Author: matthew

So we saved, and shopped, and looked, and spent months debating, then finally bought a new digital camera. It’s coming in the mail, and should probably be here by Friday. It’s the Kodak Easyshare Z7590. We’ll have to let you know how well it works after it arrives, but the cool thing, to me, was the great deal we got.

We had been hunting for a good deal on a digital camera. The one we have was a Wal-Mart special, $99.98 piece of junk. The funny thing is, the pictures it takes aren’t great, they tend to be really fuzzy when taken indoors, the shutter speed is laughable… yet it worked. We liked it, because we could take a ton of pictures, put them on an SD card, dump them on the hard drive of our PC or Mac, and be able to take all the pictures we liked without spending a fortune on developing them all. We’ve used it a lot, and the cheap-o digital has lasted longer than any other camera we’ve owned. It’s still working! Maybe we’ll give it to the kids or something.

But really, how many of your pictures turn out to be “keepers” that you scrapbook? Maybe out of a whole roll, 2-5 pictures will be worth keeping. The rest may make decent fodder for the lining of scrapbook pages, or they’ll sit in a dusty bin moldering in the attic.

Anyway, we knew we wanted a new digital camera to replace the old. A conventional camera just makes no sense for us. After several months of off-and-on hunting, we finally figured out what it was we wanted:

• Minimum of 4 megapixels, so that we could print out an 8×10 photo from our printer and have it look good.
• High optical zoom capability. This is important, because most “point-and-shoot” cameras only zoom up to 3X using their optical lens, and then maybe 3X more using “digital zoom”, which really sods the quality of the photo. You’re better off not using digital zoom at all, and just cropping the picture later.
• Good reviews
• A name-brand. No more “Connor 5000” or “GenericBrand001”.
• We wanted to make sure that the viewfinder view (the little eyepiece) and the display would give you exactly the same picture. The problem with our existing digital camera is that the viewfinder is, at best, a gross approximation of what you’ll get from the screen. But when you’re taking pictures outdoors in bright sunlight, there’s not an LCD made that can handle that kind of glare.
• It had to use “SD”, or “Secure Digital” media. It’s what we’re already using for our electronics, and I like to stick with it. We actually ended up deciding on SD some years ago because that was what our Palms supported. I’ve never regretted the decision, as I have an SD slot in the side of my laptop, SD readers on our computers, and everything we use uses SD. Makes it easy to figure out if we can transfer stuff without weird cables everywhere.
• It had to support video with audio. We’re not looking to make it into a camcorder, but occasionally you just can’t capture the moment in a still shot. Then it’s nice to kick the camera into video mode, and record a few minutes of video to archive the movement of something special. Our old camera had the ability to do video, but no audio.
• It had to have ways to add at least a few accessories. With the high-zoom capability, a tripod mount would be a must.
• It needed a high-quality glass lens.

With that laundry list, there are actually a ton of different choices available. We looked at several of them, and the one that kept popping up was the Kodak Z7590, along with its little brothers in the “DX” series. The camera is 5 megapixels, 10X zoom, has excellent reviews, is a name brand, has a digital viewfinder (a second, small LCD which shows the same image as the large LCD), uses SD media, does video recording at SVHS quality with audio, can do a tripod and a shoe flash, and has a reasonable-quality glass lens. So we checked out the camera in Wal-Mart and a CompUSA, found that it had the features we wanted, and more, and set out to find the best deal.

About the only thing missing is the possibility of using a remote control. Remotes are handy for when you’re taking a picture at very high zoom and don’t want to jiggle the camera at all by pushing the button. A timer can serve a similar function by letting you stay hands-off when the camera shoots, but it’s slightly less convenient. Oh well.

We didn’t know when we started hunting, but Dell sells consumer electronics. It’s not their primary business, but if it’s closely associated with computers — as digital cameras are — they probably sell it. Anyway, in cruising the Internet for good deals, I ran across an article talking about “coupon stacking” with Dell.

I’d stacked coupons buying my laptop from them several months ago, and saved a crazy amount of money versus regular price. About $800. I hadn’t even thought of it for anything other than computers, though.

Well, we were able to do it again. Regular retail on the camera is about $400. We used a 20% off coupon code that we found on the Internet for that specific model of camera. Then I found a “$30 off all orders of $300 or more or $60 off all orders of $500 or more” coupon. And Dell Home was running a promotion with free shipping for all orders of $25.00 or more.

