Car accident

This afternoon I've visited a car accident victim, a young woman engineer working with me for several years. She was driving normally on highway in late afternoon and a car illegally turned and hit her on the driver's side. Her spine was crushed. The other driver, an illegal immigrant does not have insurance and State of Colorado refused to prosecute him and just deported him. It is shocking and heart-breaking to see such a vital, smart young lady in pain, in hospital bed, cannot move and possibly will be paralyzed for life. I was quite emotional visiting with her and some of her siblings. Her life has changed for ever.

Adverse possession of land in Boulder, Colorado

Bob Greenlee, a Boulder, Colorado City Council for 16 years and served the last two years as mayor wrote a column re. adverse possession of land in the local "Daily Camera" newspaper a couple of weeks ago. I excerpted part of Bob Greenlee's Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007 column to summarize the controversy. 

"[Bob Greenlee] wrote about a rather disturbing adverse possession case affecting a portion of Don and Susie Kirlin's property that Judge James Klein gave to former district court Judge Dick McLean and Edie Stevens. I had no idea what a firestorm my describing this situation would stir up. I'm gratified that so many people were as disturbed by this ruling as I was... The facts still seem pretty clear and undisputed: One neighbor [the McLean and Stevens, both lawyers] trespasses on a neighbor's [the Kirlins] property for over two decades and then claims they not only have a "right" to do so but sue the rightful owners of the trespassed property in order to actually claim it as theirs. Many attorneys apparently agree that the case will likely not be reversed if appealed. 

It was then revealed that McClean and Stevens asked the court to award them court costs and attorney fees. I think this can be described as adding insult to injury. The whole thing is still hard to believe, although I have no reason to think there's some other motivation driving this matter. One of the truly disturbing things about this situation is that it may bring further discredit to the courts and the legal profession. Sure, there's such a thing as adverse possession — and many people have pointed out it's a rather historic part of our common law heritage. 

One can justify its existence because over the years various property boundaries involving thousands of acres of ranch and farmland may not have been properly surveyed, staked or adequately documented. A fence here and there may have inadvertently gotten built where it shouldn't have been. An old barn or outbuilding might have inadvertently ended up a few feet off a boundary line. Things like this happen all the time. The essential difference is that many of those transgressions were largely inadvertent; not knowingly manipulated. It's rather apparent what happened in this case. 

Whenever the courts and judicial decisions appears to extend beyond the boundaries of reasonable or justifiable behavior, it's a travesty if for no other reason than how such a perversion impacts a person's acceptance and respect of our legal system and its ability to render justice. Respect for the law is critical in a free society. Whenever there are instances when common sense seems to be absent — particularly on the part of those of us who don't believe government always respects personal property rights — we become more suspicious if not somewhat paranoid. 

When we read about government taking away a person's property by decree or by eminent domain or by adverse possession, some of us tend to get rather exercised. In addition, when I wrote about this situation, I had no idea how often this seemingly benign application of the law has affected so many property owners in one way or another. Several people have shared their own stories that involved claims of adverse possession and purported government "taking" of their lands by questionable means, including the imposition of a variety of government mandates that don't allow certain things to happen because of claimed health, safety and welfare concerns. 

The final chapter in this unfortunate situation has yet to be written." There are lots of things in our society which are not illegal but surely are unethical and immoral. If I've had sex with former judge McLean's wife for the last 18 years without his knowledge it would not be entirely illegal but sure as hell is immoral and unethical. I hope that the old judge and his lawyer wife settle this adverse possession of their neighbors' land and return it to the rightful owners."

Homelessness and compassion fatigue

I ride my bicycle past many homeless folks every morning. It's early morning and they have been awake for some time, congregating at several spots along the bike path. Some smoke; others telling stories, jokes and laugh. Some would be yelling, spitting at no one or nothing in particular. There are abandoned trash, dirty clothes, styro foam cups, take out containers near where they stand, sit, lie or strewn alongside the bike path near the creek. 

Loners prefer sleeping on the grass away from the crowd. They would be preparing their panhandling signs for the day. All smell bad. Students on foot, bicyclists, and runners mostly ignore the homeless since their compassion is overloaded. I wonder why these people do not get the jobs that the illegal aliens who do not speak English as well and with no legal status are doing.

