Chachi In Charge

The Eye of the Beholder

Or in this case, the eye of the owner. Last night E and I were suppose to go see Neko Case perform at Bimbo's 365. I left work, walked to the bus, and as I was crossing the street, the wind picked up. Next thing I knew I had something stuck in my eye.

I tried all the usual tricks on the two bus rides home - blinking a lot, rubbing, pulling my eyelid over the lower lid. Nothing worked. I even tried looking into the side mirror of a parked truck while I waited for the 19 bus to see if I could see the offending object. No luck.

I got home and turned on all the lights in the bathroom, got out the eyedrops and magnifying mirror and started poking at my eye. No matter what I did I couldn't see anything and it was now getting red and sore in addition to feeling like I had a rock stuck under my lid.

E finally came home to me curled up on the couch with my eyes shut looking (and feeling) totally miserable. We called the Kaiser advice nurse and (after waiting way to long on hold) was told to report to the doctor at 9:30. Which was two hours away. I was also told to ice my eye and take some Advil.

Luckily about 1/2 hour later Kaiser called and asked me to come in right away. They were afraid that if I waited until 9:30 and they couldn't treat me, the injury clinic would be closed and they'd have to send me to emergency. E stopped making dinner and we reported to the injury clinic and I was quickly seen by the same doctor who treated me when Horus bit me. He remembered me.

The doctor couldn't see anything in it and didn't see any scratches on the cornea.
I got my eye flushed and he sent me home with instructions to call the eye department today if I wasn't better. By the time I got home the anesthetic was wearing off and it felt like something was in there again. I went straight to bed.

This morning it's sore, but more like a pulled muscle sore, not rock under lid pain. I'm guessing that it's from all the poking and proding that was done yesterday.

So, sadly we missed Neko, but happily I can see. I was almost hoping that I'd get an eye patch (Arrrgh, Matey!) in time for the Halloween party on Tuesday. But I'm releaved that everything is back to normal.

Yet Again I Read CNN and Am Outraged

This time it was an article from CNN's sister site, Money.com:

"The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the records were examined under a series of broad U.S. subpoenas, with the Times reporting that Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions.

"Public dissemination of our sources and methods of fighting terrorists not only harms national security, but also degrades the government's efforts to prevent terrorist activity in the future," he said. "If there are people sending money to help al Qaeda, then we need to know about it. We also need to take advantage of that knowledge to follow the money trail and thwart them.""Full story.

If The People don't know you are watching them, they can't do anything about it, now can they? Privacy, smivacy - you're civil rights do you more harm than good. Of course The Government is only looking out for your best interest.

AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

It's Not a Game, It's a Way of Life

I feel like I've been talking to everyone I see about sf0. It's about time I mention it here.

E and I have started playing a game called San Francisco Zero. It's an online game that you play in real life. It's fun, addictive, cool, and E and I are both jealous that they thought of it first (though thank goodness they did 'cause it's just so much dang fun).

The basic idea is that as a player in the game, you have certain tasks that you must accomplish. The tasks vary from the innocent (upload a photo of your character) to humantarian (give out lemonade at a park) to the subversive and/or illegal (put a flag on the top of the Sutro Tower). Completing tasks gives you points, and the more points you have, the higher level you are, and the more you are winning. The point of the game is to get out of the house, explore the city, meet people you never would meet otherwise, have some fun, and shake things up.

They have also gone about constructing the game in a really clever way. First, the web site is slick. Things just work. They use Ajax when it makes sense. Yes, there are a few bumps, but given that it's run by a couple of guys out of their apartment it works amazeling well. So, technology-wise, the game is slick.

They've also tapped into the whole social networking, viral marketing thing. It's all free (it's a task to donate money to the game). The advertising comes from geeks like me that can't stop talking about it; a marketer's wet dream.

They are bridging the gap between the real and the digital. And I don't mean that in a virtual reality type of way (though there are tasks related to that). You have an online persona, and you interact with the game online, but you have to interact with the real work and then submit proof of what you've done. You can't get very far by sitting by yourself with your computer with your browser open to Google.

So, yeah. Check it out. Sign up. Let me know. And we can go do tasks together. Yippie!

New World Order, Same Old Lies

"Police don't have to knock on residence doors before barging in to seize evidence, the Supreme Court decided Thursday. A warrant's good enough to get them in. The justices' 5-4 split was a victory for President Bush's new high court appointees and signaled the body's conservative shift following the departure of moderate Sandra Day O'Connor. Earlier rulings found such action would have been running afoul of the U.S. Constitution." Full story

I don't even know where to begin with this one. ARUGH!!!! Isn't there someway to stop it? At this rate we aren't going to last until 2008.

USA sitting in a handbasket. Highway to Hell. Handbasket breaking all speeding limits on said highway.

The Line Between Being PC and Censorship

I just read an article at CNN.

"Two high school seniors picked quotations from Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" to appear under their high school yearbook pictures, prompting school officials to apologize.

The quotes were picked by Christopher Koulermos and Philip Compton, both 18. Koulermos' read "Strength lies not in defense, but in attack." Compton chose "The great masses of people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."" Full text here.

This article makes me mad. Very mad. Yes, Hitler was an evil man that did way more harm than most people could ever dream of. But that doesn't mean that we have to put our heads in the sand and pretend he never existed. That doesn't mean that we can't look at what he did/wrote and learn from it. Just because he's Hitler doesn't mean that everything he did was tainted.

There is a great quote by Hermann Goering,

"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Again, really bad man. Great insightful quote. I think perhaps it is more telling of what is going on in the World today than in time of the Nazis.

Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (to sum up Voltaire's feelings on the subject)? I thought that was the whole point of no censureship in this great democracy of ours. Apparently they were talking about a different country when they taught me this in all those US History courses I took.

"Tweet Tweet Tweet" said the birdie.

This is a recording of the birds in my backyard singing. This is for an sf0 task (I'm having trouble with their file upload, hense the posting here).

Recording of birds singing (mp3: 117 kb)

How I Talk

Usually I reserve these kind of things to just posting on LiveJournal, but this one was interesting enough that I thought I'd post it here.

This should not surprise anyone. You can take the girl out of New England...