Replacing a car battery

I just replaced my car's battery. That was a lot more work than I expected, partly because I had never done it before. Loosening the screw on one of the battery clamps was pretty difficult, and as it turns out, I didn't need to loosen it all that much. Also, there was this arm that was used to hold the battery in place, and this one supporting rod kept falling out of place after I installed the battery.

Now that I have the hang of it, replacing the battery should be pretty easy. I probably won't have to do that for another five years, though. In fact, my current battery lasted me for a little over six years.

Oh, M.D.

This gal, M.D., is heavily into eastern mysticism and all this kinda nonsense. Too bad, since she's a very attractive thirtysomething woman. She's intelligent, lean, athletic, and beautiful, and she's got killer gams.

What a shame.

That's not what you do at a swing dance

There's a bunch of folks that I sometimes attend dance events with. Unfortunately, none of them know how to dance, with the exception of one gal who (somewhat infrequently) comes along.

There are a couple of other ladies who can follow along somewhat when it comes to partner dancing, but they aren't as enthusiastic as a lot of other folks that I hang with. What's more, they could use more energy.

I went to a swing dance event with them in December. At one point, instead of dancing swing, they did the usual "party" thing where you get a circle of people together and just kinda twist it around. That was utterly embarrassing.

It's one thing if you don't know the moves -- but for pity's sake, if you're at a swing event, then at least TRY to dance swing. Sheesh!

Motown dance moves

I decided that if I ever want to look up some useful Motown dance moves, I should check out Tamilee Webb's DVD, "Fit to the Hits: Motown Moves."

Patty

I just heard that my friend Patty got engaged. Good for her. She's a nice gal, and fairly attractive as well. She also has brains. Heck, if not for the fact that she's divorced with a boatload of kids (as well as a few areas of potential incompatibility), I might have chosen her myself.

She's a great gal and she deserves happiness.

Speaking of competence

Speaking of lacking competence...

I wonder what happened to DMS. He's a guy that I knew in school. When he landed a job, we all predicted that he'd be shooting himself in the foot before long. He had some technical competence but very poor social skills. What's more, he was basically a "plug and chug" kinda guy when it came to solving physics-related problems. He could study and he could score well, but he didn't necessarily have a very solid grasp of the underlying science principles.

Then there's Deborah, someone that I worked with at a charity. She had competence, but she was also severely lacking in people skills. She said that she was a people person who simply chose not to act like one. That was a blatant excuse for bad behavior, and she never admitted that to herself.

Competence

There are various works that could be used to describe T. Oliver. "Competent" is not one of them.

The guy is a bozo. He lacks common sense.

CVC

I saw that this site mentioned the CVC. Boy, did that bring back memory. Relatively recent memories, but still...

They do some exciting work, by gum. I almost wish that I could enter a different field and work alongside those clever folks.

I'm so cold

I am so cold. So uncomfortably cold.

I use to laugh at the cold. Well, not anymore. After losing a significant amount of bodyfat, I now feel the cold more acutely. A lot less insulation, you know.

I wasn't fat before, and I certainly wasn't a couch potato by any means. (You could say that I agree with this philosophy.) I also used to quietly scoff at people who complained about the cold. Well, not anymore. (To be fair, most of those people were fatter than I was. However, I also have to remember that some folks will just tend to be more temperature-sensitive.)

New solo Charleston stuff

I've got to remember the following moves and work them into my repertoire:

Boogie drops, followed by this four-snap move
Knee slaps followed by a jump Charleston
Charleston spins followed by the scarecrow

So incredibly tired

I am beat. I got to bed at a little past 3 am due to various tasks I had to take care of. Also, a friend of mine kept me up on the phone due to some personal crisis of hers.

Then I woke up early in order to attend my 8 am cardio workout class, which was further tiring. I would have liked to take a nap in the afternoon, except that the cleaning ladies who were supposed to arrive at my house were two hours late (through no fault of their own, I might add) In fact, they're still at work right this minute.

I have to leave in about two hours -- maybe an hour after the cleaning crew gets done. I've got a full night of activities lined up, and so I won't have time to rest. None.

I could really use some rest, too.

The Super Hero Squad Show

This show is kinda amusing. Clearly directed toward children, but with enough humor and witty one-liners for adults to appreciate it.

I could do without the flatulence jokes, though. Oh, and the inclusion of Wolverine was obviously meant to pander to the X-Men fanboys. Still, I like the way they include bastardized versions of all sorts of classic Marvel characters, plus a few more obscure ones.

Not feeling well

I'm feeling congested. This comes and goes. Ugh.

On an unrelated note, I'm a bit frustrated with this one social dance event that I've been attending every month. Virtually none of the people there know any dance styles. They just shake it about. One guy and gal know some east coast swing, and they're good... but not great. She can dance it, but with a bit of difficulty. He doesn't have much flair either.

I don't understand how people can attend these events month after month without figuring that it'd be helpful to learn a few steps. As things stand, they just shake themselves about, which is mighty boring. Few people can do that well.

It doesn't take much to learn some steps, folks. Attend a local swing dance event, for example. Or check out some videos from the library. Or even break down the moves in a TV dance routine.