Fourth of July Morning Hike

Decided to start the 4th off with an early morning hike before the sun was too fiercely blazing. Ate a good breakfast of cereal with fresh blueberries, arranged our hiking paraphernalia and off we went with our constant sidekick Sheba. She was so excited and happy to be going on a surprise walk. Right off the bat, she did her business in the middle of the road, two little tootsie roll turds. Then she was off prancing down the street, barking her head off. 

She was able to walk all the way to the park since it was a little cooler this morning. Then she wanted into her doggie pouch. We took a little breather halfway up near a big rock with a gorgeous 360 view. I mentioned that this is where I would like my ashes spread once I have departed this good ole life. Then upward we trudged. Once we reached the top of the hill, Sheba was out and on her little hooves hiking away. To spur her on, I encouraged her to look for mousies. This always gets her excited. We tried a new trail for a short distance, then decided to go a bit longer than we did last week. Many people were out enjoying the pleasant weather and the holiday. Also lots of doggies. 

We passed a woman with two dogs. One dog was afraid to cross the wooden bridge. She told us to go on past her. The hardest part of the hike was the first part which was uphill all the way. Then it was pleasant and easy walking. We did a total of 2 hours and were back home before 10:00. A great way to start the 4th.

Terrorist attacks in England

I have much admiration for the English sensibility and stoicism. It is sad to watch yesterday and today's terrorist events unfolding in England.

May 29, 2006 - Return home

[Note: This post is for a past event.]

We returned home yesterday evening after spending 4 nights in London.
London is a very livable city with lots to see and taste. We walked around the city
quite a bit and I got big blisters on my toes. We took a one-day tour to visit
Oxford, Stratford (the birthplace of W. Shakespeare) and Warwick a
well-preserved English's Middle-Age Castle.

May 21, 2006 - Venice

[Note: This post is for a past event.]

We took the wrong train yesterday afternoon; instead of jumping into
the high speed EuroStar train from Firenze to Venice (a 3 hours ride)
we rode a different train the opposite direction to Rome. My only excuse was
that we were in a hurry: the very short - couple of hours - Italian-style railroad
strike was over and we had to hurry to catch our train. We managed
to get to our hotel in Venice at about 1 am dead tired. We just
climbed into bed and was attacked by a couple of mosquitoes: I was
glad that I took the insect spray with me! One should remember this if
ever planning to travel to Venice.

Venice is as crowded as Rome. It is sad to see such a glorious city
almost abandoned and decayed. Only parts of Venice do now have
residents. We walked the back streets this morning and had a wonderful
brunch of Italian panini, coffee and fresh grapes. The table next to
us sat a couple from Australia and we had a good time chatting with
them.

The San Marco piazza had thousands of pigeons which are so used to
people that they climb on their heads and arms begging for foods. The
city is going through a major renovation so hopefully it will continue
to live on for another 500 years.

We are off to London tomorrow to return home so Ciao for now.

May 21, 2006 in Cinque Terre

[Note: This post is for a past event]

We were in Cinque Terre. It is a beautiful, interesting Italian region.
We hiked really hard yesterday for about 3 hours up the mountain
to a height of about 1000 feet.

The Mediterranean sea breezes helped cooling the hot and muggy air
quite a bit. Our feet still feel the blistering sores from yesterday. The day before we
were in Sienna. It was very hot and humid even in the shade. The train
rides were exciting listening to the simultaneous chatting of the
Italians without understanding a word of the conversations. The
Italians seem able to understand continuous and simultaneous
conversations without any problem.

We will be traveling to Venice tomorrow. It will be a long (about 7 hours)
train ride since we have to backtrack through Firenze.

May 17, 2006 in Italy

[Note: This is for a past event]

We took the high speed EuroStar from Rome to Firenza yesterday.
The 90 minutes train ride was interesting; we watched several older
European couples arguing quite passionately about something. They went
on for the most of the train ride until a conductor came by with an
intepreter. We still did not know what it was all about except that
they showed their Romanian passports to the conductors.

We checked in to the Degli Orafi hotel. It is about a hundred feet
from the Vecchio bridge. I blamed it all to the Internet. Before the trip
I checked many Internet sources for hotel and many had reported
about unsavory characters loitering near the hotel. I then remembered
that one of the rooms in the  Degli Orafi - which I assumed to be in a
safer neighborhood - was used for the movie °Room with a view" so I
sent them emails and made the reservation. Well, all Firenze hotels
have loitering unsavory characters. Degli Orafi has them across the street!

