One of the few bright spots I find in the federal income tax form is the checkbox that one can tick to divert some money to a presidential campaign fund. (Short and sweet WP article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Election_Campaign_Fund)

It's not because I like or approve of public funding of political campaigns (talk about adding insult to injury!), but because it gives a very small piece of tax-money decision-making to the people from whom the money is being taken in the first place; essentially it means the mechanism for collecting taxes functions also (albeit weakly) as a sort of self-executing referendum.

Given that I think publicly funded campaigns (not to mention income taxes per se) are an awful idea, I think there are better uses for such a checkbox, but all the same. Aiming for optimism here!

Thought experiment: How about a tax system that asked in the payment process a forward-looking question like this of anyone paying a net income tax:
"I do not approve an increase in my effective tax rate.[ ]" or
"I do approve an increase in my effective tax rate. [ ]"

Or,
"I want $3 of the amount assessed by means of this form to be used for the reduction of the national debt. [YES/NO]"

What do you think about using income tax forms (while there's an income tax system) to essentially ask people how the money being collected can / should be spent? What "Money for X / no money for X" questions do you think should be asked? (Or, if you think it's a bad idea to have such taxpayer discretion, Why?)

[Aside: asking taxpayers directly, rather than indirectly, how their collected monies should be spent could be done whether or not the underlying tax system is an income tax or some other form. I'm prompted to donate small amounts to charities, for instance, every time I visit the local Safeway grocery store.]

Several vivid ones, two remain w/ any detail

1) Working in Manhattan. Commuted to work by something between subway and light rail, from within the city someplace. Sara H. and Dana B. worked in the same building, along w/ some other I knew, but names not coming to mind. Dana, Sara and I would say Hi freqently, walk together to / from transit spots, etc. One day, on such a walk in common, Dana and I both leaving the office for something (coffee?) in the afternoon, bump into AQL, who it turns out worked either in the same bldg or nearby. She said Hi when there was no other choice; I made introductions, overall seemed an inoffensive encounter, though it made the bottom drop out of my brain for a bit. That same day, have a similar, less awkward encounter, meeting up by chance w/ Eileen Liu, who I didn't even know was in the city but it turns out was working there as well. Mentioned earlier meeting w AQL, which surprised her as well. I knew that Becky was around, too, which I mentioned to her.

2) Eating w/ some people (mid to late evening) in a slightly fictionalized Seattle: Jake, ScuttleMonkley (Patrick McGarry) and -- weirdly! but it seemed very normal at the time -- J. Moyer. We driving to a place that might be called low-brow haute cuisine (like the sort of places that sell only hamburgers and mac-and-cheese, but very gourmet). In this case, they sold a small menu, specializing in I think chicken, stuffing, and fries, though I'm sure there were also green vegetables like spinach. The food was served, counter service, in cafeteria trays with wells (rather than plates, bowls, etc.), but not ordinary ones: they were translucent plastic, broad ovals rather than rectangles, with deep wells (though more the size of a small platter than typical cafeteria tray). There was a funny trick to ordering there, too -- something about the dessert portion was dependent on how you ordered; if you said some phrase (which was not secret, but not the default setting) you got a double portion of the desserts, and they were reputedly excellent, things like apple crisp and blackberry cobbler. Paper displays in the seating area prompted, something like "Are you getting the Double Dessert?" Again, sort of a gussied-up comfort / fast-food touch. It was somehow related to an optical illusion that relied on the shape of the wells in the serving tray; they *could* serve a half-portion in such a way that it looked like all that was intended, but if you asked for the double portion, they'd happily provide it -- it just didn't *look* anything like doubled, more like a margin-of-error difference in portion size.

Though I was skeptical of the contrived / twee feel of the set-up (seemed very cookie-cutter kitsch -- I don't need an irony supplement in my food), I did actually like the meal we had, and admired the efficiency of the actual operation. The serving tray system and counter-service system -- self-bussing, too -- cut their need for staff, meant less interference with the (rather cramped) dining area, making that small area workable for customers. I meant to but forgot to order the stuffing, but it smelled good. I was going to sample some of Joe's or Patrick's, but the extra bit that one of them had left was raided by the other.

