Posted inEntertainment

Academy Awards impressions

Should have gone with my heart, "Bowling for Columbine," rather than calculating, "they'd never vote for Michael Moore"...would have won with 11 picks, rather than tying with Laurel and one other person who also had 10 at Jim Ramsey's traditional vegetarian AA potluck...regardless, 10 or 11 is still pretty pathetic; my sister and brother-in-law report they got 16 and 17 respectively, ending up the top two at their AA get-together...congratulations! though don't I recall you saying, Carol Ann, that you do advance research on the Internet, checking out the projected winners from various sources, and then averaging them all together?...doesn't…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Victory! (but the war may not be over yet)

No, we're not talking about Iraq, but about Laurel's fight to stop further partitioning (a.k.a. subdividing) of lots in Spring Lake Estates. The report from the Marion County hearings officer arrived in the mail today. She denied the Nielsen's application to partition their Oak Drive lot. We're still digesting her findings, but clearly all of Laurel's hard work researching well deepenings and replacements, plus the competent hydrogeology reviews by Malia Kapillis, paid off. The hearings officer cited numerous errors and omissions in the original hydrogeology report prepared by Nick Coffey for the Nielsens, most of which were pointed out by…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Good and bad of March 17

The good: its our anniversary, which we cleverly managed to make St. Patrick's Day, so whenever images of green beer and drunken Irishpeople start to run through my head I know it's time to start making romantic preparations. Which, this year (our 13th, which isn't bad because we're not superstitious, knock on wood) didn't require a lot of time. I guess a man knows he's been married a dozen plus years when the big present you decide to give your wife is finally fixing two mouse problems--in our well pump enclosure and (more disgustingly) our medicine drawer--and she is happy…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

Week in review

God, that sounds like some sort of PBS public affairs program, "Week in Review." But that’s what it's been, more than a week since my last HinesSight entry, so duty calls me to summarize it all in a single blaze of what-we've-been-up-to-but-haven't-uttered-a-peep-about. Well, the most traumatic event, from which it took me several days to recover, was logging onto the L.L. Bean web site, ready to accomplish my bi-or tri-annual jeans buying in the usual minute or two, and making a horrifying, absolutely impossible to believe, discovery. L.L. Bean had discontinued selling black natural fit jeans, and had changed the…
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Posted inHome life

Clearly, a message from God

What other explanation is there? I open up the newspaper this morning, and there in the Saturday “Auto” section is a glowing review of the Mini-Cooper. I got to drive one of the original Mini-Coopers exactly one time, circa 1967, when a college friend much more knowledgeable about cars than I urged me to test drive one, as an alternative to a VW bug that I was thinking of buying. That test drive is still fresh in my mind, or, at least, as fresh as any experience from the 60s can be, for reasons that should be obvious, but which…
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Posted inFamily Home life

Oh, yeah, vegetarianism is cool

I know it is true, because Time magazine tells me so. Therefore, following some sort of possibly-twisted Aristotelian logic, since Laurel and I are vegetarians, we must be cool too. The article reports that nearly 25% of adolescents polled by Teenage Research Unlimited said vegetarianism is "cool." And college students rated salad eaters more moral, virtuous, and considerate than steak eaters. Well, obviously. Who needs a poll to tell us that? Vegetarians rule! Real vegetarians, at least. Time says that in a survey of 11,000 people, 37% of those who responded "Yes, I am a vegetarian" also reported that in…
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Posted inPhilosophy Science

Near-death experience and nothingness

Recently an acquaintance forwarded me an email message about a particularly amazing near-death experience. All near-death experiences are amazing, of course, because death is such: amazing, the mother of all mysteries. I've always been interesed in NDE's since I have a bit of a personal interest, as do we all, in what happens after we take our last breath. Death has a way of capturing your attention, thats for sure. But most NDE's bear a distressingly close resemblance to the nature of the person having the experience. Christians tend to see Jesus, New Agers a soul guide, and so on.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies are you going to kill today?”

On Laurel's instigation, we took part in the worldwide no-war! protests today, joining 1000 or more people at the state Capitol. It had been over 30 years since either of us had been in an antiwar protest march, so we were a bit out of practice. I had the LBJ chant all ready to go, realizing that some acronym substitutions had to be made, but it bothered me that GWB didn't rhyme so nicely with "hey" or "today." Fortunately, the protest was much better organized than protests were in the late 1960s. Probably the organizers weren't nearly as stoned as…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Backups are beautiful

That's my sentiment at the moment, having just reinstalled the blogging software after more than a week in the deeper depths of upgrade-to-a-larger-hard-disk-hell. Reinstalling, and then posting an "I'm back" message resulted in the disappearance of every single trace of the old HinesSight postings--which, in retrospect, was entirely predictable, since the newly installed software had me starting from scratch. The message, my friends, is to faithfully backup your precious whatever. This is relatively easy to do with computer whatevers; I just had to copy a folder from a backup drive to the new drive. Its a bigger problem with more…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

HinesSight interruptus

My sister recently reminded me that it had been five days since my last posting. Indefensible! I shall punish myself severely, in a fashion that I cannot let myself know, or I would be able to take steps to avoid it. Let the punishment fall when I least expect it, which it will, since it isn't known even to myself. My only defense, and it is a weak one, is that dear Dell 8200 is still suffering from some start-up and performance problems, not unlike yours truly. So I continue to spend more time than usual fussing with computer maintenance…
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Posted inHome life

