Some months back I discovered an mp3 file on my computer with the intriguing filename of mystery.mp3

 

When I listened to the file I heard a compelling instrumental. No clue as to the artist or title was forthcoming. I asked my wife and children to listen to it to see if they recognized it. They did not. This made for a double mystery...what/who was it and how did I come by having it?

 

Months of playing it for friends and extended family yielded no answers. I posted a snippet and asked the readers of hp.misc - an internal newsgroup/bulletin board at hp. Many responses like "sounds like a theme to a tv show or movie" but no one recognized it.

 

A couple of days ago I was surfing and came across a link to 411songs.com (http://www.411song.com/). This service, which appears to be cellphone oriented, will 'listen' to 15 seconds of a song and then within minutes send a text message with the title and artist.

 

They'll give you one free, so I dialed the number. I was at work and tried with my office landline, but with no text message capability, nothing happened. So I dialed them with my cell, listened to the prompts and when instructed held the phone up to the speakers. I was 2 minutes into the song as I moved the phone to the speakers. After 15 seconds I checked and the call was ended. Three minutes later my phone buzzed - incoming text message. I read it and it said "Friends and Lovers - George Martin". As soon as I read it I knew  a) it was correct; and b) *I* was the source of the file.

 

Let me 'splain. Back in January I tried out Napster-To-Go. While I was trying it out, I heard a version of "In My Life" that was very compelling - Sean Connery reading the lyrics as a poem with an orchestral background of the  song. The album was titled "In My Life" and the artist was identified as George Martin, longtime producer for the Beatles.

As I recall I must have downloaded the whole album, listened to the various tracks and then recorded those I wanted to keep. Obviously when I did I must have not labeled "Friends and Lovers", and by the time I listened to it again I couldn't place it. (Senior moment - they seem to be happening more often lately!)

 

As disturbing as that lapse is senior-wise, I'm amazed at 411song.com - I'd love to understand the technology behind the magic. As an aging boomer, with presumably many more senior moments ahead of me, I may actually subscribe to their service. It'd probably be much less aggravating for my family and friends if I had a computer I could ask "Who's singing that? "What's the title?"

These guys consistently give me the best laughs on the web.

 

Today's "katrina/sheehan" confluence had me out of breath...

 

When I was in my twenties somebody smart told me that the only way to make ANY money in the stock market was to get comfortable doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing. If the market is tanking and everybody is selling to get out, you should get in - BUY. And when everybody else is buying in, that's the time to sell.

 

(pardon me while I divert you for a moment)
Now later I learned that it isn't the only way. If you just buy and hold, and if you buy at regular intervals, regardless of the up and downs of prices, you're probably going to make money.

(okay, diversion is over, now back to the point)

Nevertheless, getting comfortable doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing is good advice. It certainly seemed wrong the first time I heard it (which I've learned is often one of the signs of really good advice), I'll tell you that over the 30 years or so since I heard it, I've seen good examples of where I wish I'd followed it, and not just in investing.

 

Humans are herd animals. It really feels good to be doing what everyone else is doing. First of all, you have the advantage of all those people agreeing with you...what you're doing is the smart move...just look at all these people doing exactly the same thing.

 

The most amusing time I can point to where I didn't do what everyone else was doing was in 1988. It was the Texas Presidential primary, and Chris and I were headed to our local polling place to vote. As we approached the elementary school, there was a long line that we knew to be for the Republican primary. As we detoured around that line to find the what we knew would be the lonely Democratic primary, we had friends and neighbors helpfully telling us - "Wait, the end of the line is back that way, you're going the wrong way." We smiled and said "Thanks" and continued on. Sure enough we found a lonely poll worker, waiting patiently, with no line in front of her. We signed in (I think we were the 3rd and 4th Democrats to show up that day), and voted and walked back home. Our helpful friends and neighbors had only moved a few feet in line and we were done. Now you might think the point of this story is to vote so you don't have to wait in line. No! The point is that you do what you want even if it means you have a lonely walk to the polling place while your friends and neighbors have a party waiting in line.

 

On a motorcycling oriented email list I've been on since 1997, one winter a fellow subscriber who lives in Ohio commented that even though the temperature had dropped below freezing he was still riding his motorcycle to work on days that it was dry. This comment started a flood of emails questioning everything from his sanity to his parentage to his patriotism. After reading a dozen or so stinging attacks, I weighed in that I didn't think it was such a bad idea, and if I lived in a latitude that had similar weather I'd probably do the same thing. This fellow emailed me off-list to thank me. I replied "I hate to see anyone in a fight by themselves". He remains one of my closest on-line friends to this day.

 

When Bess and Scott were young, I told them that if they ever came upon another child being razzed or teased I thought they should step in and defend the child and challenge the tormentors. First of all, I said, most bullies are not secure enough to stand up to any challenge. And even if they do stand up to a challenge, you may sway some of their supporters (who secretly dread being bullied themselves one day) and they will help defuse the situation. And in the worst case, where nothing changes, at least the kid being picked on will be grateful to have help - they'll probably never forget you. I told both kids that as far as I was concerned "I was helping a kid that was being picked on" was not only a "get out of trouble" free card, it was a sure sign that they were maturing.

 

Now as I told this story, I knew that there was little chance that they'd do it. If humans are herd animals, children are lemmings, willing to walk off the cliff in order to do what everybody else was doing. But what I was trying to get across was the idea that they should think for themselves, not just go along with the crowd. Often the crowd is not only wrong - they're not that hard to convince that they're wrong. Challenge the convential wisdom! Looking at the two independent, free thinking adults they've turned into, I suspect that message got across.

