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Real Free Speech

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched an online petition to express outrage at conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Obama to “fail.” – http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/27/dems-launch-online-petition-rush-limbaugh/

Now, I don’t have any real use for Mr. Limbaugh.   I find his critical thinking skills inadequate, I believe his primary motivation is attention and a fat bank balance, and I find his rhetorical skills gallingly under par.   I also think this is generally what you’re going to find in most political commentators you encounter if it’s their living, I really don’t care what the political view that they visibly espouse are.

But if you don’t believe in someone’s right to say something you don’t believe in, you don’t believe in free speech. Here’s the catch, when Mr. Limbaugh says something I don’t like, I’m allowed to say, “I don’t like that.”

I think the indignation on both sides illustrate to me more than ever that most people don’t get the point of freedom, nor do they really want to.

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A New Hope

I’m watching Star Wars: A New Hope with my family.

I’ve told my children what an influence Star Wars was on me, but I’m pretty sure they don’t fully grok it.  How could they?  They don’ t have the perspective.

But I remember how it exploded on my brain as a child.  It was the first image I had of a strong woman in film.  I mean here was this Princess that shot bad guys and bullied fools and gave orders instead of screaming and melting into a little cotton candy mess of tears when things went wrong.

Oh sure, there was Wonder Woman, but she was too clearly meant to be eye candy (and her fight scenes never looked convincing to my untutored eye).  And there was the Bionic Woman.  But she wasn’t in charge.  Leia was the first female leader I encountered in fiction.

Certainly Star Wars is how I became a science fiction fan — that and a story by Issac Asimov in my fourth grade reading book called, “The Fun They Had”.

I have to wonder what will be the benchmark media (book, TV, movie, whatever) for my kids that exploded on their brains and made them think in a new way.

Oh, and I just gotta say:

Han Shot First!

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The Knit Kit

Sometimes you find a gadget that is so well-designed and thoughtfully engineered for its purpose that you have to stare in jaw-dropping awe.  Thanks to ame_chaname_chan for this!

Knitkit
Now, this blog is not meant to promote products, but I’m gonna show off one:  The Knit Kit.  It’s coming out in March.  This is smart and useful design.  It contains ‘most every little accessory tool you’d need when you’re out and about knitting, and goodness knows there are many of us who knit while we travel — whether it’s commuting or if it’s a longer trip on an airplane. I’m going to be going to Florida the week after next and I wish the product were already available.  Of course I’m planning my Plane Project.  Most likely socks.  I like knitting socks on planes because it’s small and easily portable in my laptop bag.  You can often tell how much I’ve flown in a year by how many socks I’ve made!  The only redundancy I see is that there are scissors as well as a thread cutter here.  The only thing I usually need scissors for is cutting yarn anyway.

I’m working on a We Call Them Pirates hat in black and red for myself.   I have one in black and white, but it was my first attempt at stranded knitting and I really did make it too tight.  It looks okay, but it’s just too small for my bus head.  If you have a child who’d like the hat, lemme know1.  On a whim, I went through my stash and realized I had enough wool to make myself another one, so I am.  ‘Cause, well… PIRATES!  What I really need to do is make the matching mittens.

I’m also going through my stash to see what I can knit up without buying anything.  One of the great joys of the fact that I use a template and just come up with goofy stuff for a lot of my projects is that I can use up yarn when I overbuy.  I have a lot of gray, some burgundy, some black and some gold.  I could probably come up with something reasonably entertaining with that if I gave it some thought.

My son is pushing for another gold sweater.  I’m going to have to buckle down and get the nerve to try the Seamless Saddle Shouldered Sweater from Knitting Without Tears.  The design is a bit more classic than the 70s looking yoke sweaters, so translates well across the years.

1Obviously, this’ll go to the first person who asks for it.

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Geek Knitting

I’m in the home stretch for a sweater for my son.   I ruined a couple of 100% wool sweaters I’d made for him and he was a bit vexed.  You see, we live in Northern New England.  Hand knit sweaters tend to be pretty warm.  So, I learned my lesson and I don’t care what the fiber geeks say, I knit using Wool-ease.  You can wash it in the washing machine.

So, this is a Seamless Yoke Sweater such as you will find in Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmerman.  I adore knitting in the round, and making sweaters in the round is insanely easy.   The yoke will have the Autobots logo on it.

Knitting is an inherently geeky craft.  There’s a lot of math in it, as well as pattern repetition.  If you’ve any creative bent at all, it’s also an endless opportunity for creation and invention.  It’s a technology as well as an art.  You know me, I like the intersection of technology, creativity and usefulness.  That’s why my favorite knitting projects are sweaters and socks.  You always need good, warm socks and where I live, you always need comfortable, warm sweaters.

The cool bit about the way I make sweaters is that there is a basic algorithm that will work for anyone, and it’s still custom.  Check out Knit by Numbers: a simple way to make your own patterns.   It explains the concept really well.  It really works and you get a sweater that fits you properly.

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No Right Click on a Snow Blower

I’m about to teach a teacher how to use a snowblower.

Now, we’re both geeks.  I told him I was going to talk him through how to use the snowblower by talking him through it just like I teach computer applications.  He got a pained look and said, “Yes, but I can’t right click on a snowblower for a help file if I forget what you said!”

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Self-esteem in the Locker Room

There is nothing so good for my self esteem as the gym locker room.  It’s nice to be somewhere where you realize that there’s no such thing as the “perfect” body  short of a studio shoot and some serious Photoshop work.  I’ve gained some weight and was feeling badly about myself.  I hadn’t been exercising, so my brain was getting sluggish, too.  However, half an hour in the pool swimmin’ laps is enough to put my mind right.  ‘Course it doesn’t do my body any harm, either.

But, the reminder that there’s no such thing as perfect is a good one and it helps keep me from getting down on myself.  The gym I go to is a community gym, so you get everyone from the competitive athletes to the old ladies who swim gently to stave off the walker just one more month.

I’m kind of in between.  I do my swim and it feels good, but I’m no competitor.    I like to keep active because I have a sedentary damn job and if I don’t move, my brain stops working properly.  Since my brain is my major asset, I really can’t afford to let that get sluggish.

One of the women in the gym today commented as I was blow-drying  my hair, “I don’t see how you can have hair like that and be a swimmer.”

Apparently, she’d never heard of the Conditioner Trick:

Wet your hair really well in the shower. Work a small amount of conditioner through your hair.  Don’t use too much or your head will be too slippery and your cap will fall off while you’re swimming.  My hair is pretty thick and down to my waist and I only use about the size of a silver dollar’s worth.  Put on your swim cap. If you’re working out hard enough to get red in the face, your head is hot enough that you’re getting a great deep conditioning treatment. Don’t put the conditioner on the dry hair as you want your hair to have absorbed the water without so many chemicals in it first. The conditioner will seal out the chemicals from the pool then.  After your swim, shower and wash your hair, but if you have to use a hair dryer1, don’t dry your hair all the way.

Of course, this doesn’t stop me from looking really goofy when I put the swim cap on.  It’s  like those old Samurai topknots, getting my mane up into those little latex caps.   I guess if you’re a serious swimmer, you have to resign yourself to looking like a damn dork working out.

I need to find myself a weightlifting buddy in a couple of months, though.  I’m working back into working out more often and I want a little accountability, I think.   I want someone strong enough to spot me, though.

1It’s 10F outside today. Yes, I’m going to mostly dry it before I go outside to go home!  I’ve actually neglected this before and had my hair freeze on me.  I doubt that’s very wise for one’s health.

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Home Vignettes

My cousin told me he’d gotten a DVD player that’ll take a USB drive input.

I boil with envy.

I also discussed this with my son, who ran up the stairs shouting, “Auuggghhh. Must run away from gadget-crazed Mama!”

Honestly, I didn’t think I was that bad.

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The What Happens Next Machine

I was given a snowblower and a wood stove late last summer.   The woodstove has been a grand and glorious thing, but it hadn’t snowed enough to need a snowblower up until rather recently.

We tried to use it Saturday and found that it was too heavy to use on a hill.

That didn’t make sense to me.  I know New England girls aren’t supposed to be the delicate flowers that we Virginians with our softer winters are.  But, the idea that I wasn’t strong enough to push a snow blower up a hill and use it didn’t set with what I figure the design parameters of the machine oughta be.  I’m as strong as some men…  And really wasn’t at home to dealing with shoveling a 17″ snowfall all on my lonesome if I could figure out a solution.

So, I called upon a technique hammered into me from before I could read.  It’s called the “What Happens Next Machine“.  You might remember it from your Sesame Street viewing if you’re between 35 and 45.   This is actually a fantastic lesson in theory v. practice, but it’s also a good lesson in tracing the problem.

So,  my snowblower…

Each handle has a lever you squeeze.  The left one controls whether or not the snow is blowing.  The right one controls… Oh. Wow.  It controls the drive mechanism on the wheels.  It is, in fact, a self-propelling machine.  (I kinda figured it had to be since it had a reverse control and all…)

So, using the principles of “What Happens Next”, I traced the cable from the right hand control to the machine.  It’s supposed to be a pull lever, but it’s loose.  Further examination shows that it is not hooked around a wheel that will pull it taut and decrease the friction on the cable when it’s pulled.   Voila!