More on the location: this was around where Seattle's Pioneer Square is in real life; slightly south and east of downtown. A sort of arcade mostly of restaurants, wrapping around a small square of grass (Maybe 100 or so feet on a side), in a neighborhood of similar spots; there was auto traffic, but one-way and meandering; the single lane of cars goes slowly, because they're looking for parking, and because there are pedestrians (and because anyone who is *leaving* needs to back out of the angled parking slots into the same lane). The parking is on both sides, though, at least in points, and sometimes it's doubled up (two cars in a long diagonal spot; the 2d car is trapped by the 1st, so I guess this works best if there's a two-car party of diners) who know they'll leave the same time). The whole arcade of restaurants (perhaps some other shops, too, but no homes that I noticed) was full, lots of people strolling around in the pleasant weather, shirt-sleeves and polo shirts. SMall trees interrupt the sidewalk at spots; some of the restaurants (all of which have quite narrow faces to the sidewalk) have a few tables out front as well. There were homes and apartments nearby, but connected by footpaths and conventional streets, rather than the European-feeling narrow car path here. The restaurants were mostly 1-story, perhaps some were two-stories, but there was nothing very tall. Reminded me a bit of the stretch of California street where Mashiko is (in West Seattle); bookstores, for instance, would have fit in well.

Funny thing happened on the way there: in one of the double parking slots on the left, I notice a car (silver sedan, obviously a semi-high-end car; Mercedes? Sebring? Lexus?) with its lights on. I regret not knowing how to reach the owner to tell him his lights are on; Jake immediately looks up the license on a notebook or tablet computer he has along, and says "Ah! It looks like the owner just spent [some exact amount, like "$17.24"] on an entree at a restaurant called [and here he named it]," and showed on-screen an image of his credit-car receipt, along with the menu of the restaurant. From the price, he was able to tell what dish he'd ordered. We contacted the owner (text message? phone?) to let him know about his car.

20100423-dreams

1) In Austin, present day, visiting a counter-service BBQ place on the 2d floor of a (fictional) 2-level mall just north of the UT campus, just east of the Drag. I recognize the place from other dreams, though I think this is the most specificically it's been located. Was taken by the looks of the girl who took my order, daughter of the owner -- I guessed Philipina or Indonesian. Her name was two syllables, but not very conventional -- I think "Trina." Short hair, dark-brown or black, petite but not tiny (5'3"-5'4", say), slightly broad shoulders, mischievious eyes. She read my face when I was stammering my order, laughed pleasantly, said something disarming, looked around to see if her father saw her flirting w/ the only customer in sight. I got my food, and then -- jump cut -- she and I are riding an Austin Metro bus, off to go do something around town, having a fun conversation.

2) James Bondian, though I was not all that suave within it. Held prisoner in a hotel room by 3 or 4 people; there was a woman being held, too, though I was suspicious she might have been a plant / double agent, so that I would volunteer information (about what, no recollection) in order to save her from harm. Though we were both being guarded, there'd yet been no serious attempt at extracting what I / we knew; that was to start later, and I got the feeling it was the 2d stringers who were in charge at the time. Data: they didn't bind me well to the chair; their weapons were mostly out of sight (or holstered); they were obviously talking among themselves about other matters part of the time, and in some cases smoking (confident that we'd not try, unarmed, to challenge them); they had us in a hotel room. Walls thick enough that neighbors would be oblivious, but not in (say) an isolated warehouse, country estate, etc. I took advantage: my legs were unbound, so I was able to get up, use the chair to which I was tied as a weapon to disable at least one of the 3 or 4 others in the room, which also loosened the bonds enough to let me move more freely. I got out of the room (leaving the woman, of whom I was still suspicious) and into the hallway of the hotel, which was actally a breezeway -- climate like Florida. I made lots of noise (anything I could think of -- chicken noises, shouting randomly, throwing out names), hoping this would discourage pursuit for fear of witnesses, and tried to make my way toward any place with more visible people (same reason). The chair was still attached to me, but only loosely, and I figured it would loose enough to cast off in short order.