Stephanie Underwood

So I watched Carrie Underwood's holiday special this week. The earliest skit left me feeling non-plussed, and some of the country numbers didn't really resonate with me. I do realize that the latter is a matter of personal musical preference, though.

Oh, and I loved the choreography that went into her performance of "Songs Like This." Her backup dancers were amazing.

Much has been said about Carrie Underwood's good looks. Personally though, I thought her sister Stephanie Underwood was a real stunner. There was an ongoing subplot within her special about trying to set Stephanie up with a guy, and I found myself thinking, "Yeah, right. A woman who looks like her should have men following her around everywhere."

The end of Monk

So the Monk TV series has come to an end. How sad. How very, very sad.

The series got kinda clunky toward the end, but it was still a darned sight better than most of the stuff on TV. The USA network really gets it when they emphasize characters over glitzy and gimmickry. Characters matter to them. As their slogan says, "Characters welcome."

Snotty swing dancers

Some of the ladies at the swing dances that I attend are so darned snotty. They think they're too good for some of us, and they blatantly ignore basic dance etiquette.

Yeah, Katie. I'm talking about you. As Chris said, you have such a bug up your posterior. Another guy said that you're pretty much the queen of the snotty crowd. I agree.

On an unrelated note, I tried to squeeze in a workout today. It just didn't happen. Had way too many other things to do and way too many distractions. That driveway full of snow, for example... ugh. Plus some video stuff that I was doing.

Never started a movie

I hate the fact that when I was young, my family would NEVER watch a movie right from the start. No, they always felt that it would be okay to walk in during the middle then try to make sense of the plot. We'd then have to sit in our seats during the long break, twiddling our thumbs, so that we could catch the first part of the movie.

Why was it so difficult for them to time our trips such that we'd catch the movie right from the start? I remember asking if we could try that, and that suggestion was dismissed.

I don't wish to disrespect my parents, but that was a positively philistine attitude. It deprived us of the opportunity to appreciate a movie properly, in the manner that was intended. It smacked of saying, "Eh, this is good enough."

Bah.

H-1B holders DO pay taxes on income!

Have you ever heard the claim that H-1B visa holders don't have to pay income taxes? That they get to live her as cheap labor without needing to pay taxes on their salaries?

That's just rubbish. It's one of many lies that have been spread by people who are frustrated and who don't bother to check the facts. They are outraged that foreigners are supposedly taking jobs away from US citizens (an overly simplistic claim, IMO), and so they unfairly lash out at H-1B workers. The reality is that H-1B workers DO have to pay income tax, and anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or severely misinformed.

Now that was a terrible sight

Every now and then, you get some annoying people at the local swing dance events. There was one such guy recently.

First, a word of explanation. It takes a while for newbies to learn how to dance swing, so you've got to expect that some folks won't know the moves very well. Nevertheless, it's expected that even newbies will at least try to dance in a swing style.

At one of the recent swing dances, there was this fella who wasn't doing swing at all. Instead, he was just messing around, swing his arms around with his partner and just making stuff up on the spot -- badly. You know, just swaying around and moving his arms about, as well as those of his partner. That was distracting enough, but this fella chose to do so RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the dance floor. You'd think that if he didn't know the moves, he'd stick to the perimeter of the floor instead of staking out a spot right where everybody could see it.

Now, it would be one thing if he was at least doing some other style -- foxtrot or salsa, for example. People would just figure that he was trying something different. When you're just messing about though, that shows that you're not really trying very hard.

To make matters worse -- and I don't mean to be unkind -- he was badly overweight. I mean SEVERELY overweight. There's no moral or social culpability in that; however, he was wearing an ill-fitting shirt, and so as he swayed back and forth, he had huge layers of flab flopping out of his shirt and bouncing around. It was a painful and disturbing sight to behold.

I don't want to disparage the guy for being fat. I do wonder if he knew how unslightly and disturbing it was to see these huge flaps of flab peeking out from his shirt and flying about. Yeow.

Smallpox

The following is from the October 2007 issue of Discover. Very nice.

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Whatever Happened to... Smallpox?


Once the most feared disease on the planet, smallpox killed countless people in the course of human history. The first signs of smallpox are fever and aches. Then come the disfiguring pustules, often followed by death. But there hasn't been a case in nearly 30 years. In 1979, after an aggressive 12-year campaign of vaccination, the World Health Organization declared human beings smallpox-free. William Foege, who worked on the effort and is now a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says smallpox is still the only disease that humans have ever manged to vanquish.

Crude versions of a smallpox vaccine were first described in the 18th century, and by the 19th century, vaccination had become widespread--and in some countries, compulsory. "The speed with which smallpox disappeared was breathtaking," Foege says.

Smallpos hasn't vanished entirely, however. At least two laboratories--the CDC in Atlanta and one in Moscow--keep the virus alive, and the last known case, in 1978, arose from a lab accident in Birmingham, England. Although the manufacture of smallpox vaccine for the general public was suspended in 1982, production resumed when security analysts realized that smallpox would be a choice weapon for bioterrorists. In 2002, President George W. Bush claimed that the United States had stockpiled enough smallpox vaccine to protect the entire country.

If smallpox does reappear, "scientifically, we know how to stop outbreaks," Foege says. "My concern would be the social chaos of people who are trying to get in line for vaccinations."

- Stephen Ornes