beancounters

Old and New

IMGP7399
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Grace, this has become one of my all-time favorite pictures of San Francisco. What an eye you have. Merci!

The doggie with the benjamins

NEW YORK (AP) -- Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum.

Shocking? Excessive? Perhaps - until you read on and learn the the breed of dog.

Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court.

Oh, a Maltese! Yes! That explains it! You see, the Maltese is the cutest, friendliest, most trust fund-worthy dog breed in the world.

No offense, blogfolk. I don't mean to say your own little ankle-biters aren't terrific. And I adore our own resident Pekapom and our resident, um, Terrierish.

But there's something about the Maltese ...

Slight setback

Here at FTP10BFYO(TM) HQ, we have noticed an alarming setback in our accidental weight-loss program. After careful analysis, the following culprits were identified.

Culprit #1
A Sacramento Regional Transit bus. Specifically, Bus #142. It stops right inside our parking "structure" (under the Highway 50 overpass) every quarter hour, and it drops us off, like, 18 inches from our agency door. It is substantially quicker than walking. And the cost to ride one way is an easy to afford 50 cents. Darn that 75% public transit subsidies for state employees!

Hey RT Rider and RT Driver, bet you never thought you'd hear someone complain that the RT is too convenient ...

Culprit #2

We don't have to say another word about Culprit #2, do we?

In conclusion, our analysis suggests that if we don't update to a policy of moderation in the use of the above items, it may be necessary to bring in exercise reinforcements from the Volunteer Walking Committee.

Preemptive recall

Too close to real life for comfort!

Ford Motor Company Preemptively Recalls 6.1 Million 2011 Models

A spokesman for Ford Motor Company announced today the preemptive recall of all 6.1 million model year 2011 cars expected to be produced under the company's flagship Ford brand next year.

The recall, which will affect all new Ford automobiles immediately upon leaving the assembly line, is intended to address "serious production, concept, engineering and safety flaws that we expect to come to light in the recent future", according to the spokesman.

7.5 on the D.E.M. (Double-Entendre Meter)

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to find out how big your balls are. Play Balls, a quick-moving flash game. Travel around the board with your balls, touching some balls and avoiding others. Make the white balls disappear before the black balls engorge you. I don't know how far you can go, but I made it to level 7 and was told I have hefty balls. [via A Welsh View, home of the video for Human Tetris!]

A six hour car ride? Stop! That's too silly

We laughed, we cried, we dozed ... that conference touched us all.

Later, we all did silly walking.

No, wait. That was just me.

Madam Cat-Herder, I presume

Field trip day. A few of us are going to San Jose to attend a task force meeting. My boss wants me to observe, not the subject matter (Retirement Benefits policy - ::shudder::) but the way in which the task force is administered. Within the month, the task force, made up of a wide range of enemies professionals, is expected to come up with a set of formal recommendations. This is traditionally a process as painless and efficient as herding cats into a wheelbarrow.

But apparantly, there's this miracle-working administrator working in Sacramento ... a person with a resume longer than Capitol Avenue ... who has a reputation for excellence. Governors constantly appoint her to committees like this for the sole reason that she can herd cats. And my boss wants me to watch how, exactly, she does this, so I can do the same for an advisory board we ourselves are convening in the fall.

Will I have to talk to her? I feel like Stanley journeying into the jungle to meet Livingstone. Meanwhile, my coworker is preparing to give a speech to the task force, so I'll probably listen to that on the way down. Will help me cram on retirement benefits, about which I know nothing.

Fake accents

Deputydog starts the trivia ball rolling with his list of 13 of the worst fake accents in movie history. It's a subjective list, and he gets a few facts wrong, but I forgive him because he nailed my personal Bad Accent Movie Trifecta: a) Kevin Costner in 'Robin Hood', b) Don Cheadle in 'Ocean's Eleven', and c) Keanu Reeves in 'Dracula'. ("Dude, I have seen Count Dracula, and he is most heinous.")

I understand why he listed Sean Connery in, well, in practically anything after the Bond movies. And someone else mentioned Michael Caine. But you've got to understand, these are two actors in a class of their own. I don't know how they gained this status, but it's true. They are not hired to play believable characters. They are hired for their box office appeal! Recognizable accents are a problem for lesser mortals. Somebody in the comments section gets it:

Saw a comedian once do a whole routine on pitching movies to Sean Connery. “Ok, it takes place aboard a submarine. Everyone is speaking Russian, except you. You’re a 12th century Scottish nobleman.”

Which book are you?

You're Brave New World!
by Aldous Huxley
With an uncanny ability for predicting the future, you are a true psychic. You can see how the world will change and illuminate the fears of future generations. In the world to come, you see the influence of the media, genetic science, drugs, and class warfare. And while all this might make you happy, you claim the right to be unhappy. While pregnancy might seem painful, test tube babies scare you most. You are obsessed with the word "pneumatic".
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Amazing! All true! Though I could just as easily have been Lord of the Flies, because this irresponsible idea for a reality show has been on my mind in recent days. [Via Nag on the Lake]

Font smackdown

This makes sense to me. I always imagine that a certain rivalry exists there ...

