Black Cat in Black and White

The new phone lets me take black and white photos, as well as sepia ones: better for low-light conditions!

Mainly, though, this is a test to see if I can photoblog using Mail-to-Blogger. GoBlogger didn't work.

We'll see how it looks!

Later:

Hey, not bad! There's no way to control the size of the images, and I don't know if I can send text that includes HTML -- although I don't see why I couldn't -- but basically, the "how to photoblog from the phone" problem is solved. Cool!

A Change in the Weather

Gary and I went for a walk after dinner and actually had to wear jackets! Be still my heart! Could autumn actually be on its way?

If so, it's none too soon. A few days ago, I saw a coyote dart across one of the busiest roads in town, four lanes divided by a median. It got across the first two lanes, paused at the median, launched itself into the third lane, panicked at oncoming traffic, and then very wisely ran back the way it had come. I hope it didn't wind up being hit, and that it got home safely. It was running in the direction of our local mountain, and had probably been driven down in search of food after an exceedingly hot summer.

The last (and first) time I saw a wild coyote in town was last summer, when wildfires drove all kinds of critters off the mountain. Today, Gary and I also saw two dogs who looked feral. I probably should have called Animal Control about them, but didn't; I hope someone else will.

In technology news, Blogger lets you set up a mobile blog and then merge it with your regular one, which I'll probably attempt, since I think it's the only way to post photos from the handheld (basically, you e-mail them the photo and text, and they set it up for you).

I've also set up different ring tones for the phone and my e-mail accounts. Woo-hoo!

Today I drafted a poem on the BlackBerry memo pad, just to see if I could. This typing-with-thumbs thing gets old quickly, however, particularly for those of us who are young at heart but increasingly arthritic in the joints. If I ever do a lot of mobile blogging -- and a longish trip back East next summer may be in the works -- I'll have to invest in one of those folding Bluetooth keyboards.

That can wait for a while, though!

CapricaQuest

Yesterday, after presiding at a very successful MA defense, I took this snapshot of the flowers in my office. Then I tried to use the BlackBerry to post the photo to the blog: no luck. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

As it turned out, that was only the first of the day's frustrations with Caprica Curve, who, alas, turns out to be a much more expensive date than I originally realized. But first, the important news: My father's still home on antibiotics. Yesterday he got more moving estimates, and he's found a company he's happy with. When I spoke to him this morning, he hadn't gotten much sleep and said he felt pretty lousy. He certainly sounded it, with a terrible rattling cough. But he had enough energy for a lively debate about biomedical ethics, so I figure he can't be doing too badly!

Right. Now back to Caprica. So: it's 2:00 on the Friday before a holiday weekend, and I want to get my work e-mail synced to the new phone. I call our IT Department, thinking that they'll tell me to see some tech on campus who'll push a few buttons, and that everything will be easy.

Ha.

First, IT tells me that I have to pay a $60+ licensing fee to get my work e-mail on the phone, even though I get it for free on my home computer. And no, they don't take checks or credit cards; they need a purchase order from the English Department, and the money has to come out of a departmental account.

This is nuts, since the university's having such a huge budget crisis that the department can't even buy new toner cartridges for our printers. But I go upstairs and talk to our secretary, who's willing to fax the IPO through when I offer to pay the money to the department myself.

I hike up to the student union; the new one's abut a ten-minute walk from our building and is next to the new library. Both buildings used to be two seconds from the English Department, but not any more, and it's hotter than blazes out. But I have my sunhat. I'm set. I get cash at the student union to pay the department, and then I go to the library to meet with the tech person who'll set up my machine (and who's sweltering in a room without AC, which seems ironic for a tech person).

She gets my work e-mail synced to my phone. But when I try it, it doesn't work. It tells me that service is blocked. She makes a phone call and learns that I need a fancier data provider, an Enterprise server, but that if I call Verizon, they should be able to switch me over easily. It will be more money, but I have my state discount, right?

