Tiger Woods' Mistresses, Photos and Updates

Here are the latest photos of all the women that Tiger Woods has slept with:

These are: (top, left to right) Sarah Palin, Tina Fey, Linda Carter, (bottom, left to right) Meredith Baxter, The Tiger from the Movie Hangover, and his wife Elin Nordegren.

Keep in mind that these are only those women for whom we have confirmation that Tiger has slept with. The rapidly growing list of women with whom he's been alleged to have affairs with includes: Lady Gaga, Wanda Sykes, and Tinker Bell.

Color blindness correction surgery so far so good

Of all my blog entries, I think this one I am most excited to be writing about. Here is the deal: if you've been following my blog, you wouldn't even have known that I suffer from color blindness. Suffer is probably too strong of a word, because I have been able to function fairly normally throughout my life, despite only having dichromatic vision. In fact, in some sense it was a benefit to me, because it enabled me to talk with three girls in in junior high school, who would not otherwise have given me the time of day. These were fairly good looking girls ("easy on the eyes" as some of my ancestors would have said), who had not yet been cured of their curiosity in science. So, a freak like me was someone worth experimenting with, testing whether I could distinguish this shade of brown from that red, ha ha ha isn't he cute, etc. Three girls out of my league in three years is not too shabby. OK, I've digressed here, and haven't even explained what is so exciting recently.

I have been considering for years getting corrective surgery for my color blindness, but until recently have been too scared to do so. (What finally put me over the edge?: hopefully I will discuss that in a future blog.) I'm pretty much a chicken shit when it comes to surgery having to do with my eyes. I don't feel like I have to apologize about this, though, because after all, it's my fucking eyes that I'm talking about. To give an example, I am also somewhat nearsighted, but still have not gathered up the nerve to get the laser surgery. It's not rational, of course. I have no problem pasting thin pieces of plastic on my eyeballs and leaving them there for half a day (or longer if I am too drunk to remember to take them out) without worrying about the lack of oxygen causing new blood vessels to grow on my cornea across my pupil, decreasing the level of light passing through my pupil and ultimately contributing to blindness. So that doesn't bother me, but gentle sculpting of my cornea with lasers or some kind of sharp carving knife that reminds me of a tonka trunk I had in the sandbox as a kid...that actually bothers me a lot.

But I felt like obtaining trichromatic vision was worth the risk of the surgery. Plus, there was an important risk-mitigating factor: without incurring exorbitant penalty costs, I can try out this surgery in small trials. The reason this is possible is first, because of a reasonably friendly eye surgeon that I found. Second, when introducing new color discrimination, many positive effects can be gained from even a portion of one optical system (a.k.a. "eyeball"), whereas spatial aberrations in vision tend to be dominant and require full corrective surgery to appreciate the benefits. Clearly I don't understand the science here, I'm just parroting the information I was given by people selling me various kinds of risky, expensive surgery.

So, I opted to go with the bottom-left field of my left eyeball for this first round of surgery. I chose this because when I was a kid my dad used to take me to archery on Saturdays. I look back on this so fondly now, but at the time I think I was an indifferent annoying pre-teen or teenager. The sort of freaky archery instructor (just how you would imagine him) first had me determine which is my dominant eye by looking at something far away through a triangle formed by my fingers, and then bringing this close to my head to reveal the dominant eye. It turns out it's (and by "it's" I mean "it was" in this instance) my right eye. So, this is how we selected my left eye. There were further reasons for choosing the bottom left quadrant of my eye, but I don't really remember them, and basically it made intuitive sense to me at the time that that the outside bottom quadrant of an eyeball is the most useless part. Don't challenge me on this, because I didn't use science while deciding this.