 

Now I can just imagine what you must be thinking of this idea - doing the opposite stands directly in conflict with much of our culture here in the U.S.  Well, just like when I told my own kids all those years ago, I don't necessarily expect you to start doing it. But will you at least *think* about it?

My nieces and nephews have this saying - "Uncle Ted is always right". The exact details of how that phrase came into being escape me at the moment (perhaps one of them will take up the invitation to document it in their blogs :) but in later years I've translated it to mean "we care about what you have to say (even if it ISN'T right)".

 

Tonight on my walk I listened to portions of 2 hours of today's Diane Rehm show. I try to never miss the first hour on Friday's - Diane calls it her weekly news roundup - and I find it a good opening to the weekend's talking head shows. I heard some of that first hour in the car live this a.m. on the way to the office. I listened (to the portion I didn't hear live) on my zen micro tonight, and then I started the second hour as I finished my walk.

 

The second hour was a fascinating discussion about a new book by Dr. Marc Siegel: "False Alarm". Marc Siegel, is a practicing internist, associate professor at N.Y.U. School of Medicine and columnist for the "New York Daily News." "False Alarm" is a look at the epidemic of fear sweeping America. In the book Siegel explains why, in a country where most deadly diseases have been eradicated and advances in science and technology protect our bodies and property better than at any other time in our history, Americans are still afraid.

 

As I listened to this discussion, I had ideas for several posts to my blog, which I will make over the next few days. A short list includes:

 

1) The re-election campaign of G.W.Bush - a campaign to be proud of?

2) Doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing.

3) Most of what we worry about doesn't happen.

4) Don't be afraid, but don't be stupid, either.

5) Turn off the TV and think.

 

There may be more fallout blog postings when I hear the last part of the show. Regardless, I hope I'm a good enough writer to get the ideas across - because if I am, you may find yourself agreeing with my nieces and nephews. :)

 

I thought that "The Daily Show" handled Senator Tom Coburn's emotion-choked plea most artfully.

 

Watch it yourself  at the link below. Senator Coburn's moment comes about 2 minutes and 10 seconds in

 

Click here to watch (note: this link worked today, 9/15/2005, I wonder how long it lives?

 

Funny how, like beauty, hateful is in the eye of the beholder.

I never suspected that GWBush did read the National Geographic Magazine, but now I suppose we have proof that he does NOT:

 

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. "

President George W. Bush on ABC's Good Morning America on Thursday 9/1/2005

 

I don't know how to do this on a blog entry, but I want to try. I'm sad to report that my sister Sherry died last Monday, September 5, 2005.

 

She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Sept/Oct of 2003. Two surgeries and 3 different rounds of chemotherapy managed to extend her life well past the original prognosis, but never were able to put her in remission. On July 26 she learned that a tumor had blocked the passage between her one good kidney and her bladder and that her prognosis was very grave. She elected to enter hospice care at my Mom's house on Northaven(our family moved there in 1962 so this was home for all of us). The doctor gave us very little hope, telling us that she would only last a few days...two weeks at the max. Monday was 6 weeks, so she confounded them one last time.

For a lot of that time she was awake, alert and relatively pain free. Every member of her extended family was able to come for a good visit during that first week and she had a good chance to see them and say goodbye.

Mom, Jill and I were with her when she died (Kirk had been with her earlier in the day), we had the cd player running with some of her favorite music, and from what we could tell she was not in pain.

As you can imagine, this has been very tough on our Mother, as well as on Jill. They were her primary care-givers through the last 6 weeks of her life. If it were in my power, I'd award them the Congressional Medal of Honor for their service to her in those last days.

 

Ovarian cancer is a nasty disease, it's early symptoms are somewhat non-specific and by the time symptoms become easier to diagnose the cancer will often have progressed to advanced stages that are hard to treat effectively. If you google ovarian cancer you can find several good sites with information about it - fortunately it doesn't affect as many people as breast cancer so it's not as well known. Unfortunately this means that it is harder to diagnose and therefore has much worse survival rate percentages.

 

I learned a lot from Sherry over the years - but perhaps nothing more important than being with her on this last journey. As I assisted her in selling her business and disposing of some other assets, she turned to me and said "You know, there's something very liberating about this. I'm no longer concerned with acquiring things - and giving things to my nieces and nephews who need them feels wonderful. If I wasn't dying this would be really cool!"

 

I'm doing ok. I hate to lose her, but she was so sick and so tired for so long that mostly right now what I feel is relief for her.

 

 

Friday night, after more than 23 years of marriage, I attended a 'rock concert' with my wife. We've been to lots of other live peformances together, but somehow this was our first rock experience. Turns out my educated, professional, erudite wife turns into "Good Time Annie" when her body is stimulated with more than 100dB of amplified electric guitar. I was astonished.

 

John Mellencamp and John Fogerty provided 3 hours of high decibel entertainment. She loved it and I loved watching her love it.

 

Today (Sunday) we went to the Meyersen to see the Dallas Symphony Orchestra play Tchaikowsky and Shostakovich. A long way from Fogerty and Mellencamp - my ears were not assaulted so much as they were embraced. Truth is Chris enjoyed today just as much as Friday night...just no dancing in the aisle today.

 

 

A long time since I've posted, there's too much to say about the intervening weeks for a blog entry. Maybe after I process it some.