David Hodges

I have now completed 3 books by novelist Elizabeth Strout:
"Olive Kitteridge"
"Amy and Isabelle"
'Abide with Me"

They are all set in Maine in small towns. Each focuses on a central character or characters.
In Olive Kitteridge it is the village school teacher of whom all the kids are afraid and who has difficulty with the important people in her life. In Amy and Isabelle it is a mother and daughter who are at odds while the daughter tries to hide her growing sexual awakening. In Abide with me it is Tyle McCasky, the young village minister whose wife has died and whose young daughter refuses to talk.

But in each book the townspeople are also important characters and play important parts in the stories.
Ultimately these books are about love, loss, despair, redemption. You might think of these Maine towns as quaint or drab, but the lives that are depicted are intense and vivid.

You won't be sorry if you make the acquaintance of Elizabeth Strout. My only regret is that she hasn't published any more books yet!

 It is so wonderful to be able to walk without pain in my knee and hip!
It is so wonderful to be able to run 2 miles on the treadmill without pain.
It is so wonderful to be able to lie in bed without having to bend my knee for comfort.

All winter I have suffered from sciatica. I threw out my back before Christmas. In January,  I threw it out again shovelling snow from the driveway. It got better but left me with this lingering soreness in my hip that radiated down to my knee. It would get much worse when I walked, or stood for any length of time. 

This lasted all winter and spring until a few weeks ago. It would appear to be getting better and then I'd be back at square one again.
I was doing yoga for self-therapy. Also prayer.
First I went to my acupuncturist. He was good on pain relief but the unerlying problem didn't get better.
Then I went to my regular doctor who said with rest it should get better on its own eventually. But it didn't.
Then I went to my chiropractor who said my left SI joint was frozen (Sacro-iliac, where the tailbone joins to the hips). He couldn't get a good adjustment there. But he said that was the problem, not in my hip or knee.
Then a few weeks ago I had an impromptu session with my friend Heidi, who does Shiatsu and energy healing. She worked on me and I could feel the heat from her hands entering me. I started to feel improvement.!
The following weekend I was watching a video, decdied on the spur of the moment to go up to my yoga mat and stretch. When I did so I felt things moving in my lower back in a new way! So I lay down on my back and did a spinal twist and was rewarded with two large pops from the frozen SI joint! They released! I knew it would start to get better!

Now, two weeks later, I am nearly symptom free. Every once in a while there is a pain in the back of my knee but it is transient. 

This weekend I have run over 4 miles on the treadmill! It feels great!

So I thank God, Heidi, and my chiropractor for this healing!

I'm going to see Terminator Salvation - the first matinee of the day. That leaves the rest of the day free for more mundane things. I was saving this movie to see with my Terminator-buddy but she doesn't seem to have a free weekend for a few weeks (she's in New York) and I can't wait.

Did you know there is an expression for the feeling we get from humanoid robots: "uncanny valley". Definition: " Feelings of unease, fear, or revulsion created by a robot or robotic device that appears to be, but is not quite, human-like." (WordSpy.com)

The article goes on to say: "if you graph people's emotional reactions to a robot, they will generally increase (become more positive) as the machine's similarity to a human being increases. However, at the point where the robot is nearly lifelike, a certain creepiness or even downright revulsion takes over and the emotional response collapses. If the robot could be made 100% human-like, then the emotional response would, of course, return to the favorable range. That emotional crash at the not-quite-human stage is the uncanny valley."
http://www.wordspy.com/words/uncannyvalley.asp

"

The side of a porch down the street

I love how much color is in the bricks that the naked eye doesn't see but that comes out when you push the dynamic range.

Happy Easter everyone!
It is a beautiful morning here in Southern New England. Things are starting to bud out now.
I went for an early morning walk...ostensible purpose was to return a DVD to the drop box a few boxes away, near Lulu's coffee shop.
But mostly I wanted to give my camera and my knee a spin.
I have been battling sciatica all winter. It was made going for walks a chore but otherwise hasn't interfered too mcuh. But long walks would leave my knee sore as hell and somtimes my hip and down my leg.
But finally I have a good chiropracter who is making progress loosening up the SI joint. That and some deepening twice-daily yoga practise to open up the hips. So this morning was a good walk, very little pain, my mind was actually on the resurrection beauty of the day and not much else.
Hallelujah! I hope to post a picture or two later in the day. Right now I have to pay my bills (including income tax, blah!) and then off to church.

If you have five minutes, watch this beautfiul, inspiring video on sustainable living:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKtgfSW9k9Q

It shows a better way...

I saw the movie "Transsiberian" last night with Cindy. I had never heard of it, but it was great - a gritty thriller set on the Siberian Express railway through Sibera. We went during the so-called hurricane Hanna, which was a fizzle, aside from bursts of heavy rain.
Then last night I slept the sleep of the dead and woke up disoriented, it took me a while to remember who I am. And I am running a slight migraine, first one since July. So I have been working on moving web sites from an old server to a new server, which is a process that involves ftp'ing files, setting up IIS and FTP, finding the DNS provider and updating that. Tedious. But we only have a few sites that have to be done.
Then I helped Robin pack the car - she is taking stuff to New York for the semester at Columbia.
Now even though it is Sunday I have some programming I want to do. Why? Because it is a hard little bit I have to do, and during the normal workday there are too many interuptions.