Less Popular Fonts Lash Out At Times New Roman

Gill Sans MT

Alright, Times New Roman, we all know you think you're better than the rest of us. What with your ubiquitous default status on practically every single word processing application known to man, and your supposed readability, and your fancy-pants serifs. Well, aren't you just God's gift to typeface?

Bauhaus 93

Since when does a little popularity among acne-ridden high school English students and their underachieving instructors earn someone bona fide street cred? Back in the day, it meant something to be a font. You were there, living and breathing it, one with the zeitgeist. A font was just as much a cultural building block as it was a means of written representation.

Webdings

Double right arrow black widow spider crescent wrench ball peen hammer tropical oasis ear spider dialogue blurb first place trophy first place trophy.

Doggie underground railroad

I made vegetable soup this weekend, with lentils and squash. It came out perfect. Bunny was in raptures. Suck on that, Progresso!

Neighbor Liz's teacup-sized dog Kibbles keeps making its way under the local fences to our house. Now it's so accustomed to coming over, it just walks in through the pet door like it belongs here! N. Liz has been unable to find the tiny hole(s) being used for the great escape. And we're reluctant to plug up our own holes, because of this: the yard that Kibbles walks through to get to ours is guarded by two weird, anti-social dogs who can't be trusted not to do something mean to it. Maybe this is a paltry excuse, but if Kibbles is going to wander, we want her to be able to reach a safe place.

Meanwhile, N. Liz is taking it all in stride. "I have to work late tomorrow - can I just stop by and pick up my dog before I go home?" she joked.

Defend yourself against retail!

It's Saturday, and it's DIY day, by Eris. If you saved the post 100 things you can make yourself, now's the day to crack it open, choose one of the items, and get moving.

Why? Otherwise you'll be like me last Saturday ... finding yourself buying a 4 oz. container of sun-dried tomato hummus for $3 from Whole Foods. Hummus! Garbanzo beans and tahini and garlic, blogfolk! I used to make my own hummus all the time. I swear, I can make a batch of hummus with my eyes closed for about a buck and a quarter. I ask you.

I think I was afflicted by Whole Foods Madness the other day. You know, you get into that big store ...  everything smells like organic macrobiotic free range lentils ... and by the time you get to the deli with its Olive Bar ( mix 'n' match, $7.99/lb) reality has blurred and you're just scooping up heaven knows what with two spoons into tiny little deli containers.

WHICH IS WHY we must defend against the siren call of the specialty grocery store, and make our own food from scratch today. Or at least one thing. Go here and begin. Good luck. Come back here and let us know what you make.

Friday dog blogging

Yes, it's a gratuitous puppy pic, put here specifically to make everyone go *squee* and to make Anthony gag.

Meet our new neighbor! She mysteriously appeared in the backyard yesterday. When we spotted her, we were all like, duuude, free dog. But unfortunately she had a tag with a phone number on it, and thus our better natures were appealed to. It turns out, she lives on the other side of the fence from us. Probably for the best - another dog in the house would have upset the gentle balance of power now shared by Sammy and Daisy.

Kibbles is part chihuahua, part pomeranian - a chi-chi pom. Which gives her the lock on precious, wouldn't you say?

A short bit about new offices and old habits

I don't know if I've ever described my first office. It's only six feet wide, and ten feet long. There's a big window at one long end, and a door at the other. From the window, if I stand up and lean forward just so, I can see the Capitol. Next to the door is a long window with blinds on it for privacy. (Though no lock on the door. Privacy, my dear blogfolk, is sometimes just a social nicety.) There's a desk that just barely fits, three bookshelves, and a second chair for visitors. That's all the room there is for furniture.

My new boss actually apologized for putting me in here. I expressed quiet graciousness in response. I couldn't tell him the whole truth - I love this space. I don't care if it's considered small. I love it. I love it more than I can possibly share with coworkers, or they'll think I'm pathetic. My first office!

I love it so much, I almost broke my cardinal rule about decorating. I almost brought in more stuff than can fit into one copy paper-sized box. But I didn't. Heck, even the dozen or so research method books on my shelves don't push the limit. If I were kicked out today, I could still throw everything into one box and motor in a matter of minutes, if I had to. Not that I'll have to. I don't think. Isn't that odd. Paranoid habits die hard.

British is to American as waffle is to bark

Good news for us (slightly) confused American Harry Potter fans: Strictly British is a glossary of little-understood words in the HP series. I recommend you browse it for a few minutes. Even though I've read quite a lot of British fiction in my years, it turns out I misunderstood a goodly number of terms.

For instance, in HP5, Fitch the custodian is forced to punt students across a swamp in the hallway. Until now, I thought that meant he would pick them up and kick them down the hall! Strictly British tells me he actually took them across in a boat. That's a sliiiight difference.

More thoughts on incentivization

Thanks to the Forced To Walk Ten Blocks To Your Office™ weight loss plan, my favorite pair of khakis, cruelly exiled last winter, now fit me again. Still can't report much of a dramatic change, but hey. You takes your victories where you gets 'em.

