No, They Don't Give Out Samples | Visiting The DEA Museum

After years of being on my list of things to see, we finally made it to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Museum. My Mother-in-Law and Ron, in the for the weekend, were up for exploring this small, quirky destination.

The museum starts with an odd contrast: on one hand, the signs outside building are quite inviting. Yet, as soon as we stepped into lobby we were reminded that we were visiting a working federal building. We had an armed escort to a security checkpoint, followed by a screening that seemed more thorough than TSA. From there, we had an escort to the museum itself. Once inside, we could wander freely.

The museum itself is relatively small, consisting of one large room with various displays and artifacts. It would be easy to walk in, think there's not a whole lot to see and walk out. However, we took our time and were not disappointed.

Much of the history of drug use in America is quite fascinating. From a Coke bottle back when Coca-Cola contained cocaine, to an asthma inhaler which was also powered by cocaine (!!), the artifacts underscore America's casual relationship with some very hard drugs.

While drugs often held amazing promise, even back in the day doctors had their limits. The museum cited Charles Bradley's 1937 experiment where he gave 'unruly' children amphetamines and counter intuitively, it calmed them down. It took another 25 years before anyone seriously considered his work, which ultimately led to the Ritalin that's used to treat kids today.

The museum spotlights three major classes of drugs: opiates, synthetics and marijuana. It's this last drug which gives the museum a bit of a propaganda feel. Outside the walls of the museum, in Virginia, cannabis is now legal to own and use. In the museum, cannabis like LSD and heroin, is highlighted as a Schedule I drug. It's considered to have "a high potential for abuse, [and] no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States."

Ron noted that in contrast cocaine is a Schedule II drug. He asked the docent about this rating, especially in the context of the recent push for legalization. I piled on: what about alcohol and nicotine? Why don't they even make the list?

The museum staff member tried to explain that a Schedule I ranking isn't intended to imply it's more dangerous than Schedule II, just that it meets a particular standard set by the FDA. And my question about alcohol and nicotine may be fair to ask, but the short answer is, for historic and legal reasons the DEA doesn't get involved with alcohol and tobacco.

The museum, however, isn't purely a 1980's anti-drug commercial. They delve into topics such as how class and fear of minorities often drove drug policy. One classic example is the treatment of lower cost crack cocaine versus more expensive powdered cocaine. The response to these variants varied significantly and were directly related to the race and socioeconomic status of the population using the drug.

If you find yourself in the Pentagon City area, the DEA Museum is worth checking out. Expect to spend 30 minutes to an hour there, and know that it has kid friendly exhibits and activities. We certainly enjoyed ourselves and learned a thing or two!

US Open 2021 Final, In Pursuit of History

The Plan

For the last seven years we've had a straightforward strategy for taking in the US Open: go up for the middle weekend to experience some amazing in person tennis and then watch the final comfortably from home.

This year, with Novak Djokovic looking like he may pull off a calendar grand slam, we decided to tweak our plans. We'd still go up for the middle weekend (we did, it was great), but if Novak made it to the finals, we decided we would hustle up to New York for the day to see him go for this historic title.

After a fairly extensive brainstorming session we came up with our strategy for taking in one day of tennis in New York: we'd fly from DCA to LaGuardia, pick up a rental car, drive the few miles to the stadium, park in a reserved spot, take in the women's doubles and men's finals and then hop in the car and drive 4+ hours back to DCA. We'd drop off the rental at DCA and then drive home. Easy, right?

We considered flying or taking the train home, but the unpredictability of the match duration made this not especially practical. Do you plan for a 5+ hour match and then spend hours waiting when it turns out to be a 1.5 hour blowout? Or, do you plan for 3 hours and leave early, knowing that you're missing an epic battle? Driving home it was.

The Execution

Getting to the stadium happened without any notable glitches. The flight from DCA to LGA was easy, and with no luggage to wait for, we were at the rental counter in no time. Incidentally, the rental cars are stashed near the old Marine Terminal. We only had time to appreciate the facade of this building, with its quirky flying fish motif. Hopefully we'll get back and I'll have a chance to head inside to see the 1940's era, 240 ft mural.

This is our first time driving in Queens, Koreatown and I have to say, wow. Shira's driven all over the world, including places where traffic laws seem optional, and this experience was still unique. We waited on a side street to turn right into a larger street, and absolutely nobody made space to let us in. It took a few minutes, but Shira cracked the code: she was just going to have to pull into traffic and assume that would be the signal to make space. It worked.

Hey Look, Tennis!

And so we found ourselves at Arthur Ashe stadium taking in the end of the doubles final between Sam Stosur and Zhang Shuai against Coco Gauff and Caty McNally. Gauff and McNally are both Americans, so the crowd was naturally behind them. But we'd been watching Stosur and Zhang have an amazing run since the Western & Southern Open, so we couldn't help but cheer for them. We may have been the only fans in the stadium to do so.

It was a nice bonus for the day to see them take the title.

The Main Event

With the women's doubles champions crowned, it was time for the main event. Could Djokovic win one more match this year, thereby handing him a calendar gland slam and making him the first man in 52 years to pull off this feat? The stadium was absolutely packed with Novak fans, a first in US Open history.

Sure, there were fans of his opponent, Daniil Medvedev, in the crowd. And they cheered on their man when he'd hit a winner or make an amazing shot. But the stadium absolutely rocked every time Djokovic made forward progress towards winning.

Alas, Djokovic's win wasn't meant to be. Medvedev played the match of his life, managing to keep his A game going for all three sets. Djokovic had a few glimmers of success, but it looked like he kept waiting to wake up and alas, never did.

In hindsight, this loss wasn't really a surprise. For the last few matches, Djokovic had an extra slow start, and he only managed to beat his opponents because they dropped their level long enough for him to get into the match. Medvedev to his credit, never did this.

So he lost and history wasn't made. To avoid the crush of exiting fans, we watched Djokovic and Medvedev hug it out and then scooted from the stadium. We watched the medal ceremony on a big screen near court 17. It was eerie how we had the space to ourselves.

I have to admit, my first thought, after watching Djokovic limp through three sets of tennis and ultimately lose was: well, if I had known the outcome, I'd have skipped a full day of travel to see this spectacle. But, with a little time to take in the loss, now I'm not so sure.

In many respects, what makes a champion, and what makes a champion worth learning from, is how he or she deals with losses. Especially big losses. And being three sets away from one of the most impressive accomplishments in Tennis certainly falls in the big loss department. To get an up close view of how Djokovic responded to this crushing defeat is actually quite valuable.

During the medal ceremony, he was gracious and talked about how the crowd gave him a sense of connection he'd never had in New York. His post match press conference was even more impressive. He talked openly about the full range of emotions he experienced from his loss, and again stressed how the love from the crowd was so special. (Indeed, we have never seen a crowd embrace him so completely). He gave full credit to Medvedev, and tried to explain some of his own short comings. He even managed to step back and switch into tennis ambassador mode, talking about his hopes for the game itself and how he and others needs to do a better job supporting lower ranked players.

When I have massively disapponting moments in my life, I hope I can muster the perspective to have these kind of thoughts. Djokovic setting this kind of example is impressive and appreciated.

Homeward Bound

After the medal ceremony we found our rental car and got on the road. The ride was mostly uneventful, until Google told us it had a faster route. The catch: we'd be leaving the highway to take side roads.

Did Google know something we didn't? Was it trying to avoid an accident or construction that wasn't yet on the map? Or, was it a glitch in Google's logic that would add an extra 30 minutes to an hour taking side roads when the highway would do the trick?

Shira and I recounted times when we'd both listened to and skipped Google's recommendations, and how that'd had resulted in both wins and losses. Ultimately, we decided to follow Google's suggestion and got off the highway.

I'm not sure this saved us any time, but it did take us by a Friendly's where we got some delish ice cream and recharged.

16 hours after we left our house for the airport, we pulled into our driveway. The trip had been a success. History hadn't been made for Novak, but the day was anything but a loss. We'd exercised our logistics skills, watched Stosur and Zhang take the title, watched Medvedev make history winning his first grand slam title and watched a champion wrestle with a massive setback. Not bad for a day's work.

Review: The Attachment Effect

The Attachment Effect: Exploring the Powerful Ways Our Earliest Bond Shapes Our Relationships and Lives by Peter Lovenheim was an easy book to read. Through our Foster Care Training, Shira and I have been taught about the importance of attachment. Along with basic safety, it's among our top priorities when caring for children. Whether it's establishing ourselves as reliable attachment figures, or helping birth-parents do the same, it's not unusual for us to explicitly think about attachment when we're in foster-parent mode.