Degli Orafi is a very nice hotel. We had two rooms and two baths! The decor
is quite amazing. After checking in we walked to the Duomo and were
very impressed with the famous church and its Dome. Everything costs
money in Italy nowadays. We paid to get in to climb the 414 steps
leading to the top of the church. The view was spectacular there to
most of Firenze, 92 meters down.

I had made the Uffizi museum reservations so we did not have to wait
to get into the museum this morning. As we strolled through the two
wings of  paintings and statues I was thinking that a PBS DVD of the
Uffizi may not be a bad idea unless one prefers to justle with the
zillions of tourists ooh-aahing about art. By the way,
we now know the difference between tempera and tempura.

Susan did look at the previous email today and claimed complete
innocence. I had provided her with deniability for all the grammatical
and spelling errors.

We will be going to Siena tomorrow and will travel to Cinque Terre a couple
of days later.

First day, May 15, 2006 in Rome

[Note: This is for a past event.]

Susan and I arrived in Rome yesterday evening. It was a very nice
flight: when told that we were on our first anniversary we were
upgraded to first class on British Airways. It sure was high flying:
the foods were good and on real china with real silverwares. And the
seats were converted into a twin-sized bed after dinner. Still we were
somewhat tired when we arrived in Rome. We checked into our hotel, the
Belle Suite Rome and after a short nap we walked several miles to the
Spanish Steps which are underwhelmed, the so-so Travis Fountain and
had some gelato which is the Italian version of our American ice
cream! There are absolutely so many people, tourists packed in Rome.
Millions of tourists.. the subways were so packed that we lost the
fear of pickpockets; there was no way anyone could move so picking
someone pocket is - I was sure - out of the question.

After a long night of sleep we felt a bit ambitiously adventurous: we
took the very early subway to the Vatican and to visit other places
later. I had made reservation ahead of time so we did not have to wait
for several hours in hot Italian summer to get into the Vatican
Museum. The Sistine Chapel frescoes had been cleansed so they looked
very bright and almost fake. Again, people are everywhere. Tour groups
from every country on Earth were here today. We then walked several
miles to the Pantheon and were awed by the incredibly fine example of
early first centuries Roman architecture and engineering inside. We
have with us a Rome map, one of the very best but still were lost
several times. Many Roman streets change name quite abruptly.

We took several buses later to travel to the Colosseum and to the
Roman ruins near by. The Colosseum looked much larger when we climbed
upstairs to level 1. It made ones paused thinking about all the bloody
sports that took place there and the thousands of people died there
for the entertainment of the Romans back then. We took the subway back
to Termini, the main train station and walked to our hotel dead tired.
Dinner at Del Giglio - recommended by our hotel manager was excellent.

The hotel's computer does not have an Xd card reader for me to
download our pictures. We will be travelling to Firenze (Florence,
Italy) tomorrow. Hopefully, we will be able to report to you our
travel as we progress.

So Ciao for now. 

Memory

I've been surprised many times by the selectivity of memory. Recalls of same events, feelings, emotions are so different, at times conflicting or contradictory to one another by different people or at different time dependent upon one's state of mind at the moment. My memory of my younger past as a single father was filled with moments of tenderness, days of quiet contentment and happiness. There were moments of  frustration. But they were transitory leaving faintly vague traces.

Life lessons from a dog

I noticed that our little Pomeranian is getting a bit slower, less energetic as she approaches her 8th birthday, middle age in human term. She is still a very lovely dog with twinkling beady eyes and gentle joyful wagging tail. But a bit slower and not as fast sprinting upstairs to greet "Mommy" every morning. Her growing older is much more observable and obvious than that in humans. She has been teaching me about love, unconditional love, joy, loyalty, sadness, joy. It took me a couple of years to earn her love and trust but after that love is constant with unquestionable faithfulness. Her slower walks, less energy, a bit darker demeanor, gently remind me that all things shall pass and life will end someday. Isn't it a bit ironic that when we love for someone we also are reminded that love will eventually end.

