Barnson.org

Some months ago, they installed a television screen in the tactical operations center in which I work. Luckily, my cube faces away from the screen, because as most of you know (thanks Jon fo the term!) I’m ADOSS — Attention Deficit Ooh! Something Shiny! The closed-captioning is turned on and the volume is off.

The only advantage I see to the all-news channels is that you can tune in any time of day, watch for thirty minutes to catch up, and then be done and do something else. When it’s playing for eight hours a day, you see the same story at least sixteen times every day unless something exciting happens.

And if something exciting happens… that’s all that’s on for those eight hours.

How inane.

I may do a real post on this one day.. but as we all know there is a writers strike in Hollywood. I saw THIS posted on Aintitcool..

If the writers are on strike.. who’s writing all the phrases on the picket signs?

HAHAHAHA

I know it’s old news for a lot of people, but I was listening to the news this morning and heard the word “terrorist” or “terrorism” no fewer than ten times in one three-minute segment.

I’m sick of that word. In that vein, I bring to you today, William Shunn, the Accidental Terrorist.

(Warning: a very long read, if you’re at work, save it until you’re home. It’s tremendously entertaining and funny, though, and an interesting insight into the pressures on LDS missionaries…)

Heh.. look at that bottle or Pantene 2 in 1. It says on the front in BIG PURPLE LETTERS: “Up to 50% more Volume! *”.

But then look at the back in small tiney gray letters.. “* When comparing Pantene 2 in 1 use with mousse and Pantene 2 in 1 without Mousse”

Wait a sec.. Did they just say that, essentially.. the 50% more volume has nothing to do with the Shampoo? They just said the shampoo, when used with mousse has 50% more volume than when used without the Mousse. ISN’T THAT ALWAYS TRUE??! THAT’S THE POINT OF MOUSSE!!

Or at least I hope so. There is a writer’s strike either on or about to be.. so it may be delayed.. But Fox has Greenlighted “DOLLHOUSE”, starring Eliza Dushku (Faith).

Essentially, she is a blank slate, owned by an organization that rents her out to the highest bidder, able to be imprinted with whatever it is she needs. If she is hired to be your lover, then she is completely devoted to you alone, if she is an assassin, she is deadly, and inbetween, she forgets it all.

At least she’s supposed to – but when she starts remembering, drama ensues.

Joss has a SEVEN episode commitment based solely on the idea, and it may become more, so here’s hoping.

(Still waiting for “Ripper” info.. c’mon BBC!!)

Hey there Mr. Barnson,

Quick question, if you have the time. I’m managing a web site for my family’s church that runs on either Drupal or Civicspace. It’s completely member locked, so currently when someone goes there they see an Access Denied message in the body of the site before they log in.

I’m trying to change the “Access Denied” message to something more user friendly, and I’m guessing it has to be done at the file level, since I can’t seem to find anyway to change it using the ‘administer’ section of the site itself.

When I hit View Source on that main page, the code appears to be just an html page. It looks like the Drupal engine calls up some html code to display in the main page’s body. However, there are no html files in the directory on the server where this Drupal site is installed. Would the html code be in one of the .mysql files?

Thanks much, Arthur

We have an interesting little tradition in Utah. Periodically, the Utah Education Association has a conference of some sort, and the kids get a week off from school. There is no holiday associated with it… there’s just a six-day vacation, usually in October.

This year, we planned on going to Seattle for UEA weekend, but obviously had to change our plans due to shifting circumstances. The break from the usual routine really heightens tensions between children in the family. I vaguely remember such vacations as a child being long stretches of boredom after the first day of shouting “Freedom! Freedom!” with joy from the rooftop.

It’s funny how oftentimes getting the thing you want — a break from school, for instance — turns out to be the worst thing for you. I can think of other examples, too, but for some reason I can’t shut off that tiny little part of my brain which refuses to listen to logic when I tell it that I’ll never win the lottery.

Tonight was the viewing for family and close friends of my stepfather, Dennis Ker. Attendance was surprising, even with people milling in and out over the course of two hours.

It was, I felt, both surreal and slightly macabre: there lay Dennis’ corpse in the coffin in the place of honor, surrounded by flowers with a line of chairs containing family to his left. A video synopsis of his life was playing on the LCD screen at the back of the room, repeating the same several songs over and over again throughout the 3-hour event.

