I don’t know what data they base their risk on but it sure seems to me that someone is either trying to make a lot of money or they don’t have a good idea of what their risks are. The bottom line is that if you are a NRA member you can buy insurance to cover lawyer and liabilty costs if you use your firearm in self defense. For a $100K benefit it cost $165/year and for a $250K benefit it costs $254/year.
Saturday we went for a hike near Helmer. Xenia put on her elf ears and her corset and other clothes to make her look like an elf. Just to bug her I keep telling her she the pointy ears made her look like a Vulcan. It was a nice walk and I took lots of pictures of my little Vulcan.
Sunday I shot in a Lewiston Pistol Club IPSC match. The results aren’t out yet but I suspect I won. I did very well in two stages and “pretty good” in the other two. Some of my biggest competitors had problems in one or more stages and probably put themselves out of the running. I took lots of pictures and put them on the web. In the rifle match I came in last though. I really need to practice IPSC rifle stuff a LOT more. I can start by doing dry firing a bunch. There were a lot of people at the match and it wasn’t organized as well as it could have been and it ran very late.
When I got home from the IPSC match Barb and I went for a walk. When we came back I started working on cleaning out the garage which I was supposed to do much earlier. I just barely started when Kim called and said she was coming over to say hi and her friend Spunky wanted to play a game of chess with me. They came over and I stomped on the poor kid. He said he couldn’t get very many people to play him and none of them were very good players. I thought maybe he knew how to play but I knew it was going to be a push over after he made his very first move (he moved his knight to king’s rook three). As I told Xenia I could only think of about two other moves that would have been worse for a first move. He was very polite and seemed to be a nice enough kid. He said it was the first time he had a good game since he played his science teacher. I told him I was home on weekends and I would be glad to play him again. If he comes back I’ll give him some pointers after the game.
Xenia and I put finished off getting all recycling stuff to the center then went to a move, Alien vs. Predator. The best thing about the movie was the line in the preview, “Whoever wins, we loose.” It wasn’t a bad movie. It just wasn’t that good. It wasn’t entirely consistent with the other Alien movies which bugged me some. But I did like what they did with one female character. She is putting a pistol in her holster and the lead character in the movie asks, in a disapproving voice, if she thinks she is going to need that (they think they are just going to visit a pyramid site under the Antarctic ice cap). The woman with the pistol says something like, “I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Just like condoms.” Very cool. Handguns portrayed as a protective tool. Of course she does need it – but against the alien beasts and the predators it doesn’t do much good.
Today Barb and I are going for a hike on Kamiak Butte. Maybe look for a geocache.
Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer was arrested in Japan on Tuesday. I used to play a lot of chess. That was pretty much all I did in high school and the first year or so of college. Bobby Fischer won the world championship in ’72 (I think) when I was very much into the game. I feel a fair amount of attachment to him for what he did for chess. It makes me sad to read stuff like the following:
Mr. Fischer’s legal troubles date back to 1992 when he emerged from hiding to play a highly publicized match against Russian Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia, then at war with Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Mr. Fischer won the competition, earning a prize of more than $3 million, but he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for violating United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing the match there.
…
“I think the U.S. is not going to exist much longer,” Mr. Fischer said. “I think everybody is going to be surprised at just how soon the U.S. collapses and the U.S. becomes history.”
In other such interviews, Mr. Fischer has praised the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Barb and I were talking the other day about how famous people are often strange. She was reading a book on John Lennon and asked, “Does becoming famous make people strange or is it that only strange people become famous?” My answer was, “I don’t know. But my hypothesis is that in order to be famous most people will have to be ‘different’ in some way. Smarter, greater motivation, extrodinary talent, something like that. Whatever it is that made them different may also have a tendency to make them strange. And of course there are a fair number of examples of people that appear to be ‘nice’ and manage to handle fame fairly well. But you are correct, it does seem like there is some sort of correlation.”
Bobby Fischer is possibly the greatest chess player that has ever lived and it’s possible that whatever it was that made him such a good player also made him more than a little bit strange.