Movie: Merry Christmas

We saw "Merry Christmas", a French movie with English subtitle this afternoon. This is about a true event in the early days of WWI; a temporary truce was declared unofficially by the waring soldiers of Germany, Great Britain and France on the Christmas Eve of 1914. My wife and I were both moved by the humanity of the story.

Intrinsic value of beauty, happiness...

I've been thinking about the conversation I had with my son several days ago. It was about beauty, happiness and whether there is an intrinsic value which bounds them to all mankind. This morning I was walking along the creek path with my wife to her office and thought about it. I'd like to believe that there is an intrinsic foundation to what we call beauty and happiness. Without this we are left with subjective valuation for life and its meaning. 

My son believes that beauty and happiness are subjective and are given value by individuals. If indeed beauty and happiness are values shared universally then why they are defined so differently by different people and different cultures/societies. Many of us can't seem to understand the "... happiness and joy", shown by the relatives of an Iraqi grandmother blowing herself up to kill their enemies. This sentiment of "happiness and joy" is so foreign/bizarre to us; it defies a reasonable evolutionary biology explanation. 

If one accepts the 'martyrdom' of suicide bomber brings true happiness and beauty to some but abhorrence to others then there may be no intrinsic value to happiness nor beauty. However, the joy I had walking our dog in the autumn early morning seeing the beauty of the creek, the trees, birds, squirrels and the peaceful wonder of nature would seem to be desirable to all. It is hard to believe that some people would not enjoy the simple pleasure of mindful walking, secure and contemplative upon the quiet beauty of this autumn morning walk.

Evolution of life

Yesterday evening, my wife and I went to listen to the 'Exploring the Evolution of Life' Symposium at the university. What a pleasure to meet and hear articulate, intelligent discussion! Dr. Douglas Futuyma from the Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York gave a wonderful forty-minute presentation of Evolution as the "most important theory in Biology" and to a large extent a scientific theory about life and all its living things. Futuyma gave examples of experiments and studies - from geneticists to geologists and naturalists which support the incredibly intricate but correct predictions of Evolution. 

 Dr. Warren Allmon is with the Paleontological Research Institution and Cornell University gave a passinate discourse about the "spectrum of God", the scientific basis, conflicts, reconcilation for our understanding of its existence, scientific honesty and the politics of religion in America. Allmon does not rule out God's existence but added that there are several critical areas where the religion(s) cannot reconcile with our understanding of life and all consistent scientific, engineering successes which make our life work the way it is.

Ovarian cancer

I have been reading as much as I could about ovarian cancer. There are articles in magazines, books (e.g. "It's always something" by Gilda Radner), newspapers, and on the Net. Just Google "ovarian cancer personal story" and you can read hundreds of bewilderingly painful stories of the horror. The more I read about the ovarian cancer the more appalled, horrified I am of its devastation and the attempts at its treatment. Not only the disease attacks a very sensitive organ of a woman it is so unpredictable and deadly. There are not many consistent symptoms; its cause is almost unknown and there is no prevention. It is so terrifying a random blow and the surgeries and subsequent chemotherapy is almost equally chancy. 

What is the purpose of living a good, clean life and befallen by a random disease with a guarantee of barbaric poisonous attempt to cure? A healthy woman with vague symptoms could one day be an attractive person and on the next day an ovarian cancer patient with assured horrid, tortured treatment. This is the injustice, the unfairness and horror of cancers - ovarian cancer in particular - that I can't find words to describe my sorrow, anger and fear.

Poor technical writing and machine interfaces

I've had a Nikon CoolPix 8700 digital camera for some time. I am now trying to experiment with its short movie recording capability. Having these short movies with audio on my web site is fun. Well, it was not all that easy to decypher the poor technical writing of the Nikon's user manual. The step-by-step procedural explanations are quite unclear (example: the description to set the camera into movie mode did not explain how to 'enter' the options selected; meaning that the manual assumes the reader would know to press the 'Quick' button to select the options!??). 

 The interfacing displays are not so well-designed: one has to select many steps to get to 'User Mode 1' or '2' before setting the movie mode. Sure, there is a short cut to use the 'Func' button but one has to set it up using multiple steps first!

My Toolset

I have used computer and electronic tools for as long as I can remember. Back in the 1970's I bought a very first personal computer which really was a single board computer running Motorola 6800 microprocessor with several 7-segment LED's and a couple of toggle switches. It could not do much; a simple binary program turned the LED's on/off. I graduated to an Altair 8080 running an Intel 8080 microprocessor. I had to borrow a lot of money for it. 

