SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.com http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #175 New Moon of March 26, 2009 Contents copyright 2009 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* Silicon Soapware is late again. Do I have an excuse? Sort of. Part of it is that I've been busy on other stuff, such as cleaning out old receipts and such for tax season. And part of it is that I'm just getting over a cold. Back in grade school any illness pretty much automatically qualified for an excused absence, at least as long as my parents corroborated it. High school was similar. College didn't seem to really care about my physical presence in class as long as I did the work and somehow learned whatever was being taught. Most instructors (with the exception of ROTC) didn't even call roll. The various employers I've had have also just pretty much taken my word for it when I've been too ill to go to work. But I've heard of cases where employers will demand a note from a doctor as proof of illness. Leaving aside the question of how sick is "too sick to go to work", the logistics of being seen by a doctor aren't as simple as they used to be. My primary care physician doesn't, as far as I know, make house calls. I have to make appointments for checkups and flu shots and such weeks in advance. And I'm not sure he even handles random illnesses like colds and "stomach virus" and such at all. He would probably just say to take some over-the-counter stuff, and if the condition didn't improve in a day or so then go to the nearest Urgent Care facility. So how does one document an illness that may not otherwise require professional treatment? Say you call your doctor and describe the symptoms, and the doctor says to just go to bed for a day or so and call again if it doesn't get better. But you don't want to leave it at that because your employer requires a note from a doctor. How do you proceed? Suppose you go to an urgent care facility and tell the triage person that you think all you need is documentation of your illness rather than actual treatment. Will they do that? Even if they will, getting there may not be neat or pleasant, especially if the condition involves vomiting or diarrhea. So is this an unfilled need in the health-care industry? Do we need some new kind of practitioner, something between a paramedic and a notary, whose main function is to make house calls with less urgency (and at less expense) than present paramedics, documenting the patient's condition but not otherwise providing treatment? Does such a thing exist? ********************* If you want something to talk about besides recent illnesses and operations, there's always the weather. The last few days have been warm and sunny. That feels good, but it isn't necessarily good news from the standpoint of the water supply. The people who manage such things say California doesn't have enough water stored away for the coming dry season. They're asking people to conserve. One of the things that often gets mentioned in the context of conserving water is toilet flushing. Can we somehow manage to not flush quite as often as we have in the past? That in turn reminds me of those electronic auto-flush things they have in some restrooms. Usually they sort of work more or less as intended, but sometimes they don't. One I encountered recently at a convention hotel was way too sensitive. Just about anything was an excuse for a flush. New user arriving? Flush. User looking at the toilet paper roll, perhaps to verify that there's actually paper there? Flush. User's portable electronic Internet thingie says the stock market just went up? Flush. Stock market just went down? Flush. User is about to leave? Flush. User is actually leaving? Flush twice. And so on. I think this is a waste of water, but a toilet flusher doesn't seem to care about that. Its mission in life is to flush, and that's what it most enjoys doing, so it's going to take just about anything that happens in the vicinity as an excuse to flush. Where the water to flush with comes from is somebody else's problem. It's like that saying about how when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail. It also reminds me of that philosophical question about the tree in the forest. If a toilet flushes when there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? ********************* While we're on environmental aspects of the hotel business, there's the matter of towels. Several hotels I've stayed at over the past couple of years have had those little cards with stuff about how washing all those towels uses lots of hot water. So if you don't need your towels washed every day, hang them on the rack. But then they didn't have any spare racks to hang your used towels on. There were the racks the clean towels were stacked on, and that was It. The one time I commented about this on one of those feedback forms (see Silicon Soapware #163), they replied as if I'd reported a maintenance problem rather than a design problem. So do they not really read those comments, but just throw them at a computer full of canned replies? That's what it felt like. ********************* "Question, Question, I need to know. Please, kind Question, be answered." "There you go, begging the question again." ********************* The newspaper that shows up on my doorstep every morning is getting thinner and thinner, with its appearance sometimes bordering on being gaunt and cadaverous. At