To have an entire text who's thesis is that childhood attachment plays a critical role in one's life is both sensible and appreciated.

Lovenheim, to his credit, has taken the topic of attachment and looked at it from every angle. This goes beyond understanding your own attachment style and how your parenting may be impacting your children's style. He looked at how childhood attachment impacts marriage, dating, work, religious life and so on. After each chapter, I found myself recounting some part of it to Shira, usually underscoring how attachment shows up in our lives in unexpected ways.

The text takes the reader through the four broad types of attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized). Unlike many personality traits, like say being an introvert vs extrovert, being securely attached is decidedly advantageous. Yet, all is not lost for those who didn't win the attachment lottery. Lovenheim talks about how one can tweak or otherwise work-around his or her attachment style. He also makes the case for attachment style diversity in groups. Still, secure attachment is a tremendously helpful goal parents and caretakers should strive for.

One risk with the text is that it's possible to get too focused on attachment and try to use it to explain every quirk in ourselves or those around us. This isn't Lovenheim's intention, of course. Personalities are complex and attachment is just one factor that makes us act the way we do. 

Another aspect of the book that made the text so readable is much of it takes place in either Rochester, NY or Washington, DC. That's where I was born, and where I live. Add to that, that the author is Jewish and much of the text just feels familiar.

Between reading the book and taking the Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire, my sense is that I am securely attached. Much credit goes to my parents for giving me this trait, the fruits of which are hard to quantify. Thanks Mom and Dad, you guys rock!

On The Timelessness of Coding

I have this hypothesis that if you can write clean, elegant, modular forth code to solve a problem, then you truly understand the essence of problem solving.

I suggest this because forth is so flexible that while it is possible to build something beautiful, it's much easier to go terribly wrong and create an unreadable, unmaintainable, monstrosity.

To test this hypothesis, I've been carefully making my way through the 1984 text Thinking Forth, a classic book that tries to teach problems solving through the lens of Forth.

In the section on sharing components, there's an example of coding a feature within a text formatter. While the example is not the most arcane in the book, it still seems dated to say the least. Here's some of the sample code, found on page 294:

: [DISPLAY] ...
( the original definition, always does the output) ... ;
VARIABLE ’LOOKAHEAD? ( t=looking-ahead)
: <DISPLAY> ’LOOKAHEAD? @ NOT IF [DISPLAY] THEN ;
VARIABLE ’TOC? ( t=setting-table-of-contents)
: DISPLAY ’TOC? @ NOT IF <DISPLAY> THEN ;

Old school, right?

The day after I read this section I received a feature request from one of my customers: a PDF file was occasionally rendering with a page break at just the wrong location. The result was a legal document with the notary's signature block on page two by itself. The request was to detect this scenario, and move some of the previous page's text to the second page, thereby making the document kosher.

I'm using PHP's fpdf library to build the PDF and it provides no built in way of handling this scenario. I am going to have to craft a custom solution.

What struck as remarkable was how the example from the forth code was surprisingly similar to the problem I was solving today. Both called for the ability to execute layout code in an invisible way and then re-execute that code in a visible fashion, this time informed by what was learned during the first execution.

So much as changed in computing since 1984. And yet, the problems and their solutions remain eerily similar.

In Praise of Samsung's Night Mode

These photos were snapped two nights ago in very low light, without a tripod. They should be blurry, grainy and almost unusable. Yet, here they are:

This is the magic of Android's Night Mode. Every once in a while technology delivers a game changing feature, and this is one of them.

In short, my Galaxy S10+ is able to bend the physics of how photography works. Amazing.

A DC United Game In Two Pics

We attended DC United's last regular season match. Here's how it went.

3 minutes in: it's in the net! Whoo! We're the greatest team to ever play the game!

90 minutes in: down 3 to 1 to Columbus. Booooo! What the hell, Columbus? How dare you try to win. And these refs, could they be any more incompetent?

After 94 minutes of play we lost and fans around us were blaming everyone but the team for it. It was not sportsmanship's finest moment.

