A Rant Against Family Style Dining
First of all, I have no problem if you are sitting around your dining room table and your mother puts down a huge pile of food for dinner and you are told to dig in. Great! I love it! But when I went to a chain Italian restaurant named Buca Di Beppo, and was proudly informed by the waiter that you ate family style here, just like you were in mama’s house in Sicily, I was not happy. Basically, you order a small number of main courses (in our case, 2 main courses for 8 people) and you get a humungous pile of food and everyone digs in. You must be kidding me! You mean I don't get to order what I want? We’re supposed to agree in our family? With four people on special diets, three vegetarians and two with lactose intolerance? No way!

So after quite a long discussion, we were able to pick out one meat dish the non-vegetarians could eat and one non-meat dish that everyone could eat. Mind you, I say “could eat”, because I normally would not order spaghetti with marinara sauce for myself, it’s not one of my favorite dishes, I don’t want pasta on my diet anyway, but I seem to have no choice. For the record, the chicken marsala was wonderful, the spaghetti marinara was below average.

The seating at Buca Di Beppo is a booth, and while I don’t normally get claustrophobic, I felt the booth was kind of cramped and tucked into a cubbyhole in the wall where the table was surrounded by three walls up to the ceiling (unlike booths in other restaurants where the booths only go up to the height of the booth, and then you have maybe one wall or open air above the booth. The service was alternately good and bad. Before they seated us, they insisted on taking us on a tour of the restaurant (just like the tour you would get in mama’s house in Sicily, I presume), not bothering to ask if we were hungry and would we rather order first? For each course, we were brought new plates and the previous course’s plates where whisked away. Great, but could you please bring us eight clean plates instead of seven plates, one of which is dirty? Why did the side dish of meatballs arrive five minutes before the pasta? Why did the cheesecake arrive for dessert, but no plates and forks arrived until later? And one of my biggest pet peeves at any restaurant, don't give us plates straight out of the dishwasher, steaming hot, for a cold dish such as cheesecake.

The restaurant was overdecorated, there was just too much on the walls, it was distracting. The family style dinner theme was abandoned when it came to drinks, instead of giving us a pitcher of stuff, we got to order our own drinks individually. Oh, I see now, that’s where the profits are, let’s give everyone exactly the drink they want and maybe they’ll drink lots — but let’s cut costs on the dinner itself, its obviously cheaper to make a few humongous dishes than everyone’s order individually like in other restaurants. And let’s make sure that we don’t bother cooling those plates for the cheesecake, that takes more time and more plates and why bother? The customers are going to eat the cheesecake regardless!

I won’t be back to Buca di Beppo.

VOTING MACHINES: “HANGING CHAD� WASN’T SO BAD
From What’s New by Bob Park: There is no way to independently verify results of electronic voting machines that run on proprietary code. Worse yet, teams at Johns Hopkins and Rice analyzed one leading company’s system and found gaping holes in security, leaving the system open to both insider and outsider attacks.

Where are you, Nessie?
A new study has failed to find the Loch Ness Monster. Reports of this monster have been coming in for centuries, even though there was no scientific basis for a single monster to be living in the Loch. Didn't matter that many experts said people confused logs and other mundane objects for a monster, the search continued. Didn't matter that one of the most well known photos of the monster was an admitted hoax. People kept searching. Let’s hope this puts an end to this nonsense.

A Piece of Amelia Earhart’s Airplane?

Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while trying to fly around the world. No conclusive trace of the airplane, Amelia, or her navigator Fred Noonan has ever been found. However, theories abound. One theory says that Amelia landed in then-Japanese territory and was held as a spy and eventually executed. Other theories put her in the Gilbert Islands, or that she crashed and sank at sea after running out of gas. Yet another theory says she landed her plane on uninhabited Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro Island) and lived for a while as a castaway. My own personal favorite is that she drifted with her airplane to near the coast of Paraguay in South America, and she was held in custody by the Paraguayan police before passing away from her injuries, carving her initials AEP (P for her married surname) into a jail wall in Ascunción.

TIGHAR, an organization that spends considerable time and money pursuing the Gardner/Nikumaroro Island theory, reports that it has found an artifact on the island that could have been part of Amelia’s airplane. Other possible parts from Amelia’s airplane were found on Nikumaroro on earlier visits, in nearby locations. These artifacts are incosistent with World War II airplanes, but not inconsistent with the type of parts found on Amelia Earhart's plane. In addition, a skeleton of a castaway, plus parts of a woman's shoe, were found on Nikumaroro in 1941, and the only people known missing in that part of the Pacific who could account for that skeleton was Amelia and her navigator. And lastly, Nikumaroro Island is directly ahead on the last known path Amelia was flying. TIGHAR is careful to point out that they cannot conclusively say that this particular new artifact, nor any of the other evidence, is the smoking gun that proves Amelia made it to Gardner/Nikumaroro. They cannot even say, at this time, that the new artifact was from Amelia’s airplane. All they can say is that it is another piece that could fit the puzzle.

The TIGHAR web site contains all of the research that TIGHAR has done into this fascinating mystery. It’s all there for you to read, although if you like the site, they do also accept donations, which fund further research. The approach they take is as scientific as possible — they state an hypothesis, and then go about testing it using currently accepted scientific, historical and archaeological principles. You can also participate in an ongoing discussion about the evidence pro and con regarding Amelia’s disappearance.

Oscillate your Oscelot
Paige’s Page will be on hiatus until Tuesday, July 29, 2003.

Was it really invented by Thomas Crapper?
Well, no, in fact this is just an urban myth. The toilet has been around for centuries, and now you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about the toilet by visiting The Sulabh International Museum of Toilets. What, can’t visit New Delhi, India to peruse the treasures in this museum? Well, no problem, because they have a web-site. It’s educational! It’s historical! It’s hygienic!

Masturbation Horror Stories
Mastubation Horror Stories details all the horrible things that can happen to you when you, um ... well, you've been warned, so cut it out! But if something bad does happen to you, submit your own stories!

Find A Grave

Now you can see the tombstones and gravesites of the famous and not-so-famous, at Find-A-Grave.com. It’s a very interesting site to browse through and see the rather opulent graves of some people, to the rather plain graves of others. I find it rather startling to see people who accomplished a lot in their life with rather plain graves. For example, the grave of Benjamin Franklin seems rather dull and ordinary. Adrian Joss, who may have pitched the greatest baseball game in history under pressure of a pennant race, spends eternity in a grave site that would not attract any attention, you’d never know someone famous was buried there. However, Alexandre Alekhine, former World Chess Champion, has a rather opulent tomstone that shouts “Come and admire me”. Kings and queens, nobles and commoners, we all will need a grave at some point, and you can see how different people chose to spend eternity. It says a lot about the individual who is buried there.

Kobe Bryant’s Accuser
First of all, I don't know if Kobe Bryant is innocent or not. Nor do I know if his accuser is a gold-digger or the victim of a heinous crime. I do know that ESPN Sportscenter has reported that the woman's home phone, home address and e-mail address has been posted on some web-site. This is incredibly unfortunate, and something that no one deserves. The losers who posted this information obviously represent a segment of our society where mean-spiritedness is considered a desirable attribute, and this is a segment of our society that is becoming more and more prevalent, especially in sports. I can't imagine any justification for posting this information on the Internet except to “twist the knife� in this woman's back further. And of course, there will be morons in our society who will take that information and say “Hey, dude, let’s call up that woman and tell her what a piece of shit she really is�. This is mean-spiritedness for the sake of being mean-spirited. Folks, let the judicial system run its course, let’s treat all those involved with a certain amount of dignity and decorum, and let’s all wait for the facts to become known.

Book Review: The Worst Journey In The World

Author: Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Title: The Worst Journey In The World

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised… so says Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the youngest member of one of the first teams of Antarctic explorers, part of the ill-fated Scott expedition in 1912. The book details the horrors that polar explorers had to go through, and the spirit of the men who did so. With little preparation, and animal skins as their clothing (not modern fabrics), they braved blizzards, numbingly cold temperatures and a diet of penguin, seals and fish in their pursuit of science. In order to be the first humans to view a penguin rookery when the chicks are hatching, Cherry-Garrard and his companion survive overnight temperatures in the -70s (Fahrenheit) while camped in their tent. On the way back, their tent blows away, but somehow they press on and survive, sleeping under a blanket of snow. Robert Falcon Scott, although he made it to the South Pole with four others, did not survive an unusually cold Antarctic summer, a victim of the cold, blizzards and his own planning mistakes. Cherry-Garrard’s gripping account of the discovery of the bodies of Scott and his teammates is well worth reading. But the entire book is full of dramatic escapes and stupid blunders. I couldn’t put the book down.

Ret fredom ling!

From Engrish.com, a site which delights in examples of how foreigners (particularly Japanese) butcher the English language, not while speaking, but in written form, we see the following examples:




All you Harley-Dabeson fans, don’t shoot me, I’m just the blogger.

Giving Blood
Since I occasionally have my moods where I am an upstanding citizen, I again volunteered to give blood. But must they make it so painful? I'm not talking about the insertion of the needle, I'm talking about the long wait beforehand in the Red Cross waiting room. Now, I had an appointment at 4:30, so I was expecting to get in reasonably soon after I arrived. No way! Apparently, there were lots of people who had 4:30 appointments, and plenty who hadn't gotten in from their earlier appointment were also sitting in the waiting room.

Okay, stop, and let's review. I am volunteering my time, and my bodily fluids to the Red Cross, which they then go ahead and sell. Yet they can't manage their business efficiently so that I want to come back.

One time, I arrived and waited an hour and half. It turns out that a patient had a medical problem giving blood, and needed medical treatment right there on the donation table. I understand how emergencies can happen. But what about a little courtesy to those of us in the waiting room? Like for example, an announcement that we're going to be quite a bit behind schedule. No, we didn't get that. Other times I have waited from 15 mintues to and hour and 15 minutes.

Today, when I arrived, I saw the huge crowd ahead of me. I waited one-half hour, reading their stupid magazines that I was not really interested in (my fault, I forgot to bring a book), and only one person was ushered in to give blood, although two left. I can do the math, I was going to be sitting there a long time. So, my dear Red Cross, please listen carefully — and I'll write you an actual snail-mail since you probably don't read this blog — don't schedule 6 appointments at 4pm and another 6 at 4:30 if you only have the capacity to handle 2 or 3 people in a half-hour. Either bulk up your staff, or don't make so many appointments. Don't treat us blood donors that way, we are volunteering to help you, we deserve better.

Overuse of Jargon?
I took my car to be fixed because the “Check Engine� light on my dashboard would not go off. Otherwise the car ran fine. So as I explained this to the mechanic, his boss, who was listening to the conversation told the mechanic to write down “No drivability issues�. Geez, that sounded nice, but it would have been a whole lot faster for the mechanic to write “runs fine� and everyone would have understood this. I wonder why it was important to phrase things as “no drivability issues�. But I didn't bother to ask. As a side point, I did have “payability issues� with the final result, but that’s another story.

Word Of The Day
Spline
NOUN: 1a. Any of a series of projections on a shaft that fit into slots on a corresponding shaft, enabling both to rotate together. b. The groove or slot for such a projection.
2. A flexible piece of wood, hard rubber, or metal used in drawing curves.
3. A wooden or metal strip; a slat.

A Rant In Favor of No-Smoking Laws
In a few days, New York State will put into effect strong anti-smoking laws which will prohibit smoking almost everywhere indoors, including workplaces, bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, etc. And there has been a lot of consternation over this. I can sympathize with the smokers, they see something they enjoy being taken away from them by politicians. I wouldn’t like that either. A lot of arguments have been put forth as to why this is a bad law. I’d like to rebut several of those arguments

Argument 1 — Our rights are being taken away! Americans guard their rights very carefully. We believe that they cannot (or should not) be taken away. Our rights are defined in the Bill of Rights and in the United States Constitution. Smoking isn’t in there. Smoking in these places isn’t a “right�, it’s something that our laws have allowed. And because the laws have allowed smoking in these places, the laws can also be changed to prohibit smoking in these places. That’s essentially what most other laws have done, they take something that used to be allowed under the law, and they prohibit it. Nothing wrong or sinister about it.

Argument 2 — Non-smokers have more rights than smokers. First, as I have explained, smoking is not a “right�. But more importantly, why should a law favor one group of citizens (non-smokers) over another group of citizens (smokers)? One reason is that this is a democracy, majority rules, and if the non-smokers represent more voters than the smokers, then the non-smokers most likely win in a democracy. More importantly however, is my feeling that the laws should allow you to do anything as long as it doesn't harm another person. That's why libel is not permitted. That's why theft is not permitted. And now with smoking, where we have developed a large body of scientific evidence that smoking harms non-smokers who are in the vicinity, my opinion says that a good law will not allow smoke to harm others.

Argument 3 — If you don’t like the smoke, stay home! I can’t stay home from work. I like to go out in public and enjoy the same fun things that you smokers do, and I’d prefer not to breathe your smoke. But, once the new law passes, if you don’t like going to places where smoking is prohibited, you can stay home.

Argument 4 — Bars and restaurants will lose business, and people will lose their jobs. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports on a restaurant/bar known as The Distillery which implemented a no-smoking policy months before the New York State law took effect. And what happened? Business went up! People who used to stay home because they did not like to go out to smokey places, are now going out to The Distillery. It seems that the possibility is a real one that smokers who decides not to go out will be replaced by non-smokers who now are going out again. The same article also discusses the experience in California, which enacted no-smoking laws in 1998 and the dire predictions of doom and gloom didn’t happen, in fact business seems to have gone up in restaurants and bars.

Losing Weight
For many years, I kept telling myself I had to lose weight, I'd make New Years resolutions, I'd tell myself I had to eat more salads. That level of determination lasted about two days, and then I got really intimiate with those chocolate chip cookies. Sound familiar?

But I never lost weight. In fact, I was up to 193 lbs, after being skinny most of my life. Not good. Plus I wasn't getting hardly any exercise, also not good. So what to do?

Fortunately, I had seen a good example set by a co-worker of mine, who lost 50 pounds and looked great. My sisters also practiced smart eating habits, so they were role models. And so I decided to go on a diet. No, not the Atkins Diet, there's enough controversy over that so I decided not to get involved. No, not Weight Watchers, that costs actual money. I simply decided to do what my co-worker and sisters had done.

I stopped eating baked goods. No bread, no chocolate chip cookies, no cakes or pies, no bagels. My department at work has a goody-sharing club, everyone is supposed to take turns bringing in donuts or similar items every Wednesday. So I opted out. I also stopped drinking soda. I stopped eating junk food. And my meals usually involved salads, and smaller portions than I used to eat. In fact if I ate out, I took half my meal home for my next lunch or dinner.

I started getting exercize too. I got an old bicycle and fixed it up and now I'm riding throughout my neighborhood.

The results, after a month, are shocking to me. I have lost 11 pounds, and I feel better. I don't know if losing weight is the cause, but my tarsal tunnel syndrome symptoms have almost disappeard.

How is it I could accomplish this, when in the past I never had the willpower? I suspect its because I saw other people do it, and heard how they did it. I know you can do anything you put your mind to (I learned that from Eminem's “Lose Yourself�). Now, every day, I envision weighing myself at 2 pm and seeing another LB disappear. It's turned out to be kind of fun.

I still have cravings. I fight them. I think I'm going to win, I'd like to get down to 170, and I think its going to happen. I'll let you know.

RIAA nearing 1,000 subpoenas against file-sharing suspects

Well this is scary. The RIAA is obtaining subpoenas against ordinary folk who happen to have traded music on-line, sometimes people who have less than 10 songs available for download. Now ethics and morals aside, millions of people are now at risk of being sued. Do you think RIAA will go ahead an sue millions, or do they just want to scare most of us into abandoning music-swapping?

I couldn’t make this up!
Mother Kept Mummified Daughter for Aliens
A distraught Kazakh mother kept her daughter's mummified corpse in her apartment for three years hoping she would be resurrected by aliens, police said on Thursday.

A Humorous Satire of Pop Culture
This satire is in the form of a music video, it stars Jason Alexander (from Seinfeld) and William Shatner, from deep space somewhere, and Trista Rehn (from The Bachelorette). It also spoofs the so-called “Reality Shows�. Click here, then select the video for Celebrity by Brad Paisley.