So I bought a tripod and a 1GB memory card to go along with the camera. This changed our pre-coupon price to a little over $500. We applied the $60.00 off coupon, then the 20% off the camera price coupon (order is important: if we applied the camera coupon first, Dell’s web site would only let us take $30.00 off the total order via the Dell Home coupon, as it was then less than $500.00). I changed my shipping option to the “free” option.

Total price for a top-of-the-line point-and-shoot Kodak camera, plus tripod and a gigabyte of memory: $365.00. Retail price for the camera alone — and the price down at the local Wal-Mart — is within pennies of $400.00. We saved over a hundred twenty dollars by shopping smart. It’s even a better deal than I could find trying to get it through Amazon, or off eBay.

The experience showed me that, many times, there are much better ways to shop than your standard “run down to Wal-Mart and buy one” approach. They may advertise “always low prices”, but there are ways to get high-quality products from reputable dealers for substantially less than the Mart.

I read an enlightening perspective on the embryonic stem-cell research debate on the New York Times Letter to the Editor page regarding Mario Cuomo’s recent esssay on the subject.

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, put it succinctly:

Mario M. Cuomo mars his well-reasoned essay on the use of embryonic stem cells by characterizing the crucial moral issue as whether “human life starts at conception.”

Even the earliest embryo conceived of human parents is alive and a member of Homo sapiens, and that is enough, in the eyes of many, to make it a living human being.

The crucial moral question is not when human life begins, but when human life reaches the point at which it merits protection.

It is to that question that the significance of consciousness and viability, discussed by Mr. Cuomo, should be addressed.

Unless we separate these two questions – when does life begin, and when does it merit protection? – we are unlikely to achieve any clarity about the moral status of embryos.

I’ve never really thought of it in those terms. If you think about it, there is human life which we (as a society) protect, some which we do not protect, and some which we intentionally destroy through war, executions, etc. If we accept that embryonic life is fully human the moment it is fertilized, it definitely changes the question of the ethics of embryonic stem-cell research.

It seems to me that it’s obvious that an unfertilized egg deserves little or no protection. Thousands of hysterectomies per year attest to that point of view. Similarly, sperm isn’t protected life. If it were, well, virtually every male on the planet would be guilty of genocide by the time he was fourteen 🙂

Similarly, we don’t protect unborn human life which strongly endangers the life of the mother. We are incapable of protecting the fertilized eggs which fail to attach as a result of in-vitro fertilization by hopeful couples wanting to have a child. We can’t protect against miscarriages, as my darling wife and I learned through painful first-hand experience. In general, in the US we do not protect human life which is not yet viable outside the womb, through easily-obtainable abortions.

Embryonic stem cell research holds both great promise for the health and longevity of humans, and reading this brief response convinces me the chief ethical concern is not when “life” begins, but how much it’s worth to us. I’ve found myself wondering which life is more valuable: the fully-developed one which might be saved through the use and destruction of a stem cell, or the potential one in the petri dish.

I doubt there’s a clear-cut answer. Even if the alternative is to discard the stem cells entirely.

Finally, after years of service outages, shoddy quality, bills for services never received, and customer service reps who made promises never kept, we’ve divested ourselves of our local telephone monopoly, Qwest. I, along with 37,000 others, will now say that “Qwest Sucks”.

Several months ago, we transferred our telephone service to Vonage. We’ve received excellent service, profoundly good sound quality, and a host of nifty features, for a low price of about 27 bucks a month. I initially posted about our experience with Vonage here. It was initially Sammy G who turned me on to Vonage in the first place.

Eventually, we apparently infected Weed with the Vonage Virus, and he sent me a PM saying he switched. I’m still waiting for Justin to do so (Hey! Dude! I just sent you a referral); and Justin, if you sign up, be sure to use refer-a-friend stuff so you and I get free months! Weed had already signed up, so I couldn’t claim him for 2 free months of service.

Anyway, after we booted Qwest as our local telephone provider, we were still stuck with them for DSL service. Local alternatives were wireless, which I’ve had bad experiences with and prefer to avoid, and dial-up. Obviously, dial-up won’t work with a VOIP phone, so we waited until Comcast came into town advertising cable Internet.

We finally got it installed today. Within hours, I called Qwest and formally terminated our last remaining tie to our local telephone company.

I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s fast. Real fast. About three times faster than Qwest DSL for downloads. It’s unfortunate that Comcast hamstrings upload speeds (it’s a fraction of Qwest’s upload speed), but apparently they have a “Business” offering which offers dramatically improved uploads.

As 90% of what I do doesn’t involve the need for amazingly fast uploads anyway, I’m not too concerned.

