Think Black, by Clyde Ford

Clyde Ford’s autobiography Think Black is as much a biography of his father, the first Black systems engineer at International Business Machines, as it is his own memoir. Clyde himself worked at IBM for a few years, but found its machinery too stiff to budge further on inclusivity in its ranks. Yet, the extended and personal histories of IBM take up the brunt of the book. The curious will wonder, if he were seeking to get away from the convoluted constriction of his father’s influence, why Clyde ever sought to work for the same company at all.

The answer may be that the Black experience of traversing the minefield of White America leaves few options. His dad groomed Clyde for the job by dint of such narrow paths – describing the only point where his father furiously defends him, Clyde writes how his dad closed the door to his guidance counselor’s office and set the record that his son wouldn’t be a manual ‘aircraft laborer’, but work for IBM. The author flew as close to this ground as his wings allowed, that is until he set foot on the continent of Black origins in Ghana, where slaves were garrisoned in a coastal castle awaiting shipment to complement the slave trade. It was in those dungeons that Clyde heard the voices of his forebears and feared for his safety while being shadowed by government agents. He caught a plane out by the help of others, his wits, and luck.

During his stint with IBM, the company tried to entrap him at every decision-point, the legacy of which IBM’s founder Thomas Watson is famous for. Ford’s research into the dark past of IBM bubbles forth the hellish story of its complicity in Nazi data-gathering for the purpose of executing the Final Solution. Decades on, IBM was still profiting lucratively on the imposition of Apartheid in South Africa by supplying equipment and software to keep tabs on the Black populace. The company resisted his efforts to get snippets of information about his own father’s work. It took Clyde a lifetime to get even obtuse answers to the obvious questions of his parent’s extramarital affairs and covert undertakings for the simple sake of survival.

Set aside the outré-mer, family indelicacies, and cat and mouse, and Think Black is Ford’s succinct and spiked depiction of the maneuvering all Blacks encounter and feel compelled to subsume into their interior culture, the talks Black parents must have with their kids about getting stopped by cops, what not to wear, how not to respond to aggression. It calls for a deep breath and courage to report. Unlike other books on race, Ford’s personal story strikes a tuning fork we want to both not believe and believe at the same time. We don’t want to believe the incredible contortions Blacks still have to twist backwards to perform and conform to society’s ‘norms. We believe the sordid story of his parent’s double-life, because it coincides with and corroborates prominent stories in history, because facts don’t lie, and the facts are plain to anyone who has followed broadcast news or flapped open a paper.

Think Black can make you depressed on the state of the world. However, it’s a memoir. Ford had to get this stuff off his chest. The state it relates of the condition of race today can be sad, but it is a status that, like a barely-moving progress bar on a computer, is a sign that perhaps humanity needs a hardware or software upgrade every generation. Just as the big iron of mainframes went obsolete, society is being confronted with the reality that in order to move the social needle forward, we must ditch ancient storage and programming for newer logic, faster wiring, inclusive algorithms. Think Black is a fast read, and a book that should not gather must or dust on a shelf, but be passed around the C-suite, technology departments, and history class. It is a lesson on the past for a future we’re creating, whether you’re a techy or anyone fed up with navigating the deeply-cut American racial maze.

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a TCP protocol built into Microsoft Windows Active Directory (AD) which allows an authenticated user to send a remote query to look up AD entries, chiefly users, for the purpose of locating or saving documents under the user’s directory folder structure on a server. This could be the user’s home directory or some other directory structure. Of note, LDAP is platform independent, so system administrators should be aware of it, whether the server runs Windows Active Directory, Unix, or Apple OS X Server. Also, a computer technician should understand LDAP because PCs and other devices use it.

In the author’s experience, as well as from a CompTIA perspective, an A+ technician should be familiar with LDAP for two reasons. First, in many organizations, LDAP is the vehicle whereby a user’s login script and home directory may be pulled from AD. This may mean that user files are saved on the network, and/or user rights and permissions are not managed locally by the workstation, but governed by Group Policy through the network. Therefore, the technician need not be concerned with restoring hard disk data after replacing failed hardware, or with requesting the user’s login credentials to troubleshoot software issues. Once the hardware or software problem is fixed, the technician is effectively done (except for recording the incident or completing paperwork). LDAP takes care of the rest once the user logs back in.

