So. We have decided to stay. We have begun the house modifications, albeit a little sooner than anticipated. A week ago we had a pipe break in an upstairs bathroom. Just hours after a new accessible shower was installed. The pipe didn’t freeze, it just broke, snapped, while I was moving stuff in the vanity. Later that night, it did the same thing to the plumber as he was working. Fortunately the water was off when it happened to him. Another snapped a week later when bumped by a contractor laying a new a floor in the adjacent bathroom. (I think this is bad pipe.)

So, the CPVC in the house has me a bit freaked out and we have started having it replaced. Especially with a big section of living room ceiling missing, it is a lot more cost effective to do that now.

As we consider choices for replacing the living room floor (half of which has been torn out) we have to think about choices that will handle a wheelchair, if needed, without damage. This takes laminates out, and probably all of the snap and click floating floors. This leaves vinyl, tile, and hardwood (glued or nailed). If I could find our existing tile it would probably be an easy decision to use tile, but alas it is no longer made. Bamboo is probably the winner.

Meanwhile, the upstairs bathrooms have much wider doors. Wide enough to get a walker through. We are still considering quotes on the chair lift and thinking about geometry and cost. It is not a big house, although now somewhat bigger than we need, and areas like the entryway are small and the footprint of a chair lift has to be carefully considered to avoid obstructing wheelchair access.

The big project will be to slightly enlarge the small downstairs bathroom and make it wheelchair accessible. We have a plan and it is reasonable in cost and approach. We are also considering other modifications to the kitchen to help ensure she is able to easily self-manage when I am not around.

Throughout all of this I have begun to learn about the concepts of “aging in place” and “visitability.”  We also think a lot about furniture layout and how traditional homebuilding practices do not enhance accessibility.

I also learned that Virginia offers up to a $5,000 for permanent visitability adaptations for new construction and modifications to existing structures. It is the “Livable Home Tax Credit.”

I think this will all work out. I hope.

They’ve got cookies…and you are going to be assimilated anyway.

So, what good is sitting, all alone in your room? Go on and join the data fray, become part of the collective.

Consider, if you will, the Kit Kat Club its celebration of sexual fetishes of all stripes.

Or, if a more dystopic future is your choice, maybe a visit to the Milk Bar with Alex and his droogs.

Across the net tonight data is flowing in unimaginable numbers of bytes. From simple communications like text messages and email, to the buying and bartering of 80 million Anthem records. Others are working with data, writing stories about data. Still others are creating and running organizations to encourage the collection and use of more data, while other organizations are opposing them.

With good reason on both sides.

My friend Barmak and others talk about the fetishism of data (or big data) frequently in the context of education data. Even though I am a data guy, I see his point. Once upon a time, when I was much younger, we learned about being parsimonious or frugal in our datasets for research. Today that seems completely out the window. There is a lot we can learn from big data, and a lot we can learn from much smaller datasets that are less intrusive that pose less risk to those we are trying to help by using their data. I suspect most of the time we can learn more from the smaller datasets where we sit and think about what we are doing.

Of course, while I write this, I am also working on a projection model based on more than 20 years worth of data that will produce results I am confident will be wrong in 15 years. The question is just how wrong and so I struggle to minimize the wrongness. There will be something like five million moving parts (with agency and motives of their own) affected by forces that have changed dramatically over the last two decades and others that didn’t exist.

Oh well, love is an imaginary number and the eagle arrives daily, and I remain modern and unbound…at least to the fetish of big data. I have a lot of data to work with, but it does not, I think, rise to the level of “big.”

While reading a completely unrelated blog post about Dominion and Eminent Domain, as granted to private companies (allegedly operating in the public service) I got to wondering about this. Are forces in motion to allow private companies, to declare eminent domain as it relates to data? Is it that much of leap to believe that some corporation is trying to find a way to ensure access to all the information it doesn’t have about us to better target its advertising? Perhaps Kroger or Food Lion argue that they need access to our health records to help us make healthier grocery purchases. Certainly that would be considered in the public good and if a power utility is a public service company, how is a grocery not? Food is far more necessary to the individual than power delivery.

Btw, how can one not appreciate the phrase “Dominion and Eminent Domain?”

Some of you will think less of me for this. “Joe Versus the Volcano” is one of my favorite movies. I know a lot of people didn’t like it, probably still don’t like it. I am not a movie critic like my nephew, so I won’t attempt to justify the movie’s goodness through its repetition of themes and icons, or its characters. It’s simpler than that. But how can I not like a movie that starts out under driving rhythm of “Sixteen Tons” sung by Eric Burdon?

Some things defy explanation or just don’t need it.

When I was a child in Oklahoma I remember watching Tennessee Ernie Ford sing this song and others on television. Later I rediscovered Johnny Cash and  his cover of Sixteen Tons. It is one of those songs that has always resonated with me. Perhaps because it is, in part, about the inability to catch up. There is always more to do.

Sixteen Tons is also one of the (many) reasons I love the movie “Heavy Metal” because of its thematic connection to the Devo cover of “Workin’ in a Coal Mine.” I just wish the movie held together better overall. However, it is more probably a bit more successful than “American Pop” which tries to do much and doesn’t really satisfy.

Anyhow, whatever you tomorrow, Monday (2/2), don’t drive angry.