Anyway, our Vonage phone works perfectly. Our bandwidth is great. Unlike with Qwest, I can be downloading a few gigabytes of an ISO file at 400Kbytes/sec, and be yakking on the phone without any problems at all. No glitching. Whereas with Qwest, I couldn’t even play an online game while someone was on the phone, the phone would get so glitchy.

I cranked our phone quality settings up all the way, and the quality difference is profound. It’s the difference between cell-phone quality, and high-quality telephone. Very cool.

Anyway, I’m happy to finally be out of Qwest Hell. It’s a hell they created for themselves and for us, and we figured the best possible revenge was to simply not pay them any more money.

Yay us!

I realize it’s been published elsewhere, but I found this too good to pass up.

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I’m setting up an office in my den and I’m thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name’s Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don’t own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name’s Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don’t know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let’s just say I’m sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue “W”.

COSTELLO: I’m going to click your blue “w” if you don’t start with some straight answers! OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?

ABBOTT: Yes, you want Real One.

COSTELLO: Maybe a real one, maybe a cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. Just tell me what I need!

ABBOTT: Real One.

COSTELLO: If it’s a long movie, I also want to watch reels 2, 3 and 4. Can I watch them?

ABBOTT: Of course.

COSTELLO: Great! With what?

ABBOTT: Real One.

COSTELLO: OK, I’m at my computer and I want to watch a movie. What do I do?

ABBOTT: You click the blue “1”.

COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?

ABBOTT: The blue “1”.

COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue “w”?

ABBOTT: The blue “1” is Real One and the blue “W” is Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: But there are three words in “office for windows”!

ABBOTT: No, just one. But it’s the most popular Word in the world.

COSTELLO: It is?

ABBOTT: Yes, but to be fair, there aren’t many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.

COSTELLO: And that word is real one?

ABBOTT: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn’t even part of Office.

COSTELLO: STOP! Don’t start that again. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That’s right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What’s bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn’t it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? They own it!

[A few days later]

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. May I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on “START”…

If you’ve ever been the victim of “phishing” — or even attempted “phishing” — you might be interested in an article on the topic in the Wall Street Journal.

Phishing is basically sending an email purporting to be someone you are not, attempting to extract personal information about the person to try to drain their bank account via Western Union money transfers or ATM withdrawals. I’ve covered a unique form of phishing particular to eBay scammers earlier.

The overriding message? Don’t ever give out information to someone who solicits it from you. Only give it at times, places, and to people that you have made a free choice to contact and divulge this information.

What’s really interesting to me is that the parts of phishing, such as designing web sites to mirror banking sites, creating the emails, making the fake ATM cards, trading account information, and managing user databases of phished accounts are all, themselves, full-time jobs.

Yay, it’s official! People with bigger brains are smarter than people with smaller brains.

My head is flippin’ huge. I must be a genius then.

According to Thursday’s AP News Report, many Utahns think polygamist clans in southern Utah aren’t getting prosecuted enough.

Warren Jeffs, who has been previously mentioned here (and also a related case here, which attorney general Mark Shurtleff declined to prosecute), was recently indicted for sex crimes for arranging the marriage between a teenage girl and a 28-year-old man. This is the first indictment of a high-profile polygamist in the western US in quite some time. John Daniel Kingston, another Utah polygamist, only served 28 weeks of his earlier sentence for felony child abuse, and was in court again on May 21, 2004 for continuing to abuse his illegitimate children.

In my humble opinion, it’s very telling that Utah prosecutor Mark Shurtleff has not been willing to go up against the polygamists. Instead, Arizona has stepped up to the plate to do the dirty work to bring Jeffs to justice.

Mark Shurtleff’s spokesman, Paul Murphy, states, “Anytime there is a victim who will come forward to testify, we’ll take the case. Those victims have been few and far between.”

To the contrary, says twenty-year-old Rachel Strong, recently escaped from Jeff’s polygamist clan, “Here I am. For over six months I’ve been willing to testify.” Additionally, Tapestry Against Polygamy, a Utah-based group assisting women and girls escaping from abusive polygamous relationships, distributed a list of escapees willing to speak during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Tapestry’s task is made more difficult, however, by the existence of the Blood Atonement Doctrine, which, although repudiated by the mainstream LDS church, is still considered doctrine amongst fundamentalist Mormon sects in Utah backwaters. Blood atonement mandates the murder of apostates and those who violate certain fundamentalist church edicts. According to Tapestry, “Many wives have been threatened with this Blood Atonement.”

I suspect this complicates obtaining willing witnesses for a trial.