The second purpose of LDAP is for sending document scans from a multi-function device (MFD) to a network location upon user authentication at the device. The end user of the device only needs to step up to the panel, login, press keys to retrieve an entry from the directory, and press Start to either scan a document to that entry’s folder, or print a file saved in the folder. To set up the device, a computer technician relies on a network technician to supply the LDAP parameters. This is one instance where computer and network technicians work together.

To a computer technician, a modern multifunction device, especially a console model, can be a daunting piece of equipment. A technician can be expected to troubleshoot paper jams and image defects, and to replace modular components, but also to configure an MFD via the control panel or machine web page. If the machine is being installed, it may not be networked yet, and so entering the parameters may take finagling, such as connecting the MFD to a laptop by a network cable (if MDI/MDX is enabled) or a crossover cable. This allows the laptop to access the device web interface. Add to this that every MFD manufacturer has a different menu system and the job is far from routine. What doesn’t change is the necessary LDAP parameters to input. These parameters are used by the device to ‘bind’ or authenticate on the network in order to query AD.

LDAP settings need the host name or IPv4 address of the AD domain controller, and the port number, 389. LDAP uses the ‘distinguished name’ of a network location, rather than a Windows path name, fully-qualified naming convention, or Unified Naming Convention (UNC). With a distinguished name, the AD organizational unit, object (container), and domain controller are broken down into the following syntax:

ou=organization, cn=container name, dc=domain, dc=com

This information makes up the parameter of the root directory where the LDAP query will search. The computer technician will enter this data provided by the network technician. Whether the machine binds to the network anonymously, or with specific credentials is also a choice. These credentials are different than what the walk-up user keys in. Depending on the organization’s security policy, a user may only need to swipe a card to gain access. Below is a screen capture of the device Web interface of typical LDAP parameter settings (for a Xerox WorkCentre 6515 model MFD).

In addition to these settings, an MFD should also allow a test query to ensure the connection establishes and returns a known entry.

Imagine the happy faces when the organization’s directory can be accessed from the MFD control panel. This is a fine example of integrated technology, when workers collaborate digitally and reduce paper in the office by scanning documents to, and retrieving information from, a well-organized computer network. Scanning to the network through LDAP is preferable to scan to email or scan to USB flash drive, because those methods have security and/or scanned file size constraints. LDAP offers a good balance of network control and user freedom.

Understanding S.M.A.R.T.

In thirty-odd years of troubleshooting computing systems, I have encountered perhaps two dozen Hard Disk Drive (HDD) failures.  While that does not seem like much, to the person whose HDD failed, it may mean the end of the world.  HDD failure should cause concern because so few users keep a backup of their data, and fewer do so on a regular schedule.  HDDs often fail without warning – no error messages – only symptoms of impending disaster (ticking, scraping, and other noises) that point to the HDD as the source.  A novice might ask why not simply repair the Master Boot Record (MBR)?  Because software cannot fix a mechanically failing drive.  Wouldn’t it be useful to receive notice in time to run a backup, or to have a technician address the problem before a catastrophic failure crashes the disk?  Of course.

This is where S.M.A.R.T. comes in, an acronym that stands for Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology.  As published starting in the ATA-3 standard, S.M.A.R.T records key characteristics of the HDD which deteriorate over time.  Some of data comes from temperature sensors while some count the number of events, to compare with a lifetime limit or threshold value.  The overall picture S.M.A.R.T. provides gives a sense of failure prediction, and therefore a chance to act before failure occurs.  Given the importance of data and storage, one would imagine that tools like S.M.A.R.T. would be technician-friendly.  But as with many technologies, the reality is different.  Rather than a big, bold message on the screen reading, “HARD DISK DRIVE ABOUT TO FAIL!”, it takes a keen eye to interpret raw S.M.A.R.T. results and to determine the risk of HDD failure.

