Random Thinking

Today is the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center. You can read my blog entry about the 1993 bombing. The memorial for the six dead (right) was destroyed in the 2001 attack. Only a small fragment containing the name “John” for one of the victims, John DiGiovanni, remains. The planners of the 1993 attack are all currently in prison. I wish the same could be said about the planners of the 2001 attack.

Every Day Lasts a Year
by Richard S. Hollander

In 1986, Richard Hollander’s parents died together in a tragic car accident in NY. Among the items he inherited was a box containing letters sent from Poland, the former home of Hollander’s father. At first Hollanderignored the letters but at some point as his grief for his parents receded, he realized what he had found. These were letters from his aunts and uncles sent to his father during the the period from 1939 to 1942 from Poland. Since Hollander’s Polish relatives were Jews living in Nazi occupied Poland, the value to history of this correspondence became apparent. None of Hollander’s relatives survived the war but they live on in these letters. Dora, who found romance in the Krakow ghetto; Klara who held on through her faith in God; Genka who saw no hope but only blackness ahead; Luisa who held her optimism through it all; as well as many others letter writers.

The first part of the book tells the story of Hollander’s father fleeing Poland and escaping to the US, followed by his attempts to avoid deportation as an illegal alien. We also learn of his attempts to get exit visas for the family still in Poland. When the war breaks out, he joins the service and is sent to Germany, first to fight and later to serve as a translator. While there he finds little more about his family other that it is highly likely they are all dead.

Two essays follow that give some information about the Krakow ghetto and life within the ghetto. Then the letters follow. There is something quite haunting reading these letters, many quietly hinting at the writer’s desperate need to be rescued by their brother in America. The letters are from the grave and reading even the trivial ones can’t help but make you think more about these people who suffered and died in the Nazi killing machine. But this opens up a question that is ignored, what did happen to all of these people? Surely at least some small information could have been found, a place of execution, a hint at a year, a final word. The book doesn’t reveal if Hollander made any effort but in post-USSR Eastern Europe, surely some information, some person, something must recall one of the 20 people in Hollander’s family who died. Ignoring that I think the book is well worth reading. Just be sure to have tissues nearby.

Tags: books, review, holocaust, family in the holocaust, Every Day Lasts a Year

Sudden Sea
by R.A. Scotti

In 1938, the most powerful hurricane to ever strike the Northeast of the US hit Long Island and New England. The hurricane was completely unpredicted and the death toll reflects that fact. There were 682 dead and 1,754 injured. Every state in New England other than Maine had deaths but no state suffered like Rhode Island with 433 killed. Barrier beaches on Long Island and Rhode Island were swept clean of houses with the only survivors being those who had fled at the first sign of the storm or those who rode the roof of a broken building to the mainland.

R.A. Scotti has captured the feel for the day by letting us meet some of the people who experienced the hurricane and hearing about that day from them. She starts by introducing us to some of the children who live on the island of Jamestown, Rhode Island and some of the residents of Napatree, a barrier beach right in the path of the hurricane. The author then shifts our focus, bringing us into a discussion of the incredibly powerful hurricane and the men whose job it is to track it. And as their failures come into focus, as the hurricane is lost by the Weather Service but is still aimed at Long Island, the author brings us back to the people who will be the first to experience this beast.

This is the best part of the book. Her descriptions of how the hurricane changed the geography of the places it struck, how it changed the economy of the area, and mostly how it effected the people are all well captured. By showing us through the eyes of a few witnesses, the author gives us more than just a glimpse into that terrible day. The horror of the storm is shown through the deaths of so many adults and children. Scotti’s writing is good – journalistic – if not poetic. The pictures are well chosen to help tell the story. The pictures and maps of Napatree, for example, before and after the storm shows a beach crowded with homes turned into a vacant sand dune. The maps show a barrier beach moved, breached, and destroyed.

The end result is a well written book that tells an interesting story without piling on too much detail. At about 250 pages, the book is long enough to tell the story but not so long as to fill the book with more that the story required. If you are interested in the history of weather or the history of Long Island or southern New England, then I can easily recommend this book.

Tags: books, review, hurricane, great hurricane of 1938, Sudden Sea

This is our new laptop computer. It’s an Acer Extensa 4420. AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual-core processor (1.8 GHz, 2 X 256 KB L2 cache), 14.1″ LCD screen, 2 GB DDR2 memory, 160 GB hard drive, read/write DVD, built-in WLAN. We got it at Best Buy – very inexpensive.

The question of why we needed a new laptop has the same answer as to why I haven’t been blogging much lately. And the answer gave a good laugh to the young lady at Best Buy, who at first thought I was joking.