The surgery was amazingly painless and quick. You would think anytime lasers are monkeying with your retina it would hurt crazily, but it turns out that's not true. The most painful part was the initial injection of the drug or whatever into my eyeball. I have to be honest, I don't really understand the process. This drug is some kind of molecule or something that over time would just get broken down by the natural stuff inside your eyeball. But at first, it's a molecule that can react with things, but only when you shine this laser light on it. So basically, they have to inject this substance in your eyeball (with some special syringe that sucks / injects simultaneously (sort of like a more complicated epoxy dispenser) so as to relieve the pressure). I guess it spreads around pretty quickly, and then the cool thing they do is they shine this laser into your eye which causes the molecules to interact with the proteins involved in photon sensing in your retina. The laser light causes the molecule to permanently bind to the protein, causing the protein to absorb different colors of light than it used to, and effectively becoming the photon-sensing pigment that I had been missing. The key to the procedure, apparently is only modifying a fraction of my natural photon receptors. (If they modified all of them, then I would still have dichromatic vision, just a different kind--it turns out there are recent studies showing that this is equally effective, if only done in partial vision field, but the debate is still ongoing.) Apparently there are at least two ways to do this. The first way is to use optical interference of coherent laser beams to only stimulate transformation of stripes on the retina. The second way, as I understand it, is just to only shine the laser light for a brief time, so that only half the receptors are modified. As it was explained to me, the first method is much safer and easier to control, while the second is much cheaper. I opted for the safer method. The only remaining part is that you need to be looking in the correct direction for them to shine the laser. It turns out this isn't a big deal, either, because they just use some sensing mechanism to look at where you're looking and then zap at the appropriate times.

OK, this took me much longer to describe than I had been hoping when I started! The net result is that the surgery was amazingly successful! I want to describe in another blog or two about what I now see...but the quick report is that I can easily now distinguish colors of objects that I am studying. I will definitely go for full-field correction as soon as I can save up the money...but it turns out it's not really that important. Now, as to what colors I am seeing now that I am finally at least partially trichromatic, that too is another blog. As far as I can determine, I can see the same things now that most people can see, and I just need to tweak my definitions of colors somewhat. The bottom line is: THIS SURGERY WAS A HUGE SUCCESS and I am pleased with the outcome!

Used my inflatable airline seat encroachment device for the first time; very pleased

Even though I am so fricking tired from the two legs of flying today, I got online to write this blog because I am really excited about how well my inflatable-seat-space device worked today. It's a whole other issue why I had to fly two legs even though there is a direct flight and I don't want to get started on it. But since I'm started, basically my company buys us the cheapest possible flight, because they think it will save the company money. However, they don't realize that this makes every trip one or two days longer, adding another night of hotel expense, not to mention the extra day of per diem, which of course is spent entirely on beer, wine, bourbon, etc. on the flight there and to try to get to sleep the night before the business meeting. So it ends up costing the company more money and for some (not me) the 10 hours of drinking the day / night before the meeting probably decreases business performance (neglecting the incremental benefit of having super-drinking powers for the next night out with the meeting people). If I were CEO, I would make sure my people fly up the same day as a meeting, or having something important to do when they get there, so they stay reasonably sober. For the way home, they can walk home, what do I care? Ha, ha, just kidding, I would be a very friendly CEO.

OK, So today, for some reason I had planned ahead for this trip and I purchased one of those inflatable suits, custom tailored for the airline and aircraft that you are booked on. The trick is (I guess), that you need to buy a model appropriate for both legs of your flight (if applicable) so that the space to fill is the correct size. There is considerable variation from, say an L10-11 to a 747 to some puddle jumper. I suppose it is still on the honor system for you not to use it when your space is obviously smaller than the suit can fill, as I don't think yet the airlines have adapted policies for these kind of things. But even so, let's say you used a 747 model on some crappy prop plane from Ithaca to La Guardia--would anyone really have a right to complain, given that it's generally accepted that if you weigh 350 pounds you can spill over into my seat on whatever flight you wish? Some people actually weigh 350 pounds and are in good shape, or at least it's just their body type, that's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying: "Why do my size small clothes cost the same as size XXL, even though it is plainly obvious that I am receiving far less in raw materials, namely cotton, polyester, rayon, dacron, elastic, spandex, etc. and even whatever thread is made of?" Actually, that's not what I'm saying today, I was in a good mood when I started, because the new gadget worked so well. I will proceed:

It turns out that both legs of my flight had the same model plane, so ordering was easy. I ordered mine from the direct site, but I think Amazon now has them now (or maybe it is just a link to their store: http://www.stopairlineseatencroachment.com). (I think this company has been making a killing off lithe businesswomen and lanky businessmen for a while and now they are using Amazon to ramp up to us less-frequent fliers.) So all I had to do was tell them my normal size for pants and shirt, and the type of airplane(s) and then within 5-10 business days, I recieved my suit. They still only sell manual-inflate models, which I think is reasonable, given the need to pass through TSA and also considerations of cost and ease of packing. If you think about it, most people using them should have reasonable cardio-vascular health and so be able to do some huffin and puffin after they've put all their other crap under the seat in front of them, or in the overhead compartment. They do have a few options, I forget the other options, but I did opt for the neck ring torroidal thing, which is for sleeping, and I have to say, it is idiotic to not get that. Ever since I have been flying, I have been too cheap to spend $15 or whatever dollars on one of those neck cushion things and every single time I end up lolly-gagging my head around, not able to sleep, or in incredible pain when I wake up? Why did I do that? Seriously, if you take my advice on anything, definitely get the neck cushion option. Oh I remember, they also have different patterns, colors, etc. (camo, e.g.), but I just got clear, which is fine if you wear clothes you are not embarrassed of.

OK, so here is the reason I am so happy. On the very first flight, it was a 2 / 3 seater, and I was a window in the 3 seat side. There was some other guy in the aisle, and the flight wasn't sold out, so I basically thought I was OK, except for the regular annoyances that make flying so fricking unbearable. For example, this guy in the aisle had a book, but was OBVIOUSLY not reading it and kept peering over into my area and waiting for me to make eye contact to initiate a conversation. I hated him even before that, because he was a stranger, but when it became clear that he was a chatter, then I was tacitly livid knowing he was going to start something. Then I knew even if he were so chatty-cathy on me, he would still be pissed and make a huge deal out of it when I had to go take a leak 2 hours into the flight because I had had 3 Jack Daniel's in order to tolerate him. As if me asking him to fricking un-do his seat belt, stand up, and move three feet either forward or backward, twice (which, by the way, is good to do to avoid deep vein thrombosis) is worse than him bothering me with inane conversation for three hours straight. So then I start day-dreaming about my main solution for this, which is that they should just use general anaesthesia on every passenger on every flight. This would really be the most pleasant and safe way to travel. No terrorist is going to bust into the cockpit if he is unconscious. Obviously this isn't going to happen. But how about just getting rid of all the seats and letting people mingle? This is the most common way to avoid talking to people. There would be a problem with bad turbulence, but I have ideas for magnetic boots that would get rid of that problem. Furthermore, if people were standing, mingling, you could fit a lot more people onto one plane and much more comfortably. This is similar to if you stacked everyone into slots / bed compartments (which is compatible with the general anaesthesia idea, and even without sedative, stacked sleeping compartments would be infinitely more comfortable).

So, with all that going through my head, it turns out my worry about the stanger one seat away from me was a minor concern compared with the behemoth who happened to be scheduled to sit directly between us. Ordinarily, at this point I would have silently flipped my lid, but today I was clearly excited and I know that my heart started racing. The guy did all the predictable things: feigned confusion; faked inability to operate overhead compartment; insincere apologies; not-so-sneaky, unnaproved raising of our separating armrest, etc. He flopped down and I would estimate that multiple parts of his body were on top of mine, clearly in my own space. I sort of paused for a minute, maybe to soak it all in, but really because deep down I was still nervous, and then I started inflating my suit (I had practiced at home, so knew what to do). So, basically, for the first minute or so I think the fat guy, and the potential talker next to him were confused, and by the looks on their faces maybe worried that I was some kind of terrorist going to blow up the plane via an exploding bag. Then it became clear what was happening, as the air pressure started actually moving various parts and folds of the guy next to me and I just kept going.

So, actually, it was a lot of hard work inflating, and I will probably look into those blogs whose bloggers have claimed to have figured out how to tap into the oxygen mask system--but I don't really believe those bloggers, because it would seem like clearly you would be tasered or something for messing with those. Anyway: much to my DEE-LIGHT, the whole suit inflated and before we even started to taxi, I was engulfed in my own COMFORTABLE space, pretty much exactly equal to the space that I had purchased with my ticket, same as the fat guy next to me. I enjoyed it a bit as the potential-yapper's smile slowly faded as he realized that he (lacking a suit) was basically double-f'ed now that I had inflated. In case you are wondering, yes, they both, separately dinged for the flight attendants to complain, but I would guess that while new to both of my aisle-mates, the flight attendant was newly familiar, and I was clearly in the right and so no recourse was granted.

So, that is why I am so happy. The first leg of the flight was probably the most comfortable I've been on a flight, ever, including when I've had the whole row to myself. I didn't even have any bourbon or anything, though I did have several beers at the Max & Erma's between flights while I gloated over the first flight. The second flight it turns out I had no person next to me, which I found disappointing. Also, it turns out that there is no way to inflate the neck ring without inflating the whole suit, and I was too embarrassed to do that just so I could sleep. That is definitely a drawback that the manufacturer needs to address, but overall, as I'm sure you can tell, I am very pleased, and I highly recommend this product.