S.M.A.R.T. saves information on the HDD onboard memory, which is retained when the power is off.  Many manufacturers implement proprietary versions of S.M.A.R.T., and so software is needed to read and display the data, which the HDD manufacturer provides with the hardware or via download.  Third-party software is available to read an HDD’s S.M.A.R.T. record, too.

For example, in my current workstation, the HDD is manufactured by Seagate, which offers a free download called SeaTools for Windows to run tests on the S.M.A.R.T. data on the HDD.  SeaTools gives a Pass/Fail result and saves the start and completion times of the test to a log file, but lacks details other than that.  That is where third‑party software called SpeedFan fills the gap.  SpeedFan, developed by Alfredo Milani Comparetti, provides monitoring of S.M.A.R.T. values and has been tested on major HDD vendors’ equipment.  Comparetti posted a good technical description of S.M.A.R.T. in a white paper at this link.  SpeedFan gives visual “Fitness” and “Performance” meters to judge S.M.A.R.T. conditions. While useful, the meters are not perfect.  What else can be done to decide the health of an HDD?

Through the power of crowdsourcing, an online tool called HDDStatus beta (link here) compares your HDD’s S.M.A.R.T. results with the actual data from thousands of other users who also wish to avoid catastrophe.  This tool requires an Internet connection, and uses PHP code which should run on most operating systems.  Based on the tool’s findings, the human-readable results give a clearer picture of the HDD status.  This is so useful that Comparetti’s SpeedFan includes a button to link to HDDStatus.  As the developer notes in his white paper, the tool gives all the information necessary to conclude if the HDD needs replacement.

This is of special significance for technicians who troubleshoot HDDs that are not installed in computers, but rather provide storage for equipment like multifunction devices (e.g. copiers, printers, scanners).  Remove the HDD, attach it to an external enclosure connected to a computer with Internet, and run HDDStatus.  Now the HDD can be held to the same level of troubleshooting as any other HDD.  Now, what will it take to make an app that displays a message: “HARD DISK DRIVE AT RISK OF FAILURE! AUTOMATICALLY BACKING UP DATA”?  That’s the question to ask to simplify this interesting technical problem.

(NOTE: S.M.A.R.T. is also used for SSHDs, because these storage devices are prone to failure as well).

Care and Handling of ZIF Connectors

A PC technician constantly encounters cables, wires, and connectors in computer work.  One commonly found connection is ZIF, or Zero Insertion Force.  These are sockets designed to attach CPU chips to motherboards without the need to press to insert the chip into the socket.  Instead, after insertion, a lever or handle is moved to engage the contacts to the socket.  The CPU is thus subjected to fewer stresses and static discharge events in handling that could otherwise damage it.  Also, the circuit board itself is protected against warping that could crack and delaminate the circuit traces from the fiberglass backing.  This possibility exists due to standoffs that mount the board to the computer frame.  In non-ZIF connectors, the force to insert a chip can be enough to bend the chip package pins too.  Still, the fact that some pressure is necessary means the ZIF connector belies its name.

Figure 1 ZIF Connector

Figure 2 Print head ribbon cable

Another area where technicians encounter ZIF is in ribbon cable connections to circuit boards (see Figures 1 and 2).  It is not uncommon to require (or at the very least, use) a special tool to “seat” and “unseat” the connector, if only because the connector may be hard to reach without having to remove other components.  Such a tool might resemble a double-sided stick or plunger where one side has tabs to pull up the plastic tangs of the connector from either side of the ribbon (see Figure 3), whereas the other end has tabs used to push down (i.e. “seat”) the connector tangs.  So, while the ribbon is inserted without force, the connector itself needs a push.