It has to do with the bit of evil in the picture just to the left. That is Kokie, one of our three cats. A couple of weeks ago, after using the computer in bed, I put the computer down on the floor and went to sleep. When I woke up, I discovered a laptop computer covered in urine. Since it was plugged in, the inner pieces shorted out and everything melted. Unfortunately, the cat was not electrocuted.

You might wonder how I know it is Kokie that did this evil deed. Let’s just say I have my informants and leave it at that.

Michel is now home and digging through the 15 lbs. of Hershey’s miniatures that her sister sent to her. Here is Michel after looking for (and finding) Mr. Goodbar. You can see that she still has her wristbands from the hospital.

She is feeling better each day but the recuperation is a long process. She had quite the incision in her back. Here you can see the stitches compared to a quarter.

So far Michel has reported some improvement. As the weeks go by and the post-operative swelling goes down and the nerves heal, we are hopeful that we will see big improvements.

Michel had the surgery on Thursday and according to Dr. Milhorat, it went very well. The specific surgery Michel had is called detethering. It is used to treat Tethered Cord Syndrome (TCS) which more and more doctors (especially the doctors at the Chiari Institute) think is a major cause of symptoms in Chiari patients.

TCS is when the spine is under pressure because it is being pulled down from the bottom. The bottom of the spinal cord has a tether which causes this pressure and the pressure can crush the nerves at the base of the spine and prevent good cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow. The surgery cuts this tether at the base of the spine, and thus relieving the pressure on the spine. Dr. Milhorat told me that pre-surgical CSF flow in Michel was 0.5 and that after the surgery it jumped to 3.5. He also said that when they cut the tether, Michel’s spinal cord retracted 2 inches which showed that there was a great deal of pressure pulling down on her cord.

So far Michel has said that her swallowing is better, that she feels much less like she is choking on her food. She also feels much less nauseous. As the post-surgical swelling goes down, she should see more improvement, at least we are keeping our fingers crossed.

We have gotten past this hurdle and we are hopeful that the improvements Michel feels will be enough so that she won’t need the second surgery. Dr. Milhorat sounded very hopeful when I spoke with him on Thursday and he was convinced that the surgery was the right thing to do. Michel is still in the hospital and we are hoping that she will be able to come home in another day or two.

Back in October I wrote about how our Boston Terrier, Lily Beans, had an insulinoma, a mass on her pancreas. The last few days her symptoms had been getting worse and on Saturday they were very bad. She was whining in pain at times and was having trouble breathing. Sunday morning we realized that she had come to the end and so we took her to the vet to be put to sleep.

It was very gentle at the end. The vet let us hold her while they got everything prepared. She was panting very badly and choking on her own saliva. She was calm, though, and appreciated being held. The vet gave her a sedative and her breathing quited down and her eyes closed and then the final medication went in and Lily slowly stopped breathing and then she passed on.

Lily Beans was a good dog, always gentle with everyone, and always loving. More than one person cried themselves to sleep last night.

So you have a new computer and you want to copy all of your songs over from your iPod. Seems simple enough. You hook up your iPod, open iTunes, and grab the songs and drop them into your iTunes music collection. Except it won’t drop. It gives you the red circle with the slash when you bring your music over to iTunes. Maybe import will work? Nope. You can’t import from your iPod either. So how do you get your music to your new computer? There is software that you can download from the internet and some of it even costs money but you don’t need any of it. It’s actually easy, although unsupported by Apple.

Your iPod is just like a hardrive and when you open up “My Computer” your iPod is right there. It will be listed under “Removable Disk”. When you click on it, it will open and display a few folders but none of them will be your music. That’s because your music folders are hidden. But that’s not a problem. Go to the Tools menu item and select Folder Options… and a box will open with several tabs. Select the View tab. In the Advanced Settings section there will be an option for Hidden Files and Folders. Select the Show hidden files and folders radio buttton and then hit OK.

A new folder will now be displayed named iPod_Control. Open this folder and several new folders will be displayed including one named Music. Copy this folder to your \My Music\iTunes folder under your My Documents folder on your C: drive. This could take awhile depending on how much you have on your iPod. It took about 15 minutes to get all my music downloaded to my PC.

Right click on the folder you just created and select Properties. At the bottom of the window that opens, make sure that the Hidden and Read-Only checkboxes are unchecked, hit OK, and when it asks if it should apply this to all subfolders and files, hit OK. Almost done… Now open iTunes and from the menu select Menu>Add Folder to Library. Navigate to the folder you just downloaded and hit OK and iTunes will start loading your music. A couple of minutes later and you are done. Your computer now has a copy of every song that was on your iPod.

If you use these instructions, let me know how it goes by leaving a comment.

And here is another hint of what I am working on. That is a picture of my desk. And no, buses do not normally stop at my desk.

The February issue of Fleet Maintenance magazine has their cover story about the company I work for and the technology we are developing! This will give you an idea of the really cool projects I am working on.