Pawprints From Space

Oh joy. We will be moving to a regional format at work soon and that means the office I go to everyday will be closing. So. I will be working from home, tele-commuting, a road warrior.... never able to escape the flippin' job because it is in my house (and they don't have exterminators for that kind of pest). Not sure what to think about that. On the one hand there's the whole set-your-own-hours-have-more-flexibility argument and the tax-deductions-here-I-come argument on the other hand there is the fact that there will be no way to physically step away from the job. It will be here in the house lurking in the next room. This is a recovering workaholic's nightmare! It has to rank right up there with asking a recovering alcoholic tend bar! You are putting an addict's source of addiction into what is supposed to be the safe zone: home. Part of me loves this idea. Get more done without the distractions of playing receptionist and answering phones, or having people drop...

Kerfuffle? Yup. It is a word, it's a fun word even meaning uproar and such. The amazing part is that someone who is known for mangling regular everyday words and tripping over sentences actually used it - correctly! - in a sentence. The sad thing is that probably half of the reporters in the audience had to look it up. Fun words. If you're at all into fun words check out The Superior Person's Book of Words by Peter Bowler. It is a great little dictionary with all sorts of silly, fun mile-long words.To whit: Nosopoetic meaning "producing disease, unhygienic and/or infected". How to use it in a sentence? Easy! The next time some obnoxious person proudly shows off some awful and/or over-priced thingy they have purchased simply because they can you could say "Ah, how perfectly nosopoetic!" They will be pleased thinking you've just raved over the whatever and you can be smug knowing you've just told them exactly what you think and they have no clue. H...

Things just keep on getting weirder. Life just keeps on rushing ahead at warp speed and frankly my dears.... I'm fed up. Yup. It's rant time! Today's rant is brought to you by corporate big shots who in the rush to improve the bottom line trample all over the folks they supposedly "value". To whit: reorganization which is just another pleasant euphemism for "we're going cut jobs, increase workload, go all Big Brother on you and you're gonna like it or we will get rid of you too while we sip colorful drinks in resorts". The Enron boys aren't the only arrogant souls out there you know. Okay I don't work for Corporate America but nonprofits are not immune to the joys of watching the bottom line and the need to restructure and its only a matter of time before it hits our world too. So I gotta ask: what happens to all the great volunteers who suddenly don't have a local office to turn to? How are they supposed to feel connected to the caus...

Bay 1997 - 2006 - Christmas 2005 

Yesterday our household lost its heart. Baby was the kitty who took care of everyone. When you were sick she was the one who snuggled up and stayed with you. When you were upset and crying she ran to you and nuzzled and cuddled until you felt better. She kept the other two cats in line, chased the squirrels out of the yard and gave the birds reason to fear even though she never killed one. She was small and feisty with a big heart. Unfortunately her heart just couldn't keep up with her and after a routine surgery to remove a skin lesion that big heart gave out during recovery. The pretty kitty had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy it turns out is the major type of heart disease in cats but virtually undetectable. At nine years old Baby was very lucky, most cats with this condition do not live anywhere near this long. She will be well and truly missed and impossible to replace.

Okay, I have now officially seen everything. I thought I had before you know, but nope I was wrong. The other night coming home from class I was behind a red Ford pick up truck at the light. No big deal. Red truck tricked out with the light kit atop the cab, striping and lots of chrome, Tweety looked a little odd on the tailgate but hey maybe the guy has a girlfriend/wife who likes Tweety. But as the light changed and he pulled away I saw it. The truck had testicles. Big ones. Yup. Red tennisball sized testicles hanging from the tail hitch. Not just balls in a sack that somebody put together as a joke but authentic-looking testicles. This guy had to have bought these somewhere. They actually sell these things somewhere. Now I had read that you can have your dog fitted with prosthesis after having him neutered (not that the dog actually cares mind you) but fake balls for your truck??!? Is this the next level of the eternal "mine's bigger than yours" game? Ya gotta wonder: ...

The other day the Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr had a great editorial about the topic of exchanging one's freedoms for security. If your paper does not carry Mr Pitts' column you are missing a good one. There was a great quote by Benjamin Franklin included: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". And isn't that exactly what we've been doing ever since 911? I don't generally agree with the ACLU but they have a point in their ad that appears in the latest issue of the magazine Mother Jones. Curious? Check out the March/April 2006 issue. The ad is on page 12. Makes you think which is undoubtedly the whole point. Back to Mr. Pitts' editorial. He recounts a scene that happened on Feb 9th in Bethesda MD (not all that far from Washington when you think about it). Apparently two men in uniform "stride into the main reading room (of the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery...

I appreciate a day off as much as the next person, maybe more what with work and volunteering and grad school, but after three plus years I am still astounded that I get President's Day off. Of course I do have to go to class tonight so it isn't 100% freedom but still...it is a day off. So of course there are great plans of cleaning etc that you just know will not get accomplished (why do you think I'm writing this and not doing that?). News item of the moment seems to be the Cheney hunting accident. Of course accidents happen when hunting. Get a bunch of testosterone driven folk out in the middle of nowhere with firearms and things are bound to happen. Okay the victim walked up behind without announcing himself but how do you mistake an elderly man stomping through the brush for a bird? The two don't make anywhere near the same amount of noise. Hmmm, methinks the VP is just a mite trigger happy. The real kicker is the way Cheney's office kept quiet for so long. Any...

Have you ever had one of those lives? Just when you think it is safe to relax a little, start putting some actual money away for retirement and maybe be able to afford that vacation you've been putting off for the last three or ten years... WHAM! Life bops you upside the head with some absurd situation and then runs off laughing as you sit there and wonder what the hell hit you and whether or not you need medical attention? Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have one of those lives. Not days, weeks nor even years... LIVES. Seems as those whenever I stop holding my breath the proverbial shoe really does drop. With a very loud thud. I won't go into all the gory details here but suffice it to say budgets need to be re-evaluated, plans need to be canceled or at least revised and who the hell is going to have time for homework in an upside down world? So yup... I will be "winging" this next paper for the Managing Across Cultures class. Speaking of getting smacked... what the devi...

You may be wondering what the purple awareness ribbon badge-thingy on the blog is, it represents Relay For Life. If you have never been to a Relay For Life event (American Cancer Society) you are missing something. Tons of people all having a blast and raising money to fight cancer. Of course my perspective is a little different since I work for the American Cancer Society and have to manage 4 such events but you know, if I ever leave the job I will come back as a team captain. Go to www.cancer.org and plug in your zip code on the homepage to find a Relay near you. The Sister Cities International project is another cool thing to check out. If your city has a sister city somewhere in the world you can be sure that there is a committee of volunteers in your town working to maintain that relationship, set up exchanges and even seek out new sister cities. We have a sister city in Japan and I have had the opportunity to travel to that neat country three times now. I've learned a lot an...

For those of us who are single this is not a fun day. I just needed to point that out to those of you cute and cuddly couples out there. Moving on... Have you ever read The Smoking Gun? Check out the Web site http://www.thesmokinggun.com/ it will make you go "hmmmm".The featured document today is on the VP Cheney hunting accident. Okay so what the heck does Saddam want? Jail is not the palace for Pete's sake! He says he is being mistreated, denied access to the Koran (which okay I think he ought to have since it is a religious text - maybe he'll actually read it for once and see that murder is not okay), and he doesn't like the people in the courtroom looking at him as though he was a curious animal. Hello! Get a clue! A hunger strike is not going to get you five star treatment or ban everyone from the courtroom. He ought to be thankful he isn't being treated as prisoners of his were treated. And what about the President of Iran? Scary guy. NASA's 2007 bu...

I have to wonder... is sleep really necessary? Oh sure I'm exhausted a lot of the time what with a 60+ hour work week, graduate school and trying to keep up with everyday details of life (laundry, groceries, cleaning the house) but think how much more I could get done without sleep! Heck, I might even have time to a) exercise and b) have a social life. Maybe I could get some hobby time in there too. But you what? If we could do away with sleep I will bet that several things would happen: 1) we'd end up putting even more hours in at work which defeats the purpose of not having to sleep as far as I'm concerned; 2) the government would somehow tax those extra hours and 3) insurance rates would go up. Think about that last one. Without 6 to 8 hours downtime more people would be on the roads at all hours (car insurance) resulting in more injuries (health insurance)... spending more time exercising and/or engaging in outdoor activities could also lead to more sports injuries and ...

Have you ever noticed how large organizations fail at internal communication? In fact the running gag in the communications department is generally that they can't communicate. As we all know communication is a process requiring a sender and message and a receiver. Understanding by the sender or receiver of the message is not a factor in the process. This is how you can have a misunderstanding but not a miscommunication . Okay rant over, back to topic. I am researching a final paper for an IT class for this MBA program I'm in. We are looking at technologies and how their growth and utilization is helping/hindering or will help/hinder our workplaces. So here I am thinking "cool! ACS (my employer) could really benefit from wireless technologies and the Internet in reaching people with information etc." and "gosh! what if experts would blog on this and that" and so forth. Guess what? We partnered with Yahoo for a month-long celebrity blog promotion to raise ca...

Nope I don't mean that the sun is going to go dark or the world come to an end. You can relax. But for the curious who were eagerly awaiting the DAWN mission there is some bad news. While checking in with newsgroups I belong to and otherwise cruising the Web I came across a story by Alicia Chang of the associated Press. She reports that NASA's unmanned spacecraft intended to study to of our solar system's largest asteroids will not launch in 2006. Once again we can thank the ever-popular problems of "cost overruns and technical issues". Apparently the project has been postponed indefinitely. Sheesh! We can't have manned missions to anywhere due to risks to the astronauts; we can't fix the Hubble telescope due to a) risks of a manned mission and b) cost of unmanned (plus the uncertainty that an unmanned mission would even work!); and now we can't even further science with unmanned missions of this source due to costs. I don't know about you but it m...

Yesterday NASA recognized a Day of Remembrance for those astronauts lost in service. When you think about all the risks these brave men and women take and consider how few over the years have been lost I have to wonder why anyone would question the value of space flight versus the risks. But hey, that's just me. The crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia (as President George W. Bush said of Columbia's crew) "knew the dangers and they faced them willingly knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life." For more info check out www.nasa.gov Stardust Update: "The Principal investigator, Deputy Principal Investigator and several subteam leads have worked 8:00 am until near midnight for the last two days. We have removed many aerogel fragments and found many particles in them; removed 7 pieces of aluminum foil and found very many small craters in them; removed several particles from the fragments and examined them by IR; microtomed several particles; remove two...

Good Grief! I just realized that my job has kept me so busy that I haven't been online for a week! Yipes! Sorry about that. Jobs. Can't live with 'em, can't pay the rent without them. Do we live to work or work to live? For me I am afraid that I live to work. The darned thing controls my life. There ought to be someone standing over me to physically stop me when I go over the 50 hours a week limit. Hell, I only get paid for 35 of them! If we are salaried, is that just another term for slavery? Think about it. They can work us as many hours as they want, state that it is necessary for the job and then not give you flex or comp time. In an "at will employment" state employers can pretty much do whatever they want if you are in a salardied position and your only recourse is to quit.

So, have you ever heard of Relay For Life? It's this cool event that the American Cancer Society has wherein teams of people raise money to fight cancer. This post is called "a word from our sponsor" because I work for the American Cancer Society and since they pay me they do, in effect, sponsor this site. In any case check out their web site www.cancer.org and see where there is a Relay near you. With more Relay events than there are Wal Marts in the U.S. odds are there is a Relay near you. Just put your zip code in the box on the home page and it'll tell you what's going on in your area. You should also get info on your nearest area office so you can get involved. Okay shameless plug over... we now resume regular blogging...

Pouncequick - Clark Gable fan, jazz lover and sky watcher 

After a seven year trek chasing comet Wild 2 the Stardust probe is back on Earth with about a million comet and interstellar dust particles inside a sealed canister. For those who don't follow such stuff the particles in question are thought to be leftovers from the birth of our solar system some 4.5 billion (that's "billion" with a 'b'!) years ago, some of them could even be older than the Sun! The folks at the Johnson Space Center in Houston will unlock the canister and a preliminary look-see send samples to labs all over the world for further study. "Night of the Living Dead" concerns aside (confused? go rent the movie - get the original not the remake), this is pretty cool stuff. Dust particles from 4.5 billion years ago! Okay there may be some nearly that old under my couch but these are interstellar dust bunnies! By the way the Stardust mother ship remains in orbit around the Sun and NASA is considering sending it off after another comet to sna...

Whether or not you think Pluto is really a planet, it is still pretty cool that on Tuesday NASA is scheduled to launch the New Horizons probe to explore the icy little thing. Of course there have been some delays and could still be more but the launch window doesn't close until February 14th so odds are pretty good that the Atlas 5 rocket will eventually fly. According to Mike Schnieder of the Associated Press in his story published today: "When the 7-foot-tall (2.1-meter-tall) New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto as early as 2015, the spacecraft will study the ninth planet's large moon, Charon, as well as two other moons just discovered last year. The $700 million mission should provide scientists with a better understanding of the Kuiper Belt, a mysterious region that lies beyond Neptune at the outer limits of the planetary system." As cool as this is I have to ask... if we can spend money to send a probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt why can't we fund manned s...