So I sit down in the snow to fix it.  (My butt is still cold!)  What I don’t own is a toolbox with all the tools I really should have for things like this.  You know, ratchet wrench….   God, it took me forever to unscrew one confounded little bolt and because I was wearing sweats and not snow pants, my butt got wet.  But still, I fixed it and cleared off the driveway — mostly.   Snow blowers aren’t made to go down all the way to the pavement, darn it.  Good thing I have a 13 year old to take care of the rest.

I want a Girl Genius T-shirt, darn it.

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Books and Their Effects

For all that I’m a compulsive reader, you could hardly call me a lover of “great literature”.   Oh sure, I like Shakespeare, but understanding that mode of English was hardly a leap.   My church gave out Bibles to its first graders when I was a kid and we got the King James Version1.  So we were educated in Late Tudor/Early Stewart English from nearly babyhood.

But when I look at the books that really hit me between the eyes, that move me and that make me think/feel on a deeper level, they’re generally not considered “great literature”.  Stranger in a Strange Land, the later Discworld novels, American Gods, Shogun, The Lord of the Rings...  We’re talkin’ pop literature here.

And yet I’m so culturally (or perhaps emotionally) backwards and dense that this stuff does move me deeply.  I find the climax of Wintersmith — a kid’s book, can move me to tears2.

I often struggle with the fact that my fiction isn’t very good.  Sometimes I wonder if it is my taste in books.  I wanna move people like I am moved by some works.  I know of one person who admitted he cried at the end of Stranger in a Strange Land and have never known anyone who has spoken of Terry Prachett as doing anything other than be funny.  Sure, Prachett is funny, but his best work3 isn’t a comic piece even if it does have humorous bits.  It’s why I like him.  He’s funny, but his stuff generally has a point.

Russian novels (sorry Prof. Barnstead) leave me clammy.   The Brontë sisters?  No.  Oh, I like Dickens well enough.  Mark Twain is amazing.  But “serious literature”?  Not so much.  They don’t move me.  They don’t inspire me.  They don’t make me want to reach beyond myself.

But I like that stuff to be candy-coated, too.  Inspirational literature as a genre makes me shudder.   Mostly, I think, it’s because I can’t relate to the characters.  I get John Blackthorne just fine.  Granny Weatherwax or Sam Vimes and their personal struggles with themselves?  Oh my goodness do I grok them!

I just don’t connect with what’s generally accepted as “great literature”.   I wanna be told a story, be affected with pity and terror.  I want something that moves me, even if it’s not all that highbrow.

1In spite of its translation faults, I still favor the KJV when reading the Bible. Early training, I expect, but it just sounds better.

2The last scene does, too, but that was meant for the Pratchett fans who are parents and would catch the power of that metaphor, I think.

3Nation, his latest. It’s really fantastic.

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Working at Home and Self-Discipline

I’ve had people comment from time to time that they don’t have the self-discipline to work from home or be self-employed.

Ironically, it’s not unusual for me to get this comment from people I consider more self-disciplined than I am1.

I think that it has a lot to do with one’s view of  “should” v. “want to”.  I like working from home and having the freedom that I do a whole lot.  I might be a good writer, but to explain how much I like it would be difficult. I don’t know, necessarily, how much self-discipline it takes to do what you passionately want.  In fact, I’d say it doesn’t take all that much discipline, really.

That’s something I think we often miss in our lives.  We don’t separate out what we think we should be doing or should want from what we passionately want with all our hearts and souls.

Does this mean we should necessarily make our livings from our passions?  No, not really.  When you can, it’s really cool.  I’m not gonna lie about that.  Thing is, it looks a lot more virtuous than it is.  When you wake up excited about doing something, and that something is your job, you look all focused and motivated and virtuous and disciplined.  Friends, going into a toy store and grabbing everything in sight is about as far from disciplined as you can get!

I’m going to be taking a trip down to visit my family soon.  I’m taking the train at least in part so I can work on the way down.   I love being able to do that.  It’s hard to describe the kick I get out of it.   The kick I get out of sitting here in my writin’ chair listening to Dire Straits (playing Money for Nothing, ironically enough), and working on a project for a client feels so very good.  I used to dream of being able to do exactly this when I was a kid.  I’d read science fiction stories about people with hand computers (and remember these were written when computers were as big as a bedroom!) able to access datanets anywhere, write stuff, do work and go anywhere while they were doing it.

I wanted that so badly.  It’s part of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.  When I was a kid, it was the only portable profession I knew about.  Being a computer professional wasn’t yet all that portable — as  I well knew when I watched my father leave the house as I got up to get ready for school.  But I’d take my notebook into the woods behind my friend Mindy’s house, write, and fantasize about the day when I’d be making a living doing that.

When you want something that badly, when you dream about something so much that it stops being a dream but just an internalized part of you waking and sleeping, discipline isn’t the issue any more.  It’s just… what you do.

1 I actually consider myself pretty undisciplined, really. I’m just pig-headed.