Like a Record

You hear it all the time from rock stars: “well, we listened to lots of our old material while we were making this album.” U2 did just that a few years ago and the end result was that U2 started to sound like they weren’t washed up anymore. Their music was fun to listen to again as it was true to form, focused, and purposeful.

When W won the election in 2000, I was disappointed. Over the following years I’ve been disappointed, sad, angry, indifferent, and curious about why this country has been in a tenuous state. When you look at the neocon, you realize that they are the conservative equivalent of a 60’s era liberal — and when the scale tips too far one way or the other, this country doesn’t fare so well. Achtung, Baby!

As for election night, wife was moved to tears over Obama’s win (he’s from her home state and all) and I found myself delighted with McCain’s concession speech, because, really, it was great and it reflected the McCain I’d thought we were going to see in the 2008 presidential race — but never really did. I think I’ll remember the speech forever.

As for why I’m glad Obama won, I’d been feeling the same way for years: that our government has been out of touch with us, we’ve lost our way as a country, that “U.S.A.” is an artist past its usefulness and prime. We could create another epic like Joshua Tree through sheer dumb luck — but with our current level of effort it’s more than likely that we’d just produce another Pop or collection of “B-Sides and Rarities”. More than likely, given our gross financial state, it’ll take approximately Chinese Democracy years before we’ll be able to recoup the costs of cleaning up this mess.

The Libertarian movement is indicative of this apathy because while it’s big on individual freedoms it seemingly has no concept of social responsibility. Libertarians are like college rock bands: boring songs, poor engineering, loud noises, and rough edges. I decided long ago to steer clear of the Libertarian ideals and stick with the Democrats because while songs about malaise and dropping out of college may have their merits works like Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree are incomparable, masterful, and beyond engaging. You can get endless mileage from them.

I’m a firm believer that our success as a nation has been about perseverance, responsibility, accountability, hard work, and pride. At various times in our history we’ve produced a Joshua Tree or an Unforgettable Fire and as a result built up a lot of credibility in the industry. I think the last time this happened was in the years that followed WWII.

Unfortunately we’d swiped the card a few too many times over the last 4+ decades and it’s really worn down that magnetic strip. At some point you realize that if you just paid attention to your old material people would keep buying your albums.

If U2 can do it, so can we!

But we’ll get to that in just a little bit -or- Slash wrote a book?!

I doubt from a quick glance of my web server logs that anybody reads this weblog anymore. That’s alright, tho. I was really sick of writing it for awhile in 2006. And 2007. And, well, until recently. I think I was a bit illiterate for a period and that gross lack of input lead to a lack of output. Then, and more importantly, I had lots of things going on my life that made for great stories that I chose to keep to myself.

Quickly, then.

1. I got married last month.
2. We bought 38 bottles of wine on our honeymoon to Sonoma.
3. Over the past two years, we’re pretty sure that Emerson the Wonder Dog nearly died at least once. He’s fine at this time.
4. I’ve started making music again but this time on my own schedule.
5. I left Unix administration for engineering only to return to Unix administration last fall.
6. We stalked our local Toys ‘R’ Us until they got the Nintendo Wii in stock. The only thing more fun than buying the first one was buying the second one. We gave the first to my sister in law and the second, well, we haven’t opened the second one yet. But we will!
7. Our friend AW bought me the “Slash” biography for Christmas. KLP may have been jealous because her gift was the “Joy of Cooking”. At first I was really thrilled with this ironic gift.

Let’s talk about this Slash book. While I’m a sucker for pop culture, there are certain things I’m wont to avoid. At the top of that list is “rocker biographies”, mainly because:

• I’ve probably already heard everything I need to know about Ozzy Osbourne’s snorting of ants on VH-1’s Behind the Music.
• The stories lose their punch when written by a ghostwriter.
• I mean, really, even if he wrote the book himself, why would you expect anything even half decent from some guy who may have written a song called “Rattlesnake Shake”?

