The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Sylvia Sotomayor:

Joyce at 206:

It isn't a direct response, but I found DeMarco's Slack to be a partial antidote to Who Moved My Cheese. Among other things, DeMarco points out that change comes in different flavors, some good, some bad; he also points out that increasing efficiency leads to increasingly stressed out employees which leads to decreasing effectiveness.

Three, almost four now, years ago the new management in my company gave every employee a copy of Who Moved My Cheese. Within six months a lot of the more productive, effective, and fun to work with people were gone.

Hope that helps.

Hmmm.

I love the smell of the desert, especially when it is hot. The heat releases so many of the different volatiles. It's wonderful.

I like the smells of inland Southern California - even the freeways. I visited Boulder, CO once on business and someone there asked me how I liked it there with all the clean air. I replied that it was nice the first day, but then I got homesick and stood behind a bus for a while. :)

Also, during my first full-time job, I joked about liking the smell of those big fat black permanent markers. Even sniffed one deliberately to prove it. No doubt that explains a lot about me today. :)

I have four things I would be very sad to lose:

1) My first edition of von Humboldt's Personal Narrative

2) The cat (OK, she may actually be number 1)

3) The server's backup external drive

4) The laptop

My Mom was born in Berlin in 1943. She was brought up on stories of grandma's beautiful china that was never used and is now gone. My Mom uses all her good dishes from time to time. That's what they are for. I learned that from her.

Adam Rice @8: I, too, have a three door Stickley bookcase. I bought it to house the von Humboldt. It contains all the books I would pack into the car if I had enough time to do so before evacuating. The rest of my library is replaceable.

I would just like to thank C Wingate at # 20 for posting that link to the Leningrad Cowboys et al.

I watched every single clip of theirs I could find on youtube, rented the Total Balalaika Show from netflix, and then spent 45 euros ordering all three of the DVDs and the Total Balalaika Show double CD. I have shared (or inflicted, your choice) the concert on everyone I know, including my parents.

I have even briefly considered a trip to Quebec after Denver WorldCon to see the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble live. Alas, I cannot afford that, too.

Thank you.

-S

#348 & #352: I prefer paperbackswap.com which swaps more than just paperbacks and seems to have a better search feature than bookmooch.

Also, Powells will buy from you online. http://powells.com/sellonline

-S

#649: "There's the interesting questions of what people are capable of while on sentient-but-not-conscious autopilot. I assume for a new driver almost nothing is automatic. For an experienced driver, quite a bit is. So the experienced driver could be more likely to go onto autopilot, but their reflexes might still be faster than a fully engaged inexperienced driver."

Here is an anecdote for you:

When I was in college (20 years ago), my family lived in Vacaville, CA. The I-80 curves around part of Vacaville and my destination was equidistant from any of the 5 exits. It was raining, I was tired, I said to myself I would take the first exit and go home that way. Next thing I knew I was at the last exit. Scared the hell out of me. So, even my unconscious inexperienced self could navigate through several miles of curving freeway and stay in the same lane.

These days, much more experienced, I keep myself awake in the car. I don't ever want to have to rely on my autopilot again.

Oh, and I always wear my seatbelt.

Me, I'm buying stock in UPS and Fedex.

I flew to OHare on Monday, through Dallas, which was shut down for 1/2 an hour due to a storm. So, it's no surprise that my checked luggage didn't find me until 24 hours later. Flying home, no flight problems, but again, my luggage didn't show up.

Since most of the time I am flying on business to a hotel, from now on I will pack a box (or two) with everything I'll need and send it to the hotel overnight or 2-day air. I'm sure my boss will allow that as a business expense. Besides, the box is insurable.

Doesn't solve the issue of overseas vacation travel, though.

-S

A.J. wrote:
About those hotel wireless ports: Can't you just change your browser's user agent to fool the scripts?

I will have to try that next time. Usually when I first get to the hotel, I'm too tired from travelling to think of clever things like that.

Also, re software licenses, the few I've bothered to read seem to have some clause that says subject to change without notice, which makes them useless for us end users.

Of the 3 computers I own, the desktop and the server run linux, and the laptop runs Windows, with Firefox, Open Office, Apache & MySQL. The only reason the laptop runs Windows rather than linux is that many of the hotels I stay in when travelling require IE to initially access their "free wireless internet". And the only reason Mom's laptop runs Windows is that her sewing software requires it.

It does help that a close friend knows Windows & security very well, has shown me how to uninstall various Windows components, and has hooked me up with a better anti-virus.

More on names:
There's a Dr Pepper in the Geography Dept at USC.
Also, I once met a woman named Aida Verdi.

More advice to parents:
Don't ever say that you'd rather see your son die than be married to the serving maid. He will.

Also, on running off with people, it seems to be okay to run off with the gaberlunzie man, as long as he's actually a noble lord in disguise.

Marna said:
But how do we account for the extremely positive outcomes of young married women who leave their house and lands and child and own wedded lords etc to bugger around in the wilds with unemployed gentlemen named David?

Actually, those often end badly, too, or at least they did before they were cleaned up by minstrels who thought it might be a good idea for pretty young unhappy married women to run off with people like them. At least, so says Doc Watson.

Avoid minstrels.

Re Tayafeth's "insurance won't pay for a refill if there's more than a week to go on the previous bottle." True. However, you can refill with 3 days left, and I am going to try to regularly refill my prescriptions every 27 days and see how that works.

The other thing is a vacation override. My prescription was due to be refilled while I was in Glasgow, so I went to my pharmacy before I left and explained this to them, and they got a vacation override, even two weeks before I was due for a refill.

Depending on your pharmcy (mine's small and local and independent), you may be able to get them to advance you a week's worth on the grounds that you lost them or they were destroyed or something.

Another option, my hmo sent out these coupons for getting 90 day refills from an online pharmacy. My doctor was more than happy to write me a year's prescription to take advantage of this. Check with your plan. Some do this.

Of course, this only works for people who have a health plan.

-Sylvia

Sandy says:
I've had a discussion or two on why Americans always ask "Where are you from?"

That's a question I find fascinating, being an Air Force brat who was born off base in France to a not yet fully naturalized American immigrant from Nicaragua and his German wife. My Dad tells me he had to make the round at the various embassies several times before Germany agreed to give me papers. If I'd been born male, he says, France would have claimed me instead.

Generally when people ask me where I'm from, I say "California".

-Sylvia (delurking)

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