Word of the Day
elegiac
ADJECTIVE: 1. Of, relating to, or involving elegy or mourning or expressing sorrow for that which is irrecoverably past: an elegiac lament for youthful ideals.
For example, listen to “Eternal Flame� by The Bangles

Web Site of Note
You've always wanted to Fling The Cow, now you can!

CD Review
Artist: Brooks & Dunn
CD: Red Dirt Road

The title song, Red Dirt Road, is a killer song, as good as anything Brooks & Dunn have ever produced. Like many other songs that talk about roads, the red dirt road is a metaphor for the adventures you go through in life. It was there that he drank his first beer, and where he first saw Mary. It’s the excitement of looking forward to what life has to offer, and the comfort of an old friend. It reminds all of us of those defining moments in our life, whether or not the girl was named Mary or not. It evokes warm and comfortable emotions, as well as any other song this duo has produced.

There’s a lot of other good stuff on this CD too. “Memory Town� recalls those feelings (fantasies, even) we have all had about a lover who is no longer ours. “When We Were Kings� is another fine song, taking us back to those times when we were kings, when the whole world was our oyster. Stylistically, this particular song has Kix and Ronnie's voices, but the lyrics and musical arrangement sound straight out of Bruce Springsteen (can you “Glory Days�?). “She Was Born To Run� is a traditional Brooks & Dunn story (despite the fact that the title also reminds you of Springsteen), about girls and cars, and all Brooks and Dunn fans will be right at home with this song. And then there's “Good Cowboy� — you have to raise your eyebrows the first time you hear the lyric “you look romantic laying in the hay� — and this is clearly Brooks & Dunn's first song that is about sex and nothing else.

But there’s also something disturbing about this CD. There are quite a few different musical styles represented, and while that might be a good thing, its not if you’re looking for more of what made Brooks & Dunn one of your favorite groups. Some of those other styles just don't work for me. “I Used To Know This Song By Heart�, with lots of piano in the background, reminds you more of Elton John or Billy Joel than it does Brooks & Dunn. And to be honest, I think this CD will grow on me, and I’ll be glad I have it, but it just doesn’t grab you by the throat and not let go like their last CD Steers and Stripes did.

Maybe that’s the point, however, Brooks & Dunn are looking for new musical adventures on their trip through life. They can try something new, without giving up what made them tremendously successful. Which would make sense, because as you know, there’s life at both ends of that red dirt road.

Rating: 7 tumbleweeds out of 10

In Case You Missed It
RELIGIOUS MERGER CREATES 900 MILLION HINJEWS
Attainment of Nirvana Still Goal, But Not So Important
That You Should Miss Cousin Vijay's Bar Mitzvah

In Case You Missed It — But this one is real!
CNN reports: France bans the word e-mail! No kidding, its too “English� for them! Sacre bleu!

Corporate Downsizing
The rumors are flying at my company again. 10-15% of the workforce will be downsized. Now, I won't debate the logic behind this, because many people have discussed the validity of corporate downsizing. However, I do want to write about how this affects me.

First of all, I am going to assume the rumors are true. They always have been in the past. What effect does that have on me? Well, for one thing, I stop spending my discretionary income. That new digital camera I was thinking of buying — forget it! Eating out at restaurants? Not likely! A spending spree at Barnes and Noble? Yeah, right! And this effects all the merchants I might do business with; their sales will be lower, not just because of me but because of all of my co-workers are likely doing the same. So, then, their business suffers, and my company's business suffers. It's a vicious cycle.

Last Thanksgiving, when the previous round of downsizing happened, I kept my sanity by convincing myself that I could not possibly be in the bottom 15% of the workers. And it appears I was right that time, as I was the time before, and the time before that. But I can't really keep convincing myself of that ... because there are no poor workers left anymore. Everyone left is a solid performer. A friend of mine said she can't sleep because of these rumors, because she's convinced that she might be one of those to be downsized. Last time, she was downsized, but then called back when someone else unexpectedly took a different job. How's that for building worker satisfaction?

Morale always bottoms out when these things happen. Companies become less productive, and more mistakes happen, because the workers are understandably worried. Their minds are on how they can survive, not on doing their job. And even once the downsizing is over, quality goes all to hell because there are fewer workers to do the same amount of work, while management wonders why we can't seem to fix these nagging quality problems. What a way to make a living!