All this said, of course, meant that I ended up reading the Slash book. I think before I was going to put it on a bookshelf (so that people would visit the house and ask excellent questions like: “You have the SLASH BOOK?! DID YOU READ IT?!”) I thumbed through it if only to get a glance at what I was missing. Then I saw a picture of a young Slash riding a BMX bike. So I read a few pages. After reading about 50 pages I realized that I had committed myself to finishing this book.

So, dear reader, think of this blog entry as a public service announcement and its message is really simple:

Please don’t waste your time on the Slash book like I did mine. Instead do something more productive like hitting a rack of breakable dishes with a cast iron pan. You will thank me for this.

In case you need to know why, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you:

• The Slash book is really, really poorly written. You can kind of tell that Slash wrote a lot of it. I guess he gets a point or two for not clearly hiring a ghostwriter to do the dirty work but since the book is also lacking in insight or — as a reader I came to settle for as little as possible — even half-decent stories.
• Nothing in the Slash book is all that interesting. He seems like a pretty boring, aimless, lazy guy overall. I’m not really into the “drugs are cool” thing at all, so reading about Slash’s drug problem got really tedious after 5 or so pages. Unfortunately, he wrote about it for a large part of 300 pages.
• Slash was a little drunk or bored while writing this book. Often times he’d end a paragraph with the phrase “but we’ll get to that in just a little bit” and would never quite return to what he was “getting to”. This happened more as the book progressed.
• I theorized that this book may actually be Slash’s implementation of an elaborate drinking game by page 8 (every time you see the words intense, intensity, or bohemian you have to drink). By page 9 I was convinced (every time you see the phrase “I can’t imagine why” you have to drink). Slash’s use of the words intense, intensity, and bohemian was never ending. At some point, I kind of felt that he was beginning to interchange them.
• Slash’s story about how he got the nickname “Slash” was pretty boring overall. I expected something much, much cooler, like how he gained a reputation as an adept sharpened-toothbrush-fighter during his stay at the county jail. No such luck. Unfortunately, if I recall, his nickname came from “slashing” through the room, like at a party.
• I really wanted to hear some dirt about the GNR breakup, because after all, I’m still (not really) waiting for that Chinese Democracy album to come out.
• Outside of being a seemingly useless fellow, Slash seems to be humorless as well. Guys like Ozzy are funny and self-deprecating, even if only unintentionally, and this adds to their charm. Guys like Slash throw around words like “bohemian” for 400 pages until you’re left hoping that the next page you read contains the liner notes.
• It’s a miracle that GNR released one GNR album, must less two albums and an EP. Seriously, they really wasted lots of Geffen’s money.

To Serve and Detect -or- I’ll Cut You!

I’ve been working with UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems for 15 years. It’s thrilling yet infuriating. Challenging yet arcane. Sometimes like riding a crosstown bus, you just want UNIX to hear the bell and let you off at the next stop.

*ding*

Lots has happened over 15 years. In its earlier form, UNIX could handle lots of tasks while offering the poorest interface possible. In its latter forms, UNIX has tried to steal the hearts of desktop users away from Microsoft — while not necessarily evolving in terms of acceptible interfaces, usability, or compatibility. 15 years later I find myself running applications under a Microsoft platform while interfacing with UNIX systems through Microsoft-based terminal software. After 12 years, I had done enough projectile vomiting over half-cooked UNIX “desktop productivity” applications that I could no longer muster the energy to use — much less to justify their existence.

At the tip of the iceberg, of course, is supporting UNIX which means that I have to deal with people. And by people, I mean non-technologists. I’ve realized that about 60% of my job is non-technical. I spend it answering pages, lending an ear to complaints, lifting heavy things, or sometimes just offering psychiatric help, because sometimes UNIX just makes you want to jump.

Of the 40% of my job that is technical, probably 90% of that involves being a detective. User A comes to my desk and asks me why his UNIX system is shafting him. I put a whole bunch of yellow tape around their UNIX system, take some pictures of the crime scene, there’s a manhunt, and later there’s a capture. Whether it’s a mail system or some kind of other server, it’s always the same.