I go home. I call Verizon, where the perky sales rep informs me a) that yesterday's sale rep was incorrect in telling me that I get a state discount; my calling plan doesn't qualify me for one, and upgrading the calling plan would be more money than I'm paying even with the discount, and b) that the Enterprise plan is $15 more per month than the old plan was. The upshot is that I'll now be paying about $65 per month, although that's still less than I thought it would be based on the prices on the Verizon site.

Grumpy but resigned, I settle down to my next task: trying to transfer music from my laptop to the phone.

No go. It doesn't work.

I do some research and learn that I need to buy a media memory card, something I really should have been told when I got the BlackBerry. Gary thinks they assumed that everyone knows that, but I didn't.

Now really grumpy, I take a break for dinner. Then we go to PetSmart to buy catfood. Then we go to our friend Jim's house to visit his new flamepoint Siamese kitten, Petunia.

Petunia's a darling, but as you can tell, the flash on Caprica's camera makes her look like Radioactive Devil Cat. Since she's a Siamese, her eyes are actually a beautiful light blue. Despite photographic appearances, she's a very sweet kitty.

She hung out peacefully in Jim's arms for most of our visit, purring like "an idling truck," as Jim puts it. In this photo, you can see her pretty tail.

She let us pat her and didn't seem afraid of us at all. I grew up with Siamese, so spending time with her made me nostalgic for the cats of my youth.

This shot avoids radioactive-eye syndrome (by virtue of not including her eyes at all), and also lets you see the markings on her head. They'll get darker as she gets older.

Having been delighted and refreshed by our visit with Petunia, we decided to venture to Office Depot to try to find a memory card. When we got there -- it was now 8:30, and the store closed at 9:00 -- the sales rep advised us to go to the closest Verizon store, where the card could also be installed and initialized. The closest Verizon store, which also closed at 9:00, was about ten minutes away on a road we don't know well.

We managed to find it, though, and there I had my first break of the day: a 6-gig card was on sale for $25, not a bad price at all. And when I got home, I could download music without any trouble. So I now have a working iPod. Yay!

Caprica's now configured in all the important ways she needs to be, which means that I can stop fussing over her and get back to the rest of my life. Yay!

Oh, actually, there is one more glitch I'd like to iron out if possible, although it's not essential. I downloaded Google Maps, which indeed provides handy driving directions when I enter starting and ending points. But when I ask it to find my location, it consistently believes that I'm in Seattle. Does anyone have any clue what to do about this?

And on a less happy note . . .

When Gary and I got back from shopping, we had a voicemail from my sister. When I'd called her earlier at my father's apartment to thank her for the birthday gift, she told me that he'd developed a bad cough overnight -- although he didn't have a fever -- and that his home-care nurse was making an emergency visit to check him out.

The nurse thought he had the very beginnings of pneumonia, so Liz took him to the ER. I spoke to both of them there. Liz said things were going well, but that she didn't know if they were going to admit him. He said that he'd be fine, that he certainly wasn't going to be admitted, and that he was sure they'd just send him home with antibiotics. (Since he's 86 and already frail, I have my doubts about that, but we'll see what happens.) His main concern was that he didn't want me to worry too much.

Whatever's causing his cough, they caught it really early, so I'm actually not too worried. But all prayers will be appreciated! Thanks!

Later:

Well, Dad called it. They're sending him home with meds. He does have pneumonia, but it's just at the beginning stages. (Wow, that came on fast!) Evidently his doctor was debating whether to admit him: he said on paper, he'd do the admission, but my father seemed to be doing well, so instead he's going home.

I'm glad he'll get to sleep in his own bed tonight.

More

Well, it's certainly been a gala day! (By the way, I'm now blogging from my regular machine, which is certainly preferable in terms of keyboard size if it's available!)

I got home from my hospital shift to discover birthday packages from my mother and sister, even though my birthday isn't until September 7. They'd both sent me gorgeous bracelets from a wonderful Native American jewelry store near them; my mother also sent me a generous check. After I'd called to thank them, Gary and I went to the Verizon store. I thought the BlackBerry would simply cost too much to make sense, especially with monthly charges.

