Health update

The good news: in the first month of my "new start", I lost 19 pounds. Of those, 12 were in the three weeks after my first doctor's appointment, and thus, count against Cigna's 5% requirement. Since that only comes to 25 pounds or so, I'm clearly going to have no trouble getting there in six months. It seems I might even be able to get to the target weight that the MGB surgeons would prefer for doing my surgery laparoscopically (the only way MGBs are done).

The bad news: my HbA1c (a measure of long-term blood glucose levels) went up from 8.0 to 8.2. Now, that's not much; it's actually within the plus-or-minus of the test. But it's an increase when it should be a decrease. I'm not too worried, though. My tests have shown a slow but steady decrease, about what I expected. After all, I'm not aiming primarily for fast BG reduction this time around. My exercise regimen is limited by my pain, and my reluctance to push myself too hard and make myself stop. And my diet regimen is limited by the dietitian's insistence on adding fruits and vegetables despite the fact that their carbs will bring up my BG. I expect slow progress, but progress, and that's what I've been seeing. I suspect the HbA1c just isn't showing it yet, but will by my next test.

It's kind of hard to really feel invested in it now. I have a dose of short-timer's syndrome. After the surgery, odds are good my blood sugars will be a simple non-issue. It's easy to get thinking of this process as not being about my blood sugar, but simply about checking boxes on Cigna's checklist. The doctors would be horrified at that attitude; they want all my efforts to be based on the idea that the surgery will never happen. I'm trying to strike a balance. I care about my blood glucose, but if the long-term goal of eliminating diabetes and achieving significant weight loss requires me to have slower improvement in my BG and HbA1c right now, that's fine, too.

Anyway, the exercise part, which I've always said is the linchpin of everything else, is still in a preliminary state. Still not seen the physical therapist, and still using the same equipment, so the fact that I'm keeping it up at all, even at this reduced level, is an impressive achievement. (Not that the doctors even realize that, let alone give me credit. All they see is that it's not as much as they'd like. But I'd much rather be able to sustain doing some-but-not-enough than to push too hard and end up stopping.)

Next week's physical therapist appointment is a hopeful step. The arrival of the recumbent stationary bike I ordered, expected in the next two days, is an even more hopeful one. The hope they point to is being able to keep my exercise regimen more thorough and complete without a lot of pain. That'll lead to better improvement in blood glucose, and sustaining the weight loss.

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On the other side is the process of arranging the surgery itself and its insurance coverage. The doctors keep talking about this like it's routine, and asking us when our surgery date is, but it's likely to be quite a struggle. We're not sure if it's better to start working with Cigna now, in hopes of getting the lengthy process of them losing our paperwork and issuing spurious random rejections to happen in parallel with our six-month weight-loss regimen; or if it'd be better to wait until we have that regimen, and all our other ducks, in a row, before we even draw ourselves to Cigna's attention, to make it harder for them to come up with ways to reject us. I wish we had a tactics guide for that kind of thing.

The other problem is getting local support. A surgery like this requires a lot of follow-up in case of problems and to make sure we're doing what we need to do. Yet it is, like many other kinds of surgeries, specialized enough that you can't get it locally, you have to travel for it. Since we can't fly out to High Point, North Carolina every few months (or even every few years) for routine follow-up, we need a way to get local follow-up, which means we need a local practitioner to agree to do it.

What exactly "follow-up" comprises seems to be hazy. Other long-distance patients of High Point seem to get by on "get my bloodwork done locally and have results copied to High Point", combined with the usual possibility of emergency care in case of catastrophe. Yet our doctor's office blanches at the idea of agreeing to provide this kind of care, perhaps because they imagine that they'd be called on to do more than they actually would, or perhaps it's me who is underestimating how much they'd have to know or do.

Why won't someone just write me a check for $34,000 so I can avoid all this insurance stuff and just get it done? It'd just be done.

Underappreciated movies redux

Today's nominee is Sneakers.

I wonder why this movie made so small a splash. It has a fantastic cast full of big names, and lots of them. It was pretty well promoted back in its day. It's got plenty of action and a cutting-edge feel, even though the pacing is not frantic, it's measured and well-crafted, rather than just piled on and ratcheted up. Seems like a sure winner. But while it didn't bomb or anything, a lot of people are not even aware of it, or only faintly.

Looking at it solely as a heist movie, it's one of the best out there. It's also one of the best computer "hacker" movies, both in terms of an interesting plot, and in terms of realism (not to say it's perfect in that regard, but most of its inaccuracies are easily dismissed as simply time-condensing things that would be boring to watch more slowly, plus there's the MacGuffin, which isn't real, but is at least plausible). It's also a very good action movie. Plus it includes a fair amount of serious thoughts about the value of information, the balance between privacy and identity, and the impact an information society can have on politics, society, economics, and justice, for better and for worse. (Admittedly, some of that takes the form of slightly heavy-handed, though still story-appropriate, exposition.)

It's one of those movies that bears up very well to repeated watching. You don't start finding flaws; the closer you look, the more the plot fits together. You don't find it becoming hollow; you start appreciating more details, more foreshadowing, more subtlety in the acting and writing. It's a movie that sticks with you, not one that boils off the memory a minute after the credits roll.

It also has good laughs, and they're very natural laughs: they don't feel like people being artificially witty, but the kind of funny that you have with normal folks who happen to be funny. Okay, on second thought, "normal" isn't the right word. Some of these guys, especially Mother, are pretty weird. But when they're funny it's because of who they are, not because of who the writer was.

Local produce on the honor system

Here in rural Vermont it's not uncommon to see stands at the side of the road selling local corn, flowers, or produce on the "honor system". There's a pile of fresh corn, probably pulled from the immediately adjacent field the previous day, and an old coffee can to put your money, and there's no one around.

Many people who come to Vermont and see these are astonished at the idea that anyone could still, in this day and age, count on people to pay for what they take in a situation like this. And yet almost everyone does.

What I find amusing, though, is that everyone's first reaction is to think, "why don't people just take the corn and not pay for it?" but hardly anyone thinks, "why don't people take the money that's sitting right there in a tin can?"

It's odd how somehow the idea of not paying for your corn is a different level of dishonesty from the idea of taking the money. On an absolutist level, it's exactly the same; corn and money must be interchangeable since the very existence of the booth proves one can be exchanged for the other at a fixed rate. Yet virtually every single person approaches the situation and concludes that stealing corn is "not as bad" as stealing the money from the can.

Including me; in some way I can't work out, that's my reaction, too. Though they're not as far apart for me, as evidenced by the fact that when I first saw one of these, I thought of the money theft almost immediately after thinking of the corn theft, while many people never get to the money theft possibility at all.

Most underappreciated movie

I could do a week of posts on this subject... actually I could do a whole blog on it, I bet. Nominate a movie that was really good, but that hardly anyone knows.

Today's nominee: Strange Days.

The whole movie springs from one single premise: the existence of a machine that can record and replay memories and experiences. It's easy to miss it in the flurry of story and breathtaking visuals and plot twists and interesting characters and suspenseful action, but squeezed into the same two hours with all that, there are explorations of not just one or two implications such a technology might have on society, but dozens of them, good and bad, individual and sociological.

It also has the virtue of having a main hero character who is not only not that heroic (let's face it, he's a coward), but who has no ability to fight or defend himself, even though he is always getting into dangerous situations. No, his one and only skill, ramped up to limit, is being ingratiatingly oily and slick -- not just when it's helpful, but all the time, because that's who he is, even when it is ruining his life.

It's just too much movie for most people.

Snobbishness

The kind way to put it would be to say that I am picky about a lot of things. I don't find amusing a lot of things that other people do find amusing, things like movies, or humor. A less kind way would be to call me "high-brow" or "elitist". The least kind would be to call me snobbish.

At times I wonder if I'm missing out on some of this stuff. But most of the time, I can be pretty condescending in my assurance that there's really nothing to be missing out on. A great example is the large number of formulaic jokes in widespread circulation on the Internet that are, as far as I can tell, "funny" by virtue of only two things: intentionally bad spelling, and excessive repetition. Sometimes, there's a picture of an intentionally irrelevant animal, too.

Most of the time I conclude "this is not really funny, people are just worn down by repetition to have progressively lower standards". A tiny part of the time I wonder if there's something to low-brow humor and I'm missing out. Is there really something funny about fart jokes? How about cruelty humor? What do people who enjoy the badness of bad movies see that I don't see? Where's the true amusement in 2.3 million videos of cats falling off tables?

I want to apologize to the people who I must seem very snobbish to, because I don't mean to come off with a superiority complex. But would such an apology mean anything? Part of it is just apologizing for my general social ineptitude that prevents me being more tactful. Part of it comes from that tiny bit of wondering whether it's not really me that's missing something. But the fact is, a lot of me still concludes that I am, in fact, more discerning, and the problem is just that I don't think that makes me "superior", but it's inevitable it will come off that way. And if it comes off that way, how can I apologize for seeming snobby? Maybe I really am snobby.

Proxy bidding

Here's another one of those "there are two kinds of people" things: those who understand proxy bidding, and those who cannot. I think it's genetic, like the ability to curl your tongue. Either proxy bidding is a simple thing that makes perfect sense, or you simply are unable to think it through, no matter how many times it's explained.

Unfortunately, the people who don't understand proxy bidding make things more difficult for everyone else, not just for themselves. If everyone was able to take advantage of proxy bidding, then when I put my bid in on something, there's a good chance I'll find out immediately whether I'm already out of the bidding and should move on to bid on some other item. Instead, I'll probably waste days riding out one bid so it can be outbid at the last minute -- literally -- by some idiot sniper who can't understand the auction would have come out precisely the same if they'd just put in their proxy bid earlier. It would just have saved them, plus everyone who lost, a lot of time.

The urge to try to explain it is strong, because it's just so simple, but I will resist. There's no point, it's either obvious or inscrutable. Maybe someday scientists will develop some kind of psychochemical therapy for this malady.

A rhetorical red herring

Opponents of gay rights sometimes raise a specious but effective red herring argument whose danger is how it gets gay right advocates to surrender rights to set the terms of the argument. It goes like this.

"According to this highly dubious and probably unscientific source I have here, the supposition that homosexuality is inborn is not true! Homosexuality is merely a choice, and one which can be chosen against. Therefore, we should not be talking about gay rights."

The question of whether homosexuality is nature or nurture is an important one, and there are times to argue about it. But on the topic of gay rights, it is immaterial. More than that, it's a red herring whose sole purpose is to get you to let the neocons set the terms of the debate to ones where your case isn't quite as strong. Once you give in to the bait and try to refute their argument by focusing on the question of whether homosexuality is innate, you have implicitly accepted their assumption, their begging the question: that gay rights should only be granted if it is inborn, not a choice.

And that's simply not so. Amongst the most cherished, and arguably the first established, of all our rights that protect us against prejudice, is the protection of freedom of religion. And religion is unquestionably not inborn, but is entirely a choice, and definitely something which can be chosen against.

Don't let the conservatives choose the battlefield. Don't let them get away with such a key assumption.

Charity coin drops

Maybe this is a local thing -- I certainly had enough trouble finding pictures of it online -- but every summer, I find myself infuriated by charity coin drops. This is where some charity, maybe a good one (like funding a fire department) and maybe less good (like funding a school trip) decides that the best way to raise money is to stop traffic on some major artery and practice extortion, all but demanding coins from every passing car.

Well, I appreciate that you really want to earn some cash, but here's the thing. I include at least a thousand dollars a year in my charity donations. I choose very carefully where this money goes, to support causes I want to support and where I think my dollars will go the farthest. I don't give my money to the loudest or most obnoxious people merely because they're in my face -- in fact, I tend to lean away from them, and in favor of those who are quietly using my money primarily to help people, not to pester me for more money while wasting paper and my time.

The fact that you got a permit to inconvenience me and thousands of other people today is not sufficient reason to override all of that. Nor are your puppy-dog eyes or your ineffectual grimace as I pass you by. You think I'm a cold and uncaring person because I choose not to participate in your extortion, but I'm really just choosing more carefully than you are how to allocate my charity.

So give up this intrusive and insulting approach to charity and try something else, please. Because I am not about to start encouraging you.

The road to MGBville

Now that we're decided about a gastric bypass surgery, it's good to be working on it. Last Thursday we went to the nutritionist, and today to the doctor, for the first of six pairs of meetings (which must be in consecutive months). Cigna's arbitrary and largely meaningless goal for us is the loss of 5% of weight. My real goal is to get my blood glucose back in control by hook or by crook; if I have to go through this for Cigna I might as well also do something with a very evident need right now.

So, the changes we're making now are as follows. Counting carbs again, and limiting them. Exercising again; for now, just working through it, and soon, getting a physical therapy referral to work on ways to make it less painful and more sustainable. Adding more fruits and vegetables to the diet, which requires us to bite the bullet and go to the supermarket twice a week for just produce. Doubling my metformin dose, starting today.

The exercise part is the linchpin. Exercise keeps my appetite in control, it makes the biggest difference in my during-the-day readings, and it does more to bring my fasting BG down than any single other factor. Finding a way to make it sustainable despite the pain is key.

Getting my BG in order will be a hard struggle, but one that is maybe easier to endure knowing it's very likely that it's for a limited time. (The surgery will not only be very likely to cure my diabetes outright, it'll also make the pain reduce or disappear which also makes everything else fall into place.) Losing 5% of my weight while doing it will be a piece of cake.

Mmm, cake.

Dang, now I have to go exercise.

Back from vacation

I wasn't off at the seashore this whole time, that was just three days. But I've been on vacation at home since, some of it hanging around and some of it getting chores done.

Salisbury, Massachusetts was a good getaway... because we really didn't need much other than the ocean. Clearly, this is a town in need of some urban revitalization. The first impression is that most of it is run-down and mostly abandoned buildings. This is a very unfair impression; large stretches of town are actually shiny new and it's clear revitalization is going on with lots of new building. But you don't notice the nice buildings, you take those for granted. What stands out is the run-down old things with signs right out of the 50s. The seaside boardwalk area looked like Atlantic City after Biff stole the Delorean... though I bet it looks less that way during the high season when everything's open.

One thing's for sure, this was not a "touristy" destination, despite the seashore and all the relics of a touristy era. The shops and restaurants were inhabited by locals, and there was a conspicuous absence of the kind of retail presence that touristy areas have. I don't think I saw a single "gift" shop selling tacky crap. Nor did I see many license plates other than MA and NH (Salisbury is so on the border that most of our dining and shopping was over the border in NH).

What really matters, though, is that right outside the hotel room was a small porch which opened onto sand, and the roar of the surf was plainly audible and visible from my bed. There's no sleep so relaxing as sleep lulled by the smell of ocean breezes.

The only interesting dining found in the area was a little Mexican place of no particular significance, clearly catering to locals, but it was good stuff -- well-seasoned, authentic, and tasty. Their baja omelet, full of tender marinated carne asada, was remarkable. Otherwise, the food was serviceable and unexceptional.

Relaxing time at home was also productive. First time I ever did a tuneup on a lawn tractor, using only crappy and incomplete directions in the manual, and everything still went well; the tractor started right up and purred like a kitten. (Well, a very aggressive kitten with 42" cutting blades.)

Back to the daily grind today, but it's not so bad, the rest was nice. Lots more to write about, but that's for another day.

Random idea for a roleplaying game element

I can't claim credit for this one, I picked it up on mailing list for Everway years ago, might even be Jonathan Tweet who came up with it. But I've been saving it in my bag of tricks for years and years, waiting for a chance to use it.

Amongst the people of this particular culture has arisen a long-standing tradition that seems very strange to outsiders. People have odd and disturbing names: Poison, Treachery, Despair, Infection, or Bankruptcy, for instance. It turns out that the people here believe these things to be brought by spirits of the same name: if you get poisoned, it is because you were visited by the Poison Spirit. And surely, the Poison Spirit is less likely to harm someone who has been named for him! Children are always named for some malignant spirit which the parents fear might otherwise afflict the child, as a protection against them.

(It might be even more cool if this turns out to be true -- that anyone named Poison is, in fact, immune to poison. Just need to ensure no one can get named Death, or Badness, or something else too vague or potent.)