Or maybe that’s not true.

Things go haywire when systems are totally broken, or when people are unnecessarily conniving or mean. This happens a lot, too. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time to be the bad cop, and came up with a global response to people who rub me the wrong way:

I’ll cut you.

“What?! What’s wrong with you? Isn’t that mean?”, you’re asking yourself.

Not really.

“I’ll cut you” is almost a perfect thing to say. How?

User A: Hey, how come I can’t send this gigabyte-sized email message through the email server. It bounces.
Me: (knowing that we never allowed gigabyte-sized messages to be sent via email) Because that’s not what mail is there for. You should use a public folder instead.
User A: Well, it worked up until now. If you don’t fix this for me, I will escalate this all the way up to the president of the company.
Me: (shrugging) I’ll cut you.

Or apply it to pager duty…

User B: Hey, sorry I paged you, but system X seems to be down.
Me: What happened?
User B: I rebooted the server and it didn’t come back up.
Me: I’ll cut you.

Or for hilarious incidents of human error:

Me: Why is Server Y offline? We really need it.
User C: Hey, sorry. We were doing maintenance in the data center, and it looks like the system was packed up and placed in a shipping crate.
Me: What?! Why?!
User C: Do you really need this server? Is it urgent?
Me: I’ll cut you.

Rice, Rice Baby

kl and I are fans of cooking and eating. Each weekend will usually feature some kind of grilled food or something we’ve concocted indoors. Most recently I’ve taken a liking to this rice pilaf dish. Your mileage may vary
Rice Pilaf
Required ingredients:

• 2-3 medium (yellow) onions.
• 1 large tomato.
• 12 oz garbanzo beans.
• 2 cups brown rice.
• 2/3-1 cup chicken stock (or veggie stock).
• 2/3-1 cup white wine (or water).
• 1tsp cayenne pepper (season to taste).
• 1tsp Kosher salt (season to taste).
• 3Tbsp Olive Oil.
• 2Tbsp unsalted butter.
• 1-2cups cold water, as necessary.

Instructions:

1. Dice onions fine.
2. Slice tomato and set aside.
3. Set burner to “medium”. Heat olive oil in no-stick pan until it bubbles. Do not allow oil to burn.
4. Cook onions, stirring regularly, until they start to brown.
5. Add salt and cayenne pepper. Stir for 2-3 minutes.
6. Decrease burner to low-medium heat.
7. Add whole tomato and cook until tomato begins to breakdown (5-10 minutes).
8. Add rice and stir. Allow rice to “tan slightly” for 2-3 minutes.
9. Add stock and white wine.
10. Turn up burner to high and bring to a rolling boil, stirring regularly.
11. Once mixture has reached a boil, turn burner down to low. Cover pan and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring regularly to avoid burning.
12. After 30 minutes, add garbonzo beans and stir.
13. Add butter and cover pan. Simmer for 40 minutes, stirring regularly.
14. Over the next 45 minutes, your rice should cook thoroughly, until it is soft. If you find that your mixture is drying out, add more water, 1/2 cup at a time. When you are done, the rice should be moist and soft, but you should see no evidence of liquid.

This Season on 24 -or- Why Do I Even Bother?

kl and I started watching “24″ while I was recovering from surgery back in January. You see, it all started out great: terrorists, missing gas cannisters, a conspiracy. Neat! Once kl realized the powers of Tivo, we started to record each episode and watch it at our leisure.

In retrospect, putting “24″ on Tivo and not rushing home for it was a superb idea. Why? Because every last second of “24″ sucks. Alright, so I understand plot and conflict and throwing in a couple of twists, but when you look at master works like “North by Northwest”, you know that paying careful attention to its storyline will lead you to a conclusion. Not so with “24″! “24″ has the undeniably awful habit of pulling its plot out of the air. How dare I slam such “riveting” television drama like “24″? It’s easy when you consider the following:

Wonder what happened to those gas cannisters? It was a conspiracy, and the president didn’t know.

