Home of the Soul Cookie

To everyone to whom I owe an email response: it’s coming.

As I write this, I’m sitting at a makeshift table in the Albuquerque airport, availing myself of their free wifi, waiting on a flight home that’s been delayed “at least an hour,” according to the fine Southwest folks at gate A11.

(Oh, pardon me: I have just discovered that this isn’t just an airport — it’s Albuquerque International Sunport. No word on the next outbound flight to Alpha Centauri.)

My blogging habit has been, shall we say, a bit spotty since Thanksgiving, but it was my intent to get back in the swing of things over the past week’s trip out to Clovis to spend Xmas with my family.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the bulk of this trip was spent feeling absolutely horrible. Didn’t just have The Sniffle; I had some sort of nasty stomach flu that knocked me off my ass a day into the trip and sent me to the ER in the wee hours of Christmas Eve Day.

At the time, I had no idea what was afflicting me, and my symptoms at 3 in the morning had me concerned that it might have been appendicitis. My dad very graciously drove me across town to the hospital where, after a battery of blood tests and x-rays, they made the flu diagnosis, pumped me full of pain meds, and sent me on my way.

And then I got to come back to my parents’ place and do morning updates while trying to ward off the unconsciousness the meds wanted to deliver me unto. My alternative? Call Patrick or Valli and wake one of them up to do updates. That just wasn’t something I was willing to do.

By all that is holy, how I loathe doing morning updates.

Anyway, I got updates to a bare-minimum level of completion and passed out in my chair, waking just long enough in the next few hours to move over to the hide-a-bed sofa I was sleeping on. Apart from a brief trip out to fill the prescription the ER doc had given me and to do a little last-minute shopping, I slept until about 8 the next morning (Christmas Day), completely missing the big Christmas Eve get-together my mom hosted there at the house.

I managed a few hours of nominal activity on Monday for the big family Christmas day dinner before having to retreat into my cocoon of bedding again. Tuesday, I was feeling better but still sub-par; yesterday, I felt back to normal.

So, for those of you keeping score, I managed about a day and a half of normal activity over my entire week’s trip.

*sigh*

I need a vacation.

BBC, 10 December 1981:

Mystery disease kills homosexuals

A mysterious epidemic, which has been discovered in homosexual men, is causing increasing concern in the United States.

The unknown condition, which consists of two separate diseases - a form of pneumonia and skin cancer, has been found in 180 patients in 15 states since last July.

It has claimed around 75 lives so far in the US and up to 92% of the victims are homosexual men.

The original story appears in full, juxtaposed with modern commentary about what eventually came to be known as HIV/AIDS, at the BBC website.

Jon pointed out in the comments of my last post that there’s a way for each of us to make a substantive difference today.

Since today is World AIDS Day, I thought it appropriate to quit putting off something I’ve been meaning to do for weeks: I went over to Mike Todd’s blog and clicked the “Make a Donation” button he has in the right column, to support his effort to get 1000 people to join together to donate $10 to support AIDS relief in Africa.

Why $10? Because that’s the same amount you would be giving, through Apple, if you bought a red iPod.

In his post, Mike writes:

I don’t have a clue what the profit margins are like on the iPod, but $10 doesn’t strike me as a lot of money. Let’s be realistic. It’s not. Here’s the choice: You can lay out $200, get a new iPod, and contribute $10 to a good cause. Or, you can just contribute the $10. We believe we can get 1000 people to donate $10 each. We’d like $10 from everyone in the developed world, but we’ll settle for you, and everyone you know.

I chipped in my CAN$10 - less than nine dollars US. Won’t you?

NEW YORK — A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.

Judge James Robertson, in a ruling on a suit by the American Council of the Blind, ordered the Treasury to devise a method to tell bills apart.

“It can no longer be successfully argued that a blind person has ‘meaningful access’ to currency if she cannot accurately identify paper money without assistance,” Robertson wrote in his ruling.

» Complete story (CNNMoney)

Works in the genres of science fiction and fantasy frequently employ invented curse words. Which one’s your fave? Vote in the new poll at the blog and let me know.

And if you have other favorites (many others here), let me know in the comments!

I went on a much-needed vacation to spend Thanksgiving with with my friends down in El Centro.

Before I left, I had these grand plans of how I’d keep blogging while I was down there, how I’d take a bunch of pictures, etc.

Yeah, right. Didn’t happen.

Got back in the wee hours of Monday night/Tuesday morning, and spent yesterday playing catch-up.

And now I’m back, nerfherders.

OneLook Reverse Dictionary

OneLook’s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box above and you’ll get back a list of related terms with the best matches shown first.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times the reverse dictionary has helped me find the word that’s been hiding on the tip of my tongue.

For example, plug in “back of your throat” and the first result is, appropriately, uvula.

Found this tidbit from NewScientistTech interesting:

During the middle ages, the Muslims who fought crusaders with swords of Damascus steel had an edge - a very high-tech one. Their sabres contained carbon nanotubes [...] and even nanowires.

• NewScientistTech: Secret’s out for Saracen sabres
• Wikipedia: Carbon nanotube
• Wikipedia: Damascus steel