My favorite of course from Punk’s conception in the late 1970’s to early 1980’s.

That was back when The Clash and The Cure were still sort of punk sounding.

But then there were The Misfits:

The Dead Kennedy’s (The name of the group alone was pretty tasteless!)

Suicidal Tendencies

The Ramones of course!

I hate this shit – you can have the cooler weather and darkness. After close to half a century of it I’m done. I want the fuck out of northeast.

Right now I work in Cambridge, MA. They do seem to have their shit together vis a vis public works and care and feeding of deciduous trees and plants. So I’m guessing I’m not going too far out on a limb to suppose that they’ll have nice cleared sidewalks when the time comes when the snow starts.

I am hopeful though – it’s been a relatively dry summer so I’m thinking we may be in for a snow free winter in the northeast.

After all I did get the sidewalk snow removal statute in Providence, RI enhanced quite a bit. I got tired of property owners either feigning ignorance or flaunting the weaker statute. So now you don’t clear your sidewalks there are escalating levels the worst of which is a lien against your property by the city. So of course it’ll be a light snow winter.

Plus I’ve got my city councilor all trained now – two things I suggested, one of which I know is in place, the other we’ll see. The leaves haven’t fallen off the trees yet but I see they haven’t mucked out the storm drains yet so I’m hopeful. But at the very least the sidewalks on the overpasses of I-95 in the ward – they get cleared of snow by the city now.

I do my part to help make it a little less half assed where I can.

So I’m pretty basic when it comes to footwear. Sneakers or hiking boots for winter. And more to the point Reeboks and Timberlands.

I cannot do regular shoes. They tear the shit out of my feet. But sneakers and hiking boots work for me. The sneakers tend to be more flexible but the pair I have now and the ones I plan to buy aren’t good for wet conditions per se. And we’ll be upon Winter sooner than later so waterproof Timberland hikers do the trick.

And that’s the other thing – I can get away with those footwear choices because of the field I’m in, namely Senior Linux Engineering. In fact through my entire 20+ years in the I.T. field in general the dress code has been pretty lax. Usually jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. I take my comfort seriously.

This extends into the shoes too – my feet really dig Reebok sneakers and Timberland boots. I can’t explain it, they just do.

Now If I could only get Reebok to ship via USPS I’d be a thoroughly happy camper.

So I went to use my personal machine and it was powered off. Strange – I hit the power button and get the message no disk found. I gotta download Ubuntu on a USB stick and boot it, I bet the MBR got hosed and if that’s the case I can recover data from it. The drive was after all 3 to 4 years old which is the outer edge of the safe zone for it. Plus being run 24×7 for a couple months and never being put into sleep or hibernate probably did it. But that got me to thinking.

SSD drives are getting less expensive. I can get a 250GB for a tad under $200. I may just go that route. The speed increase would be nice but I realize I’m limited by the speed of the SATA bus on the machine. But still a fuck load faster than a mechanical head seeking across a metalized platter.

Plus I’ve got the work laptop I’m using right now. So there’s no great urgency. And thanks to Google Chrome all my bookmarks etc. are preserved.

The one fly in the ointment – I went to ship a package on USPS. And of course I do so infrequently enough that I blew the password. So I clicked the recover password link and used my business email. Except I couldn’t get to my business email because, you guessed it I forgot the password to Bluehost.

Now this was early on a Saturday morning, approximately 07:00 hours eastern daylight time. So I called Bluehost, was connected to a human being almost immediately explained the situation and withing five minutes I was using their webmail product. Perfect! Got the password recover link from USPS and was in business.

Now even though Bluehost has it’s limitations, particularly if you’re going to do bulk emailing it’s still a damned fine hosting provider. I recommend them without reservation. If you’re looking for a place to host a web site, some email accounts, a database server, etc. then give them a visit.

And I should mention I’ve used Bluehost for campaign email accounts, and a whole bunch more.

I’ve read a number of gay romance stories. All start with a tortured protagonist. That tortured protagonist meets the love of their life and then the love of their life has problems.

The theme starts well enough – but I’m done. On to something else to read.

So I’d learned of this book some time ago. But I filed it way in my head and finally bought the Kindle version yesterday. I’m about three quarters of the way through the book at this point. 

First let’s state the title again “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot. 

One of the things that emerged – that when they finally got around to really studying the HeLa cells they realized that Henrietta Lacks was infected by several different strains of HPV-18. And the use of her cells ultimately led directly to the HPV Vaccine. 

Now I’ve let my ideas about the HPV Vaccine out there in older posts. I feel every pre-pubescent child should receive the vaccination. A whole host of gonad diseases could be prevented. But a new thing struck me. I know there is a push back out there against the vaccine out there. A lot of it based in the view of women as inferior to men. But reading this book a new element enters into it, I bet there’s a tiny strain of racism in the push against universal HPV vaccination.

Henrietta Lacks was in fact an African American woman, and in the book it’s made apparent. 

Thing is I’m not bothered by it. We’re all human, regardless of our skin color. 

But the book is a fascinating read. Essentially Henrietta Lacks cervical cancer that ultimate killed her, it was all caused by infection with multiple HPV 18 strains. In essence her cells have been responsible for a great many things. Prime of which in my opinion is the HPV Vaccine. But it was also used to study radiation effects on human cells, polio, and used to customize cancer treatments. 

But if you take it further – the immortality of these cells also helped scientists discover the purpose of telomeres on our DNA. And every time a cell undergoes mitosis or cell division, the telomeres  on the DNA shorten. Once they get to a certain level the cells undergo apoptosis. But when cancer strikes through mutation of the DNA by viruses, or radiation or the like, a substance they call Telomerase will rebuild the telomeres of cells. Essentially causing them to become immortal. 

So in essence we may have found the fountain of youth to some degree thanks to the cells of Henrietta Lacks. 

Go get the book. It’s a fascinating read into the person and the science of tissue culturing. And ObDisclaimer – I do I.T. work for a business that is essentially a tissue culturing and DNA sequencing firm.