Last weekend I ran in New Haven's Labor Day road race. I did the 5k. Robin ran with me, it was nice of her to accompany the old man. My time was quite respecatable (33 minutes) and it was fun and a good way to demonstrate that losing 40 pounds has a lot of health benefits.

I also set up my twitter account after reading the article in today's New York Times magazine, "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy". I am DavidHodges on Twitter. Do any of you friends  have Twitter accounts?

I have been trying to get one of the new iPhone 2.0 since Friday. After visiting a couple of the AT&T stores in the area with no luck, I have resorted to calling them instead. They always say "We are expecting a shipment tomorrow". But when I call they say "No iPhones. Maybe tomorrow." So I'll have to wait.

I don't even know why I am trying so hard to get one.

Well, its like my iPod. My friend Mark twisted my arm into getting one about three years ago. I was very doubtful but I soon came to love it and it became a gadget that I use a lot and that now I wouldn't want to be without. So maybe I'm think the iPhone will be like that.

We'll see.

Meanwhile the "No iPhone for You" beat goes on...

I have my new Verizon Wireless Rev-A broadband modem (aka EVDO) (aka 3-G). I got frustrated at the dead places in my big house where the wi-fi just doesn't reach (especially upstairs), and a recent DSL outage put me over the edge. Now I have this little USB device with a small antenna that connects me via the cell phone network to high-speed Internet goodness.

Let me review my progress in getting connected:

In the 80's there were this modems that we used to get into programmer's bulletin board systems. Every few years the modems doubled in speed - 300 baud, 1200 baud, 2400, 4800, 9600.

In about 1990 someone told me about the Internet. He was an academic and had access through his college. As a non-academic, I searched for a public portal and found one in New York, Pipeline! I spent about a year racking up big long distance bills while I trolled Usenet and gopher and made friends with people on Pipeline.

Then PcNet opened in Connecticut and the Internet was a local call away! I invested in a second phone line so I could say online as long as I wanted and still get phone calls.

In 1995 someone said I should try this program called Mosaic and bam! I was on the World-Wide Web!
Around that time I helped to start Recol.com (I was their first sysadmin) and got my dial-up through them. But dial-up was getting increasingly slow as the Web became increasingly more graphics-hungry.

I heard about DSL and was the test account for my company. This was around 2000 I think. DSL - always connected, always high-speed. Nirvana - for a while.

Upload speed is frustratingly slow - when you do web sites for a living and sit there waiting for slow ftp uploads, you know what I mean. Cable Internet, the rival to DSL, is offered here by Comcast. I will not get Internet access from Comcast. Period. You. Know. What. I'm. Saying.
Also, as I said, Wireless networking requires that you invest in a bunch of repeaters and such if you live in a large house, and the equipment isn't all that reliable (thanks to cheap-o Linksys gear

) so there are all these dead spots. What's the point of a laptop if you have to stay on the first floor of your house to receive wireless?

So, while I wait for FIOS to come to my neighborhood (Fiber optic links! To the home!), I have this Verizon broadband thing. It is more for personal use. You can't really run a business on it ($500 to get a fixed i.p. Come on! ) But at least the laptop is always connected and if DSL goes down I can plug into a mobile router and everyone still has access.
And when I'm out of the house, no more looking for cafe's with free wireless. Internet is always available.

So for right now this Mobile Broadband is the best thing around. I know it is already embedded in things like Amazon's kindle. I think that Mobile Broadband will gradually make DSL obsolete (but first the price has to come down some...competition will take care of that).

In a few years the idea that we depended on copper wires and dsl modems and routers for personal internet access will seem hopelessly old-fashioned.

I stayed glued to the couch last night to watch basketball only to have my two favorites, UCLA and UNC, both soundly beaten. Kansas vs Memphis in the final? Doesn't really interest me.
These guys play at break-neck speed. Always at the edge of losing control. Frequently they do. Its a finesse game with all that.
Will be watching our UCONN women play in the final four tonight against Stanford. Should be a good game.
But I will be so glad when basketball season is over. Freedom! For this non-sports fan who somehow got sucked in.

Hi everyone,

This week New Haven's downtown has been the scene of shooting for the new Indiana Jones movie. Steven Spielberg is here with a whole movie crew. The stars are Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett. They are using Yale's campus for a number of scenes, including a chase scene where Harrison Ford, riding a motorcycle, is chased through Sterling Library! He comes out the doors, goes through the campus, crashes through the main gate, and onto Chapel street (which is the main shopping street of New Haven), where the chase continues.

For the chase scene, the movie crew transformed a block of Chapel street into what it would have looked like in the 50's. They did an amazing, meticulous job. The attention to detail is incredible considering it will just be back-drop. I read that they do that now because with High-Definition DVD's people can go frame by frame and examine every little detail for authenticity. Storefronts have been completely changed. For example, Starbucks is now McCurry's tavern! The streets are lined with antique cars and trucks, including an old bus. There are also many many Paramount Pictures trucks around. At any given time you can see extras walking around between takes dressed in 50's styles.