I was wrong. After a mail-in rebate, my mother's birthday check covers the cost of the device. Meanwhile, adding unlimited e-mail and internet to my existing phone service (which was transferred over to the Curve) only added $30 a month to the bill. And it turns out that as a state employee, I get a discount, which means that the monthly bill will be less than $50: still an extravagance, make no mistake, but a relatively affordable one, especially since our home internet costs went down when we switched to AT&T.

Best of all, Gary now has my old phone. His mother and I have been pestering him to get one; I worry about him not being able to call 911 when he's out hiking. What if he falls and breaks a leg? But Gary's phone-phobic: he doesn't like talking on them and usually doesn't even answer them when they ring. He just lets voice mail answer, and then screens the call to see if it's something he needs to respond to or if it's for me.

We explained all this to the Verizon salesperson, who said, "Okay, look, I'll give him his own number on your old phone, and I won't charge you an activation fee, and you can just put prepaid minutes on there and add more if he uses them up. How does that sound?"

It sounded great to me. Gary was still extremely dubious, but acquiesced when I insisted. (He can testify to my ability to be a nagging wife when I think something's important!) So he now has a prepaid phone that will live in his hiking pack. With luck, he'll never use it, but I feel better knowing that it's there.

I've been playing with my BlackBerry nonstop for the last few hours. It's truly a thing of wonder and beauty. I've now figured out how to get the symbols I need for HTML coding for blogging: yay! I've set some bookmarks and done some web browsing. I've taken a few pictures and deleted them because they were terrible, but that's probably because of bad lighting. I've figured out how to add new phone numbers. I've spoken to my sister on her cell, with good reception on both ends. (More about that in another, less cheerful post.) My next tasks are to figure out how to set a password on the BlackBerry, and to download my favorite songs to the phone.

To answer's Lee questions, headphones came with the phone (and I already have nice noise-canceling ones for plane trips). My laptop connects to the internet by itself, so it doesn't need the phone to do that; but the phone gives me the option of leaving the laptop at home for short trips.

I'll have to name the phone, in the grand tradition of Holly Honda, Fiona Ford, and Vera Vaio. Carla Curve?

Wait, no, I've got it! Caprica Curve! Caprica Curve, because she's a Cylon!

Wheeeee!

Blogging from My Blackberry

Yes, I now have a BlackBerry Curve! I can't seem to find the symbols I need for HTML coding, but I'm blogging!

More later, after dinner.

Fun With Technology

Our land lines went down tonight, so I (and later Gary) spent quite a bit of time on my cellphone with a kind, patient AT&T rep -- who also seemed competent, hurrah! -- to try to get them working again. We think everything's fixed now, but a tech's coming by the house tomorrow just to make sure.

This is one of those times when I really appreciate having a cellphone.

On that subject, I'm still drooling over smartphones. Verizon doesn't support iPhones, but does support CrackBerries -- er, BlackBerries -- so Gary and I will probably stop by our friendly local Verizon store sometime this weekend to check them out. Based on online reviews, I'm leaning towards a Curve 8330. If anyone has better recommendations, please let me know!

My basic requirements are: decent audio quality for both phone and music, decent battery life, camera, QWERTY keyboard, and user-friendly e-mail/internet options.
Oh, and I don't want to spend the moon.

(Can one blog from a BlackBerry?)

Thanks!

Nice Modest Needs Story

One of the things I love about Modest Needs is that they send you an e-mail when one of the grant requests to which you've contributed has been fully funded. The e-mail includes a thank-you note from the recipient.

One of these e-mails came last week. The thank-you note was warm and heartfelt, which of course made me (and, presumably, everyone else who contributed) feel good. But what touched me most was the recipient's response to the organization's standard question, "Will you consider becoming a donor yourself?"

This person is planning to give five dollars a year, "until I can afford more."

The Widow's Mite springs instantly to mind. Five bucks is some folks' daily Starbucks budget -- which is great, if you have it -- but probably represents a much more substantial sacrifice for this recipient.

Wow.

Grand Rounds Meets the Bard!

This week's edition is up, with a Shakespearean theme. Now that's what I call Literature & Medicine!

