The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Loading...
Location
Somewhere in the crusty outer layer of small towns surrounding the warm creamy center that is Oklahoma City.
I remember as a kid sitting in church, any time my mother had to whisper to me (usually to tell me to settle down), the sound of her voice at that level used to stand my hair on end. I told her that it "hurt my ears" when she did it, but the fact was that I didn't know how to explain what was going on... It was as though thousands of ants were crawling all over my body, and every hair from my ankles to the top of my head would stand up.
Later, I found that certain female vocals did the same thing, but to a lesser degree. The most pronounced and memorable of these was the female backup singer in Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight", specifically at the 2:44 mark:
Recently, I saw the commercial for the Lincoln MKZ, featuring the song "Major Tom (Coming Home)", covered by Shiny Toy Guns. Eddie Money's backup singer produces a rather mild effect, but the female vocalist from STG positively lights me up on the chorus:
The weird thing to me is that the reaction is completely involuntary, happens consistently, and apparently there's no "building up a resistance" to it. "Take Me Home Tonight" has been doing this to me for 20 years, give or take, and I have no reason to expect the STG version of "Major Tom" to ever diminish in its effect. Stranger still, my wife doesn't feel it at all, and I don't recall ever talking to anyone who had the same reaction. So now I'm of course wondering... is this just a neurological curiosity, or does everyone have these reactions, just to different sounds -- a sort of personal resonant frequency?
There's no point to this post, really. These are just the sort of things that run through my mind when I'm closing in on my bedtime and not really ready to go to sleep yet.
There's a new crimefighter in town... criminals beware!!! Our intrepid reporter managed to get him to stand still for just long enough to snap a shot...
...before the Bat-Dawg whirled around and zoomed off in pursuit of the bad guys!
This is quite possibly the best movie I've seen in at least a year, if not several years. I'd have to actually do research to remember the last time I felt this moved. And the fact that the story is true (and contains bonus photos of the actual people involved in the closing credits) just makes it that much better.
Cancel your plans and go see it. Mom and Dad, this means you too. If you don't like it, and we know each other, I'll pay for your tickets.
Edited to add: I think the last movie that I thought was this good was 2007's Martian Child, and for pretty much the same reasons. Of course, given the percentage of people I've recommended it to who have actually seen it, maybe I'm just not that trustworthy when it comes to movie reviews.
Our last full day in Wyoming would become my favorite day of the whole trip. Ever since I first read it 30 or so years ago, I've thought Jack London's The Call of the Wild is perhaps the finest piece of American literature ever written, 11th-grade AmLit teacher Mrs. Berry's penchant for James Fenimore Cooper notwithstanding. I've probably read it 20 times, and can clearly remember the key scenes despite the fact that I haven't read it in the past several years. My grandfather and I even share a favorite quote, and occasionally recite it to each other as an inside joke:
"One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault. "Some dam day him kill dat Buck."
"Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's rejoinder. "All de time I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day him get mad like hell and den him chew dat Spitz all up and spit him out on de snow. Sure, I know."
But it's one thing to quote Francois, or to read about the traces and all of the parts of the sled, or to understand the basic operation of a sled dog team. It's one thing to read:
It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and discontent. This was the pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning. Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible lead-dog. And this was Buck's pride, too.
It's quite another thing to experience all this, to have one's hand on the sled and foot on the brake. It's a visceral, primitive thing, the dog sled, and its engineering hasn't changed all that much in the century or so since Jack London penned his great novel. There's a creak of rawhide, a whispering sound as the sled glides over the snow, a sort of magic as the dogs raise hell wanting to go, then fall into silent contentment as their paws cover the miles. London wrote about the courage and heart of these animals, but no writing can ever quite capture it. Some things need to be experienced firsthand.
Incidentally, I found this neato page that explains the parts and workings of a dog sled.
When we first walked out to see the dogs, after the teams had largely been assembled, the dogs went absolutely nuts. They knew it was time to run, and they immediately began barking and howling with excitement. I started off in the guide's sled, and the wheeler who'd been harnessed up, Jackson, was lunging and jumping against the harness. He'd push and jump so hard he got all four feet off the ground, despite the fact that the sled was anchored in several different places:
Some of the less excitable members of the team stood there waiting, while others began barking or bracing their feet in anticipation of taking off:
The dogs get so excited and wound up that if things don't take off right away, the more energetic ones start picking fights with one another to burn off their excess energy. That's why Jackson's partner in the wheel position got hooked up last… he tends to be one of the fighters. Here's the view from the sled behind Jackson and Betty:
The wheelers are generally the biggest and strongest dogs, because they bear the lion's share of the responsibility for breaking the sled out if its runners get frozen. They also are the last to take a turn, so when the rest of the team has made the turn, the wheelers are pretty much pulling the sled by themselves. In Betty's case, she's a smaller dog than would ordinarily be in the wheeler position, but she's used because Jackson tends to get along with her better, and he's one of the largest dogs at the facility, so he can make up her share of the work.
Here's Lisa looking down from the runners while I ride in the sled:
The destination on this excursion was a hot spring that's cool enough to swim in, about 10 miles away from the dogs' home base. The water was around 110 degrees, very nice in the cold winter air:
The teams were kept in their harnesses and tied in such a way that the only dogs that could interact with one another were the partnered pairs at each position in the line. Most of them just laid down and took a nap, but this pair of lead dogs really liked playing with each other:
After we'd had our swim and eaten some lunch, we started packing things back into the sleds, and once again the dogs started going crazy. Here you can see a wheeler lunging against the harness, trying to break the sled free even though it's tied to a tree:
Meanwhile the rest of his team barks up a storm:
My team for the journey back were all straining at the harnesses, trying to get started:
The noise was deafening, with somewhere around 40 dogs all howling and barking at once. It was amazing then, that as soon as we pulled up the anchors and said "HIKE!" (apparently nobody says "mush" anymore), the dogs went completely silent and just started running, tails wagging furiously:
After a couple of miles, we stopped for team photos…
…though I kept trying to get good action shots of the team behind me:
And this led to my favorite picture from the entire vacation, one which somehow sums up the whole experience:
The last day of our snowmobile tour took us from the north gate of Yellowstone back to the south gate, where we started:
Our first encounter upon entering the park was this buffalo, standing down a small slope and only about thirty feet off the road:
It was amusing to note that he was even smart enough to cross the freezing creek on a bridge:
Later on, we passed what our guide described as the hottest point in the park, a field of steam vents over a place where three fault lines meet. Apparently, the next time the Yellowstone caldera blows, it's predicted to happen at this point:
At one rest stop, we lined up the sleds for group photos...
...before moving on to the mud volcano and neighboring Dragon's Mouth Spring:
I actually took several photos of the Dragon's Mouth, but it's mostly giant clouds of steam coming out of a somewhat mouth-shaped hole in the rock, and the pictures showed nothing but white. So we've got a real pretty sign:
Just before lunch, we stopped on the shore of Yellowstone Lake (or was it Lake Yellowstone?):
After lunch we rode hard for the south entrance, wrapping up the tour with a stop at Moose Falls on Crawfish Creek:
Back at the starting point, Lori snapped this pic of yours truly chillin' after the ride:
That's it for the snowmobile tour, but the best is yet to come...
After breakfast, we went to the Grizzly Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, where some stubbornly people-comfortable grizzly bears are kept, to prevent them from being killed. This big ol' boy weighs in somewhere north of a thousand pounds and was pretty active, loping around the enclosure looking for snacks:
It's also the home of a couple of small packs of wolves. We were fortunate enough to arrive just as the wolves were being fed, and it was fun to watch how they behaved. The pack alpha immediately grabbed the biggest piece of dinner and ran off with it, hiding out at the back of the enclosure, daring anyone to come near:
The alpha female initially chased the beta male away from piece she wanted...
...but ultimately she was more interested in sniffing around the enclosure, where the keepers had scent-marked (with Febreze this time, apparently they randomly pick a scent of the day) rocks and trees and snow to keep the wolves' minds active and engaged. This left the beta male to enjoy the second-biggest piece of dinner in relative quiet...
...while the omega male took the smallest of the immediately-available pieces (some had been deliberately buried in the snow) and quietly gnawed on it, for the most part unmolested by his superiors:
We left West Yellowstone and headed back into the park, going to visit Yellowstone Falls before doubling back to go out the North Entrance through Mammoth, WY, eventually arriving at our night's lodging in Gardiner, MT:
Almost as soon as we entered the park, we came upon a coyote hunting mice:
Gibbon Falls was the first "real" waterfall we saw...
...followed by the upper and lower falls of the Yellowstone River...
...which drain into Yellowstone's version of the Grand Canyon:
On the way out of the park, we stopped at Roaring Mountain, which apparently has an entire hillside full of steam vents, and makes this constant rumbling sound:
And we got to see a wild buffalo herd...
...before exiting the park through "the Golden Gate":
Our first day of touring Yellowstone National Park by snowmobile started at the south entrance to the park. We'd cover about 80 miles each day. Unfortunately, due to the speed and cold, I found it basically impossible to get any shots from my snowmobile while we were traveling. It would have been quite a trick to remove a glove, fish out the camera, snap some shots, put the camera back, and pull my glove back on... all without taking my right hand from the throttle, losing the guide, or crashing. So apologies in advance for that. Next time I'll try to take a helmet-cam or something.
Anyway, here's the route:
Here's stuntwoman Lori suiting up...
...and here's the whole gang ready to go:
We stopped briefly for the traditional "shot at the sign"...
And after a short journey we arrived at Lewis Falls for some more photos:
For lunch we stopped at the park's cliche attraction, Old Faithful. What you can't see in these photos is the massive lodge and visitor's center they've built around this site. It may as well be a small town. Fortunately, they left at least a couple of camera angles unspoiled.
I had my camera rapid-shuttering throughout the eruption, and while none of the shots are "best", this one is typical:
We decided to get a couple of face shots in front of it, as the eruption started to die down:
After lunch, we traveled on to another active area, the "Fountain Paint Pot", which was basically a giant vat of boiling mud:
It was at this point that I christened Yellowstone "our smelliest national park". The smell of sulphur was pervasive in almost all of the geothermally active areas, and the smell seemed to stick to us as we traveled onward.
Nearby was this crystal-clear but boiling hot pool of water. You can't see it in the photo, but it probably went down 20 or 30 feet:
Then we stopped at Firehole Falls... most of the waterfalls were not that spectacular, especially for those of us who've been whitewater rafting, but here they are:
Some time later we came across a small herd of elk hanging out on the other side of a river (I think it was the Madison River) from us:
Finally, we pulled into West Yellowstone, Montana, got some nice warm hotel rooms, and ate dinner at Bullwinkle's restaurant:
My mother-in-law Carolyn is fond of taking (and funding) family vacations, so when she offered us a most-expenses-paid trip to see Yellowstone in the winter, we naturally jumped at it.
The first day was spent in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, mostly killing time until Mrs. Curmudgeon's sister (the stuntwoman) arrived, her flight having been delayed by nasty weather in Virginia, where she currently resides. While waiting, we went for a short drive and saw some Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, one of which was watching the road from his lordly perch way up a cliffside (most pictures can be clicked for embiggenation), though my camera zoom didn't quite do the trick:
Luckily, some of his buddies were much closer (about 30 yards or so):
After getting our fill of sheep watching, we decided to check out the local ski hill, where for a relatively modest fee one could go snow tubin' for a couple of hours. I grabbed a couple of shots from the tow rope, the first of Mrs. Curmudgeon and the second of Carolyn:
Then I started fiddling with my camera's super shutter speed feature, in hopes of getting a few good shots out of the bunch. Here's Mrs. Curmudgeon:
Here's a few shots of the ice on my trees... this was before a lot of these trees started losing limbs.
We lost power for about a day, had to burn up a stack of firewood to keep warm that night, but it was pretty cozy on the guest bed we pulled in front of the fireplace in the gym. Not much else to report; power's back on, wood bin refilled, ready for the next one.
After building the newest Casa de Perros, I knew the dogs would like it even more than the old one. After all, they'd gone from 64 square feet to 204, kept their air conditioning, and had a nice concrete floor now to boot. But something still seemed missing... As over the top as the whole project was, I felt I could still kick it up a notch.
The answer came to me when friends Eric and Chris called to ask if they could borrow Richard the Deep Breather. Like many folks in their early twenties, their furniture was a series of hand-me-downs and garage sale items, and they'd just gotten the latest iteration from their parents. Their old threadbare couches needed to go to the dump.
As I helped load the furniture onto my trailer, I thought, "this is it! This is what's missing from the doghouse! They clearly need furniture!"
Clearly.
So we hauled the living room set, with its holes in the upholstery, off to "the ranch", and unloaded it right into La Casa de Perros. Then I called the dogs in and coaxed them up onto their new couches, so they'd know it was allowed (much cursing and yelling ensues if they do such things inside the house).
After a couple of days, it was clear that the dogs would destroy this furniture rather quickly with muddy paws and other tracked-in debris, so I stopped at the local Atwood's and picked up a couple of heavy canvas tarps. The result:
Canvas tarps don't make much of a slipcover that the folks on HGTV would approve, but Zoe doesn't seem to mind:
For my next trick, I wonder what else they need... TV? Pool table? A wet bar?
David Brooks of the New York Times has a decent commentary on the happenings in Taxachusetts:
In times of crisis, Americans rally around their government, but most of the time they have treated it as a supporting actor in national life. Americans are an unusual people, with less deference to central authority and an unparalleled faith in themselves. They seem to want a government that is helpful but not imperious, strong but subordinate.
Over the years, American voters have reacted against any party that threatens that basic sense of proportion. They have reacted against a liberalism that sought an enlarged and corrosive government and a conservatism that threatened to dismantle the government’s supportive role.
He fawns over Obama a tad much for my liking, but in general I think his read of the situation is a good one. Of course, I'm not in favor of a government that is "helpful", "strong", or "energetic", but then I'm not, politically speaking, an average American. If I were, Ron Paul would be president right now.
The new plan allows authors and publishers who meet certain criteria to receive 70% of the book's list price as royalty, net of delivery costs, which average about six cents a book. For an $8.99 book that meets the new plan's criteria, the author would receive $6.25 with the new option as opposed to $3.15 with the standard option, the company said.
One of the big draws of the presumptive Apple tablet computer was the idea that they'd offer e-books over iTunes for it, with revenue-sharing arrangement similar to the one they do for music: 70% for the artist/label, 30% for Apple. One of the dirty secrets of Amazon is that Kindle sales, while great for consumers, were pillaging the publishing industry like Vikings on a rampage. Now it looks like authors and their publishers are going to get a square(r) deal, and from where I sit, market forces in the form of (presumptive) competition from Apple are the proximal cause. Ain't the free market grand?
Looks like the Republicans have pulled out a last-minute win in Massachusetts, presumably spelling doom for the health care "reform", as the Democrats generally refuse to try doing anything without a super-majority:
Scott Brown's victory is a serious setback to President Barack Obama's key domestic agenda on reforming health care and passing a climate change bill.
The result stunned Democrats and means Republicans now have enough Senate votes to impede the president's plans.
According to fellow traveler Vortmax, via instant messenger:
The dems have a bigger majority, even with 59 in the senate, than the repubs have had since 1923, but the republicans with a lesser majority, still managed to do whatever the **** they wanted for 8 years. The dems have done two things with 60 in the senate: Jack and ****
That about sums it up. The Democrats really come across as consummate cowards. They don't want to fight unless the result is a foregone conclusion. There's no such thing in their world as "giving it the old college try", or rolling the dice and taking one's chances. They don't attack unless they're (over)confident of success. So now they'll kill the bill, or force a bit of political theater, and blame it on the Republicans' "dirty campaigning" or some other hogwash.
That's not to say I'm supporting the Republicans, or that I'm opposed to reforming health care in this country. I just have a different idea about what constitutes "reform".
As expected, the holidays wreaked havoc on my already-gargantuan proportions. Christmas photo:
And like so many other Americans, I started off the New Year by swearing I'd regain control of the diet. Of course, since I've been chipping away at my Jabba-the-Hutt-ness for a couple of years now, I'm starting to get the hang of it.
One of my first diets was vegan, which did some really good things for me. I can actually recommend it to just about anyone who isn't doing serious weightlifting. I know there are vegan bodybuilders out there, but honestly I can't see how they do it. Powerlifting on a vegan diet made me feel like my body was eating itself. I momentarily experienced a small glimpse of what hyperphagia patients must feel like; I could eat a ginormous vegan meal, be unable to cram another bite in, and still feel like I was starving. The instant I started back on meat, I felt fine.
I also tried the Weight Watchers thing, several times, and the P90X diet plan. They both do the same thing: trick you into counting calories by calling them "points" or representing them as little colored boxes. Unfortunately, something about the way I think makes me obsessively min/max these diets, finding ways to cheat while still being technically within the rules.
I've never been truly opposed to counting calories, so long as I had technological assistance. The idea of doing it on a notepad with a pencil just makes me want to claw my eyeballs out. On several occasions I've considered writing something of my own to use, but I've got so many other projects going on that I just don't see how I could get everything done that I wanted to do.
Fortunately, the software is out there, mostly in the form of various websites, but with some downloadable apps. The websites tend to use a subscription model (big surprise), and while the "universal access" is appealing, I really don't feel like I need another monthly bill at this juncture. I happened upon a few that I really liked, in that they graded the quality of your diet or made recommendations, but I'd rather just have a piece of software I can download and purchase and keep, thank you very much.
I happened upon DietController, which seemed to fit the bill rather nicely. It's not exactly cheap for a downloadable app ($40), but it runs on both Windows and the Mac, has a fair database of foods and exercises, and seems to sport a fairly easy to use interface. They do not yet have an iPhone companion app, more's the pity, but everything else about it is pretty much what I want.
The main features I was after were the ability to enter and easily recall custom food items (because no prefab database EVER has the things you need), and the ability to enter exercise calories burned. Features that I didn't consider, but which come with this app, are weight tracking (can't see how I forgot that one), and an absolutely glorious unit conversion feature for both foods and exercises. Let me explain.
Say you enter a food where "1 serving" is 25 grams. You enter all the information for 25 grams, then enter into the conversion table "1 serving" = "25 grams". Now when you want to record the food, you don't have to remember grams, you can just say "1 serving", and the program will figure out the rest.
It gets better.
Say that for whatever reason, you have some of this food you've entered, and you're pretty sure you're eating more than one serving, but all you've got to work with is a primitive little kitchen scale. You weigh the food, and you've got 2 ounces. So you enter "2 oz" into the "amount" column, and the program automatically figures out how many grams this is and multiplies out the calories and nutrients for you. Pretty slick, right?
Even better, by using the aforementioned conversion table, you can enter weight/volume conversions. So if your granola is 3 oz to the cup, and your nutrition info is in grams, you can enter that you ate half a cup of granola, and the program just figures out the rest. Now THAT is cool.
On the exercise end of things, if you don't have one of those fancy heart-rate monitors, you can find exercises in their database or look on the internet for readings that others have taken. I did this for the P90X workouts. The problem is that calorie burns are a function of bodyweight, and the 120-pound personal trainer who reports her values for the P90X Plyometrics workouts is not going to have the same results I do at almost a hundred pounds heavier. Fortunately, when I enter an exercise into DietController, it asks for the reported calorie burn and the time spent, as well as the reporting person's weight. When I say that I've done the exercise for X number of minutes, the program looks at my last reported weight on the weigh-in chart, converts the time and weight, and spits out an adjusted calorie count for the exercise.
Have I mentioned that I love this program?
It does have a few shortcomings… drag and drop isn't fully implemented, and some of the data entry is a pain, but for the most part it's everything I've wanted to write for myself, so hey -- if it only costs me forty bucks and saves me a lot of headaches, I'll take it.
In other diet news, I am still thoroughly enamored of Clif Builder's Bars. I eat these things just about every day, though I'm getting a little tired of the Peanut Butter and Chocolate Mint flavors. They've recently announced Lemon, and I've searched high and low in the Norman and Moore area, but can't seem to locate them. I finally broke down and ordered some online, tossing in an order for the Cookies & Cream flavor as well, since they're relatively rare but not impossible to locate. I'm not much of a fan of Chocolate or Vanilla Almond, so no need to stock up on those.
I find that eating a Builder's bar right around 3:30 or 4:00 puts me in good shape to do my workout at 6:00. Too much earlier, and I crash halfway into the workout. Too much later, and I start to fight a case of the queasies.
I've also moved on from Optimum Nutrition whey protein. I've discovered SEI Pharmaceutical's Max Protein, and holy cow is this stuff delicious. I've never wanted to just eat protein powder with a spoon, but Max Protein sure makes it tempting. My current shake recipe is a cup of soy milk (regular milk tends to upset my stomach), a frozen banana, a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of vanilla. Blended together, it makes one incredible tasting shake -- kind of a strawberry-banana sundae sort of taste. I'm not a fan of chocolate, but if their chocolate flavor is anywhere near as good as the strawberry and vanilla, chocolate lovers out there ought to give it a try.
Despite all this, I'm struggling to get enough protein into the diet, and have started trying things like lean beef and turkey jerky, though I'm somewhat concerned with the high amounts of sodium. Jack Link's seems to make the best tasting product, and most of the time I don't remember to get any, but when I do I really enjoy it.
As previously noted, restaurants are the bane of any dieter's existence, especially the sit-down family restaurant. Want to eat healthy and know what you're getting? Go to McDonald's or some other fast-food restaurant. All of the major fast-food chains have comprehensive nutrition info available on their websites and often within the stores themselves. Family restaurants, on the other hand...
We recently went to BJ's Brewhouse for lunch, and I could not find a single item that wasn't deep fried, covered in butter, cheese, or oil, or just plain wrong. Whipping out the ol' iPhone, I found this lovely statement on their website:
At this time, BJ’s Restaurants does not provide nutritional information for each menu item. We prepare each and every dish with the freshest and finest ingredients available. Every item is prepared daily to ensure the highest quality food.
As my brother likes to say, that's about as handy as a soup sandwich.
I eventually ordered their grilled chicken baked potato, minus cheese and alfredo sauce (and broccoli because -- well, that's another rant). Honestly, who puts alfredo sauce on a baked potato? When they brought it out to me, it had all that crap on it, so I sent it back. The second time was the charm, and at least I got something I could work with in the diet program.
So there's a lesson: going out to eat at a family restaurant? Baked potato with grilled chicken or turkey, and everything else on the side. Then you can measure and portion and try to control how much crap you're eating.
There's the state of things. It's all going pretty well, considering, and using the DietController software is becoming second nature now that I've done it a few weeks. The only problem on the horizon at this point is an upcoming vacation, where we'll undoubtedly be eating all sorts of stuff that's not good for us, and I won't have my computer handy to log it all. I guess I'll just try to survive with a notepad for a week, and hope that when I enter it all in afterwards that I don't destroy my progress thus far.
PS: Oh yeah, I totally forgot... I made this sweet little spreadsheet for cooking at home, to figure out how many calories/fat/carbs/protein are in the stuff I like to cook. Check it out: RecipeCalc.ods (OpenOffice spreadsheet). The data entered is for a homemade pizza we had. The dough was a killer!
About a month or so ago, I purchased a Logitech G13 for playing World of WarCraft. My main reason for doing so was because I could never seem to get all of the spell hotkeys, movement keys, and Vent microphone toggle within easy enough reach that I could move, attack/taunt, and shout a warning on Vent all at the same time.
My pinkie finger was always having to stretch too far to get everything, and being on the "edge", it tended to have the most to do. On the other edge, my thumb was basically useless other than hitting the spacebar. I couldn't make it target any other keys with any real comfort or accuracy. So I was mostly playing with my index, middle, and ring finger on my left hand, and trying to overload my mouse functions with SHIFT and ALT modifiers so I could do everything I needed to do.
I mapped my number keys 1-6 on G9-G14, with my second row of action buttons mapped to the corresponding keys in row G1-G7. Put my movement on the thumb stick. Vent toggle is on G15.
It took about 3 days to get used to moving with the thumb stick, but other than that the results are AMAZING for all of my characters. I feel like I've tripled the number of spells I can easily access -- as in, access without having to think about them and without having to look at the keyboard to use.
Before, I almost never used things like the Human racial because I just couldn't figure out how to get it shoehorned into my easily accessible keys. Switching from single target to AOE on my Mage required either moving my hand to another part of the keyboard or quick-swapping my hotbars. Decurse/Abolish Poison on my Druid almost always required me to review my Clique settings at the beginning of every raid.
My Paladin now has full access to almost everything he regularly uses, with this item plus Clique and Grid. Druid is completely set up. Mage has one or two things I'm still trying to arrange, but he's still extremely functional.
Bottom line: if you have trouble moving, fighting, and talking at the same time, or if you feel like you can't really access all your skills easily, this device is for you. It'll take a little while to get used to moving with the thumbstick, but once you're used to it you'll never ever want to go back to moving with a keyboard again. It works great on a Mac, which is what I use, and presumably just as well on the PC (since Logitech is primarily a PC peripherals company). I believe it will also serve me very well in any other games I decide to get into.