Reticence and reversibility

We were trying to decide between RNY and MGB alternatives for our bariatric surgery, and while we'd heard the arguments for MGB, we hadn't really gotten a fair shake at hearing RNY's side. In all our extensive research, the few RNY doctors we'd heard had only been vague or spoken in anecdotes and speculation; they didn't talk like scientists at all. So we scheduled an appointment with the RNY surgeon, Dr. Spaulding, at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, in hopes she'd give us her side. After all, we have to choose a surgery before we can seriously begin the process of qualifying for it and getting it.

Between the time we scheduled it and the appointment, they instituted a new program where new arrivals in the bariatric program had a "pre-first-visit visit" in which they sat in front of a dull slideshow that covered the basics, and then got insulted by nurses for a little bit. This is very helpful for most people who, apparently, go to hospitals and doctors without even looking up what their condition means or what the surgery they're considering actually is. Not so helpful for us, as it turns out, since they cancelled our doctor visit in favor of this. We didn't learn anything we didn't know, and weren't able to get any of our questions answered. We wasted half a day of sick leave and several dollars in gas and parking for nothing.

When we complained, they set us up an appointment with Dr. Spaulding for this morning. We went in and got told right off that we'd be seeing a nutritionist and a psychologist to prescreen us for the procedure before we could talk to Dr. Spaulding. It was futile to point out that we weren't on the track for any procedure, we were just trying to get some answers. We were on the conveyor belt and there was no way to get anywhere other than down the assembly line.

So we sat through these post-pre-meeting pre-meetings, which we had to do separately because "that's how we do it", before we could finally talk to Dr. Spaulding. She was friendly and personable, but she also insisted on starting at the beginning, explaining everything in detail except for the bit we said we wanted to talk about: why RNY over MGB? But finally, going into our third hour there (not counting the hour drive each way) we were finally getting to the actual point of the meeting.

Her reasons for RNY over MGB: "Oh, I wouldn't recommend MGB." She added, "I know someone who did those for a while, but he stopped right away." When pressed, she suggested that there wasn't enough data on MGB to determine what its risks were (though she also claimed that they were greater) -- which is not true, they've been doing MGBs for 10+ years and have done thousands of them. Pretty much the same non-answer I have always gotten from RNY doctors which sounds suspiciously like what, in the non-scientific lay world, really means "I am against anything I haven't bothered to learn about yet." You expect that from used car salesmen, but you expect doctors to have a scientist's mindset, to base things on evidence and proof.

I didn't let it rest. We had spent two whole mornings on this and I didn't want to come away without the answer again. I pressed the issue. Her response was that I would have to schedule another appointment, as she had to be moving on.

I can understand that she only has so much time set aside for us and that her next patients don't deserve to be kept waiting. But we explicitly said our whole purpose in coming to see her (both times) was to ask this question. We said it when setting up the appointments, and then first thing when we got there, and first thing when she came in. Now she wants it to be yet another appointment.

And when we talked to the person who schedules appointments, she had no way to do so that wasn't the next step on the assembly line. Merely to come to another appointment would require us to again visit the nutritionist, who would in turn demand detailed day-by-day food logs with calorie counts. It would also be a meeting not with the doctor, but with the nurse who had berated us while providing no answers at our first pre-meeting-meeting. In other words, it would be yet another opportunity to not get answers, while being treated like an interchangeable part.

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But in talking more about this, we've come to the conclusion that her answer was all the answer we really need. I don't just mean that the way we were treated is a clear answer that "we will not get a surgery here" -- that goes without saying. I mean that her lack of a good answer, compounded upon all the other lacks of a good answer, and stacked up next to the scientific research we've seen (though I have to read more of that more closely), is an answer.

More to the point, the clincher of the deal is reversibility. RNY is not really reversible -- it's been done, sure, but it's not usually possible and you shouldn't count on it. That means if you get cancer and need chemotherapy, you're screwed. Chemotherapy will make you need more nutrients than your RNY-altered stomach can supply, and you'll starve to death if you go on it, period.

There are other reasons you might need a reversal, but that's the big one. MGB is reversible and also revisable -- if you're losing weight too slow or too fast it can be adjusted, though naturally you don't want an extra surgery if you can help it. But if you need it, the option is there, and that's something the RNY people can't touch.

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Settling on MGB also settles the open vs. laparoscopic question since MGBs are only done laparoscopically. It also settles the question of where to have it: the only place that offers them to people my size is High Point Regional Health System in North Carolina. Now we have to work out the logistics of how to get there to do this, for both of us (done at separate times), including followup appointments. We have to start the annoyingly repetitive and unnecessary six-consecutive-month medically supervised weight loss plan Cigna requires.

And, biggest of all, we have to work out how this will get paid for. Getting Cigna to cover a completely medically necessary surgery with an in-plan doctor locally is a challenge. Getting them to cover a surgery they classify (for no reason we can determine) as "experimental", with a doctor in NC who may or may not be considered "in-plan" on our plan, is going to be a bitch. High Point won't bill them, either; we have to get pre-approval and then pay for it ourselves (to the tune of $17,000 each) and hope Cigna comes through after. If it ends up being considered in-plan, and they pay, it'll cover almost all of it (except our travel costs, of course), but if it doesn't, we may have to shoulder 20%, which is more than $10,000 between us. Where I'm going to make that money appear from is a good question.

But at least we have settled finally what direction we're going, so now it's just a matter of overcoming all those obstacles.

Supermarket music

It's been a long time since they played muzak in supermarkets. Or indeed any retail operation, so far as I've seen. Maybe they still do in elevators in office buildings. But apparently someone discovered that actual music is better for sales. And specifically, the music that the primary shopping target market grew up with.

For the last ten years, the music in all the supermarkets I have visited has been mostly light, inoffensive pop music from the 1970s, and gradually it's been working its way forward. Little by little, I'm more comfortable and familiar with the music. And thus, it becomes clear that I am not only an adult now, I am solidly the center of the target market at whom the supermarkets are focusing their marketing machines.

Don't get me wrong. Most of the music I listen to in an average day is not the music I'm hearing in the supermarket (though as time has passed the amount of overlap, though small, has grown). Actually, music composed around and before my birth makes up a larger part of my music collection than the music I actually grew up with, not out of any kind of reluctance to my own generation, but just because it's better music.

But the supermarkets aren't trying to mirror anyone's music collection. They're trying to create a feeling of comfort and nostalgia which, it turns out, inspires more shopping. Maybe it's the feeling of home. For most people it's the stuff you heard while you were in high school. In my case, the stuff that, right now, this year, is the core of the supermarket mix for the first time.

It's almost depressing because, when you get right down to it, the music of my generation was not that great. If you think back to the early 80s and think of music, most of what comes first to mind is superficial fluff that didn't age that well. I do enjoy it, but it's a guilty pleasure, and it sure doesn't make me want to stand up and shout out for my generation.

There was plenty of good music being made at that time. Great music, even. But it was mostly by bands that came before and were still going, and thus are not associated with that period of time nearly as much as bands that arose (and most of the time, vanished) during it. For example, some of Rush's best work was in the early 80s, but no one thinks of them first when you think of "bands of the early 80s".

But that doesn't help when they're playing some A Flock Of Seagulls in the freezer aisle and I find myself singing along, does it?

Smokers outside my window

One of the few perks of my job is that I have a window, which I guard jealously. I also retain the ability to open it when, at this time of year, it's beautiful out, but not so hot that I will feel guilty about the air conditioner running more.

The downside is that my window is over one of the two doors out of my building.

Last few years, our office was down to a single remaining smoker, all the others having either quit or... well, quit. And he had an office at the far end of the building, ensuring the other door was far, far more convenient for him to go smoke out of. Thus, I always wondered why he would, time after time, come smoke under my window instead. He had to go out of his way to do it. I complained, and he'd go to the other end for a little while, and then start again, over and over.

This year, we have two new employees, and both of them are smokers. We were so close to nirvana! It's so frustrating. And they're all coming down to my window to smoke. Plus our new cleaning service is one girl who is only here for an hour or two each day, but manages to smoke at least 3 cigarettes outside my window during that time.

All day long I'm opening and closing the window over and over. It's maddening. Maybe I should be more tolerant, but it just gets under my skin that we even have smokers still. Some irrational part of my brain insists on thinking of smoking the way I would about polio or feudalism, as something we used to have but thank goodness we don't anymore. And then they have to bring it to my window.

So here's my question. Get a list of the arguments that smokers use to justify their "right" to smoke in my presence, and for each one, substitute "urinate". The arguments all work just as well, and most of them better, since urination is a natural function necessary to life, and the sterility of urine means it poses no real health danger. So as far as I'm concerned, if you want the right to smoke in front of me, the cost is having to endure people peeing on you, with as gracious a smile as you can put on. Fair deal.

Look, an extraterrestrial!

Like other mammals and, to varying extents, most living things on Earth, humans have a circadian rhythm: a natural, hardwired internal clock that regulates metabolism and other operations of body and mind. When exposed to the cycle of sunlight and dark, this rhythm keeps approximately in time with a day. When humans live in places isolated from these natural cues (for instance, on extended tours of duty on a submarine), they usually, for convenience, create articial rhythms of light and dark on the same 24-hour cycle.

However, when a human is left free of any external cues of light and dark, an interesting thing happens. If he has nothing to calibrate his internal cycle with, it will naturally, and fairly quickly, settle into a rhythm of not 24 hours but 25.

On an apparently unrelated subject, there are a few oddities about how the human musculoskeletal system works, which are often pointed to as evidence that the evolution from quadruped to biped hasn't quite finished. However, some people point out another odd observation: on a planet whose gravity was half of Earth's, our musculoskeletal system would actually work pretty darned good.

Hmmm... we seem to have an innate biological prejudice for low-gravity worlds with 25-hour rotational periods. It's almost as if we come from somewhere else nearby...

Okay, while this is intriguing, I'm by no means serious. This is great fodder for a surrealistic roleplaying game, but certainly not anything real. Though, hmmm...

A busy week

This week is going to be very busy for me due to a lot of stuff going on at work, so I don't expect I'll be posting much to my blog. Right now I'm feeling a little dry of topics anyway.

Paying people to do your homework

Every day when I skim through the RSS feed of new jobs at RentACoder, it's amazing how many of them are very obviously, even openly admittedly, people hiring people to do their homework. There's often ones saying that a job must be done urgently because the homework is due.

I find this infuriating. What are these people going to do when they get jobs, hire those out too? I can't help notice that if I were willing to take these jobs I could make a mint on very easy work. But I would never do it. Sometimes I want to make a fake account so I can bid on these, then never do the job, just to sabotage their efforts or at least slow them down. In any case, I find it frustrating I even have to see them. They should be in their own category (rather than combined with "Personal project") so I could filter it out -- though even if RentACoder had that category, I bet half the time the jobs wouldn't end up in it.

I'm not even in the education field. Why does this infuriate me so much?

Coding in my head

Sometimes, as now, when I get working on a coding project that grabs my enthusiasm right, I can get to a stage where working on the code feels like a compulsion. At times when I'm not coding and my mind isn't 100% occupied I'll find the code uncoiling itself in my head, ideas about what needs to be done next and how it should work, even bits of code. I'll come out of the shower with ideas that need to be captured and be tempted to run dripping to my computer to write them down.

I am so ready for an implant computer. If I could be recording my thoughts while in the shower, and able to see my screen there (on a portable display I could set down outside it, on HUD glasses, or better yet, on corneal implants), I could get so much done.

Sure, people worry that if you had that, you'd never be able to relax, or get away from work. Poppycock. The ability to leave work at work depends on your conviction to do so, which I've never had a problem with, even as I play with my laptop at home night after night. Gadgets may make it harder, but it's still up to you to get the kind of job that lets you go home at the end of the day, if it is important enough to you; and then to stand by that principle.

Meanwhile, while I was writing this I had to pause to make a note about that code I'm working on.

History threshholds

It was many years ago when I first had this moment. Someone I knew, I realized, had been born after Star Wars had come out. He had never lived in a world that didn't have Star Wars indelibly stamped upon its culture. The idea that the movie was once something that people figured wouldn't even succeed or make a profit. let alone become iconic, was alien to him.

As time goes by, different events serve as that boundary point of my advancing age: something which is an event to me, but "merely" a part of history to someone else. For my parents' generation, it was the moon landing, or JFK's assassination. For their parents it was Pearl Harbor, or D-Day, or VJ-Day. After Star Wars the next one for me is probably the fall of the Berlin Wall -- that one's coming up hard now -- or the Challenger disaster. It will be 9/11 all too soon.

Note to self: notes to self are to self.

How many times have you heard someone say "Note to self:" out loud to you? Or "mental note" equivalently. Do you think they know what those phrases mean? Clearly not, if they're always doing them out loud to others. Wait, is this some of that "irony" stuff I hear about? I thought that was about flies in your chardonnay. I don't even like chardonnay; it might be better with flies in it, come to think of it. Or maybe all the chardonnay I've tried in the past already had flies in it, and that's why it was so yucky? Note to self: try strained chardonnay some time. Hey, you, what are you doing reading my private notes to myself?

Spring? Is that you? I thought you'd never come.

We've been wondering up here in Vermont whether that damned groundhog didn't see two shadows, because it's been ten more weeks of winter already. But this week's weather forecast is glory in liquid form.

This Afternoon Sunny Hi 56°F

Tonight Clear Lo 26°F

Friday Sunny Hi 64°F

Friday Night Clear Lo 31°F

Saturday Sunny Hi 67°F

Saturday Night Clear Lo 31°F

Sunday Mostly Sunny Hi 70°F

Sunday Night Mostly Clear Lo 39°F

Monday Chance Showers Hi 74°F

If I didn't know better, I'd think that was spring.

I got the power!

Sunday's unseasonable blizzard knocked out our Internet in the evening. The power flickered all night long, and then Monday morning just after we woke up at 6:10am it went out. We went to work on Monday without proper showers, but hoping the power would be back by time we got home. It wasn't, and WEC said if it wasn't by 9pm it wouldn't be. Cell service as also out, probably because they didn't have power to the towers.

About 8pm we decided to make for a motel for the night. It's not the heat, our house was warm enough and if it weren't we could set a fire in the woodstove. It's not the lights, lanterns and candles are fine. It's not the electronics, though I did have a lot to get done after being away for the weekend at the con. It's the water pressure. You can only stay so long in a house without being able to flush the toilets.

Power came back on some time on Tuesday in the morning, and when we went home last night after work, it was very nice to have things back to normal. The lights flickered a few times, but they held up. Now if only the dishes would wash themselves.

The formula for humor-substitute

"Meme" used to mean a self-replicating idea, but it seems to have been diluted so much that all it means now is something that you repeat by rote as a substitute for wit or humor. The Internet is so choked with these meaningless, unamusing endless repetitions that one despairs of finding real humor anymore. Why be witty when you can just plug something into a formula instead? After all, everything is funny if you print it over a picture of a cat, or insert it between "1)" and "2) ??? 3) Profit". Did we learn nothing from "all your base are belong to us"?

Don't get me wrong: there is such a thing as a running joke. But to be a running joke, first of all, it has to be a joke.

Lorecon post-con report

As I had worried in my previous post, Dead of Winter turned out to be not a great choice for a con. If I had run it before I could probably fix the timing better, but as it is, we ran out of time without a solution to the mystery. Characters had an idea who was responsible but did not have any proof or any ideas where to find proof; it didn't occur to them to interview the people of the abbey more to find out about them. However, so far as I could tell, a good time was had by all, and people did get into their characters and the setting.

As a whole the con was as expected, exhilirating, fun, and exhausting. The games I played were as good as or better than the ones I played last year. Joe's horror game Mud Season was a standout, mostly because the plan we came up with was so fun to see through. Had some fun playing a board game called Pirate's Cove, though in the end, the game has lots of interesting strategic issues that all get undermined by a heavy luck influence that can easily undo everything your carefully crafted tactics have accomplished in a moment. Siobhan's Paranoia game didn't go off, too few people. Towards the end, a wearing game of Munchkin: Impossible (due to a bunch of irrepressible ten-year-old boys with no sense of personal space or of quiet) had a few good moments, notably when I turned someone's sex-change card against them by forcing them to help me defeat a super-spy that boosted me from level 2 to level 7 in a single turn.