Elsewhere in medical news, I've made an appointment with a local acupuncturist (who's also an MD, and very highly regarded by a colleague who's one of his patients). I keep hearing that acupuncture helps at least some people with allergies, arthritis and depression, all of which I have, so why not give it a try?

My initial appointment was with an APN, and my friend at work said only the MD places the needles, which would mean I'd need an appointment with him, too. I called to check on this, and the scheduler explained that the APN will spend an hour with me, taking a complete history and doing various tests. Then I'll be led into the acupuncture room and the doctor will come in and place the needles.

Dang! When did I last have that much face time with a provider? Just knowing that someone's going to listen to me that carefully makes me feel good about this place already. (Now that's what I call narrative medicine!) O brave new world, that has such creatures in it!

And, amazingly, this doctor is on my insurance list.

I'll post about it afterwards -- the appointment's in two weeks -- and let you know what I think.

Good First Day

My first day of classes went well, I think. Because we were away this weekend, I'd been forced to have my syllabi completed and photocopied last week, and it certainly helped not to be running around trying to do that stuff today. And I swam before going to work, which may be one reason my energy level stayed pretty constant: I didn't have a mid-afternoon lull, and still had energy for my evening class.

I even got a little knitting done in my office today (and took some ribbing about it from people who saw me and thought I wasn't working hard enough!).

Both classes seem like good groups; my Women & Lit students, in particular, opened up to a degree that's unusual for a first day. So that bodes well for the rest of the semester.

I also met with the lone med student in my Narrative Medicine class today, for the second time, and that was really fun. She's doing some very powerful writing. Although she keeps saying she doesn't "get" poetry, she brought a poem to our meeting today that I loved, and that I'm encouraging her to try to publish.

And now I'm going to veg out and watch DVDs with Gary. And knit.

The Hotel of Uncertainty

This is my sixth post today: jeez! I'm posting so much because I couldn't post while we were in San Francisco, even though our hotel has free internet that's worked for me in the past, because the internet was highly fickle. Sometimes the network didn't even show up on the network list. Sometimes it did, but you couldn't connect. Sometimes you could connect for a few minutes but then it kicked you off. Sometimes it stayed connected but wouldn't let you read e-mail; other times, you could read e-mail but not send it. I never had any luck connecting to Blogger, even when I carried the laptop across the street (we were in an annex) to the main hotel lobby, where I thought the signal might be stronger and more reliable. Nope. The strength was still "very low," even there.

This situation was, in a word, nerve-wracking.

But it wasn't nearly as bad as our struggles with our key cards. We've stayed in a lot of hotels, and we've used a lot of key cards. We've never had one stop working on us. This trip, we'd asked for two key cards, and both of us repeatedly -- I'm talking several times a day here -- had to get new ones, because the cards would just stop working. They wouldn't let us in the annex door, or they'd get us into the building but wouldn't work on our room door. And every single time we trekked across the street to get a new card, the front desk clerk told us cheerfully that this must be our fault: we must have kept the key next to our credit cards or our cellphones.

We kept the key cards the same place we've always kept key cards, and we've never had anything like this kind of trouble before.

Meanwhile, for some reason we only got one washcloth a day, although there were lots of towels. And sometimes we couldn't get a dial tone on the room phone.

So we're not going there again, which is too bad. For a while, it was our favorite place to stay in the city, because it was inexpensive and had free parking and free internet. Which worked. But the quality has, shall we say, gone downhill.

(The hotel's the Ramada Limited on Seventh Street, for anyone planning a trip to San Francisco. Obviously, we no longer recommend the place.)

SF Trip, Photos I: People

Here's Gary at a little restaurant where we ate lunch. Isn't he handsome?

I guess I should have asked him to take a picture of me, but he's much more photogenic than I am, so it's probably just as well that I didn't!

Here are David, on the left, and Danny, on the right, holding hands after the wedding. A friend of their got a Justice-of-the-Peace-for-a-Day certificate so he could marry them; he's standing behind him. The composition of this picture isn't the greatest, but it was difficult to get a good shot, because everyone else was angling with their cameras, too! The important thing is that it was a lovely wedding, and we all had a great time.