I donate blood on a fairly regular basis and almost never have any problems. A couple of donations ago I was approached by someone recruiting for platelet donors. They asked to take a sample of my blood for testing, I agreed, and they called me back a few weeks later to say I was a good candidate. Last night I did my first donation. Barb wants it to be my last.
I’m pretty sure the person doing my poking and running my machine was fairly new at this. Even though the needles are smaller than those used when donating blood when she put the first one in my right arm it hurt quite a bit more than it usually does when donating blood. After a few seconds it felt better and we proceeded. The one in the other arm went fine. As soon as she started up the machine I felt a sharp pain in my right arm. I informed them and she stopped the machine and had this “deer in the headlights” look on her face. Another person came over and looked at my right arm and said the needle had missed my vein. The second person offered to let me go home or she could use a different vein. I said go ahead and use the second vein. That seemed to go fine for a few minutes then I started sweating profusely and my stomach and head started feeling funny. I told my attendant and she had the same expression but seemed to know what to do. She turned off the machine again then she and the other person pulled the blanket off my lap and legs (most people get cold during the procedure), put cold packs on my forehead and neck, and asked me to take deep breaths. The one who knew what she was doing explained that the pain from the improper needle insertion caused this reaction from my body. The body drops the blood pressure in an attempt to reduce the risk of “bleeding out”. The good thing is that this usually only happens once, after recovering in a few minutes it is very unlikely to happen again. I asked if it was mild “shock” but she said it wasn’t, just a drop in blood pressure. I’m not so certain. I suspect it was shock. The symptoms all seem consistent. Anyway, after a few minutes I started feeling better and they restarted the machine. They had told me to boost my calcium input prior to donating and I drank extra milk. But they insisted I needed to take calcium supplements because the anti-coagulants would bind with the calcium in my blood and since calcium is used in nerve conduction I would start having symptoms such as tingling in my lips and generally have problems. I took the supplements they offered but a few minutes after sweating session I started the tingling in my lips. I reported it and the one who knew what she was doing said the machine had just gotten up to full speed and that was the reason I was just experiencing it. She adjusted the machine and the symptoms subsided some. Two and a half hours after I came in I was done and they removed the needles and put bandages on my wounds.
As I drove back to the house I did not feel normal. It wasn’t the light headed feeling I sometimes feel after donating blood, it was different. I was tired and drained. My mind wasn’t working up to full capacity either. I wasn’t as alert and aware of things. I was glad I only had to drive a mile or so. I drank another large glass of milk and went straight to bed.
I’m feeling much better today. I hope my aerobics class goes okay tonight. Blood donation makes my aerobics rougher. I probably will donate once more to see if thing go better if they don’t it will be my last donation of platelets. My next blood donation is next Tuesday.
Sunday Barb and I dropped Xenia off at Ross Point Camp where our little witch risked being burned at the stake or being drown. We continuted on to Missoula where we spent the night. Monday we hiked around Lolo Hot Springs then continued on to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs. It is about a mile from the road and it was a nice walk through the woods to it. We took a few pictures with my new digital camera which generally turned out well.
Barb and I had a major meltdown on Friday night. It lasted well into Saturday. What finally got us out of it was that I realized she really wasn’t understanding me. She was trying, but just COULD NOT understand what I was saying. My words would be translated in her mind into something other than what I was saying. I did not realize this until I asked her to repeat back to me my words — a simple five or ten word sentence. She could almost do it, but not quite. A minute later the words were gone. She literally could not understand me. As I started exploring this with her I realized that a tremdous amount of stress in our otherwise wonderful relationship was due to this communication problem. And it works both ways. She would say things that I didn’t understand and she was completely baffled as to why I didn’t understand. I worked out some techniques to reestablish communication once I have detected that a transmission error has occurred. By Tuesday I had the tools working pretty good and had a couple chances test them out. Here is a good example of fixing an error in her understanding me:
The phone rings. I see from the caller ID it is someone she knows and the call must be for her. She answers it and says a few words and hangs up. I ask, “What did he say?” She says, “Nothing.” I know that literally speaking (which is how I am) this is not true. He must have said something to her. But she didn’t understand that I wasn’t interested in a summary of the conversation I wanted the details. Rather than escalating and yelling “He did too say something, WHAT DID HE SAY?” I said, “What were his words?” She said, “Oh, …ummm … I said, ‘Hello’. He said, ‘Hello’, I said, ‘Joe is here and will leave soon, can I call you back?’. He said, ‘Yes, that would be fine. I’ll talk to you later.’ I said, ‘Good-bye’. He said, ‘Good-bye’.”
