I’m not much of a baseball fan, but when they’re winning, just out of ancient tribal loyalty, I’m a Tigers fan. And given my experience of the past several years, I can’t help but feel a little schadenfreude for Joe.

7-0 losers. Against the worst team in baseball. On Opening Day. With last year’s Cy Young Award winner on the mound for the Jays. Oh, the embarassment.

As Glenn would say, heh.

She gave herself an auto-Caesarian.

Glenn is having a little dispute with Josh Chafetz over whether commercials and programs that depict men as fools and/or weaklings (relative to women) are a good or bad thing. While I agree with Glenn’s point, I wonder how much of this is a backlash from previous days when the reverse was true. I’m going to be heretical here and say that I never “loved Lucy.” I never found it all that funny, but moreover, if I were a woman I would be appalled at the image that she represented–she was a perpetual adolescent, with no common sense, and values so shallow that they’d be swamped by a dry lake. I don’t watch the show, but on those occasions that I have, I was embarrassed for her.

On the other hand, this is anecdotal, because I can’t think of any other show, off the top of my head, in which women were depicted as such self-centered idiots as that one. I wonder if anyone has ever done any research on the relative depictions of men versus women on television and radio over the decades, to see if there has been any overall change. Could be a good topic for a sociology thesis.

I’ve had post categories available for a while, but I’ve been very undiligent in using them, and I wasn’t displaying them on the template. From now I will be, as you can see in the rebuilt index page. I’ve gone back and categorized the last two weeks or so, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to categorizing all 3500+ posts since the fall of 2001.

After too brief a tenure, I’ve decided to set aside blogging for the foreseeable future. In part this is due to additional pressures from work, and in part it’s due to reevaluating my priorities, which had skewed rather too far away from family and friends. I’ve enjoyed my stay here, though I wish I’d had more time to post. Fortunately it looks like Rand is back to full speed and in fine form.

Ad Astra,
Andrew

Not.

It was one of those household projects where one thing turns into another.

I’m getting the California house ready to rent, and finally getting around to fixing up all the little things that I haven’t gotten around to for years that make it a little more aesthetic and livable. One of these was replacing the faucet and handles on the downstairs bathtub which, due to the hardness of our water, had become so encrusted with various minerals that they were starting to resemble some of the more active parts of Yellowstone Park.

Of course, that meant that they were also difficult to remove. When I tried to pull the handle off the cold-water faucet, it decided to break off the end of the valve stem, rather than sliding off the spline as designed. This occurred, of course, after I’d already been to Home Depot. In addition, the new spout that I’d purchased turned out to be for a half inch pipe, while removing the old one revealed a three-quarter inch outlet.

What had been merely an upgrade in looks had just turned into semi-serious plumbing. I turned off the water, and tried to remove the valve stem. Unfortunately, whoever had tiled the tub had embedded it in grout and mortar, so I spent a not inconsiderable part of the afternoon cold chiseling around it enough to get a socket on it, while being careful not to damage any visible parts of the tile. I eventually unscrewed it until it was turning freely, but it was still bound by too small a hole, so I had to chisel some more, and finally remove it like a recalcitrant tooth.

Back to Home Depot to exchange the spout, and buy a new valve stem. It’s installed now, and I’ve got water back on, so now it’s time to steam an artichoke for dinner. All this by way of explanation of light blogging. I am also working on a piece for Tech Central Station on hypersonics.

I’m back from my travels, which were extended due to the untimely death of my father. I won’t go into detail, since that’s not what you read this blog for. Suffice to say he was a fundamentally good man who lived his faith in every word and deed. If there is an afterlife in which our actions in this life count for anything, then there can be no doubt he is well rewarded. If not, at least he lead a life replete with meaning, filled with life, laughter, and love.

More blogging after I’ve recovered from jet lag.

Color television is fifty years old today. My family didn’t get one until the seventies.

I was going to delete this post, but once people decided to comment on it, I decided to leave it up.

This is just a test post to demonstrate how easy it is to put up a post (which is what I’m doing to a group of people right now).