Fred Sandsmark's Blog

This was linked on the always-entertaining Morning News today -- a real Microsoft Help and Support note:

During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.

Don't believe me? Read it for yourself.

For a while, many people had "Für Elise" as their cellphone ringtones. Whenever I'd hear it, I'd say (to nobody in particular), "Elise, it's for you." Nobody got it.

I got back from Issaquah late Monday night. I had a pleasant Thanksgiving with Brother Mike and his family. A few highlights:

Drive up: listened to Oliver Sacks' latest, Musicophilia, abridged. I enjoyed it, but much of it was familiar to me because I had read the stories in the New Yorker. I also stopped in Portland and had dinner with a friend from Craigslist.

Tiger Mountain: Mike, his friend Kevin, and I hiked up Tiger Mountain on Thanksgiving morning. Mike's training for an August 2008 climb on Mt. Rainier and already takes the hills like a mountain goat. The view from the top was terrific.

Seattle: On the day after Thanksgiving we drove to downtown Seattle. Mike and I went to Guitar Center for their early-morning sale (got what I came for, 20% off!), then we walked to Macy's to watch the annual Holiday parade. My niece and her Connect cheer team were in the parade, and Mike and I were on TV twice in the crowd. I enjoyed all the marching bands and counted the bari saxes. Mike and I went to Pike Place Market (for stocking stuffers) and the Sci Fi Museum after the parade.

Drive back: I stopped at Powell's -- you can't drive through Portland twice without stopping at least once, right? -- and bought Alan Furst's Dark Voyage on CD, abridged. I hadn't read this one, and enjoyed it, though the narrator's accent seemed pretty changeable for some of the characters. If you'd like to borrow it or the Oliver Sacks disc, let me know.

In the last few weeks the Buckeye trees in my neighborhood have begun to drop their seeds and I'm taken back to my childhood.

For those who don't know aesculus californica, a little background: buckeye trees are natives of California; attractive deciduous trees with silver bark, lovely candelabrae of snowy white flowers in spring, thick deep-green leaves, and big seed pods. Here's a picture of a seed I found last week in nearby Carlos Bee Park:



It's almost two inches long and weighs almost three ounces. It's beautiful and fun to touch, like a piece of burlwood. A single tree can produce hundreds of them; here's a link to a photo.

One November when I was maybe five years old I brought home one of these fabulous seeds and, nailing it to a small piece of plywood, made my dad a paperweight. I wrapped it up and set it aside, proud of myself that I had 1) made something myself, and 2) beat the Christmas rush.

A month passed, and on Christmas morning dad opened the package. The seed had shriveled and turned black, and now looked more like a prune than a piece of polished burl. I was heartbroken. I don't remember my dad's reaction; all I recall is my own disappointment.

A more clever writer could find the moral in this story. Maybe it's that the anticipation of Christmas is more important than the real thing. Maybe it's that the thought counts more than the gift. Maybe it's that it doesn't pay to get and wrap your presents early. Maybe it's just that buckeyes make lousy paperweights.

But whatever the lesson, I think about that Christmas every year when the buckeyes start to drop their seeds. And laugh.

I'm driving to Issaquah, Washington for Thanksgiving, leaving on Tuesday. I'll be hauling some stuff in the open back of the pickup, so the weather is a big issue -- they say it rains a bit between Portland and Seattle in late November.

Turns out Weather.com has a feature just for my situation. From the homepage I selected Driving & Traffic, then Interstate Driving Forecast. I chose Interstate 5 from the North to South menu, then picked my departure date. Got this:



If I could get Weather.com to send me an update to this forecast once a day between now and my departure it would be perfect. Still, this I'm impressed -- both with the fact that the feature exists, and with how easy it is to use.

I've been reading the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann lately. (Why is a long story.) I don't read German, so I've been reading a translation by Mark Anderson of Columbia University. I came upon this prescient gem; I'll post it in English first, then German.

Every Day

War is no longer declared,
only continued. The monstrous
has become everyday. The hero
stays away from battle. The weak
have gone to the front.
The uniform of the day is patience,
its medal the pitiful star
of hope above the heart.