By the time we arrived home through an abysmally icky mid-April blizzard (that hit a few hours early, or we would have avoided it) I was exhausted and sore and very glad to be home. Even in spite of the storm threatening to take out the power (which it finally did first thing this morning), knock out my Internet (which it did last night), interrupt cell phone service (some time during the night), knock down trees on my property (while I was watching this morning), and block the roads with more fallen trees (took an hour to get to work after several attempts were blocked). What a day! What a weekend! Can I go back to bed now?

Prepping for Lorecon

Tomorrow is Lorecon's first day. My slot GMing is Saturday morning, but once the con starts, it'll be too late to do any prep for it. I decided not to start the prep until this week, and I've found the adventure needs a bit more prep than I expected, so I'm a little hurried, but not too bad.

First, there's a lot of people and it's hard to keep them straight. The adventure could be better organized with more reference materials; I have to make the same cheat-sheet of NPCs that probably everyone who's ever run it has had to make, so why not include it in the adventure?

Also, its very non-linear plotline makes it hard to time to fit the slot. The trick of running a game at a con successfully is timing. You've got four hours and, of all the factors in your control, the single factor that will make the most impact on whether the players come away satisfied is whether the adventure concludes at 3 hours and 50 minutes in, or not. An adventure that ends too early is all right, but non-optimal; but an adventure that simply runs out of time (very, very common at cons) always comes off a lot worse for it.

To make your adventure fit a slot, use these two tricks.

1. Figure out where in the adventure's story you should be at the quarter, halfway, and three-quarters points. Figure out what time that will be. When the game is running, if you're running behind, hurry the plot by dropping clues on the characters, or leaving out encounters or complications. If you're running ahead, make things take longer or throw in extra encounters.
   
   
2. Write an adventure with several endings. That is, write it with one ending in mind, then figure out how some twist could make that not quite the ending, and put a few clues in pointing at that, and then write a second ending. Then if you're running behind, the earlier ending can be a satisfying conclusion and the remaining dangling threads will just be forgotten.

This adventure doesn't really lend itself to that. That's what I get for using a prefab, and at someone else's recommendation, but I am sure I can make it work. It'll just take a little more time, for me to work out a few extra complications I can throw in or take out as needed. Which is where I get stuck; I'm not sure if I'll have that time.

Now the good news. Columbia Games, having forgotten about me, decided to make it up to me by sending quite a generous packet. In addition to $5-off coupons and catalogs for everyone, I got two copies of HârnPlayer, second edition, which they're probably trying to get rid of since they have a third edition out now, but they're still great handouts and will be useful at the game. Plus a copy of Kanday, which will not only be useful for me in GMing but will be a nice perk for me. Plus a copy of the adventure, which I plan to also give out at the con. Very likely everyone who isn't already in my group will get a free book for attending, plus the coupon. Pretty nice haul.

One year later

Unnoticed, my blog's one-year anniversary just passed. Happy birthday to my blog! Still haven't quite run out of things to talk about; but the more serious and deep subjects of philosophy and transhumanism and such, I haven't found enough time to resume digging into. It's always easier to write a rant about something.

Extra-potent selfishness

This is something I've thought about writing in my blog many times, but I can never figure out how to say it so it doesn't seem petty. Part of it is being annoyed by selfish people, but part of it reflects my natural ability and propensity for looking at things systemically -- stepping out of my own perspective and thinking about what makes sense for the community as a whole.

The thing that always reminds me of it is when I go to get a glass of water from my office's bottled water dispenser. The office follows the obvious and unspoken rule: if you're the one who takes the last of a bottle, it's your job to switch to a new bottle. And this is a remarkably equitable rule. The odds of you being the one to change a bottle are exactly proportional to how much you use the bottled water compared to everyone else. If Bob uses twice as much water as Jane, today Jane might happen to be the one to hit the bottom of a bottle, but over the long term, Bob should be the one to hit that point exactly twice as much as Jane, and that's perfectly fair.

But suppose that Jane happens to be a selfish moron. In that case, when she hits the bottom of the bottle, she just walks away. Bob gets there to find an empty bottle, and now he has to do Jane's share. He grumbles about the selfish people who won't do their share and force him to do it. So far, what we have is a zero-sum game: for every bit of bad Jane avoids, exactly that same amount of bad gets dumped on Bob.

But now consider the fact that the bottled water dispenser includes a system to heat or cool the water so you don't get lukewarm room temperature water. This only works if there's water in the system, though. Not only does Bob have to suffer doing Jane's share of the bottle swapping, his reward for this is to get stuck with lukewarm water.

For some reason the systemic inefficiency of this offends me almost as much as Jane's root selfishness. Jane isn't just making things worse for Bob, she's also making things worse for the entire system. This is what I find myself thinking: "If Jane is going to be a selfish [word omitted], at least she could do so honestly. She should tell Bob, 'Because I'm selfish I left you to change the bottle. You might as well do it now so you'll at least have cold water later.'"

There are plenty of situations like this. A similar office-related one: I have a few cans of soda in the fridge and a 12-pack of soda next to it; when I take one can I replace it so I always have some cold. When people steal my soda it irks me, but it's less than 25¢. However, finding I don't have a cold soda when I want one makes me fume. Why can't they at least put another can in after stealing one of mine?

If someone steals your wallet, they don't really want the wallet itself, or your library cards. Probably they don't even want your driver's license and social security card. They might even have no interest in your credit cards; many muggers are just out for cash. But are they going to give that stuff back? Unlikely, even in situations where it adds no significant risk for them. So you're out the cash they gained (zero-sum), but you're also out a bunch of time and money to replace all those things. You may well find yourself thinking, who cares about the $50 I was carrying, compared to the day off I'm going to have to spend at the DMV office!

It would be nice if things could be arranged in such a way that the selfish people only stole what they took from us, not something extra robbed from everyone, too.

You'd like this.

Consider these two scenarios, similar in intent, representing opposite points in a spectrum.

1. Hey, I was thinking about movies I like, and based on what I know about your tastes and preferences, I picked out these few that I think you would also like. Let me tell you a little about them so you can decide if you would, since of course you know your own tastes better than I do. If you want, ask me questions about them to help you decide if you'd like them. If you don't think you'd like them, no problem.
   
   
2. http://www.youtube.com/v/MrYYWI9JDLM - lol!

I always hate when I get the latter kind. Generally speaking if someone gives me a link with no further information at all, I won't even consider following it, unless I already know that they're thinking of my tastes and they know me pretty well. The rest of the time, the fact that they like something is really only a very tiny factor in deciding if I would, most likely.

What's even worse is when I'm then grilled for a reaction. There's no tactful way to say "I didn't watch it -- why should I? I know nothing about it." Worse yet, there's no tactful way to say "I watched it, and I want those five minutes back, preferably extracted painfully from the still-beating heart of whoever is responsible for that." People tend to react badly to things like that said about something they enjoyed and "recommended".

I wish people would take a few steps towards Option #1. At very least give some nominal description of the book, movie, webcomic, YouTube clip, etc. you're recommending. Better yet, remember to think of the other person's tastes, not solely your own. Above all don't be offended if they don't choose to watch, or don't like, something that you liked.

Have you (been) saved?

There's a hardware store on a major road near me which has one of those signs out front where they can put letters up to spell out messages, you know the kind. Probably 95% of the time, rather than having something about whatever sale they're currently running, they have a Bible quote or something exceedingly preachy. Even more likely so when a religious holiday is approaching.

This week, with Easter coming up, the sign only says that they're having a sale on nails. (Nothing about crosses though.)

What's worse: that that's intentional, or that it isn't?

Why be stressed?

Events like those in the last post tend to get me feeling stressed, and I always feel dumb when I realize this. Why should a mere game stress me? Doubly so, why should I let myself get stressed just because someone else is acting inappropriately? And finally, even if these things should cause stress, shouldn't this conclusion and closure resolve it?

Indeed, it does, just not immediately. For a while after, the "it's done" has to slowly soak in, and during this time, other matters are more likely to crank up my stress than they would be at other times.

Fortunately, I have some good destressors coming up. First, our roleplaying group is roleplaying again, and that's always a good step. Plus, and I wasn't expecting this when we started up again, it's good to be GMing after a while away from it. I usually do a tiny bit more of the group's GMing than I would in an ideal world, and after a while of GMing the ache to play is palpable. But the reverse, when I've been away from GMing a while, sneaks up on me unnoticed. It wasn't until a few hours into the game that I found myself thinking, "ah, I missed this".

Weekend after next is Lorecon, which should be an exhausting rush of games, including one I'm GMing which (to my surprise) a few people have actually signed up for. (Unfortunately, Columbia Games, which is supposed to support me with handouts and coupons and stuff since I'm pushing their product line, let me slip through the cracks and is now ignoring me.) Cons are always a good destressor; it doesn't just take you out of life for a weekend, it takes you out of your life about eight different ways in a single weekend. Half of them will probably be duds, but that's still four more escapes than you usually get in a weekend.

To round things out, next month we're planning a little seaside getaway in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The smell and sound of the sea have a literally legendary power to destress. We're still figuring out what we're going to be doing there, and it might be not much more than lying around doing nothing -- some vacations are busy ones where we bustle from museum to activity, and some much slower-paced, and both are good.

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." - Isak Dinesen

And they all lived happily ever after.

I've logged off from Harshlands for the last time, at least under the current administration.

This "shutting down" process was taking way too long. But what set me off today was not that.

The admins run the forums in a very severely "locked down" state where they delete posts quite readily. They leave no sign behind that a post was deleted, too. In fact, the person whose post got deleted doesn't usually even get told their post was deleted.

Virtually everyone who reads the forums has the sense of a lot more consensus than there really is, because opinions that counter what the admins believe are ruthlessly and silently suppressed.

Those who are well-treated by the admins invariably conclude that any unhappy people are just natural troublemakers and malcontents; after all, there's nothing real to complain about, and they get treated wonderfully. "Some people just can't be happy," they must think.

Of course how would they know? They don't see how miserably unfairly some people who've gotten on the bad side of the admins are treated. And they never will, if every complaint and every contrary viewpoint is deleted to "avoid flame wars". (People can be as inflammatory and offensive as they like, as long as they only do it on one side -- their side.)

Why is it like this now and not before? That I'm not so sure. The most obvious answer is that I used to be on their good side so I, too, was blissfully unaware of how bad things can be, and then one day I got on their bad side.

But I think there's more to it. When I started, Revus was the head admin, but he was largely inactive, and Blackhorde and Millie were the de facto admins. While this didn't have any real impact on their authority or impact, I think it might have tempered their worst abuses of power. Revus eventually retired, and handed them the keys to the castle. Nothing really changed; Revus was around just as much as ever, and Blackhorde and Millie still did the same things they did. But I wonder if they didn't gradually get more and more comfortable with their position, and check themselves less and less.

I have little hope that anything could dislodge them. Their control over the viewpoints that people can present and complaints they can raise is almost entirely complete. No one is ever going to call for them to step down anywhere that anyone else can hear.

I flirted with the idea of crusading, trying to get word out to people about what they don't realize is going on. "If I don't do it, who will?" But that didn't last very long. First, it's just infeasible. It would take a remarkably strong group outcry to get Blackhorde and Millie to really take a hard look at themselves and how they run things. They're absolutely convinced, I'm sure, that they're being reasonable and fair, and that's why it's impossible to get them to give themselves a hard appraising look and realize what they're really doing. Anything less than a rousing consensus would be brushed off, but it'd be a miracle just to get people to be willing to listen, let alone to that level of outrage, after they've been couched in cozy sameness-of-opinions and preferential treatment for so long. Even if it were possible, though, it's just a lot of stress and aggravation I don't need. Far better for me to just close the door and move on.

So Reb and Merewyn have set out on their pilgrimage. Maybe someday if the Gentle Lady blesses them with new admins that still remember how to look at their own behavior, they'll return. But I really doubt that'll happen, even by accident. I've been down this road before: a corrupt administration may be removed, or retire of their own will, but the corruption usually remains.

MGB vs. RNY vs. Cigna

As we find more about the various gastric bypass surgeries, and the varying and often draconian requirements various surgeons and facilities require, we keep shifting which are our greatest concerns.

The most recent one was that there was a 350-pound limit on all the laparoscopic versions; having to go to an open surgery increases the risk considerably (as well as the recovery time), and it seemed likely I wouldn't go ahead with it if it had to be open, though it's too early to make that decision. Nor was I very positive about the idea of finding a way to lose 130 pounds without any help just to get to the point where I could get the surgery; maybe I could do it, maybe not, but at best it'd mean being miserable for a very long time just to get to the surgery.

However, we've learned that High Point Regional Health System in North Carolina does MGBs (which are always laparoscopic) up to 450 pounds, which is well within reach for me.

The question of finances still looms. While our doctor is confident that we can get this kind of surgery covered, it's quite likely High Point is an "out of plan" facility. There's some very, very, very small chance that we could get it covered anyway if it's only available for us there, but more than likely we'd have to treat it as an out-of-plan facility. That would mean a $2,500 cost to us for each surgery, plus figuring out how to cover the whole $17,000 cost in between the surgery and getting it paid, since the doctors wouldn't bill directly. Financial problems are a factor but not a showstopper; our credit rating ensures that we can deal with these kinds of concerns, even if it's hard, costly, and stressful.

On a more positive front, I'm feeling very strong that I meet the selection criteria for these procedures, and won't have too much trouble convincing the doctors to let me do it. MGB is continuing to look like the best option, as I read more about it and its results, but I'm still keeping an ear out for someone trash-talking it with actual results, not just vague dislike and anecdotal considerations. I'm sure there are facts to be had out there, but it's troubling how much conjecture and bias there is. This is medicine, folks, and medicine is a science.

Gastric Bypass, Step 2

Yesterday we visited our doctor -- or as close as possible, since our previous doctor moved away and no new one has been hired for her patients yet, so a physician's assistant is handling us until a new doctor is brought on. The PA was very encouraging about the possibility of a gastric bypass. She didn't think there'd be any trouble getting insurance to consider it a medical necessity (at least, no more trouble than anything involving insurance), and she seemed little worried about the dieting requirements, considering we have 4½ years on record already. Maybe she's being a little excessively positive on that last point; I suspect the surgeons will make us jump through pointless hoops, but nothing we can't do.

Step 3 will be talking to surgeons. We got a referral for a consultation at Fletcher Allen, where we will talk to someone, probably a surgeon, about the options and what comes next, and assuming we decide to proceed (which seems likely at this point), how it'll go.

The big question still hanging in the air is whether to go for laparoscopic Roux-en-Y (of the various bariatric surgeries that are shown to reverse diabetes, this is the most common and well-known) or the Mini-Gastric Bypass (MGB). A lot of our research has showed lower complication rates and lower risk from MGB, so we've been leaning towards that, despite far greater difficulty arranging it (due to it being available only far away, the probability of far greater difficulty with insurance covering it, and the question of how to finance it).

However, we're starting to uncover some evidence contradicting that, and speculating that some complications are not being accurately recorded, because of the unusual nature of how MGBs are done (only by a few "licensed" surgeons) means some complications might be handled at different hospitals and not connected back up to the original surgeries in reviews of post-operative results.

Nothing we've found so far is truly conclusive. The most damning criticism of MGB seems to be that there have not been any truly comprehensive comparative studies contrasting it with Roux-en-Y; Dr. Rutledge, the inventory of MGB, claims that this is true only because Roux-en-Y practitioners refuse to cooperate in such a study.

And this is typical of what we've found so far; generally when you hear physicians talking about these surgeries, you get the feeling that you're hearing their personal preferences and prejudices at least as much as you're hearing the science. Personal preference and prejudice is supposed to be the patient's job in the doctor-patient relationship; the doctor is supposed to be the one dragging the patient away from spurious reasoning to scientifically-backed results.

Hopefully when we sit down with a surgeon up at Fletcher Allen we'll be able to dig through all of this. We're trying to keep open-minded about the procedures, willing to listen to the surgeon's input while at the same time insisting it be substantiated and scientific, rather than being focused on how what they happen to do at that hospital is inevitably the best treatment. ("As far as this case is concerned I have now had time to think it over and I can strongly recommend a course of leeches.")