We wound up sitting at David and Danny's table at the restaurant (there was no seating plan), although we were at the other end of a long table from them, and didn't get to talk to them during the meal. That's Danny at the end, David next to him, and their officiant -- whose name escapes me -- next to David.

Here are the two grooms with the two best men. The fellow with the beard is my friend Larry Lustig from college; Larry, his wife Laura, David and I were all in the campus science fiction society. Gary and I hadn't seen Larry and Laura since our own wedding, so we had a great time catching up. They brought their two young daughters and their niece; their oldest girl had asked what kind of wedding cake David and Danny would serve, and when Larry said he didn't know, she rolled her eyes and said, "Well, okay, but what kind of cake do they serve at traditional gay weddings?" Larry told that story during his toast, and everyone laughed.

There was a lot of talk of new traditions at the wedding. (The cake was chocolate, and excellent, for anyone who's interested.) Unfortunately -- and infuriatingly -- there's a ballot measure to make gay marriage unconstitutional in California: if it passes in November, weddings that have already taken place will be legal, but there won't be any new ones. In lieu of wedding presents, David and Danny asked for donations to the fund fighting that ballot measure.

After the reception, Larry and Laura took the kids for a walk on the beach. They were giving me and Gary a lift back to our hotel, but because the weather was cold and because we were very full, we elected to wait for them in the museum below the restaurant, which had nifty murals. I sat and knitted, and then I looked up and saw, opposite me, a mural of a woman knitting! How perfect is that? (I guess technically this photo should be in my third photo post, the one devoted to pictures of things, but it's a painting of a person, so I'm letting it slide.)

SF Trip, Photos II: Places

I love Ocean Beach in San Francisco. It's so huge, and it's usually so uncrowded (of course, we were there on Friday, and more people -- and their dogs -- show up on weekends). Just smelling the sea air does me good.

Here's one looking down the beach. It was one of those misty moisty days when the sea and sky blend, when you feel like you're wrapped in a cocoon of surf and seabreeze. The only problem with Ocean Beach is that it's difficult to recognize "exits." We always access the beach from Judah Street and walk for a while in one direction before heading back. On the return trip, all the little paths up to the street look alike, so we inevitably wind up leaving the beach too soon and walking on the sidewalk for a while. That's fun too, though, because you get to watch people on bikes and parents pushing strollers.

Yeah, so I got a little lazy in the landscape picture department. I could have taken pictures of the huge hills our friend Larry drove us (and his wife Laura, and their two daughters and their niece) up and down. The children were thrilled! I could have take pictures of the lovely park where the wedding was held.

But I didn't. I just took pictures of the beach, because I love it.

SF Trip, Photos III: Things

I call this one "Found Still Life." We found it on our beach walk on Saturday. The weather was cool and cloudy, but if anything, that was better for taking photographs. I've become very fond of our little digital camera, although I can't claim to be a great photographer!

Here's a slightly less lovely found still life: Seaweed with Jellyfish. It must be jellyfish season, because there were zillions of them all over the beach. They were the clear jellyfish, and I don't think those sting too badly, but I wasn't about to handle them to try to find out.

I love how this stick is reflected in the wet sand. There were a lot of birds on the beach, and I tried to get some photos with the birds reflected in the sand, but they were too quick for me and kept flying away. We also met various adorable dogs, but I didn't take pictures of them.

Here's another found still life, Driftwood with Waves.

After our walk on the beach, we went to the Asian Art Museum, which allows photography on the second and third floors. This sculpture of a dog makes me laugh every time we go there, so I thought I'd take a picture of it this time.

I'm also very fond of this hilarious duck vase. Gary and I discovered that we both like the unusual, unexpected things in the museum, rather than the items that look like every example of Asian art you've ever seen. The main museum exhibit was of Treasures from the Ming Dynasty, and the stuff was beautiful, but to me, it also seemed stereotypical, so it left me cold. All the Ming vases look like every knockoff of a Ming vase you've ever seen in a gift shop, you know? (I know they're infinitely valuable, but I'm not an art historian, so they have no hold on me.) Also, while I admire Buddhism, gallery after gallery of Buddha statues got to be a bit much.

