to do this, but we need to have a backup plan in place in case anything ever happens to Scarecrow. Or, you know, he just needs a break. From me. Or whatever. So we'll have this agency send somebody to help out for a couple of hours every now and again, just so we've got somebody we can call if we ever need someone to take over for Scarecrow. For whatever reason.

So we did it. They sent a perfectly nice young woman who seemed willing to do whatever I asked of her. She fed the dogs. She reheated some leftovers, and fed them to me for dinner. She swept the dog hair and dust bunnies off of the floor, and, without being asked, took a damp mop to the kitchen tile, which was really pretty disgusting. That all took, I dunno, maybe a third of the time she was here. I'm just not very good at asking for help. I couldn't think of much for her to do.

No. That's not true. There was plenty to do. There was laundry. She could have trimmed my nails. I could have had her help me clear the detritus off the desk. There was plenty to do. I just felt bad about asking her to do it. Even though she was perfectly willing and cheerful, and that's why she was there, for pity's sake! Fortunately, I didn't need to go to the bathroom.

I'm telling myself I'll work up to it. This should be a real milestone, finally getting set up for home healthcare, but it doesn't feel like we're there yet. I need to learn to do this. I need to stop feeling like I should be entertaining the healthcare aide. We don't need to chat. I don't need companionship or conversation. I need to learn to ask for help with chores. I need to learn to let someone help me with those icky personal care things. I can do this.

There's another wrestling tournament next Tuesday. I'll need to be ready.

Who knew it would be this hard?

Communicado

I'm communicado again, more or less. That is, after having been pretty much in-communicado for the last couple of weeks. Having to choose between a keyboard (= voice recognition software) and a mouse (= head tracking software), and having to disable this before I could enable that, and applications crashing right and left, was making me kind of cranky.

Then Scarecrow's laptop died.

So I've got a machine that can't do what I need to do, and Scarecrow's got no computer at all. Tuffy's been using the laptop my former employer let me keep – that's how old it was – since her laptop was stolen, but it's running the wrong operating system. Before Tuffy took it over, I replaced the pathetic Windows Vista with Fedora, which I really like but Tuffy… ah… doesn't.

Everybody has their priorities. Some people expect to buy a new car every couple of years. I've never done that. I'm not a car person. For me, a car is just a way to get where I'm going. As long as it can manage that, I don't really care how old it is. Our four-year-old minivan still seems pretty new. We sold the car I used to drive, and since Tuffy doesn't drive, we're a one car family.

We don't have a travel budget and we don't eat out much. We don't have an entertainment center or a big-screen TV. No TV, no cable subscription or satellite dish, no game console.

We have our fiscally irresponsible hobbies. There are the dogs, for example. And we are a three computer family. At least.

So we bought a refurbished laptop, and we're playing musical computers. I'm shifting my stuff onto the new laptop, and Scarecrow and Tuffy are negotiating the allocation of the remaining two machines.

It will take me a while to figure out this new operating system, get everything installed and configured and what all. But I'm communicado again. More or less.

Decisions, Decisions

I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to decide which I need more: a keyboard (that is, voice-recognition software), or a mouse (or the head tracker equivalent).

Not surprisingly, both voice-recognition and head tracker mouse software place considerable demands on processor resources; resources which my aging laptop does not possess in any abundance. The CPU, which was quite the ticket in its day, is just not up to the task. It was doing pretty much OK with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, as long as I was using a regular hardware mouse. However, replacing the regular mouse with head tracker mouse software, which is a total CPU hog, was just asking a little too much. They would both load, and run, but I couldn't... do... anything. If I opened a browser (Firefox) or an e-mail client (Thunderbird), they would crash. Same for my database and checkbook applications. Nothing spectacular, just...*poof*

By alternately disabling DNS or the head tracker I might be able to get through checking my e-m*poof*

Or not. Sending e-mail wa*poof*

I tried balancing my checkbook, but th*poof*

OK. I need both a keyboard AND a mouse, or their logical equivalents. I want both. And I need to have enough system resources left over to run applications without crashing.

Software is available these days that can do ever more magical things, if you've got the hardware to handle it. It's shallow of me, I know, but one of the things I miss about working for a software company was always having a computer that was fast enou*poof*

This is not a great time to buy a new com*poof*

Well cr*poof*

Welcome Winter!

We're celebrating the winter solstice today. If you don't observe one of the many religious holidays that occur this time of year, it can be a little hard to come up with a "How to Celebrate" template. Fortunately for us, a lot of the holiday symbols aren't inherently religious. Evergreens? Check. Holly? Check. Mistletoe? Check. Wreaths? Check. Sparkly lights? Check. Frost? Snow? Icicles? No problem. Presents? Anytime. Over the years we've incorporated these things with other bits from here and there into a holiday observation of which we have become rather fond. 

One of the things we do, and I don't remember whose crazy idea this was, is to experience the shortest day of the year by not using artificial light. We get up when it's light which, here in the Pacific Northwest, means we get to sleep in. We use whatever light is available during the day, and plan to be done with whatever we're doing by the time it gets dark. Since, here in the Pacific Northwest, this comes pretty darn early, the person responsible for the holiday dinner has to do some pretty intricate planning. If nothing else, by midmorning you realize that it's pretty much a reflex to turn on the light when you go in the bathroom.

As it gets dark, we listen to music because there's not much else you can do without turning on the lights. When it's dark, we light the candles, light the fire, put the tin sun ornament on the tree, open the wine, exchange presents, eat dinner, and all that.

It may not be exactly what everybody else celebrates this time of year, or exactly the way anybody else celebrates it, but we're OK with that. For us, it's all about love and family and eating too much and presents the recipient will need to return and the days starting to get longer. Not necessarily in that order.

It's getting dark. I wonder how Scarecrow is doing with dinner?


...rise up, Jock, and sing your song,
For the summer is short and the winter long,
Let's all join hands and form a chain
'Til the leaves of springtime bloom again.

Stuff

The other day, before I put up the post about Tuffy's birthday, Scarecrow observed that there wasn't much new material on my blog this month. Since that was true, I sat down (virtually speaking) and wrote something.

Reading it over (yes, I do that, even though it probably doesn't seem like it), I found this:

"This is all sounding rather whiny and petulant, and I don't mean it that way. Whatever point I might have been trying to make, it appears I totally missed it. In fact I should probably scratch this post and start over, but I can't think of anything else I really want to write about and at least one of my four readers is obviously restless so I'm going to post it even if I sound like a whiny jerk...."

Wait wait wait. Wait. Hold on just a minute. I'm thinking I shouldn't post what I've just written, but I'm about to do it anyway? How stupid is that? Am I really afraid "my readers" will be disappointed? Oh please. I really need to get over myself. Besides, writing for readers other than myself starts to feel an awful lot like work. Been there, done that.

So it's been kind of a thin month, content-wise, on this blog. You can thank me later.

Instead of scribbling, I've been kind of preoccupied with holiday shopping.

This time of year isn't really about Stuff. I know that. It's shallow of me to admit how much grief my gift list causes me, when it's the thought that counts, it's about love and family and being together and pretty soon the days will start getting longer. But there it is.

I have never been one of those people who can always think of the perfect gift, the one that the recipient didn't even realize they wanted until they got it, after which they can't imagine ever having lived without it. That kind of gift always involves an element of risk. I'd rather forgo the possibility of giving the recipient a pleasurable surprise if it means reducing the likelihood of witnessing speechless dismay. Give me a wish list every time.

Tuffy's good that way. She's got a wish list online, with links to everything from boxing gloves to cool chopsticks to sparkly hairpins to rubber boots. She updates it regularly. Lots of choices, but there was her birthday, in addition to the whole solstice winter holiday thing.

Scarecrow is more of a challenge. Throughout the year he mentions stuff he would have on his wish list, but come December I'll be darned if I can remember what he might have been lusting after in March or July or October.

I'm still working on it. No rush.

Birthday Girl

Today is Tuffy's 21st birthday.

I guess there has to be some arbitrary age at which people are considered adult, and twenty-one is as good as any. It's not like she's really much different today than she was yesterday. In some respects she's been amazingly adult since she was five years old. In other ways I wonder if she'll ever grow up. But, officially, today's the day.

I don't know what I expected. It seems like a surprisingly unremarkable day. From my perspective, at least, something of an anti-climax.

Maybe I'm a little slow, but it wasn't until I first went into labor, 21 years ago, that I was struck by the terrifying realization that I was about to do something I could never undo. From that point on, I would always be a parent. That's when it became real. At that point, I couldn't possibly imagine her turning 21. Or 18. Or starting school. Heck, I couldn't imagine her ever being big enough to fit into six month size baby clothes. But if time flies when you're having fun, I must've been having a blast.