I was thrilled! Previously that would have escalated into a fight as I demanded more and more insistantly that she tell me what he said and she would keep saying that he hadn’t said anything. I had to halt our conversation to tell her what had just happened. She hadn’t even realized that we had just avoided another fight over nothing but a communication problem. Another incident from Tuesday when I didn’t understand what she said at first:
We were talking about our (relatively) new table and chairs. She said, “These chairs are so solid that even Jamie can’t break them.” Jamie is our 19 year old son who is 6′ 3” and weighs about 250 lbs and isn’t careful with the furniture. What she said wasn’t literally true. Jamie if he deliberately tried to could break the chairs, but he wasn’t likely to in everyday use. I detected that what she said was not true and my strongest impulse was to tell her that it wasn’t true. It took real effort to not say anything. I struggled for a bit and realized that it was the communication problem again. She said something that didn’t accurately represent what she meant. It was close enough in the way her mind worked and she knew that if Jamie wanted to he could deliberately break them. So in my mind I corrected the ‘broken’ statement and replayed it, just in my mind, “These chairs are so solid that even Jamie can’t break them during normal use.” It worked. I didn’t have this uncontrollable urge to correct her and have us get into a fight over me constantly nitpicking everything she says.
Here is an example where neither of us is understanding what the other is saying:
I ask if she has taken the film in to be developed. She says “I had a busy week.” I say “I’m sorry to hear that. So did you take the film in or not?” She, seeing that I didn’t understand her first answer tries to explain more clearly. She says, “I had to work extra hours because Walter was on vacation. Joy had a dentist appointment and I had get snow tires put on my Jeep.” and it goes on for a minute or more as she tells me all the details of her busy week. I keep expecting to hear something about the film, but I hear about the weather and the bad roads, her schedule and the taxi service for the kids and dealing with her mom in the nursing home. I ask, “Why can’t you answer my question?” She says “I did!!!”. “But I didn’t hear it. It’s just a yes or no question.” “I can’t give you a yes or no answer. I have to tell you all the background information.” “FINE!!! You just HAD to give me all the background information. I’ve got it! NOW WILL YOU TELL ME THE ANSWER TO MY QUESTION?????!!!!!”
I suspect some people, Barb will say 99%, say I should be able to figure out the answer (the answer is “No”, for those 1% of people like me). But it’s not at all clear to me. She has given me additional information that is apparently relevant to my question. But what she has done is increase the ambiguity. Perhaps she is telling me that she dropped the film off but didn’t have time to pick it up. Perhaps she is telling me someone else dropped it off (I asked if SHE dropped the film off, not just IF the film was dropped off). The more information she gives me the more possible answers there are. In her mind the more information she gives me the more clear the answer is. Simultaneous with her making the issue more ambiguous for me I make the issue more ambiguous for her. I give her less and less information trying to make it very specific and simple for her to answer. If I had given her more information then she would have understood the question. I should have said, “I’m going to the mall. If you haven’t taken the film in yet, I will.” By giving her less information and showing some irritation she interprets things in a completely different way that what I intended. In her mind I’m mad at her because she didn’t take the film in. Which was never true. But by the time the conversation is over she cannot possibly believe anything except that. And I cannot believe anything other than she is deliberately trying to avoid my question. Both of us are really pissed at the other. With my new understanding I can probably correct the commuication error without the anger on either side.
Barb is pretty happy with things too. I don’t think she really understand why I can’t understand her sometimes. At this point I’m having to do all the work to correct the communication errors but I don’t care. I’m so incredibly thrilled to be able to communicate with her. And I’m reevaluating a whole bunch of things that have happened over the years. So many of them are related to this relatively simple communication problem. We each have blind spots where we don’t really get what is being said and unfortunately I think her blind spot is right in the middle of where I am the most comfortable and vice versa. I’m having to work to understand her and to change to get her to understand me. But that’s okay. It’s so much better than before.