20100420 - Three more lucid dreams

1) Dreamed I was in Alaska w/ a small bunch of friends and family, at relatively remote place. I suppose we had rented it for vacation. In the dream, we were quite used to the place, so either our vacation was ongoing so that the purest novelty had worn off, or we'd been there before.

- In the first part of the dream, I was walking toward the cabin after some playing outdors, eating snow, perfectly pure and white, and laughing at how it felt to do so. A few other people were doing it too, with my encouragement, and also laughing at the sensation. The snow was fluffy and dry, barely felt cold on the tongue.

- Part II: murder mystery; Steve Killen was also there at the cabin, along w/ a few others, incl. NCL. Either partly in or near a creek that crossed the property we occupied, we found a body (a new arrival -- hadn't been there earlier that day), and we could tell that the death was suspicious (though perhaps it could have been misadventure (drunk --> stumble --> drowning in creek, or hypothermia, etc.)). For whatever reason, police were unlikely to get there for a long time; maybe we didn't have a good way to contact them. For some line of work he was in, or perhaps just as a curious person, Steve K. had a fingerprint kit. Since this was in the snowy Alaskan outdoors, there's not much to fingerprint, but there were orange traffic cones there, and we thought that someone might have intentionally moved them, misleading someone who was approaching the creek into crossing at a place wheere it *wasn't* safe, as the cones were supposed to do the opposite. So Steve was going to try to find prints on the cones themsleves. If this fellow had drowned in the way we were picturing, the cones, essentially, were the murder weapon.

2) Hanging out w/ some rebellious but basically harmless ruffians, who weren't pleasing the owners of the stores they went into. (They looked semi-menacing, even if only semi. Don't remember why I was with them.) For some reason, I think this was in Portland.

Later, by myself, in a sort of sell-everything store (like a large "drug store" along the lines of Walgreens, CVS, etc.), being followed at little more than arm's length by an employee / manager there, who clearly thought I was a shoplifter or otherwise undesirable. I was ticked off. "Sir, can I help you find something?" I asked him, which flustered him a little bit (his line!), but he didn't back off. "Would you mind not following me quite so closely?" I asked, pointedly, and in a loud voice, hoping to embarrass. He kept up, so I decided to linger and dawdle, examining everything in the store, letting his suspicion be its own punishment.

3) Driving tiny, unstable car in a W. coast city (sort of a PortlandSeattleSFVancouver of a place ...)
I was behind a car full of sheiks (30s/40s, dressed in white djaballas and black-framed sunglasses) in a white Cadillac. Obviously their Cadillac was a treasured, cared-for vehicle, but it wasn't to my taste; it was from a gas-guzzling phase of the 1970s, had the sort of bulky, awkward curves I think of from then, but was made even uglier with modifications that added extra chrome bars wrapping around each corner. Still, a curiosity. I wondered why the sheiks were there, whether they'd imported the car just to tool around in or had bought it in the U.S., etc.

I got to take special note of the car (I was trying to make myself remember the plate number, and to read the state from there, but I couldn't quite do it) because I was stopped behind it at an intersection, facing uphill. (West coast is easy, besides the intuition that this was so, because the sun was setting -- late afternoon -- to my rear, over the ocean.) When the light changed, the Cadillac of sheiks roared off; the tiny car I was in sort of puttered forward, then I turned right. It felt unstable at any highway speed, so I had to keep right and slow down to the fastest speed where the wobble was controllable.

Bad experience w/ Travelocity just now, though I have usually been impressed by their system.

1) Despite filling in the checkbox to "please remember this updated information" I can't get Travelocity to stop filling in a previous address (in another state) by default, and credit card information from a card I no longer have and is out of date anyhow. That's bad UI. I don't fly often, so it doesn't come up much, but I've noticed this now for the few times that I have flown since first updating (read "trying to update") this information. a) It's wrong, which means I have to correct it by hand and b) really, I don't want extra copies of out-of-date addresses or credit card data floating around generally.