On the plus side, I got to enjoy tasty pupusas at the game (even if I did have to take out a second mortgage to pay for them). Good times!

US Open 2021, Day 2

[Composed 9/4/2021]

Us vs Waiting To Get Into The Stadium

As is our habit, we arrived at the South Gate Enterance an hour before the gates would open. We were joined by a few die-hard fans who also wanted to skip the lines to get in. To occupy the time we came prepared with a downloaded movie: The Courier.

The Courier is a Cold War film about a 'normal' business man who gets co-opted into the spy business. I'm often disappointed by Cold War era movies because: (1) they can rely on a subtle, yet confusing plotlines and (2) you know how they end. The world can't blow up, because, well, the world didn't blow up.

And yet, the first hour of The Courier was absolutely delightful. The story sucked us in and we truly enjoyed it. It certainly made our time waiting to get into the stadium a breeze.

Matteo Berrettini vs Ilya Ivashka

Once past the ticket agents, we made a beeline to Grandstand to catch Matteo Berrettini take on Ilya Ivashka. Judging by the crowd, comments by the usher and general chatter, Berrettini's reputation as being the most handsome man in tennis continues to prevail. He even played some quality tennis!

One highlight of the match was Shira's seat selection. When we arrived at the stadium, it was empty and we could choose any general admission seat we wished. Shira opted for an upper row in the Southern quadrant of the stadium. Throughout the match, the sun covered more and more of the stadium, but we had a sliver of shade to protect us the whole time. Well done babe!

Novak Djokovic vs Kei Nishikori

Before the Berrettini match was over, we ducked out to see Djokovic take on Nishikori. We're pulling for Djokovic to get the grand slam, and this is one of the matches he had to win to do that.

As is Djokovic's way, he dropped the first set, but came roaring back to close out the match in a dominant fashion. The dream of a grandslam continues!

Ash Barty vs Shelby Rogers

While we were in Ashe stadium, we opted to stay and cheer on American Shelby Rogers take on Ash Barty. We'd seen Barty steamroll her opponents in the Western & Southern Open, so while we were hoping for a Rogers victory we weren't surprised when she found herself in the third set at 5-2, on the verge of losing. Shelby had played a fantastic first set, but had given up the second set at 1-6, and it looked like Ash was going to cruise to an easy victory.

Then Shelby managed to win her next game, making the score 5-3, giving us fans a glimmer of hope. We did our part, cheering her on and she managed to keep the momentum going. Much to everyone's joy, Rogers pulled off the win, making this the most remarkable comeback we'd seen in years.

Watching Rogers celebrate, you'd think she'd won the whole tournament. Good for her, this was an impressive victory and it was a true pleasure to watch it unfold.

Alexander Zverev vs Jack Sock

Immediately following the elation of the Rogers match, fellow American Jack Sock had his work cut out for him. He was facing number three in the world, Alexander Zverev. While Sock has earned his reputation as a doubles star, we couldn't recall any recent success he's had as a singles player.

And yet, for the first set of the match, Sock was absolutely on fire. He played the tennis of his life, delivering a shock-and-awe form of tennis that left Zverev stunned.

Alas, he couldn't keep the momentum going. Early in the second set he appeared to get injured. He limped his way through the second set and finally retired during the third set. We were sorry to see him go, but man, had he put on a show for that first set. Zverev said it best in his post match, on court interview :

If Jack would have continued playing the way he was playing in the first set it would have been done in an hour-and-a-half and I would have planned my holidays and I would have had a good time next week somewhere in the south of France,” Zverev said in his on-court interview. “Jack is an incredible player. He’s been Top 10, he’s beaten me multiple times, he’s beaten top players multiple times. He’s a Masters 1000 champion and he showed it in the first set.

“He hit three-thousand winners and zero unforced errors in that first set, so when he’s playing like that, I’ve actually never seen that before. I’ve never played against anybody who was playing at that level, so I hope he can get healthy again and he’ll be at the top of the game very soon.”

Here's to hoping Sock gets himself injury free and figures out to how to play consistently next level tennis.

Batman Returns. For More Candy.

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”
- Batman, 'Batman Begins'.

“And what we do is eat candy until we're stuffed! Oh, and we also enjoy the neighborhood Halloween parade. But mostly we eat candy!”
- Uncle Ben, Halloween Begins