At least they're trying this time

Okay, I've said a lot about these loud, obnoxious attention whores who attend my cardio bootcamp classes. They were at tonight's class, and their loud attention-grabbing hooting and hollering started up almost immediately. On more than one occasion, I muttered, "Shut up. Just shut up."

I have to give them credit tonight, though. Tonight, they were actually trying to do the work. I could see them lifting their legs higher than usual and squatting deeper than usual. They were still kind of annoying, but at least their efforts were starting to match their displays of boundless enthusiasm.

Still, I'd be happier if they would just leave. Either that or shut the heck up.

I don't want to do my taxes

I don't want to do my taxes. I don't want to do my taxes. I don't want to do them. I don't.

I know that I'd get my refund a lot sooner if I would just buckle down; however, this is such an unpleasant task, and it requires so much research and double-checking just to ensure that I get everything right. Argh.

I hate this. And I know that I'm not the only one.

A pleasant treat at the gym

I received a pleasant treat at the gym today. Those obnoxiously loud guys who show up to my cardio classes -- the one who keep whooping, barking, howling, and hollering in a blatant attempt to call attention to themselves? They weren't there. Thank goodness for that! They are so incredibly annoying. I wish they'd funnel all of that energy from their mouths and redirect it into their feet.

The drawback is that they hang out with this one cute short-haired gal, and she wasn't there either. I don't know if they're friends outside the gym or not, so I don't know if their absences were related. Oh, well.

Why I don't like the Atlanta airport

I’ve already mentioned the crowding and the noise at the Atlanta, Georgia airport, right? I also mentioned its inconvenient location. Here’s another thing I don’t like: They impose a surcharge if you choose to use their Wi-Fi access.

Mind you, I’m not talking about the normal fees that go into having T-Mobile access, for example. Rather, I’m talking about the fact that the airport charges extra for using their network -- $4.95 for a day’s usage, if I recall correctly. I was tempted to use this, but in the end, I decided againt it.

Why I don’t like to fly Delta

I don’t like to use Delta Airlines for my flights. One reason is that choosing Delta typically forces me to take an out-of-the-way detour to Atlanta, home of a big Delta hub. Not only does this huge detour add a lot of travel time, it also forces me to stop over in a very unpleasant airport.

Don’t get me wrong; the Atlanta airport is clean and orderly. It’s also very noisy though, and even as I type, I see all the throngs of people. Ugh.

This time, I found yet another reason to avoid Delta. When my flight was cancelled, I had to approach some Delta personnel for alternative bookings. Well, guess what? Over and over again, they pointed me to the wrong place, bouncing me from one office to another. I finally found someone who knew what she was doing, and that really helped… but I had lost valuable time. I’ll be arriving at my destination very late, and if I had received more immediate and competent help, I might have been able to avoid this.

Stuck in Atlanta

I’m stuck in Atlanta right now. I’ve been stuck here for hours, due to flight cancellations. I’m trying to get to New England, and the weather has not been cooperating.

Staying at an airport for hours has serious drawbacks. For one thing, there’s not much to do. It’s also hard to get any work done in an environment like this. For example, I should be editing and updating some manuals, but I can’t focus on that very well with all the background hubbub. Being forced to sit on an airport floor, without a convenient table onto which I can spread my materials, certainly does not help.

This is one reason why I don’t like flying. Delays like this are a huge inconvenience, and I stress over things like whether my luggage will get there along with me. Rats.

Johnny B Goode

I've been learning some way cool, very understated dance steps for the Chuck Berry classic, "Johnny B Goode." Unfortunately, I don't have enough floor space to do all of these moves properly. Also, the floor in my den tends to flex under the jumping that's involved, and my basement has even less space.

Interestingly enough, the fellows who produced this video spelled the song title as "Johnny Be Good." They know their dance, but not their music trivia.

Stuck on a plane with an idiot kid

Okay, so maybe that was a bit harsh. Maybe it’s not the most charitable thing to say, and I’ll admit that it betrays a flawed character on my part. Basically, I got stuck on a plane beside this stupid teenager who decided to play his music loud enough for me to hear it despite his headphones, and who decided to sing along with the music! In an airplane, for pity’s sake.

Maybe I should have said something to him. If I had been more bold, or if the situation had been more aggravating, perhaps I would have done so. Instead, I suffered the annoyance.

I’ll admit to some culpability in this regard – both with regard to my lack of boldness and my lack of patience in putting up with this fella. Still, you’d think that a little bit of common sense would have told him that singing on the plane was a bad idea.

Can microbes trigger autoimmunity?

I read an article from the June 21, 1997 issue of Science News that talked about a possible microbial trigger for autoimmunity. I wonder what happened to this research. Here are a few excerpts from the article in question.

Several investigators now propose that one of the body’s initial responses to infection, the production of a compound called interleukin-12, may also awaken self-reactive immune cells.
…
More important, the researchers have largely pieced together how these microbial products ignite autoimmunity. Macrophages and other immune cells that are the first to respond to infections react to the bacterial material by producing interleukin-12. This potent immune system stimujlator then triggers the production of compounds that help the immune system create an army of cells specific to a particular microbe.
…
Shevach and his colleagues suggest that interleukin-12 inhibitors may aid people with autoimmune disorders. Such diseases are particularly difficult to treat because physicians must find ways to dampen the autoimmune attack without severely curtailing normal immne responses. “That’s always the tradeoff,” says Pisetsky.

She's getting wed!

One of my favorite female friends just got engaged. She’s sweet, she’s charming, she’s intelligent, she’s godly, and she’s stunningly beautiful. I’m not interested and I don’t think that we’d be particularly compatible, so I can say those things in a disinterested manner. It also means that I can rejoice, since I’ve long wanted her to find someone who’s right for her.

She’s had several false starts over the past two years. In part, that’s because she surely does not lack for suitable suitors. It’s good to see that she’s found someone who seems right for her.

Eardrum care

Okay, so I want to complain again. I’d like to complain about young folks who play their music at horrifically loud levels. You know the type – folks who drive by with the bass turned way up, apparently figuring that it’s not enough for them to appreciate their music. Rather, they’ve got to ensure that the passengers in all the neighboring cars must hear their tunes as well.

Heck, what about people who put headphones on, yet play their music so loudly that other people can still hear it? I shudder to think of what this must be doing to their hearing. It can’t be good. I bet it turns their brains to mush.

Airline etiquette

In times past, I’ve complained about people who talk too loudly on an airplane or who are otherwise annoying and disruptive. I had a more pleasant experience on my most recent flight, though.

Okay, so “pleasant” isn’t really the right word. After all, the second leg of my flight had been horribly delayed, and I wasn’t able to escape the Atlanta airport until six hours after I was supposed to. I was cranky and quite annoyed. Still, when I finally did get to board a plane, the people on that flight were fairly nice.

Oh, there were a lot of conversations on that flight. I could tell that some of these conversations were between people who got to know each other while waiting on standby or while waiting for their long overdue plane to arrive. Still, the volume was kept to a reasonable level. People understood that they could converse with each other without having the entire plane overhear their conversations.

I wish I could have drummed that into the head of this one passenger that I encountered a few weeks ago. What an annoyance that fellow was.

On a more positive note...

On a more positive note, I’ve met some truly wonderful people at these dances. Some of the people there are snobbish or weird, but some are just plain nice.

I recently renewed my acquiantances with two gals named Monica, for example. One is an old friend that I had scarcely seen over the past year. We had been pretty casual friends, but after touching base with each other again, we became really close buddies.

The other Monica is a gal that I first met at these dances three years ago. She did a lot to help me get started and feel more comfortable. I really appreciated that. She started attending again last month, after which I slowly realized who she was. She’s an incredibly friendly gal with a lot of other wonderful qualities – intelligent, pretty, and very, very sweet. I’m pretty sure that she’s involved with some other fella though (also a nice person) and besides, I think we have other areas of incompatibility. Still, she’s a delightful gal.

Don't bother me

I’ve been doing a lot of complaining in this blog lately. I almost can’t help it. I don’t want to focus on the negative, but certain things just irk me. Sometimes they’re little things, but they’re irksome.

Here’s an example. I was testing my new Blackberry’s built-in camera at a swing dance last Saturday. I was trying to get some great photos of the dancers, and that’s not so easy when you have people whirling about, constantly in motion.

This older gentleman comes up besides me and decides to start chatting away. “So, what kind of camera is that?” he asks. I explain that it’s actually a Blackberry with a built-in camera. “How many megapixels?” “I don’t know yet,” I say, trying to be polite when demonstrating studied disinterest. “How much is the bill for that per month?” he asks, and so forth.

Eventually, I had to say, “Sorry, but can we discuss this later? I’m trying to take some pictures here, and timing is critical. You have to catch people just as their faces become visible and they’re preferably in some sort of dramatic pose.” Now, I think that most people understand that intuitively, but I guess it wasn’t so obvious to him.