2) Worse: charge slamming. Travelocity now (I'm not sure when this started) is deciding that by default I do want to pay them $20/flight for "travel protection." (OK, now mentally make all the mafia jokes you want. "Sure would be a shame if something -- thump on window glass -- was t'happen to this nice little flight of yours.") I noticed this when the price didn't match up to what I expected, and I thought perhaps some new Federal fee had been added. No -- this one I can blame on Travelocity. Radio buttons indicating "Yes, I want to pay you another $20" and "No, I'm self-loathing idiot who loves interrupted flights and bad weather." There are some circs. in which I *would* buy such a service, but checked on by default? That's an attempt to trick people into accepting it.

Unhappy with this, but Hey, it's easy, right? Just uncheck the box. But then, adding insult to insult, you have to click a box on the later confirmation page that says "I've read about the 'travel protection' plan and I'm so short-sighted and stupid that I *still* don't want it, 30 seconds after the last time I told you this."

After filling in all the required information re: credit card, address, etc. Error flag on hitting the "Yes, I really, really want to give you my money in exchange for an airplane ticket" button, something about "invalid character" in my name. (Period after initial, I guess was the complaint. Which is idiotic, if that's the case.) So I removed the period, tried again. New error message: I needed to *again* click the box "no travel protection" box. That box is unchecked between refreshes of otherwise preserved information. That's jerky behavior, besides being a bad UI.

--------------------------

Note: In the grand scheme, even given these gripes, note that I'm generally very happy with the price and convenience of buying tickets online. It's amazingly fast to compare flights by time / price / length, etc, and the flights I got I'm happy with.

It's April 16; last night, shortly after 11 p.m. local time, I handed in an envelope bearing a check made out to THE UNITED STATES TREASURY in an amount I hope is sufficient to avoid special scrutiny from the rapacious revenuer rapscallions. An oddity: other people talk about getting back their refund each year; I must be doing something wronger than usual, because I don't think I have ever gotten back a refund, have been filing taxes for most of two decades. (Single guy, income in the taxable range, simple return ...)

The crush at the post office was actually the highlight of my drive; it's sort of a mild 30-second madhouse atmosphere, even with no real human contact, except the fellow (USPS employee? Not sure) who was helping people on the wrong (left-hand) side of the collection bin by doing an envelope alleyoop. The worst part of the drive: being lost, in a place it shouldn't be possible to be lost. A reminder of how valuable are GPS devices, and that I need to get a replacement for the one either lost by or stolen from me several months back.

Today: it's a prelude to summer. The air smells of salt water, the seagulls are circling, flowers are blooming, coffee is in the air. Hard to imagine a place with nicer summers, even in preview.

Dreams of last night:

Several (couch sleeping = lots of wakeup opptys), but only three linger, and barely:

1) at a birthday party in a small apartment, shared by several people I know. A new guy has just moved in, either college age or just out; he is trying to be a good housemate, and in doing so handily reorganized the refrigerator, which was great. What had been an awful mess, full of wasted food, became a fairly sparse, nicely organized area. The birthday party was a non-surprise party for Beth, but mostly it was just people hanging out in one of the two small dedicated bedrooms. (I think 4 or 5 people lived there, but space was tight.)

2) At a similar gathering, but in the east, with several family members as well as friends and others I didn't recognize. I realize we don't have enough snacks for everyone; my mom is there, and suggests making as appetizers salmon-omelet sandwiches, points out an unopened packaged of smoked salmon, and that sounds like a good idea, so I start gathering the other necessary ingredients, too. I only arrived to the apartment (not sure whose) that day, wasn't sure what was on hand or where it was stored.

3) I had become friends with an eccentric fellow; idiot savant might have been a good term. At the beginning of this dream I was spending time (restaurant? bookstore?) with this guy and another friend of his, who seemed to consider our mutual friend to have turned strange over the last few years. (Both of them were somewhat older than me -- late 40s or 50s, I'd say.) Though still on good terms, she seemed taken aback by his increasingly odd verbal behavior. We drove from wherever it was we had been hanging out to his home, several miles south. (Interesting, I know we were headed south, while remembering nothing else of the geography of the dream.) An example of his odd behavior: at an intersection, we pulled up behind a car that he recognized as a little known model of Saab; he started talking at length about its qualities and specs, noting the condition, likely market value, popular opinion of the car at the time of its release, etc. "Boy, I'd love to have one of these!" I was impressed, didn't know if he had that kind of knowledge stored up about cars generally, or just that kind. [Aside: I liked the car, too: Looked something like a Saab designed by F. Porsche; slightly bulgy and curvy in a way that I like in very few cars, like the Karma Ghia, the 911, etc. Leather interior, blue paint, slightly tinted windows. I think he said it was from the '70s.] His woman friend and I shared glances of understanding at some of his pronouncements along the way, too; we were planning to stay for a few hours at his house and help organize things (with his permission).