The years went by fast and things changed so much along the way. Nowadays one does not talk much about what kind of hardware one owns. Software makes the tools. I use X1 Technologies, Inc. (which recently sold to Yahoo, I believe) for local Windows machine searches. It is a superior tool compared to Google Desktop which can not search inside many file types including PDF. The Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard is another tool that I absolutely need. It allows me to convert and shrink large scanned images of magazine, newspaper articles which cannot be readily found/downloaded into PDF [which is universally readable on many platforms]. 

Norton SystemWorks allows me to keep Windows happy; it scans the registry, checks for lost links, shortcuts, scans and repairs disks, ... Norton Internet Security is the tool to keep the bad buys from my local machines. Quicken Premier and Home system keeps my business and personal finance straight. Roxio Easy Media Creator is another software program that I can not do without. It is a bit cumbersome but has so many utilities to organize, create CD's and DVD's. I also use Microsoft Office Suite including Outlook and PowerPoint every day. 

I also use my Google gmail account and its other tools daily. The MKS Unix commands and tool set package for Windows machines is also one of my daily favorite tools. I use 'tar' instead of 'WinZip' to consolidate files to be 'ftp'ed to various machines including to the Linux boxes. Of course the Treo650 with built-in Palm organizer software is my constant companion. I put it on the night stand before going to bed every night and carry it with me as soon as I wake up. At my office I have the D-Link Wireless router setup and it helps to connect all my computers and printers wirelessly. 

The 2-Gigabyte Mini Cruzer thumb drive has a nice little built-in encrypter protecting my critical data from casual hackers. I have a couple of digital cameras: a Nikon with 8 Mega pixels and a physically much smaller Olympus with 6 Mega pixels. They both are very nice cameras with movie capability. I run several web sites using a local Linux server. NetworkSolutions registers all my domain and supports URL forwarding. I recently purchased an Apple's Mac machine. 

Its 'Spotlight' search engine is quite amazing. These tools have made my work a bit easier, more organized and my life richer with better information, wider contacts and reach. The tools allow me to explore, search and learn things which I could never be able to do without them and to realize one of my assertions at my PhD interview that data at a sufficient quantity can yield intrinsic qualitative information.

All good things must end

We had a quiet Christmas. We decided not to buy anything for ourselves this Christmas. We spent time hiking to the park with our little Sheba and catching up on movies we had not seen. "Mulholland Drive" is dark and sad. "Magnolia" can be confusing. "Empire of the Sun" is also sad. We enjoyed the light-hearted "A Room with a View".

We had Russian King Crab legs for Christmas Eve Dinner. Costco brought these luscious creatures to the local market recently and they are a great buy. We also made the Italian Cioppino for Christmas day and after. It is also delicious.

Will be going for a hike again today. It has been quite warm here this week. Forecast to be raining and snowy tomorrow.

Rants and Raves

We look up health information, notably on ovarian cancer on the web quite often [because we know someone who has elevated risks of the disease] and use them as another set of data points to make informed decisions. Unfortunately there are many anecdotal tales (e.g. ovarian cancer symptoms, ...) of heart breaks but the lack of quantitative information details (how often, every 6 hours, 10 days cycles, ...? the IBS-like symptoms or pains/symptoms occur?, ...) makes these stories much less useful. 

The obscene millions of dollars that CU Boulder football coach got when fired for poor performance are noted in a letter to the Denver Post by Anne Culver on December 17, 2005, "... What happened to the concept of sports as a contribution to health, character and the spirit of teamwork? In a world where ball catchers, throwers and other 'entertainers' make millions, and social workers, school teachers and nurses make a pittance [What's wrong with this picture?], it's high time somebody laid it on the line: Sports [especially, collegiate ones] should comprise a contribution to the quality of our lives [and secondary to the goal of a university to educate all students], not a hot commodity for buying and selling." 

Frank Petkovich of San Francisco wrote in the Dec 26, 2005 Businessweek that "... in my eight years with three venture capitalist-funded startups, I have found that many of these VCs are simply lucky imbeciles hiring other lucky imbeciles to run most of the Valley companies." He wrote to comment about the fair play that Google is requesting VCs to complete information spreadsheets before meeting with them.