Wednesday, November 16, 2011 Lethbridge

5:30 am

The temperature is -6 C (wind chill -14 C), with a high predicted of +1 C. From the Environment Canada website: Today Sunny. Wind west 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming light this afternoon. High plus 1. Tonight Increasing cloudiness then 30 percent chance of flurries late this evening and after midnight. Clearing overnight. Wind becoming south 20 km/h late this evening. Low minus 4 with temperature rising to plus 2 by morning. Normals Max: 3°C Min: -8°C.

2:00 PM Geocaching

I went out for a short drive to the northern boundary of the city for my cache of the day.

• GC36FQ6 - Black wolf

5:00 PM Model Trains

I ran the schedule for the following time frames:

Time	Train	Description
1:00 am	#601 Local Freight	Form consist for Train #601. Leave Coaldale and arrive at Coaldale siding.
2:00 am	#601 Local Freight	Leave Coaldale siding, arrive in Wild Rose, perform switching for Wild Rose, leave Wild Rose, arrive at Coaldale siding.
3:00 am	#601 Local Freight	Arrive Queenston, perform switching for Queenston, leave Queenston, arrive Pine Ridge siding.
	#200 Black Zephyr (unit coal train)	Leave Black Diamond, enter Valemount siding.
	#700 Local Freight	Form consist for Train #700. Leave Jasper and arrive at Black Diamond siding.

 

At the same time I updated the sequence of steps that the train crew must follow for these activities. This details the setting for all switching as well as information on when a train passes another train on a siding.

Train #601 leaving Coaldale:

Train #601 leaving Coaldale siding:

Train #700 passing Train #200 on Valemount siding:

Overall I am delighted with how well this seems to be working.

7:00 PM Literature

Now to continue adding to the table that provides a timeline for the events in "Infinite Jest" (green is today's additions):

 

 

 

 

