keith’s new self

A can opener is a simple tool. It’s so simple that no one’s ever tried to think up a fancy name for it. It opens cans. Simple. Every household has one. You can find them in several different configurations - some sit on top of the can, some come at it from the side - and you have those super cheap skinny all-metal ones that hurt your hands. The thing is - most of them don’t work. My roommates and I have gone through three different pairs and they were all defective in one way or another. With one the blade would regularly ride up the edge and jump out, meaning you had to reposition the whole thing and start over a bunch of times, with another the blade would fail to cut the metal in spots leaving the can with a pattern of dashes around the edge (”maybe I can squeeze the tomato sauce out?”). Sometimes it would just get stuck in one place and spin - I would keep turning and turning the wheel, hoping that somehow the thing would re-engage and get cutting again. Sometimes I would stick my finger in the half-cut can crevice, betting I could find just the right amount of leverage to push the lid up without cutting through the skin. One of these openers was even a supposedly high-end $16 model.

What could be the process designing these things? Do the engineers test them on thinner cans? Do they test them at all? After a few basic tests they would realize that the can opener they designed is crap and needs to be re-engineered. It’s funny, because all the other features - hand comfort, sleek design, etc, don’t matter at all if the can opener fails in its primary purpose - it doesn’t come out of the gate, let alone win the can opener race. I guess part of the problem is consumer apathy - my roomies and I never took back any of the defective openers - it wasn’t worth the time to do it for the few bucks spent. We would just suffer with the frustration for a while and eventually go out and buy a new one - so there was no feedback loop to the retailer or the manufacturer. If people started returning their crappy can openers in droves, maybe the can opener makers would wise up. Another problem is that it’s tricky to test them on the spot - chugging can after can of fruit cocktail while you test every model in the Safeway housewares aisle, fruit chunks and pear juice dripping all over your shirt. But those little red candied cherries…

When I was a child my family had a can opener that always just worked. It was probably in the family for 30 years at least, and always worked perfectly, maintenance-free, day-in day-out. Recently I was at my cottage, and opening a can I noticed that this can opener was one of the good ones. I searched for a brand name, and engraved on the side were the words “SWING-A-WAY”, in a kind of wavy font. This stuck in my mind, and the next time I was at my local hardware store, I made a point of seeking out the elusive SWING-A-WAY, and found it inconspicuously hanging amongst other kitchen tools (including several models of cheaper, but non-can-opening, can openers). As soon as I got home I tore open the package, grabbed a can of chickpeas and went to work. The satisfying ease of gear and wheel effortlessly slicing through aluminum made up for all those infuriating epsiodes with the cuts, the bruises, the hurt feelings, and worst of all - the knowledge that I was suckered.

My new SWING-A-WAY is a model 407, and it has it’s own webpage.

Postscript: I’ve gotta give props to the old-school swiss army knife curved-blade-style can openers. Those work pretty good too in a jiffy, and are very portable, but lack the ease and flow of the SWING-A-WAY.

posted: 10:52 pm

  2 Comments

I like this poem. It’s called ‘Food for Risen Bodies II’, and was written by Michael Symmons Roberts.

On that final night, his meal was formal:
lamb with bitter leaves of endive, chervil,
bread with olive oil and jars of wine.

Now on Tiberias’ shores he grills
a carp and catfish breakfast on a charcoal fire.
This is not hunger, this is resurrection:

he eats because he can, and wants to
taste the scales, the moist flakes of the sea,
to rub the salt into his wounds.

Here’s a short review of the poem, explaining the meaning and context a bit:

In this extraordinary poem, the reference to the simple pleasure of a barbecue, of eating ‘because he can’ could be read as almost heretical; yet what emerges is a superb image of the risen man, not yet returned to God, able finally to delight in the quotidian pleasures of life, his work done, his suffering over. It is a reminder of Jesus’ assertion that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand: in the natural world, in the bodies we are and the bodies we love, in family, in the land, in a simple meal of charcoal-grilled fish. Such poems re-sacralise the ordinary components of our highest rituals: bread, wine, oil, flesh, blood, seed.

posted: 10:39 am

  6 Comments

I am kidnapping the word laziness, to use it for my own ends. Partly I would like to see the word rehabilitated, but mostly I think the shock of the juxtaposition makes it more effective in getting my point across. The word lazy seems to nearly always be used pejoratively in our culture - when used it is meant to give the reader a little disapproving internal frown directed at the person or people described. The new sense I would like to give to laziness is, at the root, delighting in the beauty of reality. A cup of rational stoicism, half a cup of irrational faith, and a dash of ecstatic mysticism. Now that I’ve pointed at the essence, I’ll dance around the concept of laziness a bit to try to draw a more complete picture. Also I’m going to propose a new word, “unlaziness”, to express what laziness is not.

Laziness is a martial art that uses the opponent’s own strength against them.

The lazy person trusts the unfolding of reality, not out of blindness, but because they perceive its beauty.

The unlazy person sees themselves everywhere. The lazy person sees everything in themselves.

The unlazy person longs for or regrets what was, and pines for or worries about what could be. The lazy person delights in what is.

Laziness allows the emergent to emerge.

The guiding influence of a lazy person is invisible (although that doesn’t imply that they are). This influence can be seen in the way things just work.

Laziness, because it harnesses the inherent momentum of reality, is the ultimate efficiency.

The lazy person gets on a wild horse, subtly nudging it in the intended direction. The unlazy person beats the horse until, spiritless, it follows their orders without question.

Unlaziness is frustrated control. Laziness is mindful ordering.

Unlaziness is restless, tense-muscled, obsessive neurosis. Laziness is relaxed wisdom.

Laziness is a continuous descent into the subtle Being of things.

The mutual production of being and nonbeing,
The mutual completion of difficult and easy,
The mutual formation of long and short,
The mutual filling of high and low,
The mutual harmony of tone and voice,
The mutual following of front and back—
These are all constants.

Therefore the Sage dwells in nonactive affairs and practices the wordless teaching.
The ten thousand things arise, but he doesn’t begin them;
He acts on their behalf, but he doesn’t make them dependent;
He accomplishes his tasks, but he doesn’t dwell on them;
It is only because he doesn’t dwell on them, that they therefore do not leave him.

- Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching (Henricks trans.)

Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

- Epictetus, Enchiridion (Carter trans.)

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a conoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about “what’s needed.”

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it’s been untied,

and is just ambling about.

- Rumi, Mathnawi IV (Barks trans.)

LAZINESS: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure…. the first great virtue of a programmer.

- Randal Schwartz, Programming Perl

posted: 9:13 am

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I’m thrilled to say that my insurance claim was approved. This is a big relief. Thanks all for the advice and support. It’s great to have this behind me.

posted: 2:53 pm

  3 Comments

I’ve been making noise at various parties trying to get this resolved. I’ve learned that the rep I was dealing with at IAP was in fact just a data gathering person, not someone who makes a decision on the claim (she just passes on the info to an adjudicator to make the decision). The COO at the benefits company (the middleman between me and IAP) has gotten involved as well, and I think has helped push the thing along - now my claim is being adjudicated without the missing file, to determine if that test result is even necessary. This is good since the adjudicator may very well approve the claim without it, but they may also come back and say that the file is required. I should know soon. In any case, I’m glad to see this thing pick up velocity.

Being the geek that I am, I wrote some Perl code to process my situation:

$person = JUNIOR_ASSISTANT_IAP_EMPLOYEE;
while($claim->unresolved()) {
    do {
        if (make_noise_at($person) == 'success') {
            $claim->resolve();
        }
        else {
            $person = $person->superior;
        }
    } until ($person == IAP_CEO);
    if ($person == IAP_CEO) {
        use Legal::Threats 'threaten';
        threaten($person) while $claim->unresolved();
    }
}
do_happy_dance();

Yeah, that should do it!

posted: 11:15 am

  2 Comments

I am in the middle of a “critical health” insurance claim with Industrial Alliance Pacific, which has now taken nearly 5 months to process, with seemingly no end in sight. They say they need to verify that I wasn’t being treated for Hodgkin’s 24 months previous to when I got the policy, so they need to follow up on every medical incident I’ve had over the last 3 years. This has taken a ridiculous amount of time, since their method appears to be “pursue one incident at a time” (rather than many in parallel - that would be waaaayyyy too efficient), and “use only the fax machine to contact doctors”. If the doctor doesn’t respond, wait a week and fax them again. Don’t call them and ask why they aren’t responding, that would again be waaaayyyy too efficient.

So here we are, five months later. I’ve ended up doing a bunch of footwork myself, visiting clinics personally, asking WTF is going on, just to move the process along. Now, there is only one record they need. In January 2003 I went to a walk-in clinic and got one of those “peace of mind” STD tests. In my provincial health record however, it just says that I had a “pathology” test, which I guess is suspicious to IAP as possibly being a test for Hodgkin’s. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make any logical sense that I would have a single test for Hodgkin’s with no other related tests or treatment in years - the paper pushers at IAP need to see it in writing.