Fine, so following the plot, it would seem like terrorists were to blame for the missing gas cannisters. So, six wasted hours later, the viewers learn that:

The president did know about the gas cannisters and that he’d murdered the previous president to ensure oil supplies for all Americans.

*Rolling eyes.*

This is not to say that I haven’t been paying close attention here. Simply, a casual viewing of “24″ should lead anybody to conclude that the show’s writers are making things up as they go along. I can picture a writer’s meeting for “24″ now:

Writer 1: Okay, so we tied the terrorists to the gas cannisters and Jack has saved Los Angeles by thwarting a terror attack. Problem? We only have enough material for 11 episodes, and we need material for 22 episodes.
Writer 2: So? Why not have the president be a conspirator?
Writer 1: How would that work? We already outed his chief of staff a few episodes ago.
Writer 2: I doubt anyone would even notice.
Writer 1: Whaaaat?!
Writer 2: If 400-pounders, mousey guys, and Chinamen can attain superstardom by performing their renditions of “Tears of a Clown” to a national audience, do you really think they’d notice if the president pulled a 50-foot garden hose out of his ass while engaged in a monologue about “oil supply” and “patriotism”?

Apparently, kl and I are suckers for this kind of divestment (of time and energy). So, each week, we watch 5-10 minutes of an episode on Tivo. We catch the “last week on 24″ introduction and the first couple minutes of the show. Then kl jumps on the “fast-forward” button and narrates:

“Okay, so Jack is chasing after someone, and there’s an explosion. The president is chatting with someone on his cell phone. He looks kind of maniacal. Jack is chasing the president. There are terrorists chasing the both of them. Oh, a commerical! I want to see that movie. Now, scenes from next week!”

I managed to avoid every last second of the first season of “American Idol”, but I wasted 5 months of my life on the second season — while I wrote a book with “Idol” in the background. I heard all of the hype about the first season of “24″ but avoided it completely. A bout of scrotal pain sucked me into the third season.

At least Fox understands its audience.

Of Bees and Dogs

I’ve often felt that my labrador retriever is like a bee, a yellowjacket. While he isn’t yellow, he does flit from place to place, he’s tried to “pollenate” (on a few unsuspecting victims), and he does like garbage. So? His nickname is “Bee”. He even answers to it!

Imagine my delight when kl pointed out a website that’s dedicated to bee costumes for dogs. Not to say that I’m going to buy one, but apparently my observation of my dog acting like a bee was more apt than I’d originally thought. And the website is a riot. Consider the following:

No Photoshop! Beedogs.com is about pictures of actual dogs wearing actual bee outfits. I’m not interested in pictures of dogs photoshopped to look like bees, nor do I want pictures of bee costumes photoshopped to look like they’re being worn by dogs.

Speaking of yellowjackets (or specifically of the color yellow), I have to take Bee to the vet’s today. While Bee is a pretty well-behaved creature and he’s housebroken, he has these bouts with UTI such that he becomes un-housebroken in the short-term. This is a bummer. This time around, the vet threw me off by asking for a urine sample.

How on earth does one get a urine sample from a 60-pound animal who flits around like a yellowjacket?

Is it akin to milking a cat? Time will tell. This afternoon, before 4pm, kl, Bee, and I will head to the backyard. I will be wearing rubber gloves, holding a plastic tub in my hands. kl will be controlling the leash. I can only imagine that I’ll be writing another entry about this one. Stay tuned.

I Rock (When I’m Not Shy)

Anne dropped by for some session work with her (now former) band last October. Joe and I did the engineering work for the sessions. We crammed three songs into two days’ worth of tracking and Joe quickly put together some rough mixes on the third day before the band hit the road.

