Nostalgia Trip

The Boy, like his progeny Mason, hated naps and would often fight sleep tooth and nail. But I had a secret weapon:



I had an Amiga 500 back then, and “demo” writers would compete to create the most mind-blowing graphics and sound effects that would run. You might not think it much, but remember this was running on 23-year old hardware. Amigas had special graphics and sound hardware built-in, taking the load off the CPU — the name “Wild Copper” came from the nickname of the graphics co-processor. Modern CPUs are hundreds of times more powerful these days, and don't need all the help.

Back to The Boy. At Mason’s current age, he was fascinated with “Copper,” with its spinning wireframes and scrolling text. When he needed a nap, I’d ask him “Do you want to see Copper?” and he’d sit still to watch it, sometimes bouncing to the music, until he slowly leaned back against me then turned around to fall asleep on my shoulder.

Display the video full-screen to get the full effect.

Mason and a Slew of TB/SN/TS Errors

Amazing sometimes, how the baby can be what keeps you sane… (video by Daughter Dearest)



We can pretty much count on The Boy giving us a TB03 error every weekend these days… he claims to have “band practice” on Saturday night but we often don’t see him until later on Sunday or even Monday. Most of the time, we don’t know for sure, but we can assume a TB22 during those “outings.” Snippet kind of gave away the plan yesterday: she said something about going to a birthday party. Mrs. Fetched nixed it, but they most likely went anyway… seems like they have a “birthday” party to attend just about every weekend.

Last night, however, a TS02 led to an error that has happened before but I had neglected to categorize: a TB28 (calls us at 3 a.m. having an emotional, probably alcohol-fueled, meltdown). He texted and called my phone twice before I woke up enough to answer it. “Come and get me,” he wailed, “I don’t want to have anything to do with these drug addicts.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

He managed, on the second attempt (a personal best), to give me coherent directions that would at least get me somewhere.

“What about Snippet?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” There was more, but suffice it to say a TS02 had happened.

As I was getting ready, he called Mrs. Fetched’s phone and he poured out all his issues to her while I got dressed and loaded my pockets. About the time I was ready to leave, Mrs. Fetched held her hand out at me and mouthed, “Wait.” The Boy has inherited his mom’s penchant for jerking people (especially me) around, first “needing” me to go somewhere, then canceling about the time I’m ready. The upshot was, he would stay because he didn’t want the drug addicts getting vindictive somehow, and would call us in the morning when he was ready to get moving. And of course it’s 6 p.m. and we haven’t heard from him yet.

The good part about this was, I finally got smart: instead of getting gas Friday, I simply drove home, figuring if he wanted to take my car anywhere he’d have to put gas in it. He and Snippet managed to get Cousin Splat to drive them to not-band practice. We have a little gas in the detached garage, so I’ll just dump it in the car when I need to go somewhere then tank up later. Since tomorrow’s a holiday, it’ll wait for Tuesday.

The error codes list…

Weekend Roundup

Yet another pic of Mason, just because I can. We haven’t seen him all week, which is probably a good sign because it means The Boy and Snippet haven’t needed our help.

And happy birthday to the great-grandparents, Mom (tomorrow) and Dad (on Monday)!

FAR Manor being FAR Manor, there’s still plenty of stuff going on even without a grandson in the house. Even when it has rained pretty much every day since we got back from vacation, and rained here a few times while we were gone. You know all that rain we didn’t get in May, June, and July? We’re getting it now. But we get a break most mornings, which means this morning I took care of most of the “go outdoors” stuff before breakfast: replace the kitty litter, empty the compost bucket (a coffee can) into the composter, pick a few tomatoes. Today ’s rain, as seen on radar, is moving in a little slower than I expected — but it finally got here.

After taking care of those little chores, then scarfing some breakfast, DoubleRed shocked the living daylights out of me: she asked me to follow her to the bank and (almost) caught up on all her rent… since May! I now have something in my pocket that Mrs. Fetched might like to get her hands on for a change.

I’ve mentioned problems with the manor windows before — not only do they have aluminum frames, which aren’t exactly wonderful for keeping out the winter chill, the funky mechanisms that are supposed to hold them in place when you raise them are pretty much all wrecked. Mrs. Fetched got curious recently when someone at Home Despot was trying to interest anyone in their window installation services, and considerably brightened the day of a rather discouraged worker. She made an appointment for their window guy to pay us a visit, and he did so late Thursday afternoon just as I was wrapping up my work at home day. With 18 windows that need to be replaced, fortunately all standard sizes, the total bill came to $12K. Um… thanks for your time, dude. I still want to replace at least the two windows in the bathroom, but with standard sizes and a friend who’s done that kind of work giving us advice, I might be able to get to that before winter. Meanwhile, I have a roll of window film that has been waiting for me to put it on the bay window in the kitchen, and I’ll be getting to that shortly. It helps that I figured out (on Thursday, while Window Dude was measuring) how to go about it with the least amount of waste.

Mrs. Fetched had been asking me to cash in some stock for some time, just to cover Daughter Dearest’s college for the rest of the term, and (during vacation) it got to where I thought it was worthwhile. The “problem” was, I thought I was cashing in stock options when I was actually cashing in restricted stock… so I ended up with a check for four times as much as I was expecting (but not enough to cover the window replacement). That caused a moment of panic, thinking the guy cleaned out my account, but when I pulled it up again I realized what happened. We’re going to kill off a couple of nagging bills and cover most of Daughter Dearest’s second term. Mrs. Fetched suggested I go ahead and accessorize my camera — so I ordered a smart flash and a 100-300mm lens last night — that should pretty well cover everything now: I have the 50mm f1.8 and the flash for indoor venues, the 28-135mm zoom for some indoor and short- to mid-range outdoor work, and the new lens will cover long-range work. What DoubleRed handed me this morning more than covered it.

Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet: this is NSFW, but very funny. Check out the woman’s expression about 6 seconds in. Besides, it’s good advice: I learned long ago, what you don’t do to the chicken, the chicken will do to you.

New story starts Monday… it’s coming along well, so I’m pretty comfortable with the head start I have.

Weekend Cinema

Your wallet’s dry, attention span too — Weekend Cinema’s the place for you!

With gas prices down from last year (but creeping up), the urban tanks are back on the road. So top up your Suxpedition and take that solo drive to SUV City!

[Thanks to Nudge for finding this one.]

Post-pourri (including Weekend Cinema)

The usual collection of stuff that kind of kicked around all week but I never got a chance to post. And since it’s already Friday, a short-and-silly video awaits…

From the “Stupidog is one word” files: Mrs. Fetched decided she wanted to breed Crissy, her thoroughly obnoxious Austrian Shep mix who happened to be in heat, and got Luke (another shep) from her mom and put him in the pen with her. And he proceeded to… do nothing. Well, that’s not completely true: he forced his way out of the pen through a hole in the gate. I got him back in and wired the hole shut. He proceeded to open the latch (he knows how to do that) and ran home. (Maybe he’s gay?)

After most of a week of not seeing Sasquatch around, he came by Wednesday evening with Jar Jar in tow. The latter needed to get away from his family for a while, so naturally he came to the manor. :-) He was hoping for a chance to work and earn a few bucks, but all he got was raking up the grass in the (small) front yard after I mowed it yesterday afternoon. At least Jar Jar managed to not do anything spectacularly clumsy this time — about the only thing that went w0rNg on his watch was DD’s computer’s audio cutting out for a few hours overnight. He’d been using the laptop a lot, so I figured it overheated then brought the sound back after it cooled off a bit. He, Daughter Dearest, and Sasquatch played a fair amount of Magic: the Gathering while they were here. Sasquatch also managed to clear a clog in the upstairs sink; he used a bent hanger to fish out the clog and an earring that got caught in it. He said, “it looked like an Amish guy’s beard fell off and went down the sink.” YUCK GAG GAG

Speaking of Sasquatch, he got so hooked on the “Mouse Hunt” game on Facebook that he started playing in meatspace. Using a really simple string/stick/box setup, he managed to catch six specimens of Mus musculus (aka the common house mouse) at his place. He has them in an aquarium, with a screen lid they jump onto and walk around on like flies on a ceiling. He’s so excited about his new pets, that’s pretty much all he wants to talk about lately… which is annoying the living foo out of Daughter Dearest. Personally, I’d find a snake owner who wanted some free chow… or at least release them somewhere far away. Maybe in the Atlanta Country Club, where they could aerate the golf course.

Silly me, putting up a gas price poll: prices have jumped from $1.89 to $2.15 here in the last couple of days. (If you haven't voted in the poll, you have plenty of time. I’ll wait.) Of course, the rain has mostly kept me off the motorcycle. Both Little Zook and the Virago are running happy, so all I need is a shot at some dry pavement. That, or find the bottom of my rain suit.

Vacation is postponed for *another* week… we were talking about going this week, but we have to shoot the community chorale tomorrow night. Next week didn’t work for various reasons; we were planning for the week of the 18th but now something else has come up. Maybe the week after… which would let me stretch it an extra day for Memorial Day. Not all bad.

And now… Weekend Cinema! With a hat-tip to Faboomama, who linked to this on Twitter. De Prez and his crew set up nuclear talks with “My Man” Mahmoud:

Weekend Cinema

If you haven't voted in the poll, it's open through Tuesday!

Got no money and only a little time? Weekend Cinema thinks about you!

You may not have much time on your hands, but these guys? They have plenty. Perhaps far too much, in fact. But the results are… quite interesting. So put on your wool sweater and marvel at the Baaa-Studs as they bring you Extreme Shepherding!

Weekend Cinema

We made it!

Weekend Cinema

When you’re too drunk to drive to the theater, Weekend Cinema keeps you safe at home!

I was going to write up a detailed analysis of the Stewart-Cramer smackdown (short version: Cramer lost) but I’m too whacked to do it. So I’ll just link to the interview:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The thing that still bothers me is Cramer saying something to the effect that “today’s investors don’t want to know about stuff like P/E ratios and the like.” DUH. Dad, if you’re reading this, you would probably agree with me that P/E ratios are one of the fundamental things you should know about investing in a stock… if you’re not interested in fundamentals, you should just spend your money or leave it in the bank.

What’s this world coming to anyway?

Weekend Cinema (political edition)

OK, so most of the country tuned into Obama’s “not-State of the Union” address Tuesday night, and some of us stuck around for LA Gov. Bobby Jindal delivering the goplets’ rebuttal afterwards. Mrs. Fetched was busy helping Cousin Splat get some of the business end of the lawn care business dealt with, so I caught the speech on my laptop. After a few minutes, I got tired of hearing my fans winding up, so I switched to an audio-only feed — this was good, because I had to get in the car and could continue listening on NPR without missing much.

President Obama delivered a pretty good address, of course. Even though he had a few zingers aimed at the goplets, he also had them joining the applause and had a few quips aimed at loosening them up, and from what I could tell from the audio they worked pretty well. One could almost feel sorry for Gov. Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, having to follow that act — and indeed, he was working under several handicaps:

1) He’s not Barack Obama.
2) He didn’t have an audience to interact with.
3) He’s a conservative, trying to make a case for the same Epic Fail policies that got us to this point.

Indeed, Jindal’s response was widely panned, by both the Left and the Right. I personally got the impression that he was reading a bedtime story; all it needed was an appearance by the Wingnut Fairy to wave a wand and make everything right… or Right. The happy peons go home to their hovels from a 16-hour workday, the Owners live happily ever after, etc. He lost me the second he started talking about compassion as some kind of conservative value — I bet he’d pretend he never heard about Gretna barricading the road out of New Orleans after Katrina.

But I digress. This is Weekend Cinema, and that means a short (and free) video, right? Tonight’s selection is actually a news report, based around Gov. Jindal’s comments made over an open mike shortly before he delivered his response. It at least explains the “bedtime story” delivery:



It accidentally highlights the stereotype of Indians talking really fast (an example of which appears in the above clip). But you’d think someone who is a governor, one considered a “rising star” in his party, would have started working with with a speech coach a long time ago. Another stereotype: southerners tend to talk slow, and are automatically suspicious of fast talkers… that hasn’t seemed to hurt him. I know I talk fast when I’m nervous… but one would think a former congresscritter and current governor would have long ago shed any public-speaking nerves.

But look. If his name’s really Piyush, why call himself “Bobby” of all things? The freeking president has a funny name, and he doesn’t call himself “Barry”; you’d think that would no longer be a handicap. Oh well. Give the conservatives 20 years or so to catch up with reality…

Weekend Cinema

Fast, easy, free… with Weekend Cinema, you don’t have to settle for only two.

Today’s selection was a 2007 finalist for the YouTube Awards. It has a Twilight Zone feel to it, although the ending might be a little obvious. See what can be done with two actors, a desk, a key… and a Black Button.

hat tip to Daughter Dearest

Weekend Cinema: Crass Free Advertising Edition

If it moves, and it's free, we want it for Weekend Cinema! Or something like that, anyway.

Now if these demonstrations don’t convince you that the iPhone is the Best. Thing. Ever. — well, you’re probably not a guy. I mean, for 99 cents… well, just watch the demos!



Or…



I’m just… shook up. Can’t decide which app I should get. (I must also find a suitable photo of Mrs. Fetched to, um, animate.)

Hat tip to The Register, always carrying the most important technology news.

Weekend Cinema

Weekend Cinema is back, and still (like the perfect date) always fast and free!

Many of us have found ourselves at the office far later than we’d like — but sometimes, there are compensations. Tonight, see what one office worker finds — both good and bad — when faced with The Black Hole.

Hat tip to the Evil Twins’s dad for this one.

Weekend Cinema

Even if there was anything good on at the theater, you don’t have time for it… so Weekend Cinema brings the free and fast to your computer screen!

I got this one from Faboo Mama, who posted it on her blog, and it’s too hilarious not to share. Turn up your speakers, the dialog is a bit soft and pretty funny too…

The First Ever Presidential Dance-Off

Mid-Week Cinema

This one’s too important to wait for Friday…



I hope nobody actually needed to see this, but just in case!

Weekend Cinema

Short, quick, and free — like the redneck’s idea of a perfect date — that’s Weekend Cinema!

Tonight, we bring you a little documentary of sorts. Urban farms might sound like an oxymoron, but people are doing it. Some because it’s the only way to put some fresh food on the table, others because food sovereignty is important.

So tonight we travel to exotic Milwaukee and see what a little Growing Power can do.

You can learn more about Growing Power and their goals at their website.

Weekend Cinema

Welcome back to Weekend Cinema, where the entertainment (or in some cases, horror) is quick and free. Just like a perfect date. ;-D

All of us, even us Mac users, have likely hurled the occasional obscenity at our computers. But this kid goes waaaayyyy over the top. (In German, but with English sub-titles. Mucho vulgarity here.) Frankly, I think it’s a put-on: that webcam would have been toast long ago.

Hat tip/fling against the wall to Brand X

Weekend Cinema

If it’s short, strange, and free, it must be Weekend Cinema!

Now I put a lot of miles on my motorcycle, and I’ve gotten pretty comfortable riding it. But this guy is a lot more comfortable than I’d ever want to get!

Weekend Cinema: The Boy, in Concert

Welcome back to Weekend Cinema, where the time is short, movies are free, and you decide how entertaining it all is!

This time, we’re making an homage to Woodstock, with a home-grown concert video… but not just any concert. This is The Boy’s first performance with Ether, a local-ish punk rock band. Here they are: Ether at Gardner Lake (rather huge, sorry about the bandwidth issues for the dialup folks). The lyrics are… well, not suitable. But I know a lot of the regular readers don’t care too much about that.

The Boy is the one farthest from the camera, wearing white & playing the bass. I stood where I did because that’s where the lighting was best.

Weekend Cinema

Welcome to Weekend Cinema, where you don’t need much time or any money to catch a flick!

This weekend’s selection is a little longer than usual, and I’m probably going to go to Basement Cat for laughing at it, but wotevr. Fire up your chat warez and check out the tale of two kids who got totally pwn3d by the starz: Romeo and Juliet (l33tsp33k tranzlation).

Weekend Cinema

An SUV driver’s day at the office.

(hat tip to Nudge, from Kunstler’s blog)