A Day at Home Depot
Those of you who read this blog regularly know I have a thing about hardware stores . . . Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace . . .I can spend hours.
Right now, however, we are doing some renovations on a Florida house, and oh! I am learning so much. I am learning that the very best contractor can’t guarantee that a project will be brought in during the time he promised, that supply lines get kinked, that when you think you have made a very complicated decision (like what kind of counter top you want) it branches into a whole lot more decisions (electrical outlets, wall treatment, edge treatment, sink choice, faucet choices, hauling away and tearing out of original fixtures, plumbing fixtures. . . ) and oh, my head was swimming. It took two hours just to arrange something I smugly thought I had thought through.
Thank God there are people who know a lot more than I do, and who can make me face the tough questions.
As I was leaving the Home Depot, the skies broke loose and water poured down. I waited at the entrance about half an hour, thinking it would lighten up. When it lightened – a little – I ran to the car, but was totally soaked, shoes, clothing, hair – there wasn’t a try spot on me. And the rain continued to pour down. I thought of how badly Pensacola needs this rain, and how welcome rain is in Kuwait, and Doha, when it comes. I sat in the car another half hour, as the rain was flooding through the parking lot, and you couldn’t see very far.
As I was working with the counter-guy, he asked me how I liked living in Kuwait.
I told him I liked it.
“What are the people like?” he asked.
They are good neighbors,” I replied, “A lot like the people in Pensacola. They are believers. They are kind, and generous in spirit. And Kuwait has it’s own beauty, you just have to open your eyes to seeing things in a different way.”
I didn’t tell him about you, my blogging friends, because I’m not sure he is familiar with blogging. And because even here, I treasure my privacy.
Finally, the rain lightened enough for me to drive, very slowly, home, trying to avoid places in the roads where the drains were stopped up or clogged, and water was a foot deep or so. Made it home safely, al hamdallah!
Kuwait: Chinese Seafood Imports?
First it was illegal – and poisonous – additives in pet foods, then in toothpaste. Pets and people died. Now, it is illegal antibiotics in the seafood – additions that exacerbate plagues like the MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) virus being fought in hospitals around the world, because it has become antibiotic resistant. My own father’s death was hastened by his vulnerability to this virus, and his lowered immune system couldn’t fight it off. For me, this is personal.
And I think a lot of the canned shrimp, frozen shrimp and scallops we buy here in Kuwait are also from China. Who is monitoring these foods?
US halts Chinese seafood imports
Chinese exports have surged as their prices have stayed low
The US has said it will halt imports of five types of farmed Chinese seafood, claiming they contain antibiotics that are not allowed in North America.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would detain shipments of catfish, basa, shrimp, dace and eel.
But the FDA said it was not recalling seafood already in the US, and that drug levels were not dangerous and only slightly above detectable levels.
This is the latest in a number of US warnings about Chinese products.
In past weeks there have been concerns about contaminated toothpaste, dog food and the paint used in toy trains.
China countered that its exports were no threat to health and “guaranteed” the safety of its products.
The FDA said it had found that Chinese seafood tested between October 2006 and May 2007 was repeatedly contaminated with antimicrobial agents.
Some of the substances included nitrofuran, malachite green and fluoroquinolone, which, according to the FDA, may help build up a resistance to antibiotics when used in food animals.
You can read the rest of the article HERE at BBC News.
For Sparkle
Cool palm tree, huh, Sparkle?
But yes, yes, it IS strangely tall.
This is how they disguise communication towers in Kuwait. No! It isn’t really a palm tree, but I knew you would love the whimsey and creativity of it all.
FBI Tries to Fight Zombie Hoards
The title got my attention. This is from BBC News and you can read the whole story here.
FBI tries to fight zombie hordes
The FBI is contacting more than one million PC owners who have had their computers hijacked by cyber criminals.
The initiative is part of an ongoing project to thwart the use of hijacked home computers, or zombies, as launch platforms for hi-tech crimes.
The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.
The agency said the zombies or bots were “a growing threat to national security”.
Signs of trouble
The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed Operation Bot Roast.
This operation recently passed a significant milestone as it racked up more than one million individually identifiable computers known to be part of one bot net or another.
The law enforcement organisation said that part of the operation involved notifying people who owned PCs it knew were part of zombie or bot networks. In this way it said it expected to find more evidence of how they are being used by criminals.
“The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited,” said James Finch, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division.
Many people fall victim by opening an attachment on an e-mail message containing a virus or by visiting a booby-trapped webpage.
Many hi-tech criminals are now trying to subvert innocent webpages to act as proxies for their malicious programs.
Many bots are used to send out junk mail or spam
Once hijacked, PCs can be used to send out spam, spread spyware or as repositories for illegal content such as pirated movies or pornography.