least they're surviving, for now. Papers in many other cities haven't been so lucky. For many years people had been predicting that in "The Future" we would all get our news electronically instead of on paper. So far, so good. What seems to have caught many by surprise is how painful the transition from physical paper to online data bits is turning out to be. There's quite a bit of financial and emotional trauma that somehow never got mentioned in those predictions. Didn't anyone see it coming, or did everybody just imagine that some sunny morning we would all wake up in some sort of indefinite rosy "The Future" where we would all live Happily Ever After? ********************* Perhaps the process of achieving any sort of utopia will always be painful, sort of the way childbirth is painful. Or to use a different analogy, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. They may be able to do that in the Star Trek universe by using the transporter to beam the contents of the eggs out of their shells, but we aren't there yet. That raises another question: If you do find some way of making omelets without breaking eggs, what do you do with the unbroken empty shells? Do you store them somewhere, or send them back to the farm to be refilled, or what? It would be a shame to just throw them away, especially if the garbage collectors end up breaking them after all. ********************* Realities? I Honey Child And Mom and Dad and Older Brother Had come all the way To Grandma's House. Restless from a day of travel, The children wanted to explore While the adults talked Of boring grown-up stuff. "The woods out back are safe enough As long as the kids stay together And don't wander away from the path And come back when I ring the dinner bell." Mom and Dad reluctantly agreed. While Older Brother would have preferred to go alone, Exploring the woods with Honey Child was still better Than not exploring the woods at all. So off they went. They never agreed on what it was That Honey Child found Beside the path Deep in the woods Just before the dinner bell rang. For her it was a dead fairy With wings that glittered rainbow colors When the sunlight hit them just so. He saw only a lump Of formless forest mould With a piece of aluminum foil or something Stuck in it. It couldn't be a fairy Because he was too old to believe in fairies And besides, Fairies were sissy girl-type stuff. He tried to dissuade her, But she insisted on bringing it back. II When Honey Child showed her find to Grandma Grandma couldn't really see it. She started to say so, but then remembered A trip to the seashore When she was Honey Child's age. She had found a baby mermaid Washed up on the sand. But then the withering scorn Of all those grown-up uncles and aunts and cousins Had turned her mermaid into a pile of smelly old seaweed. Ever since then she had been afraid To look too closely At anything that might be magical. She gave a noncommittal "That's nice" And advised Honey Child Not to show it around To the other grown-ups Lest their scorn and disbelief Turn it to formless forest mould With aluminum foil stuck in it. III Maybe Older Brother told Mom and Dad, Or maybe they found out some other way. They ordered Honey Child To throw that dirty stinky mess in the garbage. Honey Child refused. Grandma proposed a compromise: Honey Child could keep her treasure For the rest of their stay at Grandma's House But was not to try to bring it home. She put it on the table by the children's bedroom window. IV That night when Grandma helped put Honey Child to bed She turned out the light And noticed the moonlight Shining in the window On Honey Child's clump of formless forest mould With aluminum foil stuck in it. Had she been hoping to see something different? The next night When Grandma turned out the bedroom light And glanced over toward the clump Of formless forest mould She wasn't really sure what she saw there. Mermaid memories More than half a century old Filled her eyes Too full of tears. The night after that she was certain: While it was still formless forest mould by day Or in the harsh glare of the table lamp, In the moonlight it was indeed a fairy with rainbow wings, The colors barely visible when the light hit them just so. V The next night was to be their last Before returning home. Mom and Dad asked Honey Child "Should we throw that mess of yours in the garbage tonight Or do you want to do it in the morning?" Grandma answered for her: "It isn't going into the garbage at all. Instead we will have a Fairy Funeral. Tonight by moonlight Honey Child and I Will lay the corpse to rest In this little cardboard box I found. Then by the first light of dawn We will dig the grave By the edge of the woods Where the lawn mower never goes. Then we will mark the spot With bricks left over from that patio project. It won't take long, And won't disrupt your travel plans. Those who do not wish to attend Do not have to. But if you do, please show respect." VI Once again Grandma remembered her mermaid But this time it didn't hurt like before And she somehow knew That she would no longer be afraid To look at things that might be magical. -- Tom Digby Written 22:39 Thu March 5 2009 Title Added 19:58 Sun March 29 2009 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. Both are linked from http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer appended to the end of this section in the copy you received. Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --