News and Views

I watched the early rounds of American Idol this year, and was struck by how many people think they are good singers, so good that they have a chance in the American Idol competition. But in many cases the people who hear them sing think they are so bad that they laugh about it.

It makes me wonder: How could people’s self-evaluation be so bad? How could they think they are excellent, when they are really terrible?

Singing is one of those fields where there isn’t a lot of objective evaluation in our daily lives, unless you are a professional. And if your friends think you are bad at it, you will rarely get that feedback, out of politeness.

Then it made me wonder: What other fields are like this? What else do people do where they think they are world-class, but might actually be very bad?

The first one that comes to my mind is driving. I’ve heard surveys that found that most people think they are above average drivers. In some ways it is a lot like singing — there is little direct feedback on your skill, and even in cases where there is feedback (honking horns, tailgaters trying to push you to go faster) it can be passed off as the other guy’s rudeness, impatience or the other’s poor driving habits. Traffic tickets and accidents do help mark the worst offenders, but even in those cases they can blame it on the other guy, or “the speed limit was too low for the conditions” etc.

People probably have a more accurate evaluation of their math ability, because of objective feedback in high-school classes and tests. But conversely, writing ability is much more subjective and poor grades are easier to blame on the grader, as biased or unimaginative.

And right up there near the top when listing inaccurate self-evaluations must be political and economic astuteness. Many people are passionate about their political beliefs, and their ideas of the best way to move forward in an uncertain economy. “Fewer laws, less government control!” “More regulations of the out-of-control banking industry!” “It’s obvious that the wealthy should pay more taxes to help the poor!” “If I’ve earned this money I should be able to keep it — it’s not my fault if those poor people were playing while I was working to get ahead!” “More Stimulus!” “Less Stimulus!” The only feedback we get on these ideas is listening to other people’s ideas, and we usually filter out those we disagree with.

What’s right? Based on watching American Idol, I’m sure there are many people out there passionately convinced that they know what’s right, but their beliefs are based on poorly thought-out positions. They all think they are political/economic experts, but their self-evaluation is in many cases as poor as the tone-deaf screecher hoping to be the next American Idol.

We went up to “The City” last week. Partly just because we hadn’t been there for a while, partly to celebrate Chinese New Year (Sunday — “Gong Hay Fat Choy”), but mainly to attend a wedding. Our nephew Jerry Chen got married in Cupertino on Saturday.

Gisele’s sister Angela came back with us and will stay for about 10 days.

On the way there and also on the way back we stopped for a short visit with Richard and Dianna in Quartzsite near the California border. Dianna fed us a delicious soup on the way out. They introduced us to the locally made kettle corn, and we’ve been pigging out ever since.

My brother Dale come out to Arizona from Buffalo to spend Christmas with his Arizona relatives. It was great having him here for a few days.

He came out a couple of months ago for the first time in about 40 years, and that was really special. But it was a short visit with lots of relatives around to share his time and non-stop “getting acquainted”. This visit was more relaxed, and we even got to take a 5-mile geocaching hike on South Mountain (Dale, Donna and I). We found about 6-7 caches and had a good, tiring hike.

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie yesterday, ate dinner with Mom, and just generally enjoyed each other’s company.

I put him on a plane this morning, and it’s back to Buffalo with a high predicted today of 17F. (Phoenix is in the 60s.) I hope we’ll get to see each again soon, either here in Arizona or back in New York (in the summer, of course!).

I was fixing a computer a few days ago that was driving me crazy. When I began, it was full of malware; trojans, fake virus scanners and browser hijackers. I ran the usual scanner/cleaners and it seemed to be clean, but as soon as I started browsing it hijacked me to some malicious Russian website. Of course, that immediately downloaded new trojans, and I was back where I started.

I cleaned it again, using all the high-powered scanners I could find. Clean… until I started browsing again, and poof! I was in Russia.

I struggled with it for several hours, using esoteric process monitors, registry cleaners, etc., but I couldn’t find anything. Then I happened to stumble on a web forum where someone described the same problem, and had an explanation and solution.

It turned out to be a Master Boot Record (MBR) infection. That’s normally outside the operating system control, and not anyplace most scanners will check. MBR viruses used to be common with DOS and early Windows, but you don’t see them much anymore because Windows does a pretty good job of protecting the data there. However, it can happen and may be on the increase, as it can escape most scanners.

It’s easy to fix, once you know where it is (boot to the Recovery console and run fixmbr). Next time I’ll know what to look for!

I do have opinions about tolerating people’s differences, but that’s not what this post is about.

I’m talking about building up a tolerance to substances or environmental factors. For example, some people can tolerate much spicier food than others, or drink more alcohol without feeling drunk, or drink lots of strong coffee.

It’s not surprising that people vary in these characteristics, but it is interesting that many are proud of tbeir own tolerance. For example, we’ve all heard some guy smugly talking about “drinking somone under the table”. What they are saying is, “I drink so much, so often, that alcohol doesn’t affect me much anymore”. That sounds like something to be ashamed of, not proud.