Those in charge of botnets, called botherders, can have tens of thousands of machines under their control.
Operation Bot Roast has resulted in the arrest of three people known to have used bot nets for criminal ends.
GoogleEarth – Make Your Own Maps
You, too, can make your own maps, and get where you need to go, thanks to GoogleEarth. If you are a landmark driver, like me, this will make your day.
A friend gave me a map to her house that blew my mind – it was a GoogleEarth map, with lines and arrows and landmarks – everything I need when I am driving. I could see the roundabouts! I could see the major landmarks! I knew EXACTLY where to turn, which mosque where I would turn right, and which field to drive across.
She said her husband had done it; she didn’t know how. I opened GoogleEarth and figured it out. Now – oh my! I have maps to everywhere! It is so totally cool!
You open Google, find EXACTLY the image you need to use for your map (be sure your major landmarks are in the frame) and you go to File on the toolbar and scroll down to Save – there is an arrow, and you choose Save Image.
You open your drawing program – in my case, Appleworks, but it will work with your drawing program, too.
You paste your map into your drawing program, and then you add your arrows showing the route to take, and you add text identifying the landmarks, and perhaps writing out the directions.
And then you print. It’s that easy. And holy smokes, the maps are totally usable.
Spoiler
We were having a big film fest in Pensacola, and five minutes into The Prestige my son asked me if I knew how it was going to end.
This started a long time ago. They think I am amazing. Most of the time, I get it right. Sometimes, with Law and Order, or CSI, there is a twist I hadn’t thought of. I read a lot of mysteries and . . . there is a secret.
Don’t go any further if you like NOT knowing how a show is going to end.
Here is the secret. A movie or a TV show only has a limited amount of time to tell the story. You can figure that most of the information they give you is significant. Like in Law and Order, a lot of times it’s one of the people they originally interview, even if they came off well in the interview. (Those guys have gotten more and more tricky, though, and it gets harder to figure out all the time.) Listen for something that could be a lie.
The Prestige suffered a little from it’s own arrogance. They TELL us right at the beginning what the story will be, what the twist is, and how it will be accomplished, if you are watching closely and thinking “why might this be important?”
My son had already seen it. I told him “this, this and this” and he didn’t say anything, just said I had to see if I was right. Hee Hee heee . . . I was. And he was so poker faced I didn’t know how blown away he was that I had figured it out.
You can, too.
And if you haven’t seen The Prestige, it is a very good movie. It appears to be coming to Super Movies sometime soon.
New Google Earth Hi Res
New high resolution:
Canada:
Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and Fort Saskatchewan, AB
England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country, and Avon
Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude
Austria: Villach region
France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen
Spain: Valencia Andorra
US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama
Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama
Large Digital Globe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.
Updated Imagery:
Americas:
Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US)
EU: Dublin, Ireland
Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya
Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippine
Updated Terrain:
Western US 10m, Canary Islands 10m
Google Street View Peeping?
I found this article on AOL, but it is from the New York Times originally.
Google Zooms In Too Close for Some
By MIGUEL HELFT, The New York Times
The New York Times
OAKLAND, Calif. (June 2) – For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.
Google said it takes privacy seriously and considered the implications of its service before it was introduced. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” it said.
Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.
“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”
Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”
Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View — with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
On a Wired magazine blog, for instance, readers can vote on the “Best Urban Images” that others find in Street View. On Thursday afternoon, a picture of two young women sunbathing in their bikinis on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked near the top. Another showed a man scaling the front gate of an apartment building in San Francisco. The caption read, “Is he breaking in or has he just locked himself out?”
Google said in a statement that it takes privacy seriously and considered the privacy implications of its service before it was introduced on Tuesday. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” the company said. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
You can read the rest of the article on AOL MOney News by clicking here.
My comment: I am a huge fan of transparency, so you might think this new ability wouldn’t bother me. But the transparency I favor is transparency of business and government transactions, not people taking in my behavior in my own house! I am also a huge fan of personal privacy, and while a street view that just shows my cat in the window wouldn’t be alarming, it tells me that photos shot at night, which would show the interior of my residence, are also possible, and that thought troubles me very much.
Our homes are our castles! If my husband wants to walk around in his underwear (or less 😉 ) and I want to wear my nightgown all day when I am working on a special project, honestly, it is not YOUR business, nor anyone else on the internet! Do you want photos published, taken of you unaware in your own house? This capability is terrifying!
Who’s Checking Kuwait’s Toothpaste?
US checks toothpaste for toxins
Toothpaste is the latest Chinese export to raise safety concerns
Health officials in the United States say they are checking all shipments of toothpaste imported from China for contamination with toxic chemicals.
Panama and the Dominican Republic have reported finding diethylene glycol, a chemical used in engine coolants, in toothpaste from China.
The toothpaste scare is the latest involving products from China.
Earlier this year, contaminated pet food ingredients killed a number of cats and dogs in North America.
The toxic chemical, melamine, was found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands.
The tainted wheat gluten was even thought to have made its way into livestock feed.
Low-cost substitute
Cough syrup containing containing diethylene glycol originating from China killed more than 50 people in Panama last year.
The New York Times said a Chinese chemical maker had sold the industrial-grade chemical as glycerine, which is often used as a moistener in products from toothpaste to soap and cosmetics.
CHINESE FOOD SCARES
May 2007 China probes reports that contaminated toothpaste was sent to Central America
March 2007 Melamine is found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands
Nov 2006 A dye farmers fed to ducks to make their eggs look fresher is found to contain cancer-causing properties and 5,000 ducks are culled
August 2006 About 40 people in Beijing contract meningitis after eating partially cooked snails at a chain of restaurants
Diethylene glycol is sometimes used as a low-cost substitute for glycerine and Chinese toothpaste makers have said small amounts of the chemical are harmless in toothpaste.
“We are going to be sampling and testing all shipments of toothpaste that come from China,” said Doug Arbesfeld, a spokesman for the US Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA says China is the second-largest exporter of toothpaste to the US after Canada.
Food safety investigators in Panama said two brands of toothpaste were imported illegally from China through a free-trade zone.
Chinese officials say they are investigating the claims.
The Dominican Republic and Panama have pulled thousands of tubes of Chinese toothpaste brands Excel and Mr Cool from store shelves.
Beijing recently pledged to clean up its tainted food and drug industry after the series of safety scares. The subject was raised by the US in bilateral trade talks this week.
The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration is facing trial, accused of taking large bribes to approve untested medicines.
From today’s BBC News.
Emergency Service in Kuwait
I had an emergency. Now YOU may not consider it an emergency, but I have a piece of equipment, and I have a major project and a deadline, and to meet that deadline, I need that piece of equipment. And, of course, that piece of equipment began to fail me.
Not to worry. I had heard of a place in Kuwait that could fix my machine. I had that pit in the stomach feeling, like “why didn’t I do some homework and find this place before my machine needed fixing. . . ” Do you ever say things like that to yourself?
And of course, because I was desperate, when I would go into stores and ask if they knew where this place was, I was told, over and over, there was no such place.
Until one brave young Pakistani guy contradicted his employer and told me where he thought the place might be. Because of one way streets, and a convoluted traffic pattern, it took me several more passes before I spotted the place – which fortunately had one very small sign in English, as I can’t read Arabic very quickly, I still have to sound out all the letters until it sounds like a word I know. Like I am really good at “sharia” being street, but not very good at things I don’t see all the time.
And, by the grace of God, not only do I see the store, but there is – and this is truly a miracle – a decent parking spot fairly close to the shop. Thanks be to God.
I went into the shop, and there is another woman there, with her machine. I tell the man behind the counter that I have a small emergency. He doesn’t understand me, but he understands my tone, and sends a man to help bring in my machine.
It’s like the stand-off at the OK Corral. She looks at my machine, evaluating whether her’s is better, or mine. Seconds tick by, and she smiles, and the crisis is averted. She tells the man she will be back for her machine, which he sets aside to take a look at mine.
My machine is one of those simple machines, you are supposed to be able to do almost everything yourself. He does everything I have already done, and sits back, stumped. We both know what the problem is, and I know he can’t fix it. He calls a friend. He orders tea. We sit and talk as customers come in and out, checking on their machines, asking prices on new machines. We are speaking in Arabic, a language we both speak badly, so conversation often lulls. I’m not sure his friend is coming.
Finally, I pack up my machine, and of course, as soon as I get ready to leave, the friend arrives, and we need to unpack it again. Ten minutes, and my machine is good as new. He tells me what the replacement part would cost in Kuwait (if he hadn’t been able to fix it) and I gasp in horror – I will have to look for a replacement part this summer, back in the US, because I have checked online and yes, they are expensive, but cost about the same in dollars as it would in KD – i.e. $49 vs KD 40. Aaarrgh.
I’ve spent two hours sitting and drinking tea in a shop that is sort of air conditioned, but the door was always open. I am hot, and sweaty, but my machine is fixed, at least enough that I can work on my project.
This is not the way it would happen in the United States. In the United States, I might get some sympathy, but I would not get same day service. I would have to leave my machine, I would have to be served in order, and I would not get my machine back until it were fixed, if it were fixed – people are not so good at fixing old things in the United States, you have to be really lucky. Mostly, when machines break, you buy a new one.
So I am feeling really lucky, really lucky, really blessed, to have had my machine emergency in Kuwait, where things are done differently, and my machine could be fixed on am emergency basis, while I waited.
P.S. The man who fixed my machine earns KD 80 a month – $280 for my US readers.
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