Yesterday, shared dinner w/ a few people here at the house. I made a pasta salad, with which I was and am well-pleased.

The salad proper (that is, not counting the dressing):
- 1.5 lbs dry weight penne rigate, cooked all dente, rinsed in cold water, allowed to sit for a few minutes
- 1 cucumber, seeds scraped out, rough peeled, cut long on the bias (pulp reserved)
- 2 carrots, cut in long thin sticks (messy, but mission accomplished. No neat matchsticks here)
- A dozen or so kalamata olives, ripped in quarters
- 3 artichoke hearts, since they were around
- 1 small tomato cut into strips (pulp reserved for dressing)
- fennel -- perhaps an ounce or two, in total -- some thin slices from the bulb, and some of the wispy leaves
- 2 stalks celery, cut slightly on the bias; the ugly fat ends reserved for dressing
- red onion, in thin slices -- perhaps an ounce in total
- a bit of green pepper, in small strips
- sesame seeds. These were untoasted, toasted would have been even better

Dressing:
- olive oil
- basalmic vinegar
- apple cider vinegar
- some red wine
- some red wine vinegar
- rice vinegar
- tomato (pulp and seeds from the tomato sliced for the salad)
- fine diced fennel and some fennel leaves
- fine diced celery
- fine diced red onion
- fine diced green pepper
- one thin-sliced button mushroom
- fine diced carrots
- fine diced cucumber pulp / seeds
- salt, bit of pepper.
- 3 drops Tobasco
- a short squeeze of lime

This is my usual salad dressing strategy: oil, a bit more vinegar than oil, Tobasco, salt, pepper, and lots of chopped bits from the salad ingredients. I put in less pepper than usual (more would have been fine), and very little hot stuff. Often I'll put in some other ingredients, all of which were left out this time: curry, soy sauce, dill, garlic, red pepper flakes, cilantro ...

Altogether, slightly over half a cup of dressing, stirred into the cooled noodles, which had been poured (when cooled) over the vegetables.

Chilled for an hour or so in the fridge in a giant steel bowl.

Served; salt was needed, and some further sprinklings of basalmic vinegar. Also stirred in some salad greens at-table. Probably should have included olive bits in the dressing itself.

The fennel adds a great taste; Jon Lasser's apple/fennel salad may be the first time I knowingly tasted fennel, and it's great.

Tailgater in red car, (NE?) plate PD5 HC5

(Note: I don't obsess over mild or brief tailgating; it happens. What I object to is seeing impatience turn dangerous. I'm usually a right-lane driver when there are two lanes in my direction, a middle lane driver when there are three or more, so I'm rarely the victim of the worst tailgaters, as I wasn't of this particular idiot.)

Maryland plate 978M120
Black Lexus (new)
ugly woman driving (blonde, sunglasses)

Thanks for tailgating, honking (not at me, but at someone else with the temerity to be only 10 miles over the limit), and generally being an idiot. Why don't you get your catharsis someplace safer?

Quebec plate 610-FLP, Green Pontiac
Cigarette-thrower. Polluters without borders!

1) Final semester in law school, I dreamed, I got a 3.89 GPA, which would be the best GPA I've ever achieved, from kindergarten on. I remember glancing at the assigned grades, but not which class they matched. There were also more courses listed (6 or 7 at least) than I actually took per semester, and at least two of them were Bs, which means the "3.89" result is a non sequitur. But Hey, felt cool.

2) On my way to some sort of good-natured paramilitary gathering, something like Burning Man for people who'd rather play soldier for a few days than paint themselves with hallucinogenic mud. Feeling very dumb for having bought so little ammo, because I knew that it would cost quite a bit on-site. The gun I'd just bought for the occasion was an interesting handgun, I think a Kel-Tec, with a magazine that fit into the grip horizontally (below the hand, a sort of variation on bullpup design) rather than being part of and internal to the grip as is typical in pistols. I had purchased the 25-round magazine, which this pistol was specifically built to accomodate, though smaller capacity ones were also avaiable; I don't remember how the cartridges made the trip from the magazine to the chamber. Several people asked to handle this gun (which I allowed), because it was a new design, and many of them had read about it but never seen one in person. I had not yet fired it, so could give no report on that, but most people liked the balance and ergonomics of the grip.

Most people heading to this gathering were in ordinary cars or light pickup trucks, but quite a few were also walking in, perhaps from local bus stations or airports. The attitude was upbeat; people were looking forward to a few days of camraderie, cookouts, and mild adventure. I did notice one (very light) armored car, which could have been a car chassis with a merely decorative drop-on shell, or (as I had the impression) an actually armored vehicle. It was matte black, with a sharply wedge-shaped front end, looked like the Cooper Mini of tanks. Built for speed and better-than-zero protection, rather than as a portable bunker. I think it had a gun mounted on the hood (in a turret), but not huge -- might have been a 50BMG just fitted with servo motors, so it could be fired from the cockpit.

3) Attacked by either an aligator or a crocodile. Living a Huck Finn / Swiss Family Robinson existence with some friends and relatives, in a "house" that was mostly open air, made in part of trees that were already close enough together that they could be roughly enclosed with some boards, burlap, bamboo, etc. I was there as a long-time sojourner rather than permanent resident, but that didn't make much difference: it was a casual, fairly transient population overall. I woke up one day wondering how it is that I never saw aligators inside, since there were plenty of holes big enough for them to wriggle into, and some rooms (like mine) were mud-floored, sometimes dried into clay, sometimes deep in muck, depending on the surrounding or upstream swamp conditions. My bed was a platform that was just a few feet over the mud below, cut into what had been the bank of a (since diverted) stream. Just after I had that thought, I looked over to see a mostly buried crocgator (light green, 7 or 8 feet long, though I saw only the head and some above-surface bits of its spine; most was beneath the surface of the light-brown mud) nearly motionless just a few feet below me.

I was afraid, or perhaps afeared. I didn't want to kill the crocgator, but a) was nervous that the crocgator, if he put his mind to it, would badly injure or kill me, out of instinct if not malice and b) was scrambling to find anything I might be able to use as a weapon, and wishing I had a shotgun in my room. Perhaps sensing my nervousness, the crocgator stirred. I was looking for escape routes, but none were handy. I could go somewhat higher in my room, including partway into the branches of a tree, but couldn't actually leave without entering the lower muddy area where the monster was. First thing I grabbed was a stick (medium tree branch), and as soon as I had this, the crocgator lunged at me, but seemingly as a test move. As he lunged, I smacked him with the branch, which he then bit and gnawed. Didn't immediately snap it, but took of chunks I was glad weren't made of me. The crocgater was getting a bit testy now. Since I couldn't exactly play possum (besides, do crocgators disciminate against seemingly dead possums? I doubt it.), I yelled for the others in the house, hoping one of them might have experience with this kind of thing, and a shotgun, a multi-prong spear, a big net, or something. I looked around, and found what seemed the best tool of defense in my arsenal, which was a 10 or 12" cast-iron skillet.

Lucky for me, that's about all I remember.

In order of appearance in my head -- there were more that night, but I didn't get them written down, so they're now gone forever.

1) - Contemplative, optimistic. Driving at evening in beautiful semi-desert small town Texas. Tall rocks stained red, sky already purple-blue, slight breeze, air cool after a hot day, highway empty. A very few signs of human habitation, besides the road itself (a highway, but only 2 lanes). My view was high and into the distance, looking east.

2) - Driving (not part of previous dream -- someplace else) w/ Mrs. B, her daughter S, and S's brother. Either there were more people, or more than one of the four of us had a car, so at some point it seemed smart to split up or trade drivers or something, and I suggested that Brother might want to. He seemed really reluctant, and it turned out it was because he knew technically how to drive a car but had almost no confidence or experience at it, esp. with a stickshift.

In this dream, driving a yellow Volvo 240. I was amazed (and thought it was just objectively amusing) that Brother was such a hesitant driver, trying not to have this come across as ridicule, because he seemed embarrassed enough.

3) (A cool but weird one): In rural Virginia; kids were breaking into an old workshop over which I had responsibility if not ownership, and destroying some of the things it held. None of the tools there were truly valuable antiques, but they were disused or outmoded rather than actually unusable. This workshop either adjoined or actually occupied public land, part of a park I think, but the trees around it had grown, and except for kids exploring the thickets, few people knew it was there. (It might have been land that was merely taken to be public, but actually belonged to the nearby college.) I was mad, but rather than yell at them, managed to talk to the kids, point out they were destroying some valuable old things in haste, and they could instead have a much better time with the tools / wood / workbench by actually making things, learning how to use the tools, etc. They weren't actually malicious, they were mostly just exploring / adventuring, didn't realize any value to the things they were destroying until it was pointed out. So I allowed them & friends to come back, but only at certain times and after giving them a sense of responsibility for the well-being of the property. Several parents ended up coming, too, after their kids told them about it, incl. one rather attractive single mother who was flirting with me; her son had been one of the instigators in the vandalism.

Besides being near or on a park (if I recall that part right), this workshop was also near the campus of an old, decent but not famous college. It had a short name (one or two syllables), a few old marble / brick buildings, but mostly medium-sized smaller buildings in a more modern style. Respectable liberal arts school, mostly -- pearls over black turtlenecks.

I went into the campus art museum (I think just to get directions), found it fascinating, wandered through much of the museum, which was larger by far than I'd first taken it for. Many small galleries connected by low doorways, eclectic mix by origin, style and era of artwork. A large gift shop toward the middle of the maze of galleries sold mostly things like musical instruments, kits for kids to make things, science toys, etc; a smaller gift store toward the edge of the building (staffed by one blonde-haired student with ... pearls over a black turtleneck, and a slightly haughty air) sold things like postcard prints of the artworks. I encountered her (and the smaller gift shop) because I wanted to find out its open hours, so I could return soon to spend more time there.

I finally ordered a digital SLR earlier this week, after more than a decade's worth of wanting one, and watching the prices go from crazy, crazy, only AP-photogs-need-apply (and with a grant, too) for modified Fujis and Nikons (including the early Kodak/Nikon venture), to something like cheaper at entry level than I paid for my own used entry-level film gear not that many years ago. (And while it's not exactly apples to apples, that comparison is at least Pentax to Pentax; Pentax K1000, though with a nice bright 50mm lens and in quite good shape, compared to a Pentax K-x with an 18-55mm kit lens, used "very good" from Amazon.)

Thinking about digital cameras more generally, though, has led me to look at lots of pictures created with CHDK, the Canon Hack Development Kit. (I believe that's what was used to shoot the cool near-space photos mentioned on Slashdot a few days ago).

CHDK's page may be rather busy, but it beats the public face of many software products, by explaining in simple terms just what it is, right on the front page, and having labels that make sense to technical people at least subtitled for the non-initiates. ("IRC" / "Chat with other users," "Forum" / "Share results and ask questions.")

Maybe one day I'll pick up an older but CHDK-friendly Canon through Craigslist or similar in order to add some of the cool features it brings; for cheap, mid-grade digital cameras, the images possible through High Dynamic Range bracketing and motion detection are amazing.

Thanks to Google and LifeHacker, I just discovered that in iTunes it's trivial to rip a multi-track CD into a single MP3 file, by selecting "Join CD Tracks" from the Advanced menu before hitting the "Import CD" button.

Can anyone give me the one-line version of the equivalent operation in SoundJuicer, RipperX, or other LInux-based ripping apps?

I realize there's more flexibility with tracks-in-a-folder, even if Pink Floyd doesn't like it. What I'd like this for is audiobooks (which I listen to more than music); some audiobooks have 99 tracks (or even more), which gets a bit annoying to deal with on a small-screen, portable device.