Fixings & Changes

Work had a summer retreat at my boss's house - the pisco i brought seemed a big hit. While leaving the bathroom (not related to the pisco), i noticed that the doorknob was a little loose, so i used my Leatherman to tighten it up. Five years ago i wouldn't have even noticed it. Fifteen years ago i would have loosened it more.

Riverside

Saw a black squirrel in Gallup Park this morning. I know they occur in large numbers elsewhere in the state, but this was the first i've seen in Ann Arbor. I thought it might be a sign; through the remainder of my ride to work, the rest of the animals spoke differently to me, but as i speak neither squirrel nor bird nor chipmunk nor turtle, i was uncertain what they were warning me of.

Later, as i was walking home around midnight, a car parked about 10 feet in front of me and a pretty young woman in a nice black dress jumped out. At first i didn't look at her, she was going 'uhh, uhh' (though not loudly) and waving her hands. As i passed i glanced over and realised she was trying to get my attention. So i stopped and she came over and in a very low voice and barely understandable words and a smattering of what i believe was sign language she asked me for money. She seemed deaf, hence the sign language and her awkward voice.

It's been about 12 years since i gave a stranger money; i'm used to the regular scams - "i need bus money to get to Ypsi/Detroit/NYC", "ran out of gas on the highway, look i even have a small gas container", "i need drugs, man" - and ignore them. But her story was different and i couldn't figure out with certainty that she was scamming me. I gave her $6 and then tried testing her, asking if that was enough and implying i would give more, figuring that a scammer would leap at the opportunity. But she just said that she was so worried, thanked me and hugged me (i was cautious and checked afterwards, nothing missing) at which point i also realised she smelled good (nice perfume) and her clothes were clean - unlike AA most scammers/panhandlers.

Since she was worried about running out of gas i pointed out the nearest gas station, about a block away, and then she thanked me some more, got back in the car and drove off. I sat down across the street from the gas station but did not see her car pull up (she would have had to circle around the block to do so). Possibly she went to a different station on her route home, but i am left wondering whether or not it was a scam - i'm at 80% certainty it was, what do you think?

If i'm right that it was a scam, i'm also thinking that the black squirrel may have been a warning. But in retrospect the squirrel may have had a different message - the squirrel that lives in the first tree behind my house has been missing for a few days (i gather nuts and leave them in one spot for him, normally he eats them up but the ones i've left the past few days are still there) and i think maybe the Black Squirrel of Death showed itself to me to let me know my friend is gone.

Greek

Three weeks ago i hit a squirrel while biking to work. Maybe it hit me, i'm not sure. I turned a corner in a park, the landscaping prevented me from seeing the two squirrels, one ran away up a tree, one started running away, switched back and hit my wheel. I stopped, went back looking for a body, but both were in the tree, loudly complaining to me. The birds quickly carried the news down my path to work and all the other animals i normally say hi to stayed away, even the groundhog that just moved into the new place down by the bridge.

Tonight, on my way home from my mother's, i narrowly missed stepping on a little lost field mouse. It didn't move out of the way, stood in the driveway as if it were paralyzed. I gently bumped it with my foot and it jumped forward a bit. Thinking it was either sick, outcast or poisoned, i fetched the closest container (an old film tank, does anyone remember those?) and placed the mouse inside, along with some food.

An hour later the mouse was dead.





Didn't feel right just dumping the mouse out, so i weaved it a funeral basket out of a paper bag, added some food to help it on the way, and buried it in my mom's back yard.

Insert here some meaningful comment about how we live, how we die, and who notices and cares.

Data

I enjoy using and perusing the CIA World Factbook on a regular basis; its intelligence has come in handy over the past few years. One feature i've always wanted is to graph any of the Factbook's data in any manner. Unfortunately, for comparative purposes, the Factbook only contains a limited number of lists and no easy way to access all of its data in a programmatic fashion. I've wanted to cross-compare different stats as well as generate and compare derived stats. Towards this goal, i've created a proof of concept graphing engine for the Factbook.


Internet users as a percent of population



HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate

These two examples of the graphs generated show the kind of comparisons that can be made. I wrote a couple scripts to download and parse the Factbook country pages, then insert the data into some MySQL tables. Then there's one more script that gets the data and generates google chart urls and displays those images and the data.



So far i've found the resulting data visualization fun and interesting. I'm also hoping that data mining the information will be equally fun and interesting.