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guessing age from names
Saturday, September 24 2016
This morning I took the dogs on a long walk that included a walk on the Canary Overlook Trail (the best view on the trail system of the Esopus Valley). I hadn't been on that trail in months, and I don't think Gretchen walks on it that often either; you can tell when a trail doesn't get much foot traffic. Ramona and Neville separated from me somewhere early along that trail, and by the time the Whistle Tracker showed me where they'd gone, they were alarmingly close to the lower part of Dug Hill Road, a region I'd never been aware that they go to. The problem with going down there is not just the cars on the road, it's also the redneck idiots who show up at the bus turnaround and start monotonously shooting. I have a feeling an appreciable fraction of such people wouldn't mind shooting any living animal that happened along while they're using their killing machines to create a disappointingly small amount of death. The tracker showed Neville (and thus probably also Ramona) lingering fairly close to the road (within 100 feet or so) for a time, suggesting they'd set up a chipmunk mine. But then it showed him coming back towards me, rounding the north end of the bluff east of the Valley of the Beasts. And then there he was, reaching me in the place (41.924406N, 74.101418W) where the Canary Overlook Trail transitions via the Mountain Goat Path into the Gullies Trail.
Back at the house, I was wondering what to do about an email sent by the head of another department in The Organization asking me if we could have a phone date for some interactive reporting help she couldn't get to during the week. This whole working on the weekend thing is not what I want to encourage, and indeed my direct boss was incensed when he later learned that such a request had been made of me. But I actually like the reporting work itself, and if there hadn't been a request for a phone conversation of unspecified duration, I wouldn't've had a problem with it. The reporting challenge in this case was how to assemble a multi-thousand list of contacts of a known age range with no history of donations when birthday information only existed for about half the required number. As I pondered this, I suddenly had an epiphany. I realized I could get to this number using an approximation for age range: first names. First names, particularly those for baby girls, come and go over the years and imprint themselves on their generations. When I was in college, there were a lot of Sarahs, Susans, and Lisas. A somewhat younger group included a lot Jennifers. A still younger group was rich in Jessicas. Meanwhile, there have never been many Lindas or Karens in my life; those names were extremely popular among babies born during the Baby Boom, but had nearly vanished as baby names by the time I was born. The age filter didn't need to be precise, and first names would probably be good enough. As a bonus, our target demographic also tends to be more female than male.
I drove out to 9W and went to Home Depot mostly just to get some o-rings for the gravity-fed faucet in the brownhouse. That faucet had been out of commission since winter, when I'd allowed water to freeze in it. That had broken a weak solder joint between two mis-matched fittings. I'd recently redone the soldering, adding a much more substantial drainage valve (for emptying it in the winter). But in so doing, I'd discovered one of the o-rings had failed. While I was in the area, I also went to Mother Fucking Earth (the nearby health food store) to get more party provisions for Gretchen, a number of frozen faux-seafood vegan treats, and a large bottle of blood-orange kombucha, which Mother Earth has on tap.
On the way home, I went out of my way to drive out to the Tibetan Center thrift store, where I bought that three-handset DECT 6.0 phone if only for the tiny speakers in the handsets (and other spare parts). It came with six rechargeable AAA batteries, recharging docks that are compatible with our existing phones and three switching 6.5 volt wall-warts, so it was definitely worth the $2 I was charged even if I never actually use the phones as phones. (They don't seem compatible with the "plus" part of our DECT 6.0+ system in any case. That's the part that allows the use of signal repeaters.)
On the way home via Dug Hill Road, I stopped again at the West Hurley Park to give the dogs a run in the woods while I sipped on a paper coffee cup full of cold kombucha. The dogs stuck with me until I was about to load them into the car. Then I looked around and saw they'd vanished. What the fuck? It was a good thing I had the tracker on Neville, because I was able to see on my smartphone that he had gone north into the landfill and transfer station area. I eventually found Ramona snorting around in a thick clump of bushes near a culvert. The tracker suggested Neville was getting near Dug Hill Road, which threw me into a mixture of rage and panic, focused mostly on Ramona for having caused this. This snapped her into contrite obedience, and then Neville appeared before Whistle had updated his position.
Later Neville pissed on the bed. It wasn't much piss, but it was a huge annoyance. I had to rinse out the things his piss had touched, and then I pointed an industrial fan on it all so I could dry it out without having to rip it off the bed. I didn't know at the time that Gretchen wouldn't be coming home tonight, something I didn't learn until I directly asked her via email.
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