When Anne left the band, she had some material that had been “orphaned” — which was to say that it had been left undone. Joe and I decided to create new instrumentation and mixes for Anne’s work. Last weekend, Joe engineered some sessions where I’d tracked bass for one of Anne’s songs. This song was of the interesting variety: kind of Motown-like, which meant that you had to play a precision performance on top of a bouncy beat. While I’ve been involved with music for a pretty long time, I’ve also played lots of music where precision isn’t really the object of the performance. This meant that our sessions weren’t without peril.

While we got an early start on Saturday morning, I was just not feeling the song and kept obsessing about a perfect performance, so things weren’t going very well. After a few hours of redo’s, Joe and I decided to take a break. He had a sandwich and I had a buffet of other stuff, like wasabi peas and hummus/pita. After our break, we started to track again, and during the course of this, Joe brought up a maddening tendency in my playing; I get shy.

When I’m confident with my performance, it’s loud and even. When I hit trouble spots (tough tempo or phrasing, etc), the performance practically cowers in a corner or hides beneath a bed. Horrible. Take after take I worked on evening out my rough spots. And then I started feeling the song. Takes were getting it easier. It clicked. I wasn’t as shy. We actually got a pretty decent performance… after 8 hours.

Having a Ball (or Not)

A few months ago, I’d started to experience swelling of my scrotum (at the time, my scrotum was the size of a softball or slightly smaller). At first, I’d believed it was normal because there was no pain, no discharge, nothing else out of the ordinary, except for frequent urination. I’d had a test for STDs, and I was clean.

After all, my body had undergone other changes. I’d lost a lot of weight three years ago. I’m almost completely bald. I have hair growing everywhere (except from my head, of course!). I had perfect skin throughout my teen years and suddenly developed weird, oily skin in my 30’s — along with acne. I developed more in-grown hairs than I believed were ever possible. Things were happening. If my scrotum had begun to grow and it wasn’t hurting me, who I was I to worry? Maybe I was just becoming some kind of majestic creature, like a lion king in one of those Animal Planet shows? Sure, I’d be happy to let the younger ones snare and kill a gazelle while I sat there in the not-so-hot Northeastern sun showing off my impressively-sized testicles!

I started dating my girlfriend last summer. A few months after we’d started dating, she’d noticed the scrotal abnormality, and we’d had a conversation something like this:

She: This can’t be normal.

Me: I don’t know what’s up with it.

She: Does it hurt?

Me: No, not at all.

She: You should really go and get it checked out.

Me: Well, I mean I do have hair growing out of my ears and all this other stuff. Maybe it’s perfectly normal?

She: (looking at me in disbelief) Dude, just go to the doctor’s! Make an appointment! Go! Seriously, while it was kind of shocking to see you like this at first, now I’m getting concerned: really concerned.

I made an appointment with my PCP in October 2005 and, as I expected, I was in perfect health… until he examined my abnormally large scrotum. He was very concerned, noted how testicular cancer was very treatable these days, and sent me immediately to a urologist.

I was fine until I found myself sitting in the urologist’s office. Not only was I — by far — the youngest male there, I realized that I was totally in love with my girlfriend, had already considered a future with her (if she’d have me), and in it there was no place for testicular cancer.

Many things were going through my head, and I don’t feel like discussing them here.

The urologist noted my (young) age and otherwise perfect health, chided me for being a smoker, and took at look at my scrotum. A medical school resident was by his side (this hospital is a teaching hospital for Tufts University as well) and when he saw my scrotum, his eyes grew wide. He apologized, and I told him not to worry about it. After shining a flashlight through my scrotum (which is a spot check for testicular cancer), the urologist began to poke and prod, until he nicked one of my testicles. I winced in pain.

(You see, since my scrotum was so swollen, my testicles had become misaligned and were severely out of place, so a testicle was not where anyone would’ve expected to have found it.)

Since I had experienced pain, the doctor was concerned. He sent me immediately for an ultrasound. For nearly an hour, I laid on an examination table, looking up at a picture of a “peaceful” bird on the ceiling, while a technician ran an ultrasound device over my scrotum time and time again. I was very nervous, since I had no idea what was taking place. I could not stand to look at the monitor where my scrotum and testicles were on display. I could not look past the pretty bird on the ceiling. I kept answering the same questions over and over, like: “have you suffered a blow to the groin in the past?”, or, “have you done any heavy lifting on a regular basis?”