Figure 3 ZIF Connector tool

A ribbon cable has the potential of being inserted at an angle, and so the end of the ribbon may make partial or no contact, causing errors or the appearance of a dead component.  Having the technician exert some force on a connector provides tactile feedback that the connection feels positive.  This is another problem of a ZIF connector, and one reason to use a tool, or lever on a socket, to physically close the connection.  Although meant to protect the delicate component or cable, ZIF may sometimes cause the opposite effect: the lack of insertion force does not provide the feedback needed for the technician to know when the connection has been correctly made.  The technician could keep pushing or pulling until something breaks.

Ribbon-cable ZIF connectors are common on laptops and small devices, which, during disassembly, follow a sequence of fastener or plastic boss removal.  Frequently, two shells of a device have a ribbon cable attached to each: from the display or input keypad to the motherboard.  Separating the shells requires extra care, especially to prevent a shell half from hanging from the cable, causing strain.  Mobile devices benefit from surface mounted components, where small ribbon cables are directly soldered to the circuit board, instead of to a connector, which reduces component profile, resulting in a slimmer device.  The smaller cables tend to bear the weight of smaller components as well.  The drawback of course is that the components are not designed to be (easily) replaced.

Making Learning Funner

Every classroom has its dull moments, like when the teacher opens his or her mouth.  Occasionally, you get a ‘good’ teacher (‘chill’, that is) who relaxes the rules and helps those who want help to succeed.  That’s me.  I’m not saying I’m good and chill, but I take a modest approach to teaching, which is to say, I don’t try to teach.  Trying takes effort, which I’d rather spend on leisure rather than work.

Last week, I started a series of chapters which took detectives on a daily side trip down Microsoft Office Suite street; how to use Excel, for example, to import data.  How to make a mail merge.  How to… you get the idea.  Sounds boring, doesn’t it?  I ought to go into the tunnel-making business.  At least I’d offer a flamethrower to each of my first hundred investors.  (That was a reference to Elon Musk, for those who don’t get such things.)

Some students did the daily ‘work’ of reading the chapter story and performing the exercise.  Pretty straightforward stuff.  While I deem myself a fine writer, thinking up dramatic sequences each day to carry the story along is quite challenging, and I’m sure I let my followers down.  These are 16-22 year olds who regularly go on D&D quests, build in Minecraft, and use Blender to make 3D printed objects from .stl files.  So, getting into the youthful, irreverent, and existential mindset of anxious teenagers is a prerequisite to engaging their minds with absolute drudgery in Microsoft Word takes some serious contemplation.  I don’t always rise to the occasion.

Humor, however, works 80% of the time.  That is, make a riddle, a joke, or an absurdity out of what it is you need them to learn, and it will often capture the interest of at least the majority of minds.  Roll your eyes all you want.  Even so, I prefer not to be called an ‘edutainer’.  That, quite frankly, rankles.  Having sat with students one-on-one to explain (well, first to even effing figure out) the finer workings of Microsoft Access, I will tell you that this job is all about finding the switch inside the student that turns them onto the subject.  Access isn’t sexy stuff.  Neither is Outlook, or Word, or Excel, or PowerPoint.  But when I make a slideshow with the American flag in the background, and then insert the U.S.S. Missouri, a closeup of its guns, and a video clip of Cher half naked bounding around on the deck, it tends to get the attention of even the most lethargic of students.  In the next slide, I might put Daffy Duck and Marvin Martian in with the most tenuous of connections.  How else are you going to learn how to make pictures and words play together well on a screen?  And we’re totally screened these days.  Can’t get away from effing screens, unless you wake up with a mountain in your window and birds singing from your porch, like I do.  Wait a moment, I’m talking about me, which I don’t want to do.

So, recapping, as our WKBW TV weatherman used to say (that is, to sum up), make learning fun for your students.  When you run out of wacky ideas, go off the deep end and make it funner.  You have nothing to lose.

Word of the Day: Blog

Oil Painting of Tall Masted Sailing Ship on the High Seas

Blog. (noun).  Abbreviated term for Web Log, which is a euphemism for online journal.  Why would anyone want to do that?  How would you get followers?  What is the purpose of blogging about a particular subject?