And here we were, talking and laughing with only a hint of the sadness we felt leaking through our conversations. Most of the stories shared were the funny ones of better times. It felt odd to be smiling and giggling over obscure inside jokes with a corpse in the room… yet at the same time, it felt like what he would have wanted.

Tomorrow is the funeral, and with it, probably resumption of my usual upbeat and interrogatory blogs. But for now, I’m reminded of the man who was alternately exasperating and entertaining, and the love of my mother’s life.

This symptom was talked about during our staff meeting this morning.

ADOSS = Attention Deficit Oooh something shiny!

One. Breath.

One. Breath.

Sitting in this room, watching my stepfather dying in front of me, feels very much like watching an accident unfold. In a few horrifying moments in 1993, I heard a crunch, turned my head, and watched a tiny car performing a 540-degree somersault before smashing down on its windshield on the pavement. The driver of the other vehicle, a light truck, jumped out of his vehicle with his forehead gushing blood, and ran as fast as he could from the scene of the accident.

Luckily, other than being shaken up, the passengers and driver in the small vehicle were wearing their seatbelts and mostly unhurt. We helped them out of their wrecked blue Ford subcompact and brought them little cups of water and first-aid kits to cover up the cuts while awaiting the arrival of the ambulance. I stuck around with my partner to help push the car over on its wheels for the towtruck.

I was powerless to do anything to prevent it. I could not have known what was going to happen. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist the sense of despair at being unable to do more.

One, two. Breath.

One, two. Breath.

“That smells good. Whatcha’ cookin’ there, Matt?” asks Dennis in his inimitable Idaho drawl.

“It’s some beef stew. Want some?”

“Well, I would. But you know I can’t right now.”

I snap out of my daydream. He hasn’t moved more than labored breathing for several hours. He never talked to me about the plate of beef stew. But I can hear his voice in my head, in distinctive tones. I remember the sound of him hollering support to my kids while they played ball in the backyard.

“All right, Elijah! Way to go little guy!”

“Well, nice job Zack!”

“You did a great job, Sara.”

“Wow, Josh, you sure are fast.”

If nothing else, he was always a very positive person. It felt affected much of the time, like he was really working at being over-the-top cheery, but you have to appreciate the kind of effort that goes into doing that day in and day out for fifty-eight years.

One, two, three. Breath.

A slight choke.

One, two, three. Breath. A deep rattle in his chest.

He’s quiet. The morphine provided by the hospice seems to be working. He’s not flailing around or groaning in pain like he did last night. There’s no way of knowing how near the end is, but about the only things still pumping away are his heart, brain, lungs, and kidneys. Some better than the others, of course.

Dennis had a mild heart attack just a few years back. It barely slowed him down. He went right back to working his insurance business, always finding a way to make a buck. “If you can sell,” he quipped, “you’ll never go hungry. You may not get rich, but you can always support your family.”

Funny, we had been leaning on him to drop some weight and get on the exercise program the doctor told him to follow. Good advice for all.

He told us he didn’t want to go back to the hospital again. He wanted to be home.

One, two, three, four. Breath.

The deep rattle is replaced by a wheeze.

One, two, three, four. Breath.

And the rattle is back. Rattle plus wheeze. His lungs, I think incongruously, sound a bit like my first car.

Shift swap. Krystal takes a turn on the vigil. I sit behind her. I’m really not part of the rotation for Dennis. I’m here for my mom, and we all know it. But ultimately, neither Krystal nor Shirley want to face the inevitable without someone else there.

It’s tribe mentality, I guess.

Heh, Tribes. I used to play that computer game — Starsiege Tribes — way too much. Dennis used to get frustrated that sometimes I’d be playing computer games when he and my mom came to visit.

“You know we’re sitting right here, and there you are playing a game with your back to us. Should we just go home?”

His voice in my head again.

“I’m layin’ here and really wish I could tell you to knock off that infernal typing.”

Guess I’ll go along with the daydream and yield to my conscience. Back to the vigil. That practice sleeping polyphasically will pay off in the next day or two, I suppose.

One, two, three, four, five. Breath.