He’s a nice guy, but a little bit dim at times. It’s not the first time that I’ve seen this side of him. I sense that he feels a strong need for human contact, but just doesn’t know how to go about getting it.

AT&T DSL really stinks in my area

I had to stay home for a while instead of going to work. I've been having trouble with my AT&T DSL line, and their tech support staff said that they must send someone into my home in order to fix the problem.

I tell you, those people can be very aggravating. I complained about this problem last week, and back then, they also said that they needed to send someone into my home. I pointed out that for the past several times this has happened, the problem has always been with the junction box across the street. Perhaps they should check that out first?

So they did, and then they left me a phone message stating that the problem was fixed. Well, it wasn't. I got on the line with them again, and they kept insisting that someone needs to enter my home. I said, "That would be problematic for me. Should I try replacing my router first?" They said, "Sure. Try that."

(I have more to say about that later. Suffice to say that these people don't know their stuff.)

Early the very next morning, I received a phone call, asking me to get in touch with AT&T immediately. When I called them, they said, "Oh, we just wanted to see how things turned out." That's what they considered to be urgent? Good grief, they didn't even give me time to go buy a router. Sheesh!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we determined that the problem is indeed with the junction box across the street -- again. Mind you, I had to coach the technician in order for us to arrive at this conclusion. He was all too quick to say that the problem was with my desktop computer. If I hadn't pointed out that my laptop wasn't getting Internet access either, I'm sure that he would have stuck with that conclusion.

AT&T, you stink.

Revisiting the idiot rubbernecker

I’m still fuming a bit about that driver that I mentioned earlier – the one who slowed down horribly, presumably to watch the accident scene. All the vehicles in front of her had taken off quickly enough that you could no longer see them, but this particular motorist decided to take her own sweet time.

That’s just incredibly stupid and rude. She knew full well that traffic was backed up behind her, and she surely saw that all the cars in front of her were making good time. Nevertheless, she just inched along; after all, her desire to rubberneck was surely much more important than other people’s desire to get through that traffic jam.

Sometimes I think that people like her shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

Idiot rubbernecker

I was late for my Saturday morning Hi-Lo cardio class. Traffic was horribly backed up on the interstate. I noticed this as I entered through the on-ramp, but by then, it was too late to try another route.

Some sort of accident had obviously occurred, based on the police cars that I saw. I didn’t see any ambulances, but I’m sure that they must have been there at some point. Traffic had been reduced to a steady one-lane trickle, and I was chomping at the bit; after all, I eagerly look forward to this cardio class every week. Besides, I needed the workout.

So I found myself behind this one vehicle. Its driver was inching forward very slowly, so I assumed that there must have been a great many vehicles in front of her. As we passed the accident site, she finally started to pick up speed and then moved to another lane.

I was shocked to find that there were no cars in front of her. None whatsoever! There was just an empty highway. Now, I know that there had been other vehicles there, so they must have all taken off a long time beforehand. It also meant that the motorist in front of me wasn’t driving slowly because of the traffic; rather, she was obviously rubbernecking, determined to get a good look at the accident scene.

A more charitable person might say, “Well, maybe she was driving slowly because of the snow.” The thing is, there was scarcely any snowfall on that morning. Oh, there was enough to possibly cause an accident, but remember, all the other cars managed to go fast enough that they were no longer visible on the highway. In contrast, the gal in front of me was moving at a glacial pace.

And she made me even more late. Cripes.

I am hungry

I’m getting hungry. I had a very light breakfast, and I need to go get something more substantial to eat. The thing is, I’m staying at the home of some friends as I visit them on vacation. I’m on my own as far as lunch goes, so I think I’ll take off and walk to Costco. It’s only a three-mile hike, and I could use the exercise.

Zibb?

Have you check out Zibb yet? It is one of the lesser known search engines, and this one is specifically geared for business-related searches. You can sidestep a great many irrelevant sites this way, including the dinky sites that people create just for fun.

J of A R

Here is a plug for the Journal of Alzheimer's Research. It is (to paraphrase their website) an international multidisciplinary journal that is designed facilitate progress in understanding the etiology, epidemiology, genetics, behavior, pathogenesis, treatment and psychology of Alzheimer's disease. It publishes research reports, reviews, short communications, hypotheses, book reviews, and letters-to-the-editor. The Journal of Alzheimer's Researchis dedicated to providing an open forum for original research that will expedite our fundamental understanding of Alzheimer's disease. Their list of online resources (conferencdes, links for researchers, and more) is pretty darned thorough.