In sort of a bad mood today, my caffeine patch failed this morning

My caffeine patch failed this morning and so I was awakened "cold" by my alarm clock: totally old school and very unpleasant. I am assuming that the patch was defective, as the alarm clock base I purchased was the most expensive one that Amazon sold (for wireless caffeine patch activation) and there are no other signs that it is not working. If I check other unused patches, the tiny green patch glows, showing that it is receiving the the wireless signal and has been synched with the base. So, basically I think the patch I had on last night just didn't work. I honestly can't remember whether it was checking out OK when I put it on, but I am pretty sure I would have noticed if not. So that is annoying, because how will I know in the future whether it's going to work?

So, I woke up with a start at 7:01 am and it took me a while to realize what was going on. The patch should have triggered at 6:16 am and I should have been peacefully awake by quarter to seven. I was completely sound asleep when the alarm went off (now I realize why the clocks are designed with an audible alarm for backup purposes). So, I've only been using the patches for about 8 months or so, but I definitely am spoiled and had forgotten what it was like to wake up from a deep sleep with no caffeine. It was even worse than before I finally invested in the wireless caffeine patch system (why did I ever hesitate?!). What I did then was just set my alarm much earlier than I needed to wake up, and when the alarm went off, I'd quickly pop in a 200 mg caffeine pill and then go right back to sleep. I had a dual alarm clock, with the second alarm scheduled for 45 minutes after the first, but I almost never made it to the second alarm, unless I'd only had less than three hours sleep. So, in principle I was always waking up out of a deep sleep by an audible alarm, but it seemed tolerable because I knew I just had to pop the pill and then go back to sleep and my body would slowly wake up "naturally."

So, today was just terrible because I had no plan in place and didn't have my caffeine pills next to my bed. After some time I did realize that all I had to do was manually trigger the patch to release the caffeine. So, now I know first-hand some problems that can occur. Having had this happen, I for sure for a while will only use the patches which are manufactured specifcally for my base clock (which is what I've been doing). They cost about $1 / use, but it's totally worth it. The cheaper ones are about $0.79 / use, but it's not worth the savings to risk what happened to me this morning happening more often. Here are some other things I am thinking:

• I would not even THINK about trying the cell phone / PDA / wireless drug patch trigger combos. It just makes sense that a dedicated base whose sole purpose is alarm clock / drug trigger would be more reliable than a cell phone / PDA version, which for my whole life have always been buggy and prone to breaking. I have only had one clock which didn't keep time, and I never really understood how that was possible, since it was an AC powered digital clock.
• I do see now why there hasn't been a huge push to start making triggered patches for other more critical drugs. Just because it's possible the patch will malfunction and you can't trust the consumers to check and manually trigger it. Although, when you think about it, most drugs, even if they are more "important" than daily caffeine are not as time critical as when you are using caffeine to peacefully wake yourself up. But I do understand the hesitation to market for other purposes.
• I wonder if I should start wearing two patches, in case one fails (like today)? I'm sure the extra caffeine wouldn't hurt me and then it would be almost impossible to have a failure (unless the base fails...I could use two bases, but that's annoying and expensive...also there could be problems I suppose with cross-talk and confusion while initializing and setting the patches).

OK, well, now that I am done writing this, I actually don't feel as crappy as I did when I started. I guess I was sort of acting like a baby to be so pissed off that I had to wake up with a regular alarm. A huge fraction of the population in the U.S. still does this routinely and not to mention poorer areas of the world that don't have these devices. They don't even have caffeine pills in these places, so I really shouldn't complain at all. Although, in my experience from watching TV, they probably do have better access to roots and herbs that probably work better than caffeine, but definitely not digitally triggered release.

Another milestone for our daughter!