The final death knell of Harshlands

Today I did my weekly login to Harshlands. I don't go in to roleplay or participate anymore; all I do is keep my cart stocked for the benefit of those players who use it as part of the Tashal economy, while slowly accruing silver I will need if they ever make caravanning possible.

But I don't really play. No, I stopped that a couple of months ago, as I wrote about in the blog. There were a number of reasons. A lot of them were flaws in the game, in what it was trying to do versus what the admins were willing to let it do. Some were based on the simple unprofessionalism of the admins, my exposure to which all ran back to one act of twinkery that went unpunished and almost ruined my character last year -- that act wasn't the real issue, though, it was the hostility that it engendered in the admins towards me. I continued to pour my soul into the game, doing lots of in-character development, plus serving as a volunteer coder, hoping that one day they'd make good on their promises to make caravanning work, and hoping that the other problems could be worked around or lived with. But instead, caravanning got less viable as time went on. Most of the people I enjoyed playing with left, or had their characters die and recreated in other places, or went dormant, or simply got themselves involved in things that prevented my character from running into them. Playing got to be no fun. But I stuck it out for months until I finally stepped away... announcing I would keep my cart stocked and be ready to caravan if it ever got viable.

So today I went to stock my cart to find that it had been robbed. Again. Now, this might not seem too odd, but you have to understand the situation. It's a two-wheeled peddler's cart; there's not really room to be on it, let alone hidden inside it, and it only has "interior" rooms because of OOC code limitations -- that's how the stockroom is handled. Here's a similar cart, only much larger because it's four-wheeled:



Bolted to the cart is a sturdy wooden strongbox with a hefty lock. Inside that is a sturdy chest with a lock. There's another locked area where the goods are kept (and where revenue is stored).

The cart is smack dab in the middle of the busiest square in the entire island. The room description specifically says that the square is crowded shoulder-to-shoulder even in the middle of the night, and that the whole square is brightly illuminated with lanterns. There are several guards posted there, in addition to the peddler who works the cart.

Months ago, while my character was a struggling journeyman trying to close the gap between the incredibly poor income rate of a peddler (mostly caused by game limitations) and the huge startup costs of a caravanner, his life savings was robbed from that chest. The admins explained away this impossible act by claiming that it was done at a time when the square was emptied due to an unprecedent invasion of undead. Fair enough, except that I read about that invasion hours before it happened. Trouble is I can't prove that. The admins never admitted, and still do not admit, that there was twinkery involved -- which is funny because the players involved have admitted it was twinkish. And based on that it was handled IC, including my character paying 3000 silver (a large fortune) for lifelong protection against further robbery.

Today, he was robbed again. This time, all three locks were picked, and it's probable merchandise was also taken (no way to tell -- either it sold and the silver from the sale was taken, or it was taken, or some of both).

Now, the important thing which will escape most people's attention is that this isn't about the robbery or the silver. As I write this, the issue of whether this is a twink remains to be decided, and if it is, I might get the silver back. I can't say I'm terribly optimistic given how badly this was handled last time. And yet, the last time might force them to handle it better this time, since they got caught screwing up last time and then refusing to admit their mistake and digging themselves in deeper, so they're extra defensive now. But it doesn't matter.

See, it turns out that the responses I got to my petitions were insulting in a way that defies even my low expectations. It's so far into childish it might be intentionally playful in a way that went very wrong, but even if you grant every possible benefit of the doubt, it still ends up painfully insulting. Amongst the more infuriating insults concerns my use of OOC rather than IC methods to deal with this and everything else -- a clear suggestion that I don't count since I no longer roleplay:

And if not well that is sort of something not
to handle in character.
No, would probably be something out of character.
Best to come in and not play really.
Just use the mechanics.
And stuff like that.
And when stuff does not work fix it.
And go on using the mechanics.
Would really be better that way.
No tension of roleplay and stuff.
And no in character out of character seperation needs.
For all would be out of character.
Another good idea.
Thanks.

Of all the people to be snarky to about handling things IC and contributing to the game, they are so completely off-base to pick me. Plus they deleted the post I made on the forum about it. So what do you think the odds are that they're ever going to feel like treating me fairly, live up to their promises, and make me welcome in the game again?

A tiny part of me wants to note that I still have coder access to their box and could cause an essentially unlimited amount of harm to the game if I wanted. Luckily for them I'm very much not the vindictive sort; this post is about the meanest thing it's in me to do, and that's mostly wanting things to be aired. Besides, I would never punish the other players; they're suffering enough as it is, and if anything I want to find ways to make things better for them on the way out. (The tiny part wonders if crashing the game might not make things better for them, though; maybe being forced out of the game is the best thing for them.)

I am currently "closing up shop" in the game so that my character's departure is explained, and his assets are used to at least benefit those who remain behind, continuing what little I was able to do to add to the game for the benefit of other players. It's frustrating and angering, and yet at the same time, it's almost a relief to close the door on this chapter finally.

Though when I say "finally" I must admit that I have made provisions to undo this departure in the extremely remote possibility that things change. In the short term, that'd mean them changing their tune and coming back with a very convincing apology. If that happened (and just after monkeys flew out of my butt) I'd be able to undo my departure with minimal IC explanation needed. In the longer term, if they stepped down as admins, in favor of someone with more professionalism, I could probably explain my character's return and start afresh.

But these are both very remote possibilities. They don't feel like not closing the door, just like the chance a new door could maybe be opened someday, but not likely. I still get the sense of closure.

The subject is not the first line

I was tempted to make the title of this blog post be "Did you ever notice how..." After all, how often have you seen an email, forum or newsgroup post, blog post, etc. where the subject was something like that?

There's a reason we have a subject field separate from the body of the message. The subject or title should summarize what the body is about. Having it in a separate place enables the reader to find the items of interest to him. It allows focused searches, effective threading, and indexing of entries. Imagine what a visit to your library's card catalog would be if every book's title was just the first five words of the book!

When you simply dump the first few words of the body into the subject, you're defeating the purpose of both. You're making it harder for me to read whatever collection of messages or items your entry is in: a forum, my email inbox, a blog, whatever. And that means you're making it less likely that I'll read yours.

So use the subject or title to record the subject or title of your post, okay?

But I want to want those things!

The ideal outcome of a hypothetical weight reduction regimen would be this: I would still want and enjoy and eat all the same foods I do now, but I would be satisfied -- genuinely satisfied -- with smaller amounts, and those amounts would allow me to lose weight and end up healthier.

But what about something where the net result of the procedure was that I no longer even wanted or liked some things I now like?

Obviously, after the procedure I wouldn't miss those things, any more than right now I miss brussel sprouts or pickles. I would be perfectly content. And people who have had gastric bypass and found that formerly-loved foods are no longer desirable tend to insist that they're glad they did it; they have no regrets.

Yet the me now can't help rebel at the idea. I get so much pleasure from, say, a good New York bagel slathered with cream cheese. A surgery that made me like only a small portion of that, that'd be fine; I'd still have the same enjoyment followed by the same satisfaction. But a surgery that left me no longer desiring it in the first place... I can't help feel like I'd be losing something. The pleasure I get now from that bagel would be simply gone, with nothing to replace it.

Any argument that a post-op person gives to defuse this "concern" feels hollow: it has the ring of someone who has lost something and lost the ability to know he lost it. I don't mean to sound overdramatic, but it sounds like someone who's been brainwashed. One can't help imagining that if a later surgical development restored to them the ability to enjoy those dishes they've said goodbye to, they'd be the first to say "thank heavens, I had forgotten what I was missing!"

I can't help imagine someday a better version of the surgery coming along that is like what I originally described: you like the same things, just less of them. And those people who have already had today's surgeries will not be able to "upgrade" (and may be so "brainwashed" that they don't think they want to).

And yet, the people who've had the surgeries almost all agree that they don't regret giving up those things. And so too would I not regret them if I had the surgery. Is it foolish, petty, and self-defeating to be even concerned about it now?