Last night at aerobics class I realized there were other communication errors that I was having with the instructor. With my new tools I recognized what happened but I still don’t know how to fix them. Here is the story on that:
One of the moves we do involves either doing it alternating off of each side of the step or multiple times off the same side of the step. If alternating the instructor will give us a count “Two“ or “Eight“ or something like that. If off the same side it will be twice and she will say “Double“. She said “Two“ and I did it off alternate sides consistent with what she said, but she and everyone else in the class did the “Double“. She saw that I was out of synch and thought back and realized she had said the wrong thing. She looked around, realized everyone else was doing the same as she and even as I struggled to get back in synch with them told me I might as well do it the same as everyone else even though that wasn’t what she had said.
What is going on is that I was getting all my cues directly from her words. I watch her feet to keep time and to learn new moves but when actually executing things I rely on her words for what to do next. The others in the class are probably picking up on other things such as knowing what comes next because we have done this same sequence before or because they are reading her body language better than I am to know what is about to come next. There are other examples of this that happen on cosistent basis because the instructor always gives the verbal command late between these two different moves. I mess it up every time. It doesn’t matter that much if I can’t correct that error. But it’s really cool that I now know how the errors are occuring. I am very literal with words and they override other data sources. Most other people are not. This joke illustrates the concept:
Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?”
The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.”
The second engineer nodded approvingly, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”
Life with Barb takes on a whole new meaning now. I’m giddy and thrill to hear her talk. It’s like a little orgasm each time I catch and correct a communication error. If I can do that without making her feel like I’m blaming her for all the errors (which they are not) life with her is going to be very very good.
Yesterday was my parents 50th Wedding anniversary. We had a get together at my brother’s house. Lots of relatives and some of the neighbors showed up. Everyone seemed to have a good time.
Afterwards my son James and I went out to the new explosives magazine to do a little bit of work on it and check on how the roof was holding up to the snow load. Everything seemed to be fine.
Barb, James, Xenia and I went to the movie 50 First Dates after we got back. Some of the humor was questionable in the first half of the movie and neither Barb nor I were very amused, but the second half of the movie was good and we ended up liking the movie as a whole.
Barb’s brother and sister in-law (Dow and Katy) were supposed to come in from Chicago tonight. But poor weather back east is going to keep them out until tomorrow. Sister Susan from Sacramento was supposed to ride from Spokane here with them. So she is going to be stuck in Spokane until they get in about tomorrow noon. And we are supposed to get up to three inches of snow here.
Xenia called from school today and said she was sick. I picked her up and brought her home. Said she is the Queen of Snot. Lots of sneezing. Hope we don’t all get it and give it to all our guests.
I got a call from Barb today. She was pretty upset. The nursing home where her mother, Joy, lives was audited by the state of Idaho and was told they have too high a percentage of patients that have railing on their bed. Barb’s mom was one of the residents that would have their railings removed. Joy has fallen out of bed three times and in one of those falls broke her hip. A railing seems to be more than just a good idea, but the state has some sort of quota system and Joy was going to pay the price. Barb called the state inspector and was told, “You are very hostile. Calm down.” Barb managed to get some of the anger out of her voice but she still expressed her view of what the inspector should do in regards to the stupid regulations. The inspector told her that maybe her mother could have her bed on the floor instead of having a railing. For some reason this helpful suggestion was not received with as much enthusiasm as might have been expected. Another suggestion was that we take her out of the state licensed nursing home. This is actually a rather good suggestion if it wasn’t for the fact that the state takes so much of our money in taxes that we cannot afford private care for her. We could have provided far better care for her if our tax rate was 1/2 of what it currently is.
I explained this is the sort of thing that happens with government “provided” anything. They take our money from us because they know how to spend it better than we do. They then spend it according to the whims of the “central committee” and the central committee in their infinite wisdom will come up with rules such as what we are experiencing in this case. It happens all the time. It’s not just health care, it’s nearly everything the central committee does.
Vote Liberatarian, the party of principle.