The medal is awarded
when nothing more happens,
when the artillery falls silent,
when the enemy has grown invisible
and the shadow of eternal armament
covers the sky.

It is awarded
for desertion of the flag,
for bravery in the face of friends,
for the betrayal of unworthy secrets
and the disregard
of every command.

--

Alle Tage

Der Krieg wird nicht mehr erklärt,
sondern fortgesetzt. Das Unerhörte
is alltäglich geworden. Der Held
bleibt den Kämpfen fern. Der Schwache
ist in die Feuerzonen gerückt.
Die Uniform des Tages ist die Geduld,
die Auszeichnung der armselige Stern
der Hoffnung über dem Herzen.

Er wird verliehen,
wenn nichts mehr geschieht,
wenn das Trommelfeuer verstummt,
wenn der Feind unsichtbar geworden ist
und der Schatten weiger Rüstung
den Himmel bedeckt.

Er wird verliehen
für die Flucht von den Fahnen,
für die Tapferkeit vor dem Freund,
für den Verrat unwürdiger Geheimnisse
und die Nichtachtun
jeglichen Befehls.

Labels: poetry, war

There's a story on Reuters today, dateline Oslo, that begins like this:

Norway's largest erotic chain store was forced to change the labeling on products such as penis pasta, candy cuffs and chocolate body painting, to comply with Norwegian food regulations.

The Norwegian food safety authority, whose goal it is to make sure consumers have healthy and safe food, conducted a surprise inspection at one of the chain's stores and found that several products violated food labeling regulations, top-selling tabloid VG reported on Tuesday.

It's been a long time since I've visited the homeland. I didn't even know there were erotic chain stores in Norway, but there must be a few if one can be declared the largest. (Insert your own "size isn't everything" joke here.) Strange, but the store itself isn't named.

The full article is here.

Labels: Norway

Although it's very bad form to post my fourth "this is a good read" blog entry in a row, this is a good read.

It's the story (posted over a week ago) of an irate father of a three-year-old lover of modern art who wants to throttle a National Gallery docent when she says to a bunch of school kids, speaking of a Clyfford Still painting, "even if it doesn't look like it's about anything and it doesn't make any sense, you just have to bear with it sometimes."

I'll spoil it for you: the dad restrains himself. But I'll bet the docent staff has since gotten an earful. I sure hope so.

My email correspondent (and probably relative, though we've never bothered to figure out just how relative), Joanna Sandsmark, has written a weeklong series of blog posts on fictional role models. Fun, insightful reading, accompanied by some wonderful pictures. Today's post explains how Wonder Girl got the name Cassie Sandsmark. It's a great story, but be sure to read all of the posts.

I probably spend more time than most 46-year-olds with the obituaries. I have a sad knack for picking out, from a whole page of funeral notices (or two or three pages, on Sundays) those for people with brain tumors. But a different notice burned my eyes this morning: that for Dave Carpender, Greg Kihn's guitarist back in the heyday.

I've never been much of one for rock concerts, in spite of John Summers' best efforts. But I remember seeing the Greg Kihn Band at a free lunchtime gig in Justin Herman Plaza. (Radio station KOME -- or maybe it was KSAN -- sponsored these concerts in the spring and summer back in the late 70s and early 80s. We also saw the Ramones at one.) John and I arrived early and were right up front. Good show, fun, perfect for outdoors.

Kihn himself has written a eulogy for his friend and fellow traveler that's good reading.

(Edited on Friday, November 9 to correct dates -- the free concerts were in the late 70s and early 80s, of course -- and to clean up some grammar awkwardness and add a few details.)

By the title of this post, you might think that the venerable New York Times health and fitness writer and I have pooled our money to buy our way out of hell, but not so.

Turns out she and I are both fans of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate-Dipped Mini Pretzels. Two pretzels equal one point. (If you don't know what that means, well, tough.)

Brody's article, My Diet Strategy: Controlled Indulgence, is good reading.

You can't say that demographers don't have a sense of humor. Not long ago I signed up for a community education class through Chabot College. I registered online, and noticed that "Obedience School" was one of the options for Educational Level.