I've been thinking about the Milan diet incentive program that we discussed yesterday, and I realize exactly why such a thing would never fly here in California. Where is the mayor of Milan getting all this incentive money? From taxes, most likely. This means Milan is operating under a budget surplus. If a California city were experiencing a budget surplus, and the mayor ordered the windfall spent on paying people to lose weight, the local Jarvis taxpayer watchdog group would jump all over that poor mayor like fleas on a dog. They'd demand a completely equitable tax rebate instead, and they'd be sensible to do so.

Still. Milan, you rock. Props for style!

Incentivize me!

Saw a couple of diet-related articles in the news this morning.

Banish the belly, not just the pounds: That's the heart-healthy advice from a new study that finds that "pot" bellies may be a big indicator of future heart disease.

"What we're seeing is a quite strong association between the pot-belly, apple shape among a relatively young group of people and the build-up of plaque in the arteries," said study co-author Dr. James A. de Lemos, an associate professor of medicine and director of the Coronary Care Unit at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

"Ten to 15 years down the road, this can lead to major cardiac problems, such as a heart attack," he said.

  Sobering, if there's a true correlation - particularly for someone in my shape! But Italy is fighting back.

MILAN (Reuters) - Overweight residents of an Italian town will be paid to lose weight, the mayor said on Monday.                                            

Men living in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo will receive 50 euros ($70) for losing 4 kg (9 pounds) in a month, Mayor Gianluca Buonanno said. Women will get the same amount for shedding 3 kg (7 pounds).

If they can keep the weight off for 5 months, they will get another 200 euros ($280), he told Reuters.

Way back when I was a smoker, one of my dad's wives offered me $200 if I would quit and stay smoke-free for one year. I turned her down, because it felt like I would be under her personal microscope for a year, and I didn't want to give her that satisfaction. But being one person in a town full of people trying to lose weight might be less stressful. I think I'd sign on. Would you?

What's a wotcher?

At last, someone explains what Tonks is always yelling at Harry. Had you heard this before?

Urban Word of the Day
www.urbandictionary.com

August 05, 2007: wotcher

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wotcher&defid=1180351

A shortened form of "what cheer!"

A greeting between friends, used mainly in London. Also spelled
 "[wotcha]."

"Wotcher, Harry!"

-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Sinistrophiles unite!

August 13 is Left-Handers Day. [via Fark]

My brother and I are both lefties, born to a right-handed couple. Mom, it's no good calling us weird; remember, you baked us this way.

      The world is built for right handers. Examples are everywhere. For example:       

•   In school, have you ever seen a left handed desk? They don't exist. [Well, I've seen a few, but ironically, when I tried to sit in one, I couldn't function! Something about the desk - my left arm felt sort of restricted.] 
•   Many left handed items cost more.
•   Novelty coffee mugs are made with the picture or text for a right handed   pick-up.
•   Scissors are for right handers. Only a lefty would understand this. [I can use right-handed scissors, due to having to learn or perish in Kindergarten.] 
•   The computer mouse you are using as you read this is designed   for right handers.
• While many people are left handed, very few are 100% left handed. For example,   many Left handers golf and bat right handed. On the other hand, there is   a high percentage of righties who are 100% right-handed.
•   Lefties are also called "southpaws". The term was coined in baseball to describe   a left handed pitcher.
•   Tuesdays are Lefties luck day. [Huh?] 
•   Only about 10% of the population is left handed.
•   During the 1600's people, thought left handers were witches and warlocks.

Tahoe life

This year, cabin life wasn't quite as crowded as it had been in the past. My BIL and his family travelled here from Virginia in a brand-new RV, and then stayed at the Sugar Pine campground every night. And my father in-law and his wife have decided that, as much as they love us, we're too damn noisy, particularly at naptime. So they stayed in Tahoe City. The family was scattered up and down Hwy 89.

Still, this meant there were two rooms free for kids - one room for the boys, one for the girls. Worked out well for us parents. :-)

This is Daisy taking a dust bath along a hiking trail. I yelled at her, but by the time we saw, of course, it was already too late.

We almost didn't bring both dogs, thinking Sammy, being a former nomad, would take off running the moment the cabin door was open. But we took a chance. Happily, he stayed on the property like a respectible dog. He was the most popular guy in the family.

We spend most of our days at Meeks Bay along the west shore. There's something for everyone - a place to raft and kayak, and good swimming, and a lot of shade trees for those who hate the sun. It was odd to see all the reckless teenagers lying on towels in the sun, eating french fries and such, while their freckled parents huddled on lawn chairs in the shade under heavy cotton shirts.

(I'm one of the youngest of the adults - I sat in the sun sometimes - like a changeling that can travel between worlds.)

BB and I got away one afternoon by ourselves, to drive and walk around Emerald Bay. BB has recently gotten back into photography; this was a photo opportunity he'd been looking forward to. My little digital camera does a proper job, but he's starting to get some very good work out of his film cameras. He might open a Flickr account this week to share some.

And that was our week. Next on the family agenda: the first day of Middle School!