Or pouring lots of Tabasco on your food. Nothing wrong with spicing up your food, but I think as you develop tolerance to the spice you lose appreciation for the underlying flavors. I’m proud that it only takes a little spice to satisfactorally enhance my food.

Coffee is another example. Interestingly, brain activity scans show that without coffee, habitual coffee drinkers’ brains show much less activity than “normal” people’s brains. With coffee, their brains look like a normal brain does without coffee. So being able to tolerate strong coffee basically means that you need it to be normal.

Of course, there are some things it is certainly worthwhile developing tolerance for. If you live in a cold or hot climate, it’s useful to develop tolerance to cold or heat. But intentionally building up a tolerance with no personal benefit and potential harm doesn’t make sense.

Mozilla has released a new version of the Thunderbird email client.

It’s got some nice new features; tabbed emails is the main one that stands out at first.

I’ve just installed it, which was painless, and so far it looks very good.

Unfortunately my calendar plug-in isn’t compatible (yet), but it was synced with Google Calendar and my Droid, so nothing was lost.

I got a Motorola Droid smartphone last week. I’m pretty happy with it, and am pretty sure I will keep it.

I agree that the iPhone has a few minor advantages over the Droid: I like the way it feels in my hand better, with its rounded corners. Pinch-zoom would be nice. There are more apps available (about 10 times as many).

But the Droid has some advantages too. Built-in turn-by-turn voice GPS navigation (which is an expensive app on the iPhone). Larger, higher resolution screen. Hardware keyboard. Multi-tasking. Folders on the screens to help organize your apps. Verizon’s superior network (in terms of coverage).

The lack of apps isn’t as much of an inferiority as it may sound — most of the good ones are available for both phones.

All in all, I think they are pretty comparable. Extreme fans of one or the other (Ken?) will scoff that there is no comparison based on xxx or yyy, but really they are in the same class. It comes down to carrier and personal preference, I think.

I’d been running Windows 2000 on a Pentium 4 computer for several years, and I was starting to feel the limitations. On the Pentium 4, newer programs ran slowly and some of the big C++ compiles I did took forever. With Windows 2000, though I still think it’s perhaps the best OS Microsoft made (from the point of view of convenience, simplicity and stability), there are more and more programs that will not run on it. Lately the computer has been unstable, probably from a corrupted OS, and at the thought of reinstalling Windows and reinstalling all my applications I decided I might as well install all my applications on a new computer. So…

First, I bought the components for a new computer: Motherboard, CPU, case, hard drives, memory, etc. At the center is an Intel Core i5 chip. Intel came out with the Core i7 chip a year or so ago, and though very fast it was also very expensive. Just a couple of months ago they released the Core i5 version. A little slower but much cheaper. Kind of a mainstream, little-brother version of the i7. I think that within a year or so, Core 2 Duo/Quad will become extinct and the Core i5 will replace it as the primary Intel CPU.

I wasn’t sure which motherboard to get until my brother Don recommended a particular Gigabyte board. Looking into it, it was indeed well rated and filled all my needs.

Next, I needed to decide on an OS. I was tempted to reinstall Windows 2000, but since Windows 7 was being released on the very same day I assembled my computer, I decided to go for it. Fortunately, as a university student (proved by my university email address), I could take advantage of the $30 student special. That was really the clincher. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving Microsoft $100 or $200 dollars, but $30 seems reasonable.

Installed, up and running, and I have to say I’m pretty happy with it. It seems to be snappier than Vista (though that could be partly due to my fast computer), and they’ve fixed some of the irritations with Vista. And buying it on the first day it is released, it should have a long life before I have to think about upgrading for compatibility reasons.

Yesterday morning Gisele came downstairs to find Apollo in the midst of another seizure on the kitchen floor. He was fine in a few minutes, but I took him to the vet anyway. This was only the second time we have seen him in a seizure, the first being about a year ago. Who knows how many times it has happened when we weren’t around.

The vet took blood and will do another test for Valley Fever. Remember that we discontinued his Valley Fever medications about 2-3 months ago because his infection had decreased so much. If it has gone up again, he may have to stay on the med for the rest of his life.

The results should be back by tomorrow or Monday, and I’ll post here as soon as I hear.

Otherwise he seems fine, full of energy, frisky and happy.

Last month Gisele had a reunion of all her surviving siblings. Next month is my turn.

In October all of the Lafferty brothers and sister will be together for the first time in 40 years. Dale is coming to Arizona from New York, Richard and Don from California, and Donna and I are already here. Dale’s three children are coming with him, and several of the other cousins will be here too. As far as I know, none of the New York cousins have met any of the western cousins. And of course Grandma Lafferty will be right in the middle of it all.

Everyone is very excited, There is disappointment that some of the cousins will have to leave early to fill unchangeable reservations, and not all the cousins will be able to make it, but it’s a wonderful first step in rejoining a divided family. We are counting the days! (31 as I post this.)