People enjoy sharing their opinions about things of which they know a lot.  Oftentimes, the background noise and events of the day drown out a person’s individual voice.  Gaining traction for one’s thoughtful considerations involves spreading the word in the hope that there are sympathetic others who are interested in following these postings.  Posting one’s thoughts on a blog allow such public exposure, but it isn’t so simple to make the thing go viral.  You can’t force an audience to read your work.

Imagine you are the captain of a ship with access to the World Wide Web, and kept the daily ship’s log on a web site.  Wouldn’t that be interesting to someone?  People want to know the trials and travails of voyagers on the high seas.  It may give them a sense of drama lacking in their lives, while for the writer, it may expand a drama they merely see as daily activities to get from one point on the ocean to another.  We all have different tastes, right?  Try posting to a blog once a day for a week.  You may get hooked.

The Art of Teaching – A TED Talk

TED talks usually get prefaced with an authoritative stamp, something about the speaker that qualifies him or her to tell us what’s significant about their take on the topic, and why we should listen, and do more than listen, to take up the banner. Conversely, using emotion, we cater to persuade the audience into a view, while logic and reasoning place last in the power to convince. Often, the speaker tells of their experience, which gives us an idea of their closeness to the subject. We tend to feel, in the same vein, what it was through someone else’s eyes. Rarely, plain facts pull us to conclusion, but they do. Comparing prices is enough to outweigh other attributes when it comes to choosing.

Despite my career in teaching and having earned a certificate in higher education leadership, I never rely on things like that to impress. When I talk of teaching, I mean to rely on plain facts, as if they could be called that. They are, after all, what the learner ought to take away, not the display or the speaker. However, people commonly refer to teaching as an art, and it should be so, because it takes great skill to communicate information to others, especially adults in a group setting. I give you a picture in the mind of a rambunctious class of inquisitive, restless people either transfixed or lost by the teacher. The teacher juggles a compendium of responsibilities: keeping the lecture alive, overcoming noise, attending to interruptions by know-it-alls and serious question-askers, and doing it all at length and on time. Before even this, the teacher has prepared the space to bring context, relevance, and immersion. A teacher labors just as hard toward comprehension as a welder, chef, or athlete works toward a finished product or goal.

I heard it preached, about Christ being called teacher, that the Greek for teach meant, “to cause another to understand”. If true, that’s a high bar, for we frequently think of a cause as a quite mechanical thing, a basic law, such as if you push a glass of milk off the edge of a counter, it will fall, or if you drink alcohol, you become disoriented. But the results of teaching are far from clear, the mind of a student far from merely being caused to understand, so populated not with billiard balls of thought so much as waves or clouds of it. Yet, the teaching profession has only recently gained the benefit of the science of learning. True, pedagogies or methodologies of teaching fill books, yet how tested, like recipes in the kitchen, are they to produce intended results? How likely is a learner to walk away from the session changed in such a way that the information stays with them indefinitely? That would be the test.

If you follow this line of reasoning, the need for preparation, organization, showmanship, dominance, leadership – in a nutshell, managing the total class environment – becomes seemingly clear. When people refer to telling a story, the connotation is that it is dramatic enough to hold listeners rapt. Let us not forget that a well-crafted story turns on information as much as it does the cadence of delivery, context, and the reciprocal reception of listeners. To teach successfully, the information, in my view, should be spare, pared down to necessities, and not dressed up much. People recall details. Let me give an example.

Imagine explaining night and day to a child. For thousands of years, even the sages and ripe old aged assumed the sun went around the Earth, so this is something we could all pay attention to. Take a ball, big or small. An apple will do. Turn on a lamp and take the shade off. That’s the sun. Stand two fingers on the surface of the ball and rotate it from the light to the dark side. Keep doing it, twist and turn if you have to, to reveal the dynamics of the thing. The sun stands still; the Earth doesn’t. That’s the reality of what we see in the sky as night and day. We stand on a ball that goes around.

Now what facts have I used to explain this? Will the child really understand? They see round toys. They naturally desire to know fundamental answers to everyday questions. You’ve made it fun, yet so simple they could do it on their own. Even as you admire the morning sun while sipping your latte, the relationship of it to the planet could be furthest from your mind, though you would never defend the now unorthodox view that it turns around Earth. So, I suggest that teaching should be based on data, but the data should be utterly relatable. Whether demonstrating physical phenomena or fleshing out a concept, the bare bones data should be the skeleton on which it hangs. Introduce nothing, no metaphor or comparison, that takes away from the message.

How close is this to the science of learning? This is a field with controversial players, including researcher James Zull, who characterized the human ability to learn by borrowing the different functions of areas in the brain coupled with an interconnected model of how we learn, first posed by David Kolb. With wide support, the model provides a sensible base. It goes like this: concrete sources stimulate our senses, which perceive the world. The brain socks this information in neurons, while reflecting on and comparing some with what is already stored. The integrative cortex pieces similar neural paths into a hypothesis which the motor portion of the brain tests, storing the soundest theories in a hierarchy that makes truth in the mind, and discards certain held beliefs due to their lack of a good fit, now that better information arrived. Stephen Colbert challenged Harvard neuroscientist Steven Pinker to sum up what the brain does in 5 words or less. He said, “Nerve cells fire in patterns.” This model has the benefit of characterizing all sensory input as data, even theatre and asides, authority and earnestness. Armed with a memorable lesson, the brain seeks out supporting information. It attempts to fill gaps. As it learns something new, the brain is abuzz, generating new cells and paths, strengthening and growing its network.

Good explanations do not merely reduce mysteries to game show trivia, nor do they simply enrich lives with profound knowledge. They inspire connected thoughts that cause people to adapt, to change behavior, frequently for the better. With useful, repeatable knowledge, life improves and society progresses. Like paper chugging out of a copy machine, it rapidly grows and moves through the population, sometimes going viral. In the same manner that it piles up landfills and oceanic gyres, it has the power to correct our collective ills. The lesson of how our world turns on an axis may be a simple one, but its inertia overcomes even our being bound to its surface, such that space travel is becoming safer and more commonplace.

Teaching should not be complicated, but we should never wing it. Teachers need to prepare and pare down the lesson in order to impart and solidly plant the idea. If relating an idea takes repeating it three different ways, so be it.

Currently Reading

February tends to be the month when the highest winter bills roll in.  With that in mind, it is time to get lost, hide, and otherwise disappear into a stack of books.  While that won’t make what you owe go away, staying true to a reading list has the benefit of maintaining sanity.  Sure, comfort could be found in other routines, such as washing dishes or walking the dog, but they don’t necessarily transport you elsewhere, or edify.  Yes, it is arguable that walking the dog transports and doing the quotidian dishes allows you to think through a complicated project.  So too, the roofer does his geometry, the bank teller rehearses her rap for when she serves as club DJ, and the lawyer loses herself in sunset photography.  We all have something.

I want to share my 2016 reading list with you, and what I expect to learn from it.  I’ve already socked away a few.  Here’s a quick breakdown:

Signatures of Life by Edward Ashpole.  Don’t laugh at the name.  Alright, you can.  My goal with pursuing books like this is to eliminate the crap surrounding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.  Instead, Ashpole puts himself in it up to his ankles while standing on his head.  A serious reader would put it down after the first chapter.  Now you know I’m not as serious a reader as I’d like to be.  Ashpole could have made his case in a few sentences and left it at that.  But no, he drones on about certainties no exo-planet scientist would commit to.  At any rate, do not read this book.  It really sucked.

Astoria by Peter Stark.  If you liked Stephen Ambrose’s epic about Lewis and Clark entitled Undaunted Courage, this book is in that vein.  Most Americans living today do not realize the struggle it was to pioneer the West, but Stark makes it vivid for us by choosing the marginalized story of John Jacob Astor’s plan to colonize the Columbia River watershed for the fur trade.  An amazing book.

