Quick Update

Well, here it is January and things are just -- well, dreadful. I still feel like hell, plus poor Linda has a bad cold. I don't even have anything wise-ass to say. But if you don't hear from us for a bit, assume we're resting and being slug-like.

I'm going to try to answer some of the individual mail I've gotten in the next hour or so, but if I don't get to you, don't be offended. Even typing takes energy ...

What's the treatment for the treatment?

Well, the good news is that I got released from Karmanos on Chrismas Day. And according to them, I'm doing fine.

Hmmm. Actually, on my own self-devised outcomes measurement scheme (which uses common household pets to symbolize the patient's well-being), I'm at the "cat" level (sleeping 18 hours a day, eating almost nothing, and feeling like hacking up hair balls all the time.) My goal is to reach "dog" by next week (which is identical to "cat" except without the picky appetite and hairballs part.)

Being in the hospital for 12 days was not fun, especially with the effects of one of the nastier chemo drugs manifesting themselves, one by one. I did get to study language diversity, ranging from the pert, starched young woman who sometimes brought food and announced herself as "diatectic," to the older, more ample employee who kicked the door open, saying "Got your brekfoose!"

My favorite moment, though, was the one night they thought they needed a chest x-ray of me. By the time the orders for this filtered through the layers of bureaucracy, it was 8:00 PM when they finally sent a cart for me. Covered in a blanket and wearing a respiratory mask, I was wheeled down through the bowels of the hospital and left lying in a bleak corridor. Eventually, a huge, impressive Star-Trek style set of automatic doors swung open. A disembodied voice said, "Ah, kiss my ass," and the doors swung shut again.

Ah, and then the food. Let a few photos suffice to describe it.

Off we go ...

Today, I check into Karamanos for several weeks of rest and relaxation. I should be emailable, even if the wifi doesn't work, since I'll have the Treo along. Enjoy the chaos of the holiday season!

Let's cut driver's ed costs

Today, after quite a long elapsed time, I found myself in a large, general - purpose consumer junk store (Target, in fact,) the sort of place I usually avoid like the plague. And while it was as bad as it usually is, I did have a sort of an idea: for the first week of driver's ed, don't let the students drive actual cars, just walk 'em around one of these big box stores, watching the idiots who can't even push shopping carts without doing dangerous things. There's the turn - out - of - a - side - aisle - without - looking manoeuvre, the shopping - while - on - the - phone syndrome, the discipline - the - kids - in - motion approach, and so much more. In fact, you could even argue that people do anti-social things with shopping carts that they wouldn't do with cars, viz, slam on the brakes and park the damn thing crossways in the street, blocking all lanes.

I mean, you can see how this would work: instructors and students would walk the aisles, trying to avoid getting run down, and taking notes: "Now class, see what that woman just did? Don't do that!"

All of that, of course, got me thinking about my own experience with driver's ed, back in the summer of 1968. It consisted of two week's worth of training, one week in the classroom and then one week, later on in the summer, with three peers and the high school principal (earning some extra cash) as the instructor. He'd pick us up in a big old Oldsmobile, donated by the local dealer (car dealer, not drug dealer -- this was a rural school district.) Just gathering up the students used up almost an hour, since we were grouped alphabetically, not by where we lived.

After that, we'd drive to a small town nearby, park on the street, and walk around for half an hour while the principal had coffee at his mother's house. Then, we'd do some two-lane highway work, maybe a spend a little time on parallel parking, and as a special treat, duck into the state capital to experience "city" driving. I'm talking about Lansing, Michigan, here, not anywhere with actual traffic (still hasn't got any, by any modern standard), but it did give the man a slightly larger set of things to talk about. To this day, I remember when I forgot to signal a lane change. He corrected me, then said, "Let's not have any of this changing lanes without, um, following proper procedure." After nearly 40 years, I can't hear the phrase "proper procedure" without thinking of that timid, ineffective little schoolmaster. Makes me smile.

Kops at Karmanos

It took something over four hours of lying around, plugged into a machine not unlike a large dishwasher, but they got enough of my stem cells to come out and surrender -- actually, enough for two transplants, if (perish the thought) another of these circuses is ever needed. So next week, the fun begins in earnest. My plan is to have technology with me such that I can continue to keep updating this thing. How inspired I'll be to do so will remain to be seen.

Folk Songs

Stuff I wrote long ago:

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From, obviously, the days before 1/1/2000: COBOL Lizards Ever since I was a young boy I've heeded coding's call. From APL to Fortran, I must've used 'em all. But I've never seen anything like this In any function call. Those funky MIS guys Sure wrote some strange COBOL. It's utterly unpredictable, Immune to any test. JCL starts it running, And it just does the rest. ABENDS every Thursday, It's out to break my balls. Those creepy MIS guys Sure wrote some mean COBOL. Why do you think it does it? I don't know! What makes it so slow? Don't have no specifications, I must be in hell. It's all one giant module, Debugged by sense of smell. Aren't even any comments, No comments there at all! A plague on all your houses, And your silly-ass COBOL! They were COBOL lizards, There's got to be a twist! COBOL lizards, At least it isn't Lisp! Even SmallTalk would be better, Than this undocumented crap. Written fifteen years ago, And dumped into my lap. It's not Y2K compliant, It's about to hit a wall ... Those goddamn MIS guys, Sure wrote some bad COBOL.

From a time when I managed development of a multi-platform product: Buy A Sun When I find myself in tons of trouble, There's a thought that always comes. I'm sick of all this nonsense, Buy a Sun. And when the console's frozen, And the cursor doesn't blink, And smit is therefore useless, Then I think: Buy a Sun, buy a Sun, buy a Sun, yeah, Buy a Sun. AIX ain't Unix, buy a Sun. Now, when they say "multi-platform," Then I know we're in for fun. We run on thirty systems, Buy a Sun. DEC wouldn't know a driver If it bit 'em in the ass, And did someone mention Sequent? Thanks, I'll pass. Let it run, let it run, let it run, yeah, Let it run. Then I can ship this puppy, let it run. When things that worked this morning, Stop working overnight, And we know that nothing's different, And a checksum says we're right, It's then I type init 6, Having first su'd to root, And I hold my breath in horror, Let it boot. Let it boot, let it boot, let it boot, yeah, Let it boot. HP is purely evil, let it boot. Now, I've read of web performance 'Til my eyes begin to run. "Cellular" my fanny, Buy a Sun. How many of my users, Need to render in 3-D? When IRIX dies at midnight, They'll page me. Buy a Sun, buy a Sun, buy a Sun, yeah, Buy a Sun. Not sexy but they're stable, buy a Sun.

NOMINATIVE DETERMINISM

A little something from November, 2000:

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Ann Arbor: New Scientist magazine has for many years and with tongue in cheek promoted the idea of nominative determinism, meaning that your name somehow influences your profession if not your destiny. People around the world send them examples like "Doctor Payne" and "Judge Hanger" and so on. Now that you know that, let me tell about a story from this morning's Free Press.

Seems that the US Marshal's service has raided a house in Palmer Woods and seized vast amounts of high-end consumer goods, aiming to auction them and pay off, in part, the debts to society of the house's owner. They found 911 purses; 606 pairs of shoes; 165 pairs of boots; an entire room full of costume jewelry; $125,000 worth of Baccarat, Waterford and Lalique crystal; a baby grand player piano; couches, chairs, stereos, big-screen televisions, artwork, a jukebox -- and furs: leopard, coyote, mink, fox, sable, chinchilla, snake, lynx, rabbit, lamb, beaver, weasel, and raccoon.

So what? So this lady was an Imelda Marcos wannabe -- what's interesting about that? Well, suppose I told you that she's in jail in Chicago for stealing federal money that was supposed to pay for feeding low-income children at her chain of day-care centers. And her husband wasn't on hand to argue with the Marshals, since he's got his little problems, too -- he's awaiting trial for allegedly having killed his third wife.

Again, so what? Well, how about if I mention the woman's name? Marie Antoinette Jackson-Randolph.

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Traditional Medicines

As some of you know, I'm not a fan of traditional medicines, holistic approaches, homeopathy, power-tool-based therapies, and so on. They strike me more or less the same way that plain old faith does -- it would be so nice if it worked, so people tend to transpose hope with conviction. And when conviction sets in, rational thought tends to move out. Recently, China has given us a great example of this process. See New Scientist, #2629, 10 November, 2007, pp 59. (I'd provide a better link, but you have to be a subscriber to get to the full content.)

Zhang Gongyao, a philosophy of science academic at a Chinese university, published an article calling for the removal of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) from the public health system over the next five years. He called it a hoax and a superstition.

TCM, if you're not familiar with it, is one of the world's health-belief-sets that focuses on balance within the patient, specifically yin/yang and a form of energy called qi. It also uses a range of vegetable and animal substances, some of them from endangered species.

The response was loud and extensive -- even the Chinese government was displeased. But nevertheless, it plans to spend 130 million dollars on a study of TCM and its effectiveness -- not, admittedly, a real double-blind study with the potential to prove anything conclusively, but still 130 mill worth of poking around under the hood of this ancient set of practices. Problem is, those who already believe that TCM is effective have an out: since TCM deals with the dao ("the way and order of the universe," as the article described it), it can't be evaluated scientifically, says one supporter. Sigh.

As a vaguely related addendum, here's an article on Wired about the top 10 gadget scams. Amusing.

The University of Michigan

Looking over some old Wood-Charles posts, I note how many fictional U of M departments I seem to have invented. Given that tomorrow the school will be shutting down the town for the annual fiasco known as the Ohio State game, seems like a good time to compile a partial list of the various academic organizations I attributed to our ivy-covered sheltered workshop here.

• the University of Michigan's Coloquium on Things We Can Get Somebody to Pay Us to Study
  
• the University of Michigan's Office of Shameless Opportunism.
  
• THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S DEPARTMENT OF STAYING UP ALL NIGHT GIGGLING
  
• THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S CENTER FOR MAKING THINGS UP AS THEY GO ALONG
  
• the University of Michigan's Centre for Having Too Much Time on Its Hands
  
• THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S CENTRE FOR WORRYING ABOUT THINGS LIKE THIS
  
• THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S CONSORTIUM FOR CUDGELING OTHERS INTO SILENCE WITH NITPICKING AND AD HOMINEM ABUSE
  
• HE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S INSTITUTE FOR FINDING NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS TO STUDY, EVEN IF WE HAVE TO MAKE A FEW UP
  
• The University of Michigan's Department of Hosting Expensive and Probably Useless Conferences
  

I don't really know why I spent the time to pull this together, but there was probably a reason of some kind.

Oddly disappointing

So I spent a whole day this week, running around a huge hospital campus, getting a range of tests that my insurance company wanted (they'll regret it when they see the bill, I'm sure). They tested my heart function, my lung function, and xrayed every bone in my body (almost literally). Today, we had a brief de-brief with my doctor, and the executive summary was, "looks good."

What? An entire day of being jabbed with IVs (my forearms look like I've been assaulted by a porcupine), taking long walks down tiled corridors (a thing I've hated since elementary school), and getting nothing else useful accomplished, and they didn't even find a little dysfunction? I'm not a candidate for a triple bypass? Good news, I guess, but somehow also oddly disconcerting.

Anyway, this presumably clears the way for the big transplant thing in December. After that, we just keep an eye on things, says the doc.