Year	Time	Section	Pages	People	Description
1960	winter	12a	157-169		Hal's father gets a pep talk from his father when he is 10.
<2002
2002		11b	137-138		Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House founded. It provides a 9-month program of closely supervised residency and treatment.
2003	Apr 1	3	27-31	Hal, James Incandenza	Hal, age 10, in a meeting arranged by his father, with a child psychologist. Hal quotes from the OED and says that he often gets beat up when he does that with his friends. Hal's father is an avant-garde film maker who founded the Enfield Tennis Academy. Hal finally realizes that the psychologist is actually his father, wearing a disguise.
		5b	37-38	Wardine, Clenette	Two poor black girls living in a violent family situation, Reginald, Roy Tony
		5c	38-39	Bruce Green, Mildred Bonk	Two high school tough kids.
2004		8a	63-65	James Incandenza	Ph. D. in optical physics. research funded by the military. Commits suicide at age 54.
	Jan		249-258	James Incandenza	Quits drinking.
	Apr 1	14c	249-258	James Incandenza	Date of suicide
2005		11c	140-142	Hal	paper written in course Introduction to Entertainment Studies (grade 7) that compares the heroic action of Hawaii Five-O with that of the complex scenarious of Hill Street Blues
2006
2007	Apr	12c	172-176	Hal, Mario	Script for an 11 minute Entertainment cartridge on tennis produced By Mario and narrated by Hal.
2008		7b	55-60	Don Gately	A 27-year old burglar and oral narcotics addict who kills a man (unintentionally) while engaged in a robbery.
		8d	67-68	Hal?	recalls his first use of drugs when he was almost 16
2009		2	17-27		A detailed description of Hal (?) waiting for a woman to deliver some marijuana. He is clearly an addict in need of a fix. He had been in treatment 2 years earlier. This is a superb section describing the situation through the eyes/mind of an addict.
		11e	144-151		Fewer than 10% of phones were video phones. "Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her." [p. 145-6]
	Apr 1	5a	33-37	medical attache	The attache arrives home and begins watching an Entertainment cassette that has arrived in the mail from Arizona.
		9a	68-78	Kate Gompert	is on suicide watch in a psych ward, her 4th hospitalization in 3 years
	Apr 2	9b	78-79	medical attache	his wife arrives home and finds him dead, in front of the tv screen, which she then looks at.
		9d	87	medical attache	a number of other people have entered the room and are all in a trance watching the Entertainment cassette
		9c	79-85	Gerhardt Schtitt, Mario	Schtitt, almost 70, is head coach at ETA. He and Mario (age 18) get along well.
	Apr 30	10a	87-95	Marathe, Steeply	Marathe uses a wheelchair. He is an informer about the activities of a Quebec-based radical group because of his need for money to help finance his wife's illness. Steeply is an Unspecified Services field operative. He wants information about the Entertainment cassette that the medical attache and a few others (about 20!) have been watching. The cassette was delivered through a series of channels known to be used by this Quebec radical group.
		10g	126-127	Marathe, Steeply	There is a rumor that there might also be another tape cassette that is an anti-dote to the one that is causing people to become catatonic.
		10h	128-135	Roy Tony et al	urban hoods in downtown Boston
	May 9	4	32-33	Hal, Mario	Hal and Mario are brothers who share a room in the tennis academy dorm
		6a	39-42	Hal, Mario	They chat before going to sleep. Their mom (Avril) became Headmistress of the ETA after their dad (James) died.
	Aug 10	11d	142-144		A woman with an exterior artificial heart has her purse snatched (which contained the device) and dies. The assailant was a transvestite drug addict known to police. (Roy Tony)
	Oct	6b	42-49	Orin	Now a placekicker for the Phoenix Cardinals. Generally seems depressed with no real purpose in life.
		7a	49-54	Hal	Hal, age 17, regularly hides in the academy's Pump Room to get high on dope. He is an addict.
		10f	121-126	Hal, Mario, Millicent Kent	Millicent is a tennis girl who notices a new tripod that has been set up in a thicket. She is a very good tennis player but actually prefers dance. Millicent tells Mario that she is madly in love with him.
		11f	151-156		Describes the black market in urine samples so the tennis players don't get caught using drugs.
	Oct 22	13a	181-193	Madame Psychosis	She runs a one-hour radio program at MIT which often includes commentary on Entertainment cassettes.
		13b	193-198	Don Gately	He is a resident at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House which is described in some detail.
	Nov 1	8b	65-66	Orin	is in a cardinal costume in a pre-game show. He hates it.
		8c	66-67	Pemulis	is leading a big buddy get together of younger tennis players at ETA
	Nov 3	7c	60-61	Jim Troeltsch	age 17, gets suddenly ill before practice drills.
		10b	95-97	Disney Leith	teaches high-optics courses at ETA. A number of the boys are quizzing one another on entertainment technologies
		10c	97-105		locker-room banter at the ETA among the tennis boys
		10d	105-109	Marathe, Steeply	Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith." [p. 107] "Who teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? ... For this choice determines all else." [p. 107]
		10e	109-121	a group of tennis boys	"I feel this what, dread, this dread, I see seven or eight years of unhappiness every day and day after day of tiredness and stress and suffering stretching ahead, and for what, for a chance at a like a pro career that I'm starting to get this dready feeling a career in the Show means even more suffering, if I'm skeletally stressed from all the grueling here by the time I get there." [p. 109]
		11a	135-137	Orin, Hal	Orin wants to know what Hal knows about Quebec separatism.
	Nov 4	12b	169-171	Michael Pemulis	Pemulis has been doing some serious reading about a new drug called DMZ which is purported to be even more powerful than LSD.
		12d	176-181	Patricia Montesian	She is the executive director of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. A woman, Nell, (a former personal-injury attorney) has just stabbed another resident with a fork because he wouldn't stop drumming with his fingers.
		7d	61-63	Hal?	thinks to himself about nightmares and dreams
		9d	85-87	Tiny Ewell	an elf-size man who is on his way to a detox center
	Nov 5	14b	240-249	Orin, Hal, Helen Steeply	Orin phones from Arizona. He thinks he is being followed by people in wheelchairs. He is also being inteviewed by Helen Steeply, ostensibly for a human interest story in a magazine. Orin wants information about their father's death. Hal says he (age 13 at the time) was the first person to see the body after he had put his head in a microwave oven. Hal recalls that their father spent the month before he committed suicide in the small post-production room off the lab in their basement.
	Nov 6	13c	198-200	tennis boys	Verbal play while lifting weights in the training room
		13d	200-211	Tiny Ewell, Kate Gompert, Don Gately	Further descriptions of life at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. Tiny Ewell has an obsessive interest in tattoos when his Substance is taken away. (He has been here over 2 months - (e.g. early 2010) Kate Gompert is still clinically depressed. Don Gately is a live-in staffer.
		13e	211-219	Michael Pemulis	Michael has obtained a small amount of the new, and very potent, drug DMZ.
	Nov 7	14a	219-240	Joelle van Dyne, Molly Notkin	Joelle is planning to commit suicide at Molly's house later this evening. She was in most of James Incandenza's films. "Jim at the end had filmed her at prodigious andmulti-lensed length, and refused to share what he'd made of it. Her mental name for the man had been 'Infinite Jim' " [p. 225] Joelle is aka Madame Psychosis - who ran the MIT late night radio program. She was Orin's lover for 26 months and was his father's optical beloved for 21 months. She locks herself in Molly's bathroom and takes an overdose of drugs as someone begins knocking on the door.
2010		1	3-17	Hal	Hal, age 18, in his last year of high school, is being interviewed for admission to a university in Arizona. He is a top-ranked junior tennis player. He also has a photographic memory for the meaning of words. His understanding of the interview process is very perceptive although his attention to detail is bizarre. At the end he has some form of seizure and babbles incoherently. He has been in residence at the Enfield Tennis Academy since he was 7.The interview is to clarify the discrepancy between his standardized test scores which are subnormal and his desire to go to university. But Hal's perception of the interview indicate that he is abnormally intelligent. He not only remembers detail, he understands what he has read whether in language, philosophy, or mathematics. But he seems to be socially backward. "Yet he has some trouble with excitability in conversation." He had a previous episode a year earlier when he was restrained and taken to Emergency in a straight jacket. "I'm not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex. ... I'm not a machine. I feel and I believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting." The section ends with, "So yo then man what's your story?"