In the meantime the doctor who I saw for this test, Dr. Ocana, moved his practice to Bowen Island and sold his Vancouver practice to another doctor, Dr. Karim. Apparently IAP was having a heckofa time (read: weeks and weeks) finding Dr. Ocana, so it came back to me to find him, which I did in a about an hour with Google and a phone call. Problem is, neither Dr. Ocana or Dr. Karim have a record of my visit (each office told me to call the other, of course). One odd thing that has come up a couple times at Dr. Karim’s office is that they say it could be “in storage”, which they without explanation equate to being “irrecoverable”. That little contradiction I still haven’t got to the bottom of, but I am imagining a mini-storage full of badly-organized bankers’ boxes that the doctor’s office fears ever having to dig through, because it’s such a mess, and not worth their time.

So I call MDS Metro Labs, where I actually got the lab work done, but they don’t seem to have the record either, since they don’t do pathology-type tests themselves - they send the samples to be tested at provincially-run hospitals (they couldn’t tell me which one). I talked to my IAP rep, and she said that they “have a company” that will search for this record for them, hinting that this would be just as bad a bureaucratic nightmare (i.e. taking months and probably thousands of dollars to do the equivalent of a few phone calls of work).

So my options appear to be one or more of the following:

1. Pressure Dr. Karim et al to crack open the mythical mini storage and find my file. Pain-to-likelihood-of-success ratio: high. This clinic has shown almost zero desire or capacity to help me. Seems like pure pain.

2. Call/visit every local hospital, tracking down the records department inside the inscrutable, labyrinthine physical/organizational sprawl/jungle/mess that is the modern superhospital. Pain-to-likelihood-of-success ratio: medium. Looks painful, but if my record is indeed at one of these hospitals, it seems likely that I’d be able to find it.

3. Try to cajole IAP into overlooking this test result. Means navigating the inscrutable, labyrinthine organizational sprawl that is the modern insurance company, to find the bureaucrat with the power and willingness to hear my case. Pain-to-likelihood-of-success ratio: medium.

4. Do nothing. Wait for the ponderous wheels of insurance bureaucracy to churn out my claim dollars. Sun goes supernova. Total heat death occurs. Brahma, Shiva and Leonard Cohen have tea, play croquet. Pain-to-likelihood-of-success ratio: infinity plus one.

Observations:

1. Not sure how typical my case is, but I’m guessing many people probably die before getting their critical health insurance claims processed.

2. Doctors and insurance company bureaucrats have no incentive to process health claims quickly. The insurance industry is very consolidated, and I’m guessing competition around claim processing times is non-existent, most likely because it’s something you don’t think about until you need it. Woe to those who enter here.

3. Haven’t seen much in the way of consumer activism around insurance. Considering creating a website to help with this.

posted: 12:01 pm

  6 Comments

Hello sports racers! I’m now mostly recovered from my 10th round of chemo. The horrible chemo taste and smell distortions are almost gone, so I can enjoy a morning cappuccino again without it tasting like horseblanket purée* . One of the only things that is immune to this sensory jihad is ramen soup from Ezogiku Noodle Cafe, conveniently located a block from work. I eat there almost every day because I can actually taste and enjoy the food (you can’t imagine what it’s like to lose this basic comfort unless you actually do). Looks like I’ll be recovered from my last chemo in time for my 28th birthday, November 23rd. So it seems likely that my goal to outlive Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain will be, as my young friend Aidan likes to say, “mission accomplished”.

*credit to Kurt Vonnegut for this useful and effective simile.

posted: 10:29 am

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krista, i love you

you are beautiful, patient and kind

you are strong, wise and powerful

you are funny, caring, and compassionate

you are my true love

posted: 9:33 pm

  5 Comments

The folks ruling the neighbouring country to the south make me nervous/sad.

But Ze Frank makes me smile.

And Noam Chomsky is more relevant than ever.

And Ross Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, recently made one of the most important speeches of our time.

And people like Bruce Schneier are talking about sane, reasonable, effective methods of beating terrorism - instead of the fear-mongering, privacy invasions and “security theatre” happening at airports and elsewhere.

A few sparks of light in a dark time.

posted: 12:13 pm

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Just had an appointment with my extraordinarily good-looking oncologist, Dr. Savage. She said my CT scan looked “very good”. The formerly titanic pineapple is now a mere 5cm x 3cm. Lemon or smaller!!! I called it!!! Woo!!!! Woo!!!! (Red, white and blue balloons drop from the ceiling). Dr. Savage sez: The lemon is probably mostly scar tissue (fibrosis). It may never go away completely, as the chemo only kills the evil, freedom-hating Hodgkin’s cells, not the moderate, open-minded fibrosis cells. I’ll get a PET scan after my chemo treatment to determine whether we need to zap the lemon with WMDs (this blog post is gonna be picked up by Carnivore, for sure. Hello RCMP database entry).

She also remarked that I have the smoothest head she’s ever seen (I surmise she was speaking in phrenological terms, where a smooth head indicates a mind unburdened by cares or worries - an accurate diagnosis).

posted: 11:17 am

  7 Comments