After the ultrasound was done, I had to urinate like you would not believe. I pulled up my pants and ran to the bathroom. When I got out, the doctor informed me that I did not have testicular cancer, and that my testicles were alive and had a pulse. Instead, he told me I had a condition known as a “hydrocele”. I had three options:

1. I could leave things alone so long as the hydrocele did not grow substantially.
2. He could drain the fluid from the scrotum right away, but it would return in a month or so.
3. I could have a hydrocelectomy to abate the hydrocele entirely (there’s a 2-3% recurrence rate, which I found to be acceptable).

I did further research about hyrdocele, and concluded that I would have surgery. Based on my reading, if untreated, a hyrdocele can (but not always) strangle the testicles due to pressure in the scrotum. I did not want things to get worse. I wanted my scrotum to be back to normal. And I wanted relief most of all. I scheduled the surgery for January 2006, and had two months to reconsider.

I had my surgery on January 16, 2006. While I would receive a general anesthetic, the procedure would take an hour and would be done on an outpatient basis. My girlfriend and father came along for the procedure and by 7:50am, I was sedated and on my way to the operating room.

After they woke me up in the OR (did any procedure actually take place?), I was back in recovery by 9:00am or so (I forget exactly since I was “out”). I was walking by 9:45am and by 10:30am, I had reunited with my girlfriend and father. I had grown tired of this hospital experience, and felt it was time to leave.

When we returned home, I had some snacks and my painkiller. We all took naps. My girlfriend was a total angel by preparing meals and tidying up. She had to return to work on Wednesday, tho, so my father took over after that. He’s been stellar as well.

As for me, I am on the mend, even though I am kind of moody and depressed in a not-so-goth kind of way. I had extreme pain on Monday night through Thursday. I’ve had an ice pack on my groin every day, almost all day. The pain is much more bearable now, and I’m starting to walk like a normal human again (as opposed to the troll I’d been impersonating since Monday when I left the hospital).

I’ll be back to work next week, on 1/30. Still in pain. Still on painkillers. But it’s been getting better everyday, so I can’t complain.

Balloonacy Revisited

It’s true that a hot-air balloon landed in my backyard. Actually, it’s happened repeatedly — probably more than a half dozen times between September 2002 and last Sunday.

Last week, after Thanksgiving, my girlfriend and I spent a few days at a cabin in the mountains of Northern Maine. It was quite relaxing, although we both needed to get back on Sunday. We decided to drop by my house on the way back to Boston. When we rolled up my street at about 4pm on Sunday, there was a van and trailer blocking my driveway and a bunch of people milling about around the van and in my driveway. What was this about?

I stopped behind the van, and motioned to a woman (who was standing near the driver’s door of the van) that I’d needed them to move the van so that I could pull into my driveway [1]. She approached my window, so I rolled it down.

“Hi!”, she said. “We’ll be out of your way in a second!”

“Alright”, I said. “What’s going on?”

“We just had a landing, and we’re getting packed up.”, she noted.

“Hot-air balloon?”, I inquired.

“Yes.”, she said.

“Did you land in my backyard?”, I asked.

“No”, she said. “We landed out here in front.”

(At this point, I nearly exploded. I looked at my girlfriend who also looked unamused.)

I saw the name on the van, so I continued. “Are you guys aware that I told you not to land in my yard?”

“No sir, but I’ll make note of it.”, she said. “We left you a bottle of champagne for your troubles. It’s near your garage door.”

“Listen, I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be landing in somebody’s yard? Besides, I don’t want to be held responsible if something happens to you while you’re on my property. And I certainly don’t like the idea of a hot-air balloon landing so close to my house.”, I said [2].

“I understand, sir. We’ll make note of it.”

It was interesting to note that people were still milling about, probably drinking $5 bottles of “sparkling wine” (my girlfriend wonders who should call it champagne when it costs $5 per bottle, really?). We pulled the car into my garage and went inside. I was fuming. I couldn’t believe that someone would be so arrogant as to land a flying vessel in my yard — in a non-emergency situation — in particular after having been asked not to. I was wondering who’d be interested in taking a ride in a hot-air balloon at the end of November. I started having daymares about the Hindenberg.

Thing is, I’m no lawyer. I don’t work for the FAA. I do not pretend to be a lawyer by reviewing FAA guidelines for recreational aircraft. It felt like flying objects shouldn’t be landing in my yard, but I wasn’t certain I’d be correct to assume they weren’t allowed to land wherever they’d wanted.

I decided to sleep on the matter and to do some further reading on Monday. There was no sense in doing something absurd like calling 911 over it. Based on my reading, I was still unsure if hot-air balloons were able to land in my backyard. I found the website for my local police department and sent them a brief email message about what I’d seen, informed them I had no idea if hot-air balloons were able to land in residential areas, noted how dangerous it would seem to have a balloon land in my yard, and asked what they would suggest as a course of action.

My local police left a voicemail message for me on Monday night and I followed up by phone this morning. Apparently, there are FAA guidelines for the operation of hot-air balloons. I know of their existence now since the captain of my local police told me he’d read them to get a baseline for how he’d approach the balloon companies.

So, what it amounts to is this: technically, hot-air balloons can (and will) land wherever they want. However, if you’ve specifically asked a balloon operator not to land in your yard, they are supposed to land elsewhere. My local police have contacted all of the local balloon companies about their landing practices, and one of the local balloon clubs even wants to talk to me in response to my complaint (for reasons that I cannot understand). I’m not sure I want to speak with them but there’s a chance I may see what they want. Maybe they’ll want to give me a free ride as part of Landowner Appreciation? I’d possibly take them up on such an offer.

It would be door-to-door service, after all.

[1] Note: I live in a rural area. There is absolutely zero reason to be blocking someone’s driveway as there is an tremendous amount of space to park on both sides of the street.
[2] Many hot-air balloons are loaded with propane.

To Serve and Protect (after the beep)

My girlfriend and I were driving in the car this past Saturday afternoon. The weather was shitty, of course (this fall has been miserable weather-wise in New England), so traffic was “lurchy”. By the time we were about 10 minutes outside of Boston, traffic on Route 93 South had stopped moving completely. Usually, when this happens, it’s blocked all the way into the city. This would’ve been a bummer, of course, had it been blocked all that way, since she’d had lots of studying to do.

Lucky for us, the traffic jam on Route 93 South was caused by debris covering the two center lanes which meant that it didn’t last for more than a mile or so. Near as I could tell, something large and plastic — maybe a child’s playhouse or a furniture set — had fallen off a truck, broken into large pieces, and scattered itself over the two center lanes of 93. I’m not sure when this happened, but clearly no state police or highway vehicles were clearing up the debris or directing traffic.

“Do you think you should call the state police?”, she asked.

“I was just wondering that.”, I explained. “Do you think I should call 9-1-1 for this?”

“No, you probably shouldn’t”, she agreed.

Roadway debris, while an action-packed event in its own right, doesn’t hold the same level of criticality as a road rage incident or carjacking, I surmised. So I dialed 4-1-1 to get the non-emergency number of the Massachusetts State Police.

I waited a few moments for an operator to assist, and she patched me through to the Massachusetts State Police, or should I say, to the voicemail of the Massachusetts State Police. But instead of leaving voicemail for the Massachusetts State Police, the message informed me that I could not leave voicemail at this extension — but could be connected to an attendant if I pressed “0″ at the beep. I pressed “0″. 25 rings later, I gave up, debris in roadway be damned.

Clearing debris from a highway?

Priceless.

Calling 9-1-1?

Free.

Dialing 4-1-1 to fulfill some kind of civic duty?

$1.50.