ndrosen

Afghan Refugees

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:52:28 GMT

If you have lost track, or if you are not already aware of enough appalling acts of the current administration, the Trumpists are denying asylum in the United States to Afghan refugees who worked with American forces, and negotiating to send them to Congo, where they would not be safe. Gentle Reader, you may speculate for yourself on whether this is due to xenophobia, malicious cruelty, or the desire to serve Putin’s interests by making it harder for the United States to find allies or employees in times to come.

I plan to make a donation to No One Left Behind, mentioned in article, providing some assistance to people in great need, and reducing the tally of my country’s dishonor by some tens of dollars. Others may be moved to do likewise. This is not to be interpreted as a solicitation to make a donation if you have business before the Patent Office, or are a fellow federal employee.

comments

The Perversity of Sleep

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:31:27 GMT

Thursday morning, I woke from a dream at six something AM, tried to get back to sleep, an d couldn’t. I felt adequately slept, so I finally got up some time before the 7:30 alarm setting. I ate breakfast, and drank some coffee, but not very much, since I was scheduled to donate blood (which I did), and I didn’t want to give the recipient a major dose of caffeine. Then I fell asleep on the Metro rail, and some Metro employee woke me up at the end of the line, fortunately only two stops past King Street, which is near the Patent Office, so I took only a few minutes to ride back.

Emerging from King Street Station, I saw a black woman at one of the gates, with a beagle on a leash. I went through another gate, and spoke to her. She assured me that the hound was friendly, and petted him, of which he seemed appreciative. His name was Duke; I told his human that I had had a beagle named Rex as my best friend growing up.

comments

AI Hallucinations

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:50:05 GMT

The Patent Office’s Science and Technology Information Center is giving presentations on AI Hallucinations in Non-Patent Literature this week. I joined in listening to today’s one o’clock session; the lady from STIC had some worthwhile things to say about how bogus citations can be brought into existence, and how to be reasonably confident that something is for real.

She also had a memorable quote from someone named Melissa Bond: “It’s finally happened — Google Scholar has asked me to confirm the addition of a completely fabricated citation to my profile. Not only this, the made up citation has been cited 108 times already?!”

The truth is out there. Unfortunately, so are a multitude of lies and blunders.

comments

Strawberries

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:40:43 GMT

I bought some strawberries at the farmers’ market this weekend, and ate some of them, together with sandwiches, for lunch today. I’m not a great enthusiast for strawberries, but these were good, and from the farmers’ market, not mass produced.

comments

The Red Queen’s Race

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:54:13 GMT

I finished an Office Action on my oldest Regular New case of last biweekly after 11 PM Saturday night, after working what Soviet workers used to call a Black Saturday (I don’t know whether Russians these days still have to work on Saturdays sometimes in order to meet quotas).

Now I have a new oldest Regular New application, and I have the same two amendments on my Amended docket. I also have a case on my Expedited docket, but I don’t have to do anything with it for now, because it’s in Paused status. What happened is that the Board of Patent Appeals affirmed my rejection of the case, so the Applicant now gets some time to decide whether to further amend and/or appeal the case, or just let it go abandoned.

comments

Patent Office Courtyard

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:45:40 GMT

Yesterday, when I went to the USPTO campus in Alexandria to work, there were some azaleas in bloom in the courtyard, and there were also beds of pansies and lilies. Since this is April, the tag for this post is “Spring,” but the temperature was more suited to full summer. A few decades ago, I was definitely skeptical about global warming, but no longer.

comments

Quam puer coactusque, linguam Latinam cognovi

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:47:08 GMT

At the supermarket this afternoon, specifically at a self-checkout station, I noticed that the woman at the next station, accompanied by her daughter, was wearing sandals that let her feet be seen, and she had “Carpe diem” tattooed on each foot.

I finished checking out first; as she was putting items in her bag, she turned toward me, and I seized the opportunity to say to her, “Carpe diem, matrona honorata. Loquerisne Latine?”

She laughed, and said that “Carpe diem” was about all that she knew.

If she had turned out to be fluent in Latin, I would have had to admit that my ability to speak the language is quite limited.

comments

April Folly

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:14:08 GMT

In celebration of folly, I bought a scratch-off Virginia lottery ticket about two weeks ago, and began scratching off entries on April First. My folly quotient is sufficiently low that I only bought a ten dollar ticket, not the twenty dollar tickets which I used to get when I was a full-time examiner, and paid more.