Well, I think today we are going to declare as the day our 13 month old girl can finally "really" vacuum. She's been close for a couple weeks, but today finally we feel that she's mastered it and it's pretty much as good as can be expected for a while. There was a big learning curve, both for her and us, and I am sure it will be easier with the next child: for one thing we have made some of the common mistakes already and for another our little girl can show the next one (boy or girl) how to do it. For those of you yet to make your own mistakes, hopefully my blog can save you some time. Here are some of the mistakes we made / solutions we found:

• A real key was using the non-toxic colored sprinkle-dust before it is was her scheduled time to vacuum. We found this finally at our local high-end baby store and after we found it we were like "duh!" and really felt we should have known, because we have a good friend who has even driven the Zamboni and when you think about it, the Zamboni guy gets a lot of help from the fact that the ice is already roughed up everywhere so he gets a really good marker for where he's already been. Well, we think soon our daughter will be completely off the dust and now we only sprinkle the dust in corners and common places that she forgets. Before we found the dust, there really was no rhyme or reason to her vacuuming and since she doesn't talk or listen very well, it was just frustrating for everyone trying to explain spots she'd missed or gone over way too many times. Actually the dust is really a lot of fun and at first I would just sprinkle a lot of the dust all over and then do all the vacuuming myself. I am actually surprised that more adults do not use it. OK, so probably the dust is the #1 tip I can give you: do not try to teach your infant to vacuum without using the dust! If Parent's magazine comes out with a "52 tips to teach your toddler good vacuuming skills" article, for sure this should be the #1 tip. (Or #52 tip, I am not sure how they order the tips, my wife does all the reading. It could be that they put the most important one with the highest number.)
• The carrot was way more effective than the stick, so to speak. Our daughter seemed to respond and learn much more quickly to praise for good vacuuming rather than punishment for bad vacuuming. I think as a parent you should probably save punishment for things where they can really get hurt, like sticking paperclips into the electrical outlet and for more minor things like vacuuming errors, probably positive reinforcement is the way to go. Definitely it seemed to be the case with our daughter and I suspect would be true for most others as well. Our technique was to always right away praise our daughter with phrases like "good job!" or "very good job!" or "excellent job!" immediately after she switched off the vacuum cleaner and signed "all done" "all done" "all done". After this and a group hug with all three of us, then we would bring her around the room and explain how there were still some sprinkle dust left in certain areas. So we combined love with phrases like "unacceptable" and "work harder next time." But you can imagine how hard this was before we got the sprinkle dust.
• Definitely go with a canister vacuum. Upright vacuums are just not at all designed for small toddlers or any sized toddler, I would think. I don't know why we didn't try the canister vacuum first. Well, actually yes, I guess the reason is just that we've always had an upright vacuum and have never been a "canister family" and it didn't occur to us at first there would be better options. You may be reluctant to invest in a new vacuum before even trying, but trust me, it is really not worth it: the leverage and everything is just all wrong. With the canister, our daughter still cannot push it or pull it while at the same time vacuuming, but it is a relatively simple task for her to set down the hose, push to a new area and then continue vacuuming. We allow her to leave it running while she does this, but if you are in a region with very high electricity costs, you may want to develop your own policies for on/off cycling. I am not going to get into endorsing one brand or model over another (though I do endorse a type; I endorse: canister). You can check Consumer Reports for the most reliable models and your "best buy" for your money and if they have safety ratings for infant and toddler usage you will want to pay attention to that as well and for sure any special warnings they have put out about infant or toddler vacuum safety. Actually I recommend paying attention to any safety warnings as it is likely that a safety problem for an adult will have an infant or toddler parallel. If it's a safety warning on an upright model, you can trust Consumer Reports, of course, but you should ignore it, because you should be buying a canister model as I have recommended above.

OK, Those are all the tips I can think of! I hope it is helpful to at least some!

PS: Also I should mention that I am not blind to the fact that many parents will be opposed to the idea of using the sprinkle-dust as a sort of crutch at the beginning, I just didn't feel like including it, because as far as I am concerned there shouldn't be a debate. With our daughter it definitely didn't slow her development to get help from the dust, and I think it sped development a huge amount, and like I said, we could probably stop using it now. But yes, I do know this will be a hot button with some parents (and I would guess with nearly all of the parents at our daughter's private school). However, those parents really take it too far with a lot of issues, so far that I don't even really approve, but I have never said anything because at both of the weekly PTA meetings (the policies meeting and also the fundraising meeting) I am usually just too tired to get in another fight. To be honest, at either one of the meetings, I usually am just really eager for them to end. So I don't want to get into the debate, it is your own personal choice if you want the frustrating half-assed vacuuming phase to drag on until maybe 15, 16, 19 months until he or she can vacuum. You can also pay some older person to do it or do it yourself (with or without dust) and wait until your infant can communicate properly to start learning, I really don't care.