She's grown up to be a remarkable person -- beautiful, smart, talented, funny... I guess parents always say that about their kids. But she really is. She's athletic, like her dad. Like me, she believes that anything worth doing, is worth doing fanatically. She doesn't much like dogs, so I guess in some ways she's her own little creature.

Seems like we ought to mark the occasion somehow, although I'm not sure we'll even see her today. She was still in bed when we left for work, and she'll be at the gym by the time we get home. Her friends want to take her out to party, even though she doesn't drink.

I've been trying to think back to what I did when I turned 21, but I really don't remember. I know that by that time I had already made a couple of serious life mistakes, ones that Tuffy has thus far managed to avoid. Maybe that's because we were really good parents... but I doubt it.

Happy birthday, kiddo. Happy birthday.

PFM

Long ago and far away, an eager young tech writer asked a senior software developer what protocol a server used to send configuration settings to a client device.

"PFM," the developer replied.

The tech writer looked blank.

"Pure F#@kin' Magic," he explained.

Smartass.

But now, many years later, I've come to believe he was probably right. Technological advances notwithstanding, I think a lot of things still rely on that protocol.

As we were leaving the UW Medical Center the other week, a woman was watching as I drove my power chair into the elevator and turned around.

"How are you doing that?," she asked.

"PFM," I wanted to reply. But I didn't. I explained about the head array control.

It might not be magic, exactly. I leave gouges in the walls and  dents in the furniture. I go backwards when I  meant to go forward, and vice versa. I whine and complain about how it makes my awkward, clunky power chair even more awkward and clunky. In spite of all that, I'm using it. I'm glad to have it. I'm keeping up with the Red Queen. That's pretty magical.

My latest adventure in assistive technology, and the reason I've been away from this blog for a couple of days, has been a search for a way to control a computer mouse without using my hands. I can get by without a keyboard. For entering text, Dragon NaturallySpeaking does fine. For moving around the desktop, it's beyond awkward. I'm not the first person to run into this problem. There are solutions. It's time to start checking them out.

The most likely-sounding options use head tracking. A webcam tracks the position of your head, and moves the cursor accordingly. They can be pricey, but there's an open-source option. I've spent the last couple of days playing around with it.

Like the head array, you wouldn't use it if you could use a regular mouse or trackball. It's a major drain on system resources. And something keeps crashing Firefox and Thunderbird. But it kinda works. No hands! How cool is that?

PFM.

Just Another Day in Paradise

This photo was taken around 1930 in my grandfather's grocery store in Toledo, Ohio. Standing by the counter to the left of the picture, in the long apron, is my uncle Willie. Behind him, looking proprietary, is my grandfather. To his right is one of the neighborhood kids, and then two men who sold produce to the store. The guy in the back corner is my uncle Leon. The young man at right, wearing knickers, is my dad, the baby of the family. He turned 90 yesterday.

A WWII veteran, he went to the University of Toledo on the G.I. Bill and moved to Southern California for grad school at Cal Tech. A few years later, he and my mom bought a house near the ocean. In those days, mere middle-class mortals could afford such things. My brother and I grew up in that house. My mom and dad still live there.

He got up early yesterday and went for a walk, as he does most mornings. He went to the beach and back, a walk of maybe a mile, including a significantly steep hill. He says he has to stop and rest several times on the way up, but still. Mom says when he goes all the way down to the beach he sits in a chair for the rest of the day, but still.

He has his share of health problems. In May 2008 he was in intensive care with three holes in his gut. Nobody expected him to live through the night. He worked his way back, a little at a time. He still can't do everything he used to do, but he can do a lot more than anybody ever expected. The man is a force of nature.

Whenever I ask him how things are going, he always says, "Just another day in paradise!" He says every morning when he wakes up he thinks, "Another day! And I'm here to see it!" When I was living at home I sure don't remember my dad being such a relentlessly cheerful guy. For whatever reason, he seems to have come to really appreciate what he's got, and not waste much time thinking about what he's lost. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from the old guy yet.

Happy birthday, Pop.

Giving Thanks

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”
-The Buddha (Prince Gautama Siddharta, 563-483 BC)

To blogger buddies in the United States, happy Thanksgiving. To blogger buddies elsewhere, happy Thursday.

Dog Years

In response to the folks who read my last post and tried to convert my age in dog years to people years, there really isn't a simple linear equivalence. Dogs are sexually mature at six months to a year, which might correspond to human of about 13. They're physically mature at two or three years, comparable to a human in their late teens or early 20s. They're mentally mature at, well, don't hold your breath. For either species. A dog might start to show its age at 7 to 9 years, like a human who can start taking advantage of the senior discount at the movies.

But it's not that simple. While small dogs tend to mature faster and live longer than large dogs, the relationship between size or weight and longevity isn't linear, either. Some breeds typically live longer than others of similar size. It all depends. If you're really interested, and not just trying to guess how old I am, here is a pretty good summary.

My conversion algorithm is proprietary, based on an imaginary giant breed with a mature weight in the neighborhood of 150 pounds. Among other inherited tendencies, the breed is prone to skeletal problems due to its bizarre tendency to walk on its hind legs. Which is to say, I just made it up. Truly, I don't feel a day over 435.

Aside from the birthday thing I wouldn't usually give my age that much thought, had I not picked up a webcam to use to try out a hands-free mouse. Those things are brutal! (The webcam, I mean, not the hands-free mouse. The mouse is kind of remarkable, about which more another time.) Seriously, I have never been under the impression that I look like Charlize Theron and I'm totally OK with that, but one of the advantages of rarely confronting oneself in the mirror was being able to imagine that I was aging gracefully, you know, along the lines of a Jessica Tandy or Jane Goodall. According to my new webcam, this is not the case.

But for 443, I look pretty darn good.

Two Dog Night

It's starting to get cold here at night. Cold for Seattle, that is. It's not the same as Michigan-cold, of course, but cold enough for narrow dogs that don't carry much adipose tissue or fur for insulation. Although we provide them with dog beds, they prefer to sleep in a pile with the rest of their pack. On our bed.

Or more accurately, in our bed. They bring their wet fur and gritty little feet and cold pointy noses in from outside and hover expectantly until Scarecrow lifts the covers, letting in a rush of cold air, and they burrow to the foot of the bed, jostling for the best spot, between the humans. It can be very bracing.

If Scarecrow doesn't lift the covers, either because he's asleep or because he doesn't want the bed to be infested with cold wet whippets, one of them will insert a pointy little nose under the edge of the blankets and, in an attempt to get under the covers without assistance, will bulldoze them into a pile at the bottom of the bed with its head and possibly its shoulders under the pile. Alternatively, one of them will tromp around on top of the bed until the covers are in a small heap, and will then lay down on the heap.

Best to let them in. They warm up before too long.

After a while, the mattress starts to vibrate. They're panting. It's only a matter of time before one of them stands up and jumps off the bed, taking the covers with them.

I've read speculation that one of the benefits that canine domestication offered to both species was that sleeping together would conserve heat.

I'm not buying it.

On an unrelated note, I had another birthday yesterday. It kind of snuck up on me. You lose track, once you get to my age. That would be... let me think... 443. In dog years. But I really don't feel a day over 435.

All in My Head, Part Two

After another week using the head array control to steer my power chair, I think it's working pretty well, considering.

It's not as convenient or as easy to use as a joystick, if you can use a joystick. I can tell you from personal experience, though, that it's a whole lot better than trying to use a joystick if you can't use a joystick.

For the most part I've still been keeping to a speed that can be best described as 'glacial', although I prefer to think of it as 'stately.' Or perhaps 'dignified.' Getting down hallways and through doors at home and at the warehouse where I spend my days is enough of a navigational challenge for the time being.

Turns out one of the hardest things to do is go in a straight line. My chair (Permobile C300) doesn't track worth a darn anyway. With the lateral switches on the head array being either on or off, it's hard to straighten out just a little bit. Being front wheel drive, the chair has a tendency to fishtail when going downhill. I don't remember noticing it that much with a joystick, but it's really hard to control with the head array.

We've been dinking with the position of the headrest and the lateral switches. Really small adjustments can make a huge difference in how easy this thing is to use. If the side pads are in close, it's easier to turn the chair but harder to go straight. The best position for the head rest really depends on how you're sitting in the chair, which changes during the course of the day.

To respond to the comments on my last post (which I do appreciate very much even if I hardly ever respond to them directly because I'm a lazy slime weasel), using this thing does require a fair amount of head control, but not that much range of motion.

I don't need Scarecrow's help to change the speed profile. Although I can't press the buttons on the display, I've got a separate switch I can use as a kind of mode selector. That gets me to the settings menus, where I can select a different speed profile, or change the tilt, recline, etc. Navigating the settings menus and selecting options entails a series of taps on the side and back pads of the array, which is kind of awkward but not complicated. Sure beats having to ask somebody to do it for me.

Yes, I'm still learning (the hard way) that leaning my head against the head rest when the chair is on can send it crashing into walls or furniture. The dogs? Well, they're whippets. If they can't stay out of the way of a chair set to 'glacial', there's no hope for them.

I haven't taken it out in the real world much, yet. Excursions to the UW Medical Center and the optometrist went OK. I'm feeling like I'm safe enough to give it a try, but the weather has been crummy. This being Seattle, it should stop raining sometime next July.

OK, so. Mobility problems under control, for the moment. Thanks to TinMan, Cupholder v.3 is working great. My next quest is to find a hands-free way to control the cursor on my computer.

It'll be fun!

It's All in My Head

I've been using the head array control to drive my wheelchair for a couple of weeks now, and I know you're just dying to hear how it's working.

No?

OK. Most people will never need to know this. Even people with MS will probably never need to know this. I sure as heck didn't figure that I ever would. But in the unlikely event that you should go looking for information about using a head array -- what the equipment looks like, and how you use it to steer a power chair -- I can tell you from experience that there isn't much of anything out there. Besides, Herrad at Access Denied was curious about how it works and how it looks. So, here:

 

This is the head array control installed on my power chair. There is a switch installed in each of the three sections of the headrest. Touching the headrest lightly activates the switch in that section. All the rest is software.

The way my chair is currently set up, touching the center section of the headrest makes the chair go forward. Touching a side section makes the chair pivot that direction. Touching the center and a side section simultaneously makes the chair veer to that side. 

Unlike a joystick, where the distance and direction you move the stick controls where you go and how fast, each of these switches is either on or off. To change speed, reverse direction, or control other chair functions (tilt, recline, etc.), you select options from menus on a control unit.

If you could see this better, you could see that it displays battery status and whether the chair is moving or on standby (duh). It also shows which speed profile is selected, and whether the chair is going forward or backward. Each of the five speed profiles is preset to accelerate, travel, turn, and decelerate at a selected speed. To change speed, you go back to the menu and choose a different profile. The profiles are configurable, but the wheelchair tech is probably the only one who has the software to do it.

This is just one example of a head array control set up. There are head arrays with more switches, fewer switches, or different kinds of switches. Newer control units are a lot cooler, but my three-year-old chair is too old to be compatible with them. The software is pretty much totally customizable.

So what's it like to use?

It takes some getting used to. You'd expect that it takes practice to direct the chair where you want to go, and that's true. It does. And you might expect that your neck gets sore, because you're using it in unaccustomed ways. That's true too. You might even expect that you need to make sure the power is off before you rest your head on the head rest. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to do this. And it's surprising how often you need to look at the display to see if you're going to go forward or backward. And it's surprising how often I forget to do this, too. It's not nearly as convenient or intuitive as a joystick. It seems like I'm always having to stop and dink around with a menu to change a setting.

Still, I have better control with the head array now than I have had for a long time using a joystick. Although it took forever and cost a lot, I've caught up with the Red Queen again. For a while.

Remember remember

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot...

Maybe it's just me, but being burned in effigy every year since 1605 seems a little excessive after the man was tortured, and then sentenced to being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Even if plotting to blow up Parliament was a really bad idea.

I don't suppose it's any creepier than Halloween. Any excuse for a holiday, I guess.

Happy Guy Fawkes day?

All Hallows Eve

Halloween. All Hallows Eve. Samhain.

We never get any trick-or-treaters. In the five years we've been in this house, not a one. I don't understand it.

We always got a few brave souls at our old house; kids who knew there was a house at the end of that long, dark, scary driveway, even if you couldn't see it from the street.

When we moved here, I figured we'd attract a swarm of little ghosties in ghoulies. OK, the driveway is kind of steep, but it's not very long, and from the street you can see there are two houses once you get up here. And we're not out in the middle of nowhere. It's a normal suburban neighborhood, one that I would once have considered a reasonably target-rich environment. We don't go crazy with Halloween decorations, I admit, but we did put out a jack-o'-lantern for the first year or two. We quit when it didn't seem to make any difference.

This year, it will be different. This year, we will be visited by every trick-or-treater in western Washington state. This year, they will come.

This year, we didn't buy any candy.

On a Halloween-ish note, Scarecrow passed along a video clip of some clogging mummies. It's too good not to share:



Every time I watch it, I find myself thinking there are couple of steps I could steal. Even though that train left the station long ago, I can't seem to help it. I do the same thing when I listen to somebody play banjo. "Oooh, that's cool! I could do that!"

I can't, of course. I probably couldn't then, truth be told. I never was much of a musician. But I played when I could. I danced when I could. That's going to have to be good enough.

That's good enough.

15 in 15

On Facebook (this is my penance for being one of those creepy moms who lurks on Facebook, spying on my kid) Tuffy tacked me on to a list of friends she challenged to come up with a list of books I've read that stuck with me; 15 books in 15 minutes. I usually hate these chain letter type quizzes, but this sounds like fun.

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends (or, if you're lazy like me, whichever number seems appropriate), including me, because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. Do yours before you read anyone else's....

OK, here we go...

The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Sociobiology, E.O. Wilson
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould
Horton Hatches the Egg, Dr. Seuss
Emma, Jane Austen
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Big Red, Jim Kjelgaard
Introduction to Population Genetics Theory, C.C. Li
The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Moby Dick, Herman Melville

I probably spent more than 15 minutes, but not a lot more. I'm kind of surprised at some of the things that bubbled up from my subconscious to wind up on the list. Some are books I haven't thought about in... decades. Big Red? Where did that come from? They're not all books I loved. For example, I had a love/hate relationship with Intro to Population Genetics Theory. And I definitely did not love Moby Dick. It was assigned in one of the few English classes I ever had to take. This was back at the dawn of time, you realize, but it really stuck with me. It really stuck with me. The book and the class about did me in. Tuffy, English major that she is, loved it.

I found it got easier to come up with books as I went along. By the time I got to the end, I was having to choose between books with equally valid claim to a place on the list. For some authors, it was hard to pick one book that stuck with me more than others. Sherman Alexie? Terry Pratchett? Stephen Jay Gould? Toni Morrison? If they wrote it, and I read it, it stuck with me.

Well, that was fun. Comparing my list to Tuffy's, I look like a troglodyte. I haven't even read most of the stuff on her list, and wouldn't be inclined to try. It looks like work.

Maybe that's why I wasn't an English major.

Murder in Kenmore

I live in Kenmore, a suburb of Seattle at the north end of Lake Washington. About 6:30 the other evening I was sitting in the car while Scarecrow went in to Safeway to pick up a prescription. I was just sitting, not thinking about anything much, when after a while I noticed that crows had been flying overhead for kind of a long time. As I watched, they continued to fly overhead. Sometimes I could see 10 crows, sometimes maybe 50, sometimes only one or two, but for as long as I sat there I could see crows flying northward over the parking lot to their evening roost. I'd say I was there for about 15 minutes. When we left to drive home, they were still flying overhead.

That's a lot of crows. A murder of crows.

Their winter roost is a mile or so from our house. Every evening this time of year American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) congregate in this area in large numbers. Really large numbers. Tens of thousands. John Marzluff, a guy at UW who studies them, says the local crow population began to expand during '70s and since then has "increased 30-fold."

"It wasn't really a comeback," he says, "it was an invasion."

Crows are not your rare, exotic, or retiring bird. Even I can watch them. You don't have to creep up on them, stealthily, in inaccessible places, using a long-range spotting scope, at the crack of dawn, hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse. If you want to watch crows, toss a couple of Cheetos out there and you'll have more of them than you can keep track of. (Marzluff used Cheetos as bait when he was netting birds for his study. He says they're like crack to crows.)

Nothing bashful about crows. They are raucous and noisy and disputatious. They're smart and social and amazingly adaptable. They can figure out a way to live pretty much anywhere.

I really like them.

I admit, though, that watching them, I can't tell one from another. They have the advantage of me in that regard.


Is That a Caveman or Dick Cheney? Crows Know the Difference