So proud of Laurel

I'm so proud of my lovely wife, and if you could have seen her swearing like a longshoreman in front of the bathroom mirror last month, you would be as proud of her as I am. Yes, Laurel finally has learned how to put in a contact lens. Now, it is true that five year old children undoubtedly can do this without any problem, but Laurel, who is a bit older than that, had some unique problems that she had to overcome. To wit, a blink reflex that wouldn't stop. I can't begin to tell you what we (mostly her,…
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Posted inSustainability

Thanks for feeding PollMonkey

Many thanks to everyone who fed the PollMonkey and expressed their preference for a new name for the old Fairview Training Center property. The online poll will remain up for about another week, until my one-month PollMonkey membership expires. Vote if you haven't done so already. It turns out that the management of Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA), the group that is making Fairview into a sustainable (i.e. Green) development, has changed course, and now doesn't think the property needs to be renamed right away. That's fine with me. I had advised the management that they needed to slow down and…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Life and death

What it all comes down to, doesn't it, life and death? Isn't this at the root of the human condition, and our most basic fears, longings, fantasies, desires, dreams, beliefs, everything? I went in to renew a permit this morning that had, um, expired a mere four years ago, and in the process of trying to butter up the clerk who had to decide whether this lapse deserved some sort of bureaucratic slap on the hand, we ended up having a great mini-conversation about the meaning of it all. Noting that my age, 54, was similar to hers, 53, she…
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Posted inNeighborhood Sustainability

Sustainability in Spring Lake Estates

Laurel and I typed away like demons last week, getting ready Laurel's response to the Oak Drive lot partitioner's response to her response to the partitioner's application. As if that wasn't enough legalese, now the partitioner gets two weeks to prepare a response to Laurel's response to the partitioner's response to Laurel's response to the partitioner's application. (No wonder why people find the legal system so confusing.) We'll keep you posted, neighbors, as the appeal winds closer to a decision. Of course, there is a good chance that no matter how the hearings officer rules, the losing side will appeal…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

Positive postscript to hard drive hell

As mentioned in the post below, I'm desperately trying to derive some meaning from last week's attempted hard drive transfer horrors. What good is frustration? Usually we avoid it at all costs. I certainly would have sacrificed almost anything to the Great Computer in the Sky last Thursday if she could have blessed me with a benediction: "Go, Dell Inspiron 8200, and crash no more." But, what would life be like if we never ran up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles? Would we just contentedly sit on our butt, not being driven to try to crash through the barrier that divides…
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Posted inHome life

In the belly of the beast–a tale of hard drive hell

It's been a strange two days. I hardly know who I am anymore, or what I've been doing. I must seek clues in what I see around me. Empty coffee cup. Paper towel with jelly stains. Shiny anti-static wrapper. Screwdriver. PC card slot placeholders. Two tiny screws. Computer manuals. Receipt from CMS Peripherals, Inc. with "You bastards will die!!!" scrawled on it in red crayon. Hmmm. That's my handwriting. What's been going on? Ah, it all is starting to come back now...my eeensyweensy 20GB notebook hard drive had become filled to overflowing with my verbiage, and those endless Windows XP…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

God blesses America?

On this eve of Bush's State of the Union speech, it is appropriate to ponder the all-important questions, "Does God bless America?", and "Does America bless God?" Recently there was a letter to the editor in our local newspaper that made a daring suggestion: maybe it is best for us to humbly bless God, rather than make imperious demands on the divine--God bless America!--such as our President is wont to do. Obviously this person was a thinly disguised neo-pagan, or perhaps even an Al-Quaida mole, because the evidence is clear that God truly does put America first among all the…
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Posted inFamily

30 Reasons for a Father Not to Have a Daughter

In honor of my daughter, Celeste Vos, whose 31st birthday is today, I have reprised in a much more public fashion last year's birthday greeting, tenderly titled "30 Reasons for a Father Not to Have a Daughter." I probably should have updated it to "31...", but the Super Bowl has started, and I really can't think of any new reasons, anyway. Now that she's past 30 (time to have children, don't you think?), Celeste has become wonderfully attentive and sensitive to her father, even when she isn't asking for money. I'm the one, this year, who didn't get a card…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Almost a fan

I was so thrilled yesterday to get some fan email! Well, almost. I suppose I should have recognized right away from the message that something was wrong, but my desperate need for praise and approval blinded me for a while. Here's the message, with my (almost) fan's name omitted: DEAR MR. HINES, MY NAME IS...AND I AM IN FIRST GRADE. I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO COME TO OLD BETHPAGE GRADE SCHOOL NEXT WEEK. I READ YOUR BOOK, THE MONSTER'S TEST, IN SCHOOL TODAY. I LOVED IT. YOU ARE A VERY GOOD AUTHOR. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU. YOUR…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Iraq irrationality

So tell me, where am I wrong in pointing out this particular piece of Iraq irrationality? Last night I was reading a Time magazine story about Rumsfeld's war plans. Reportedly he plans to emphasize the use of special forces troops, who are to swoop in at the beginning of the war and prevent Hussein from using his chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons. Now, one has to assume that this means the special forces will (1) be able to find out where the weapons are stored, and (2) be able to destroy them after they find them. But...isn't this just what…
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