Gastric bypass surgery

This weekend I had a small job I picked up through RentACoder to record a TV show and do a transcript of the show, which entailed watching it several times. The show is called Action Hero Makeover, and it turns out it's about a relatively new variation on gastric bypass ("stomach stapling") surgery, as it was performed on Gil Gerard.

If you don't know me, you should know that I'm extremely obese, with a BMI in the 75 range. Most of the typical complications and correlated illnesses, however, have not been a problem for me. I've never had high blood pressure, and my cholesterol has generally ranged from acceptable to very good (with the exception of HDL which I just can't get to go up). I've shown no signs of heart disease.

In recent years I've been diagnosed with type II diabetes. However, I've also shown that it's possible for me to control it, even without meds. I've also shown that I can fail to stay in control. This progressive failure is mostly because of my own failures of willpower, but it's certainly true that my weight contributes: it's hard to be active and exercise when my weight itself is an obstacle so often, in the form of knee pain and general soreness at even modest activity, the difficulty of getting started, the cost of equipment that can hold up to me, and the general low level of energy I have.

Generally speaking I believe that it's possible to be "fit and fat", and that the medical community has assisted in perpetrating a number of fallacious ideas about overweight, the most pernicious being that if there are poor health conditions associated with overweight, that losing weight is invariably a means to solve them.

• First, correlation in the public at large doesn't mean correlation in any individual; for instance, my lack of blood pressure problems at my size is unusual, but it doesn't hint at a hidden problem.
  
• Second, correlation isn't causation; many of the ill effects associated with overweight are effects of a common cause, not effects of overweight itself, and trying to prevent them by eliminating overweight can be like trying to avoid sickle-cell anemia by bleaching your skin.
  
• Third, even when a health problem can be reduced or eliminated by losing weight, that doesn't always mean the health effects of attempting to do so aren't worse. Though rarely publicized, the ill effects of almost all forms of dieting are well-proven, and it's clear that dieting is not only rarely effective but usually counterproductive.

That said, I wouldn't mind not being fat one bit. There are lifestyle reasons; one feels petty talking about the thousand discomforts of being in a world that refuses to fit me, and one feels like arguing with the world and insisting it accomodate me rather than "giving up" and adjusting to fit it, but despite that, it'd sure be nice to be able to fit on planes and in cars, not have to apologize every time I try to pass someone in a restaurant, and be able to buy clothes cheap and easy. And there are health reasons like back and knee pains I wouldn't mind missing.

But the best reason is to be rid of diabetes. Yes, rid of diabetes. This is something I've really thought of as impossible, and that's what really struck me about that show I was transcribing from. Before the surgery, Gil was a very out-of-control diabetic, with fasting blood glucose numbers in the 300 range; we weren't told if he was doing anything to treat it, and it's possible he wasn't because other, more serious health concerns he was dealing with would preclude most forms of treatment. After the surgery, his fasting blood glucose was in the 100 range -- entirely normal, with no diabetes treatment at all. It's commonly said that once you're diagnosed diabetic you can only be "in control" or "out of control" but you can't ever not be diabetic, but even the doctors described Gil unequivocally as no longer diabetic.

I've known about variations on "stomach stapling" for years, but they were very dangerous and not terribly effective. Before I was diagnosed diabetic, I didn't give them much thought; clearly they were a lot of risk to solve not very much. (It didn't help that my father died on the table in exactly this kind of procedure; though it probably didn't hurt as much as you might think, given that my father was never very close to me, and that I am not the kind to obsess and worry and get wrapped up in fear because of something like that.)

Even after my diagnosis, I still didn't think much about them because they still seemed too risky, and I didn't think they'd make that big a difference: maybe they'd cure the discomfort of airplane seats, but not diabetes. I always had a general sense that one day the risk would be reduced to near nil, the efficacy improved to highly reliable, and the option would become far more accessible; and then I'd have to re-evaluate. But I didn't think that day was anywhere near yet.

The show made me wonder if maybe the time is nearing after all. Dr. Rutledge's technique, Mini-Gastic Bypass (MGB), offers some very compelling advantages even over the "state of the art" techniques now being done all over the country. The risk of dying on the table is now comparable to everyday surgeries like appendectomies. Other complications are very rare for the most common procedures, but for MGB they're far lower still, almost negligible. MGB also costs a good deal less, since it's a laparoscopic technique with a recovery time measured in hours, not weeks. I'm not just reciting the TV show's points; most of these comparisions between MGB and other bariatric procedures weren't mentioned in the show. But I've been doing a bunch of reading, and MGB simply becomes a more compelling option the more I read. Not merely by comparison to other bariatric surgery options, but more generally, as something that maybe I should seriously considering doing.

However, there are two big snags.

• Requirements: All forms of bariatric surgery require you to demonstrate extensively to the surgeons that you have spent years and years sincerely trying other methods of losing weight, and failing. While I have done "diet and exercise" for years, and it's easy to show I haven't lost weight and kept it off, I would have to lie to suggest I was trying to lose weight. Apart from the discomforts like back pain and difficulty finding clothes that fit, I haven't minded my weight; it's my diabetes I have minded, and I found that my control over that and my weight were barely correlated, if they were correlated at all. I did lose weight during my "in control" years even though I wasn't really trying to; but sometimes I gained it back, and my control didn't track my weight really at all. Would my attitude towards my weight be considered by the surgeons and therapists to be "unhealthy"? Would they refuse to consider me because I hadn't tortured myself enough with diets and done enough damage to myself before coming to them? Maybe I could parley my struggle with diabetes into something, but I'm doubting that could really live up to the kind of onerous requirements I'm seeing.
  
  
• Insurance: It'd be easy to prove to an insurance company that, if someone's going to be on their insurance for a long time, it'll make far, far more sense in the long run to let them get surgery like this than to wait for insurance to have to pay for the ongoing treatment of a chronic problem like diabetes, then deal with the complications. It's a no-brainer: $17,000 now versus tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions over the course of a life. But what's this, logic, in a paragraph that started with the word "Insurance"? What was I thinking? No doubt the insurance company is hoping that my employer will change insurance companies before then, or failing that, that I'll be hit by a bus. Or perhaps they still think that everyone who is overweight is so because they're evil. Either way, they don't cover procedures like this. Could one wangle an exception based on "medical necessity"? Uncertain. But given how it took months of stress-inducing, health-eroding arguing with them just to cover a better blood sugar meter, one can't help wonder if the cost they'd exact in sheer agony wouldn't make surgery seem like recreation by comparison. This is a doubly interesting question to ask right now since our long-time primary care physician is moving away, so we don't even know who our new doctor is yet. Who knows how sie will feel about us? Or how good sie will be at dealing with the insurance company, even if sie decides this is worth fighting for?

Yet through all of this haze, the image keeps haunting me of the idea of not being diabetic anymore. If this is going to happen, there's a lot of thinking, research, planning, struggle, and perhaps outright fighting, and a lot of time, in between me and it. I guess maybe it's time to start preparing to start prepare to decide whether I'm going to start preparing to do it. Maybe.

Poor Odysseus

After several years of wandering aimlessly around my house getting into messes, Odysseus, our Roomba Discovery, has found his way back to his charging base for the last time. iRobot made me wait two weeks for a firmware upgrade that didn't help, as I knew it wouldn't -- you can't fix hardware problems by updating software. Now they are willing to do an out-of-warranty exchange for $95 which gets me a fresh new (or at least refurbished) Roomba Discovery, while Odysseus probably gets refurbished too.

Meanwhile, Telemachus, our Roomba Dirt Dog, is filling in best he can for his dad. Telemachus is made primarily for basements, workshops, garages, and decks, and has no vacuum, only sweeping. He's not nearly as good as his dad is at doing the floors. But he does well enough that Penelope, the Scooba, can mop them effectively. It gets the job done, but I am really looking forward to having a proper Roomba again.

If Odysseus is gone, what should his successor be named? It's tempting to keep the name, since it's so appropriate, and since the replacement will be identical and a refurb besides, so is it really different from if he were sent off to be fixed? Besides, using the name of one of his suitors (probably Antinous) just seems too bleak.

But then the perfect solution occurred to me: Aethon, the name Odysseus affected while he was disguised as a beggar. So it won't be him, but maybe it still will...