I didn’t win any prizes.

comments

The Red Queen’s Race

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:09:19 GMT

I still have the same two cases on my Amended docket as last week. I have been working on my oldest Special New application, although I have not finished the Office Action.

It’s only the end of the first week of the new quarter, but I do want to get off to a good start.

comments

TurboTax

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:31:09 GMT

I filed my tax returns, federal and Virginia, on March 30, and used TurboTax, which is pretty well necessary these days, since it’s hard to get paper forms and instructions; also, my finances are more complicated than they were twenty years ago.

However, I don’t much like the way TurboTax has lobbied to keep the IRS from providing its own tax return software to most filers. I also didn’t like having to provide various information before TurboTax would let me itemize deductions, instead of letting me just itemize on my say-so instead of taking the standard deduction. Finally, I didn’t like the way TurboTax tried get me to pay for the tax software out of my refund, for a stiff fee, instead of charging it to a credit card, and I like the way TurboTax tried to get me to accept an early tax refund directly from TurboTax, again at considerable expense, instead of waiting for my return to be processed, and for a refund to be deposited to my account by the IRS (and the Virginia Department of Taxation). These strike me as sleazy business practices.

comments

More Blossoms

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:43:40 GMT

I have seen trees with masses of flowers; I think these are crepe myrtle. A woman whom I was dating a number of years ago taught me a few lessons in botanical identification.

comments

Easter

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:04:29 GMT

A blessed Easter to my Christian friends!

comments

The Red Queen’s Race

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 03:20:53 GMT

This past week, two After Final amendments appeared on my Expedited docket, and I dealt quickly with both of them. Two regular amendments arrived on my Amended docket, and will be worked on at some point.

I have just completed and posted an Office Action on my oldest Special New case, an hour or so before the midnight deadline. This is the very end of the second quarter, so my production for the quarter should be minimally adequate. It would have been nice to accomplish more, and be fully successful.

This coming biweek, I expect to have the remaining Special New case, my oldest Regular New case, and the two amendments, so I won’t lack for work to do.

comments

No Kings Rally

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:53:05 GMT

I had a 4:00 PM online meeting of the directors of the Henry George Institute scheduled for this afternoon, so I didn’t attempt to go to a No Kings Rally in DC or elsewhere. I did have time to go to the drugstore and the supermarket before the scheduled Zoom meeting. It turned out that there was a No Kings demonstration outside the CVS store on Columbia Pike, right here in Arlington. Most of the people were across the street, where they had a fat orange balloon of you know who, but some were on the drugstore’s corner. I shouted “No Kings!” and otherwise conveyed my approval.

One woman on the corner near me had an “I miss Obama” sign. I approached her, and said, “Ma’am, compared to Trump, I would miss Warren G. Harding.” She mentioned that someone she knows had admitted to missing even George W. Bush.

I didn’t mention that I had voted for Dubya in 2000. Not in 2004, when I voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate.

comments

The Red Queen’s Race

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:40:27 GMT

I don’t currently have any amendments on my docket.

Earlier this week, I completed a first action on a Request for Continued Examination case on my Regular New docket; I still have a non-RCE application there. I also have two new applications on my Special New docket, and I have been working on the Special New which is assigned higher priority.

One week left in the second quarter of the fiscal year.

comments

Eye Tests

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:33:42 GMT

I went to the optometrist’s office this morning, and underwent some tests. Then the optometrist herself saw me, and explained to me how she is following changes in my eyes and level of neural tissue over the years. There are no major problems, but she is keeping an eye on things, if I may use the expression. Someday, but not now, I may have to take eye drops for glaucoma like my father and (I think) grandmother before me.

comments

Verdict Against Meta

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:28:30 GMT

Elizabeth Nolan Brown has written about a jury’s verdict against Meta, and I share her concern about what this may do to the open Internet. It may be that Big Tech firms are not always as ethical as they should be; I still don’t think that it should be a crime or a tort to provide a platform on which some people spend too much time.

In Victorian England, for example, scolds condemned the publication and reading of cheap novels, as a waste of time, and a source of bad ideas; nor do I claim that these complaints were entirely groundless. However, it is also likely that some of the laboring men and servant girls who read such disapproved literature got harmless pleasure from it, and also expanded their vocabulary, mental horizons, and reading skills. One may say much the same of social media today; some people spend too much time on it, to the neglect of what they should be doing, but others are little harmed, and find their lives expanded by the friendships which they make online, or the chance to learn what a variety of people have to say.

The article to which I have supplied a link was published several days ago; I did not get around to posting this piece until now, because I have job duties, and do not spend too much time posting on Dreamwidth, or even looking at what my friends and their network of connections have to say and to show.

comments

A Profusion of Blossoms

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:50:07 GMT

We’ve had warm weather Saturday and today, and there is a profusion of cherry blossoms on multiple trees that had only buds or a few starting flowers recently.

comments

The Red Queen’s Race

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 17:10:18 GMT

I finished an Office Action on what was my oldest Regular New (non-RCE) application of the biweek Saturday evening, just in time to have it credited for last biweek, and put my production for the biweek at an acceptable level.

Now I need to do well this last biweek of the second quarter. I have nothing on my Amended docket; I have an oldest Regular New (non-RCE) case, and an oldest Regular New Request for Continued Examination case.

comments

Flowers, Especially Cherry Blossoms

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:12:47 GMT

I saw more flowers here and there in the neighborhood on my perambulation this afternoon. I checked out the patch of trees and brush a little to the south of my apartment building, and saw a few actual cherry blossoms, and some more buds and half-opened blossoms. In a few days, there may be quite a display.

comments

Bridged at Last

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 03:26:00 GMT

This afternoon, I went to the dental office, where the dentist and his assistant installed a permanent bridge in my left lower jaw. I hope that this proves permanent, and that my first bridge is also my last.

I remember that when I was a small child, my paternal grandfather, who was a couple of years older than I am now, had false teeth, and would sometimes take them out to show me. Thanks at least in part to improved dentistry, I have so far not needed false teeth to replace the natural-grown ones, and I hope that this remains the case. I may, however, still have more than three decades ahead of me, if I live to my grandfather’s exceptional age, so I may suffer considerable decay over such a span.

comments

Milton Friedman on Ayn Rand

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:35:20 GMT

The other day, I found my way to an interview with the late Professor Milton Friedman back in the 1990s (the interviewer, Brian Doherty, died recently). I think that Friedman had wise words on various matters, and I was particularly struck by his views of Ayn Rand (whom he never met): “As I always have said, she had an extremely good influence on all those who did not become Randians. But if they became Randians, they were hopeless.”

That makes sense. Atlas Shrugged dramatizes the results of government trying to take over everything and manage the economy. Some of Rand’s essays standing up for liberty are also memorable, and make cogent points. But you should not mistake her for the great philosopher she thought she was.

Or, as someone said after the 2008 election, “You can disagree with her philosophy, and you can say that her heroes aren’t realistic. But you have to say one thing for her: it has now become clear that her villains are pretty realistic.”

And now to work.

comments

Foods Eaten Recently

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:34:31 GMT

Whole Foods has a rosemary sourdough loaf as a seasonal thing. I tried buying one, and I liked the rosemary flavor, but the loaf had some large internal bubbles, which made using it for sandwiches difficult. Also, it’s white bread, and I usually eat bread with at least some whole grains, so I don’t plan to make rosemary sourdough loaves a regular thing.

Last week, I bought some beets at the farmers’ market, and on Saturday I made borshch, with the beets, potatoes, onion, a carrot, a parsnip, Tofurkey sausage, kale, and kim chee. That was my dinner yesterday (with soy yogurt), and will be dinner tonight and tomorrow. It worked out well.

comments

Flowers of Spring

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:27:23 GMT

Earlier today, I observed bright yellow flowers on a row of forsythia bushes near my apartment, and pink cherry blossoms on one sapling which gets plenty of sunlight; the cherry trees in the patch of woods a little to the south are not yet blossoming. I also saw other trees with larger flowers; these are not cherry trees, and I don’t know just what kind they are.

comments

Early Spring

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:50:01 GMT

Today, I observed some daffodils, and saw buds and a few flowers on a couple of trees (cherry trees, I think). Spring is beginning.

comments