God: The Failed Hypothesis, by Victor Stenger.  Now this is not an apologetic for atheists, but a scientific investigation into the attributes of the Judeo-Christian God, and why scientific tests of that God do not hold water.  Having been a fundamentalist Christian, I now seek to bolster my rationales against belief, simply because I see a gross lack of evidence.  Stenger gives a good 15 rounds in this boxing match, and wins by TKO.  After all, you can’t knock out an opponent that isn’t there.

An Erotic History of Advertising, by Tom Reichert.  I’m a quarter into this book, and it is about what I expected in terms of describing the reasons manufacturers pursue marketing their products with sexual images and verbiage.  Lots of naughty bits, but it’s a little like ‘reading’ Playboy.  But if you want to sell less-than-exciting widgets to people, try sex.

Others on the list:

Light, The Visible Spectrum and Beyond – a bit of a coffee table picture book on electromagnetic radiation.

The Color Revolution – about the 20th century’s discovery of using color as a tool.

Copies in Seconds – the story of Xerography and its inventor Chester Carleson.

Endgame – about chess champion Bobby Fischer

The Asteroid Threat – about near Earth objects and the cosmic shooting gallery that is our solar system

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence – What I hope is a much better book than Signatures of Life!

Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars – What I hope is even better than The Eerie Silence!

The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think

Who is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of Self

Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective

A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe

Functional Inefficiency: The Unexpected Benefits of Wasting Time and Money

Then, to spice things up:

Lolita

Women

Women in Love

Biographies of Roger Daltry, Nicola Tesla, Eugene Shoemaker, and Amy Winehouse

All I Want For Christmas

I admit to having book lust.  My zeal for reading has me, like most 50 year olds, staring down through lenses propped on the end of my nose.  An eye doctor would say it isn’t due to reading, just the natural progression of age.  But I have a good eye doctor who claims he will never retire.  Any way you slice it, it isn’t healthy: reading too much, aging, not retiring.

Rather than deny my appetite, I’ll publish my reading list here, in case anyone wishes to send me something this holiday.  There are 55 books on my wish list,  however I can only realistically read 20 books this year.  Not many of these are at the library, but a few are, like Helen Keller’s autobiography.  I don’t know why I never got to that one.  It’s a must read for anyone human.

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

The problem with having a wish list is that it grows as new books are published.  For instance, did you know the best work in 100 years on the subject of suicide just came out?  Yes, it is a morbid subject, but Americans tend to deny themselves introspection anyway.  That’s a joke, son.

Lake Padden Trail

We take this trail so infrequently, because the parking lot is used mostly by mountain bikers going up the Galbraith Mountain trails on the opposite side of Samish Road.  We were lucky on this rainy day to get a spot.  I always back in, because it is safer to pull out than back out, because bikers don’t pay attention. That’s a true fact. Besides being a solitary and inward-focused sport, bikers are too exhausted to care about anything at the end of the trail.

This particular day, we decided to let our dog Bella off-leash.  She’s 2 now, and has, with the help of treats, earned this right because we trust she’ll return at least for them, if not us.  But she more than proved herself, going on ahead 20 or 30 feet and looking back to make sure we were in sight.  Even when we encountered hikers with dogs, as was always the case, she played for a bit, and then stayed with us.  Bella has reached a turning point.

We also reach our turning point.  The trail has larger loops for people able to go the duration.  This one is just within our reach.  If we were to tally the litany of our aches and injuries, you’d see why.  We’re not out to burn calories.  Nothing like a woods trail recharges.  The hell with mobile devices.  All you need is a camera.Even though this is the woods, everywhere is evidence of human presence, of human disturbance.  This photo of a cedar trunk still displays the axe-cut where the logger inserted a board to stand on while using a one or two-man bucksaw.  This trail resides between Samish Road and the I-5 corridor, so road noise is never far off, despite the sound dampening effect of fir foliage.

Signs left over from logging

To get to this Lake Padden Trail going North on I-5 toward Bellingham, Washington, take the North Lake Samish exit 246, and turn left off the ramp.  The trail head parking lot is less than a half mile up on the left.  From Bellingham, take Lakeway east to the I-5 South, then proceed to the same exit, turning left off the ramp.