We loved Japanese bamboo basketry, though, and also the Korean textile exhibit. The museum's having a show of Islamic art that starts in a few weeks, and Gary and I both love that stuff, so we're going to try to make it back to the city so we can see it.

Harley's Okay!

Our vet left a voicemail message saying that Harley's bloodwork looks good: the kidney values are the same as they were the last two times, which means it's just an individual eccentricity on his part. She's going to keep doing bloodwork every 6-8 months just to make nothing changes, but for the moment, he has a clean bill of health.

No special diet! No subq fluids! Hip hip hurray!

Change of Shift

In the late-links-are-better-than-none department, I'm pleased to link to the most recent Change of Shift, the twice-monthly nursing blog carnival.

Happy reading!

All Kinds of Stuff, In No Particular Order

1. My father and Fran got the apartment! Now we begin the nerve-wracking process of two people moving from two different states into the same small space. They probably won't be here for about two months, but there are lots of logistics to be worked out in the meantime.

2. This week's edition of Grand Rounds is up. Happy reading!

3. Speaking of medicine, yesterday I flew down to Vegas to teach my narrative-medicine class to some third-year students. It was great fun, and two of them are now interested in my fourth-year NM elective (and one person came away from the class with an interesting idea for a research project). So I'm pleased with how it went.

4. Also speaking of medicine -- veterinary, this time -- Harley had bloodwork this morning to see if he's developing kidney disease (his bloodwork has seemed to indicate that he might be, but it's borderline and might just be normal for him, so they've been rechecking his blood every six months). Please keep your fingers crossed for good results!

5. Yesterday in Vegas, my friend Marin showed me her iPhone, which is a thing of beauty and splendor, and for which I developed instant and total technolust. Gary and I talked about my getting myself one for my birthday, but reality set in when I started checking the numbers: on top of the hefty purchase price for the unit, the monthly charge ranges from $70 to $130, and that's way too much to pay on top of our other bills. (Plus, battery life seems to be a problem with these gizmos.) So I'll stick with my modest little cellphone for now. I'm sure that the units will become more reliable and that prices will come down, but I can wait until that happens.

6. Tomorrow we leave for the wedding in San Francisco. It should be a fun trip!

7. Classes start Monday. Eeeep! I think I'm ready, but I suspect I'll have my share of teaching-anxiety dreams this weekend.

I think that's all the news. I may blog over the weekend -- I'm certainly taking the laptop -- but if I don't, I hope everyone has a great few days!

That'll Wake You Right Up

A very large bird just crashed into my study window and fell stunned to our deck. When I raced downstairs, I found a red-tailed hawk (I think; they're the most common around here) rousing itself and looking around before it flew away.

Beautiful animal. I wish I'd had my camera.

The cats were going nuts, natch.

Three More Crumbs

I've always been much more generous with time than with money, but the Modest Needs project has energized me. So, with Gary's approval, I'm now making the same size monthly donation to Doctors Without Borders (in honor of my father, who feels the injustice of global poverty acutely), The Humane Society of the United States (in honor of my mother, who loves animals), and First Book (in honor of Gary's mom, who works in the children's room of her local library and leads writing workshops for the kids).

These are pittances -- I'm nowhere close to anything resembling, for instance, a tithe -- but it's more than I was doing before. And I hope to increase the amounts a little bit every year.

And crumbs, of course, can do a lot.

Money Where My Mouth Is

I'm delighted to report that I'm now a registered donor at Modest Needs, and have made a modest monthly pledge. The cool thing about monthly pledges is that the organization has matching funds, so you're effectively contributing twice as much money. You can either have them put the money where they think it's most needed, or decide which applications you want to help fund, and how much. There's a huge array of selection criteria: state, type of request (individual, social worker, agency), type of need (truly vast list here!).

I've already helped fund requests for two disabled families, and I gotta say, it feels good. Oh, and while maintaining complete anonymity, Modest Needs tells you household composition (how many adults and kids), whether the recipient is eligible for other assistance, what percentage of household income the family earns, and whether they're below the poverty line.

Check it out! And consider donating! Even a dollar a month can do much good.