From where I sit, it seems as if the illegal nature of the polygamous relationships themselves are not challenged in Utah. The potential five years’ imprisonment for the crime of “bigamy” is rarely pursued. Instead, prosecutors go after the easier charges of child abuse, and the perpetrators receive a slap on the wrist in a county jail, soon to return to their previous practices. It seems fairly obvious that our Attorney General can’t — or won’t — make an effective case attempting to enforce laws banning bigamy.

What’s the right approach, then? Well, from what I understand, “raids” of polygamous households do not seem to work well. It didn’t work when federal troops attempted it against mainstream LDS leaders in the 1800s, it didn’t work at Waco with the Branch Davidians, and it doesn’t work today against the Fundamentalist LDS and Polygamist Christian groups. Such attempts simply send the leaders into hiding, and risk injuring the victims of the polygamous system with unnecessary violence. Raiding Jeffs’ compounds in Utah, Arizona, and Texas probably isn’t the best solution.

I don’t know that there’s a “right” answer for this situation. But what we’re doing now sure doesn’t seem to be doing the job.

As some barnson.org readers are aware, I recently swapped schedules to the night shift for my work. I should be on this shift for quite a long time to come.

Knowing this, I’ve had some discussions with co-workers over how best to handle working nights, particularly how to get enough sleep.

Sleep is something I’ve always taken for granted. It’s simply a thing I had to do for between 6 and 9 hours every day, like a chore. No big deal. Yet now that I’ve switched to night shift, it seems as if sleep time is as precious as gold. I’ve done some reading on “Circadian Rhythms”, and tried to understand what I can do to maximize the productivity of my sleep while minimizing the amount of time doing it. Unfortunately, as far as controlling my Circadian cycle, my 45-minute-long commute home at the end of the day pretty well nixes that, as it’s after 9:00 AM and bright daylight by that time. Some friends have suggested in my bedroom windows might help my Circadian rhythm “keep step” with my new schedule, but given the length of my in-daylight commute, it’s doubtful.

Anyway, I came across some interesting research. First among these is news that people who sleep the full 8 hours die more. Yep, if you sleep less than 8 hours a night (and more than 4), you are less likely to die young than someone who sleeps the full 8 or more. Curiously, the lowest mortality among the 1.1 million people studied was among those who slept 5-7 hours per night. So from a pure “avoiding death” perspective, the 5 or 6 hours that I’ve been able to squeeze out during the day seems about right.

Yet I’m still tired all the time. Maybe just because it’s my first week back on night shift that I’m so tired and grumpy.

Critically, although those who sleep 5-7 hours per night don’t die as early as those who do 8 or more, they suffer reduced dexterity, mental acuity, and so forth.

There are some drugs that are supposed to help. Modafinil — marketed as “Provigil” — ostensibly keeps you alert without the crashes associated with caffeine and amphetamines. There was an interesting article on Slate some time ago about it. It’s only been out about 10 years, and doctors only prescribe it for occasional use if you’re not a narcoleptic, so it’s not a viable long-term option.

When you’ve had odd sleep schedules, how — and how well — did you cope? Did you shorten sleep, or find ways to nap frequently? Or are you a natural short-sleeper?

So tonight, Christy and I got talking about neighbors. You know, the usual scuttlebut you discuss at 2 in the morning when hanging out at a friend’s house.

Anyway, we came upon the fact that our new neighbor 2 doors down is a convicted sex offender. He’s guilty of Sexual Abuse of a Child.

He’s apparently got a wife, no kids, and I haven’t really talked to him yet. I ran into this situation a couple of years ago, when I discovered that a former co-worker of mine, whom I liked and respected, was convicted of aggravated sexual abuse of a minor. The difference with “aggravated” is that the person is in a position of trust with the child, and abused it (or was a stranger who made friends for the purpose of sexual abuse); in his case, it was his stepdaughter.

How do you deal with convicted sex offenders in your neighborhood? I mean, caution dictates you probably shouldn’t hire the guy as a babysitter. You may want to be careful about your children playing near his house. But do you avoid him, ostracize him? Or try to make friends?

I just really haven’t thought about this much, and they live so close. I’m interested in your take.

(Yes, I really did post this at 2:44 AM. I am switching to night shift, and like to take a night or two to get into it before reporting for work.)

• Utah leads the nation in cases of rape per capita. A woman is more likely to be raped in Utah than in any other state of the Union. And Utah is one of the few states which does not count any teenagers in rape statistics, so the statistic is actually lower than the reality.
• Utah has more teen pregnancies per capita than any other state.
• Utah is ninth in the nation for suicide.
• Utah is the 3rd-poorest state per capita.
• Utah’s