I went downtown with a friend last night to a deli, and we got to talking with our waiter, who said he has a speaking role as an extra. He will be a cab driver. Cate Blanchett will be his passenger. He said he has two lines, "Where do you want to go" and "How fast do you want to get there?"  He said that Harrison Ford and his girlfriend, Ally McBeal, I mean Callista Flockhart, have been seen in several local restaurants, but that they are staying with his buddy Paul Newman down in Greenwich during the shooting, which will end Thursday.

Anyway, this has created tremendous excitement here in New Haven. I took some pictures and put them in a web album for anyone who cares to look:

I have been watching Battlestar Gallactica this season and have become a fan. This Sunday's season ending episode was dramatic, astonishing, and even transcendent. To say it was a cliffhanger is putting it mildly. This show combines character-driven Science Fiction with a mysterious, mystical backstory, in the same mode as Lost.  But also, as in its fore-bear Blade Runner, there is this theme of identity - am I who I think I am?

In any case, if you are also a fan of this show, there is a great article by Brad Templeton  that presents a plausible and fascinating backstory for the show. It isn't official, because it is made up by a fan, but it is faithful to all we know about the show. You can see it here: http://www.templetons.com/brad/battlestar.html

Today after work I had to go to the Pharmacy, then to the Post Office. By then I was hungry so I decided to eat out rather than waiting to go home. I was on Water Street so I decided to go to Cody's Diner and have a hamburger. I usually get liver and onions, with mashed potatoes and gravy, when I go to a diner, but I had already enjoyed that at the Acropolis Diner last weekend.

Now, it has been a while since I have been to Cody's. I used to go more often when I worked down on the harbor in the Maritime center building, but those days have been gone for 4 years now. Water Street was, in the old old days, right on the harbor, hence the name. You can imagine in 18th century maritime days the hustle and bustle of the ships and sailors on Water Street. In fact, the fabled Long Wharf of New Haven probably terminated right where Cody's is, or pretty close. But that was long ago. The Harbor has been subject to landfill over the centuries and now Cody's looks out on I-95 which thunders by on an elevated viaduct, underneath which homeless people sleep.

So I was saying...it has been a while since I darkened Cody's door. And while I would give Cody's maybe 4 stars for diner ambiance, including the appropriately dried-up waitress with the smoker's voice and a smile that could freeze lemonade in July, I have to say I was very disappointed to find that they had installed two very large flat-screen tvs over each section of counter, each one turned to a different station, so that, with eyes right, you could see, but barely hear, the local news/sports/weather, and with eyes left you could see "E-News", which seemed to show news items with any excuse to show women parading around in bikinis, which, at my age, is not news at all, and even less compelling than the local weather report. But just think. How can a New England diner, in this land which could be termed diner-heaven, think that flat-screen tvs are going to draw more customers? Everyone in there ignored the tvs anyway. So, the ambiance rating gets knocked down a couple of stars for that.

Well, the hamburger was delicious, the soup was hot, the waitress was unflappable, and I got to see a guy, with his girl, leaving the diner, with a motorcycle helmet on his head. He must have been 6 and a half feet tall and, with the helmet on, he bumped his head on the top of the door frame going out, which caused his girlfriend no end of amusement, and me too.

I wish I had taken my camera. I have to get back in that habit. So since I didn't have my camera I will have to appropriate someone else's photo: I also passed on a piece of lemon meringue pie, as I had had that at the Acropolis diner too, and the memory was still fresh enough to hold me.

I AM!!!

Ok, this is definitely better. I upload a photo to Flickr after massaging it in Photoshop. Then I use LiveWriter with the Flickr4Wrter plug-in, which lets me insert a Flickr photo into a LiveJournal post. It gives me a lot more control over the process but it isn't cumbersome either.

Here's the window of a Chess Shop on Sullivan street:

I have so many photos I want to share.

It used to be that I would use Photoshop to work with my images out of the camera, then I'd transfer them to the web server that my company runs, then I'd make a post to LiveJournal and paste in the link.

Now, with Flickr, and with so many new tools, the whole process can be more automated. The two images I sent today I used Picasa's "email image" option, and sent it to a special url that Flickr gives you to post the image to your blog.

What I found though is that you give up a lot of control over the size and placement of the image. I do like the idea of having a photo-stream on Flickr though. Hmm...time for some more experimenting.

Here's a picture I took in Washington Square Park on a sunny Sunday. People were hanging out on the steps of the fountain.

In a restaurant window in Greenwich Village...mouth watering...I want

one! And a glass of chocolate milk to wash it down!

On a recent trip to NYC I passed by this Smoke Shop off of Bleecker Street.

Okay, sorry for posting such a big picture. This is a statue that recently went up near my house, outside the Peabody Museum in New Haven CT. I like having such a fierce neighbor! Here's what it looks like from farther back: