The Third World: closer than you think

Mrs. Fetched’s mom bought a trailer from a relative; I think the motive is to fix it up and rent it out. The kitchen was in pretty bad shape, and some people we know from the private school where the kids used to go had some cabinets. So most of the morning was destroyed in the chicken houses, and the afternoon was filled up with this trip.

The cabinets were stored in a double-wide that I thought was dedicated completely to storage, with a mini-junkyard spilling outside. However, it happened to be occupied by a family. When I stepped inside, I marvelled that any one person, let alone a family, could consider living in this place. No carpet (or even linoleum) on the floors, construction material strewn everywhere, the ceiling water-stained and sagging everywhere. I’m sure there are worse places to live, but this looked like a little piece of Ramallah transplanted to Planet Georgia. The two goats tethered outside completed the scene.

It would be interesting to hear their story. The guy seems to be fairly well-educated (he knows what ex post facto means, for example) and has HVAC experience. I also noticed several PCs in various states of repair in the house, although I think it’s easier to get HVAC work than computer work these days. They were given the place by the people we know, and were glad to see us get the cabinets out — that half-opened what was once a master bedroom, and they might be able to clear the rest of the junk out and use that room now. It would be nice to see them get some flooring in there, though.

I heard that the term “dirt poor” was originally used to describe people who couldn’t afford to put in tile or wood floor in their house, so the floor was dirt — or perhaps it meant an earthen (or sod) house was all they could manage. Frankly, I think an honest earth house with a dirt floor would have been a more dignified home than this double-wide. Or maybe they’re just in the middle of gutting and rebuilding the interior... somehow, I doubt it. At least it’s a roof over their heads, even if it leaks here and there, but it’s only a step above being homeless.

There are places like this everywhere, tucked into little side lanes that you barely notice. If you look for them, you’ll probably find them. Then you’ll wonder what to do about it.

Don’t force it, get a bigger hammer

I have to confess that many years of using Macs, combined with a monkey curiousity that led to deep familiarity with the platform, has spoiled me: when my computer should be able to do something, I expect it to Just Work because it almost always does. And I get annoyed if it doesn’t.

The latest example began last weekend. Exploring the 43folders site, I found a clever little kit called the Hipster PDA. Like most geeks, I like low-tech when it works, and this is as low-tech as it gets: a build-your-own personal data assistant consisting of a stack of index cards and a binder clip. Sitting in the living room with the iBook, I thought to myself, “I’d like to try that. I wonder if I could find some index cards around here.” Then I glanced over at the lamp table, and lo! a stack of index cards, left there by someone and never put away, awaited. Figuring this was a Sign From Above, I put down the laptop and located a binder clip.

With a place to keep ideas, project tasks, and miscellaneous to-dos, my brain started suddenly remembering things I wanted to do around FAR Manor (and work) at odd moments. I could just whip out a pen and my stack, jot it down, and move on. I wound up with a rather intimidating shipping list for Home Depot, and a longer list of stuff to do around the house than I really wanted to recognize. I soon needed expansion memory (i.e. more index cards), and found the supply cabinet at work has both color and regular cards. Having found a useful way to capture and remember all those little things that could be done later, I started looking at it a little deeper, thinking about accessories (this is how male geeks keep in touch with our inner female: we accessorize our gadgets, not our wardrobe). Oh cool, how about some templates to print on the index cards?

So I downloaded the PDF, grabbed a handful of blank index cards, fired up Preview, and tried printing a few pages. The laser printer dutifully sucked in the cards, and spit them out — still blank. Suddenly realizing I needed to create a 3x5 page size, I did so and tried again... with the same results as before.

I went into full-blown troubleshooting mode at this point, trying all sorts of different things including installing new printer drivers and trying a different printer. Nothing worked, although at one point I managed to get the first two inches of a page to print at the bottom two inches of the card. It got late, and I gave up for a night that turned into a week.

Some time during the week, a thought hit me: if I could get the image to print at the top-center of the page, it should print on the card. I knew of two ways to make that happen — import each image into a page layout program by hand, one at a time, or use good old groff to do it all for me at once.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with *roff or other batch-style formatters, that’s the way most of us produced complex documents before 1990 or so. For books, or collections of books, not even the best GUI programs can yet match the capabilities of groff, and don’t even come close to matching their speed or efficiency. I’ve actually turned back to using groff at work because even FrameMaker is too slow and clunky to do what I need nowadays.

Once I hit on that idea, I had my printed cards in a few minutes. I opened a Terminal window and began the incantations:

$ pdf2ps diyp3h_core_1up.pdf diyp3h_core_1up.ps
$ for (( i=1; i<=84; ++i )); do
> psselect -p${i} diyp3h_core_1up.ps pg${i}.ps
> eps2eps pg${i}.ps pg${i}.eps
> rm pg${i}.ps
> done

Now I had 84 EPS files, one for each page in the PDF file. To do anything with them, I had to create a file of groff commands to put each index card at the top of an otherwise blank page:

$ ls *.eps | awk '{print ".bp"; print ".PSPIC $0";}' >cards.t

I opened the PDF, identified cards I didn’t want to print (and those I wanted multiple copies of), and edited cards.t accordingly. Finally, I stuck the cards in the printer and typed:

$ groff cards.t | lpr

The first couple of cards came out crooked, until I squeezed the paper guides together a little more tightly. My Hipster upgrade was quickly ready; now I just need some time to copy the data over....

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Fetched!

I still think I should have gotten you the Victoria’s Secret gift card, but I’m glad you liked the live flowers....

Justice, maybe

Lay and Skilling are guilty.

Unfortunately, I doubt that it will translate to real jail time. The two of them are already appealing their convictions, made bail, and all they have to do is stall and delay until January 19, 2007. On that date, Bush-league will write them pardons in a quid pro quo for all the campaign contributions.

Running on Empty

The Boy came by the in-laws’s place for Sunday dinner, a sort of post-Mother’s Day thing. He came walking in with his lip ring (gag) in place, but quickly sucked in his lip, said hello, then excused himself for a trip to the john. When he came back, he’d wisely taken it out.

So we ate, exchanged small talk, and then he asked me to come outside to talk after lunch.

“Where’s the oil filter on this thing?” he said, raising the hood of his car. It took a few minutes to find, probably because the filter was painted black. It’s on the front of the engine, about halfway down.

With that out of the way, the next question was, “Could you give me five bucks for gas?” I didn’t even have my wallet on me, and (as it turned out) there wasn’t anything in it anyway, but I told him I’d give him five bucks to mow the back yard (I’d done the front on Saturday). He was all over that.

From what he told me, he runs out of gas a lot. I think he’s wound up stranded more in the last few weeks than I’ve been in a lifetime. Being generally lucky, he usually gets a friend or friendly stranger to bail him out. It was kind of exasperating, and I suggested he just suck up his act, play by the rules, and move back home until he can get a better situation. This elicted a flight of fancy that was stunning for both its incredibility and deadpan delivery. I really think he convinces himself he’s telling the truth. Anyway...

(according to The Boy) Their band has signed up with some metal label and is going to be playing weekly at the Masquerade in Atlanta through the summer. Then in August, they go on tour and the $500,000 he has in escrow will clear. Uh-huh. Nice fantasy there, kid. Unfortunately, fantasy doesn’t pay the bills unless your name is J.R.R. Tolkien or Anne McCaffrey (OK, there are several other examples, but you get my drift). If it turns out he’s telling the truth, I’ll eat crow like a good sport in August. I’d offer to post a video of myself eating a real crow (cooked of course) but I’d have to shoot it, pluck it, clean it, and cook it. But worse, I’d have to explain to the in-laws why I’m doing that.

Baby wren on the loose

The baby wren decided to give his wings a try today, and ended up in the corner of the garage, with frantic parents dive-bombing Mrs. Fetched (who didn’t know what was happening) and tick-ticking away. For whatever reason, the parents abandoned garage when I came in — it may have been something to do with my bringing a car with me. I happened to catch sight of the little booger clinging to a fishing pole and ran to get my camera. The batteries were about shot, but I closed the display and managed to get one recognizable picture of the young bird, who had by this time migrated to a lawn chair. I’m sure the flash didn’t make him happy, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Seems to be a theme at FAR Manor: the kids leave the nest before they’re quite ready.

Lobster walkin’

Lobster’s been gone... six weeks as of tomorrow. No, he hasn’t tried coming back, and he pretty well burned his bridges anyway, but you hear stuff. A brief summary of his life on his own might be in order... a cautionary tale for any of you who are teenagers and are thinking you’d be better off dropping out and running off.

One thing Lobster seemed to have picked up on that The Boy hasn’t, despite repeated advice: don’t jump until you know where you’re going to land. He may have already had it planned to move to Big V’s (Mrs. Fetched’s younger sister, not exactly the most stable isotope on the periodic table herself) before we booted him, because he was there by nightfall. The private school he was going to is run by a strange Pentecostal (but I repeat myself) church, and has some odd but sometimes flexible rules. The relevant one here is that students are required to live with their parents while they’re in school. They flexed the rules to allow Lobster to stay in school while he was living with us, perhaps because we also (at the time) had our kids in the same school. However, they didn’t know Big V — so given the choice between going back to his parents’ place or dropping out, Lobster chose the latter. Hey, he had a roof over his head (although he told Mrs. Fetched even that wasn’t important), a job, and a truck. What more could he ask for?

I suppose he could have asked for some financial savvy. After wrecking his truck to the tune of $1100 for body work (and that after the mechanic cut him a break), he made a deal with a devil, aka Big V. He gave her the title to the truck and agreed to pay both rent and payments on the truck; she paid for the repairs and he got his (now hers, actually) truck back. Big V and her husband run a lawn-care business, so there was plenty of work available for Lobster on days he wasn’t working at KFC.

Sounds all well and good, except that Lobster seems to think:

a) the universe was created to wait on him hand and foot;
b) getting up early is for other people;
c) paying bills is for other people.

After about a week, he told them he didn’t have to get out of bed and work with them. They got him up, ungently, and he decided right then and there he wanted to leave. They helped him load up his truck and off he went. It wasn’t too long before he was staying in town with a co-worker. This was a useful arrangement for both of them; he needed a place to stay and she needed transportation.

Somewhere along the line, he got a girlfriend... and knocked her up. Oh thrill oh joy. He hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of what that means.

When the universe revolves around you, keeping up payments on a truck is a minor annoyance. If you want to splash out for a hot date, or controlled substances (when you’re under 21, alcohol is a controlled substance too), or yet another traffic ticket, or nice clothes... well, why not? Paying people what you owe them is optional, right? It can wait.

Maybe it can, but Big V doesn’t. One might think she would be a little more sympathetic, having been on the other side of vehicle repos at least twice, but when it comes to what is due her, or what she thinks is due her (i.e. not the whole world, but a large portion of it), she can get as evil and heartless as any banker. After a couple of attempts, she blocked Lobster in good and had his truck towed away. (Yes, he deserved it. No, I don’t feel much/any sympathy for him. I’m just saying Big V doesn’t have a lot of room to talk in this arena.)

So Lobster now has: a job at KFC, no way to get to it, a pregnant girlfriend, and a few bags of clothes. Having repo’ed his truck, Big V is legally obligated to give him the difference between the value of the truck and what he owes her for it (I would say about $1000, maybe a tad more), but selective memory may need to be refreshed. I’m not sure I’m going to be the one to do it. But in any case, Lobster is really close to hitting Rock Bottom. I wonder how long it will take him to come to his senses; probably not any time this year.

It would be hilarious, if there wasn’t a baby involved.

A whole year gone by

I realized late last night (a week too late, and a couple hours too late to mention) that I’d let Tales from FAR Manor’s first anniversary slide by without comment. That’s us guys; always forgetting anniversaries, right?

Originally, I’d meant this as a private place to complain about life in general — and in particular, a big house I’d been pushed into buying, would have to maintain, and really didn’t want to live in. I made the name (and handle) up on the spur of the moment — for those of you who don’t know, FAR means “Forget About Retirement.” On May 16, 2005, I had no intention of giving out the URL to anyone. If a stranger found me by clicking Next Blog, fine, but in my original plans they would have found only a written version of Primal Whine Therapy. Or maybe I just let things slide through June, and picked up again in July with a new focus and intent.

Looking back, this last year has been both better and worse than I could have imagined. The Summer of Discontent saw The Boy grow more and more hostile until he up and left — then came back with a dysfunctional girlfriend in tow. School just kind of went by the wayside for him and Lobster, who also fell into the same egotistical black hole — both of them could have graduated last Friday with just a little effort, but it was effort they weren’t willing to make and they didn’t care about the consequences. The Boy left again, but M.A.E. is still here and slowly beginning to mature (but still has fatal lapses of judgement). I wound up with both high blood pressure and high cholesterol, brought on partly by the chaos and partly by a rather inactive lifestyle.

And yet... somewhere along the line, I’d made my peace with FAR Manor. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t sell the place in a heartbeat were I offered a really good price, but I no longer hate living here. I’ve even begun to take some interest in the environs, which has been more work than it should have since I’d let the woods and weeds run riot in the previous two years. Maybe the Primal Whine Therapy worked after all — it has been said that you cannot observe something without affecting it. I’ve given up on ever having a satisfying sex life, but at least the finances are starting to clear up. I’ve lately started tackling projects that I’ve been meaning to do and somehow never got around to doing — writing them down over the last week may have helped there. The blog itself has also helped to mark when certain events happened; I’ve had my iBook in my lap on a couple occasions where I was able to pinpoint dates.

Lordy, I hope the next year coming up is a bit more peaceful than the last one. But whatever happens, I’ll write about some of it here, and include pictures when I can. This is FAR from a closing post... closing a crazy-arse year maybe, but I’ll be writing when I can.

Sunday humor

A new pastor was visiting his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. Therefore, he took out one of his cards and wrote: “Revelation 3:20” on the back of it and stuck it in the door. (“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”)

When the offering was processed the following Sunday, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message: “Genesis 3:10.” He opened his Bible to check out the citation and found: “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid, for I was naked.”

Quotable quotes about Word

Another gem dug up in my email clean-out

As technical writers go, I’m relatively lucky. In my 20-odd (and I do mean odd) year career, I’ve only in the last couple of months ran into overload situations that had me working weekends as well as overtime (it’s not uncommon from what I’ve heard from other people). But I’m even more lucky because I haven’t had to use Microsoft Word as a serious writing tool for almost 10 years now. Before that, Word (up to Word 7.0/95) was a decent word processor, not terribly solid (especially for documents longer than 50 pages) but easy to customize, very scriptable and mostly predictable. Being a button-pusher by nature, I was able to find and then avoid the sharp corners and rough edges and get work done.

For people who live in their word processors, Word97 marked a major turn — downward. Corrupted files, always a possibility, became more frequent. Auto-numbering went straight to #3|| and skipped the handbasket. Preference changes would spontaneously change themselves back. Fortunately, about the time Word97 (and Word98 for Macs) landed on the world with a wet plop, I changed jobs and went to work at a FrameMaker shop. Frame isn’t the most feature-laden product in the world, but it is extremely predictable and very stable. The only way to lose significant work to a FrameMaker crash is to start typing in a new document without saving it before it crashes. Anyway, all the things I started hearing from Word users at that point made me less than motivated to go back.

Nothing I’ve heard has suggested the problems are being fixed. In fact, I’ve repeatedly asked a Microsoft program manager who works on Office file formats whether the next version of Word will fix the autonumbering problems that have been around since '98. No response. (Funny how the search function at Microsoft’s blogs.msdn.com couldn’t turn up its own blog address but Google could, by the way.)

So here’s a few quotable quotes about Word that I’ve collected from the Techcomm list....

“First thing I realized about trying to do documentation in Word is that I had to lower my expectations.” — B.A.

“Only entirely random actions, bizarre incantations and forceful oaths can make Word do what you want it to (especially when it comes to numbering).” — M.B.

“Nothing will work in Word if you're wearing the wrong kind of shoes or whatever.” — B.A.

“It's a known Word bug.” — a cast of millions

This profanity-laden rant is also notable, not only for expressing the frustration so many of us have with Word, but for being the only piece of writing I’ve ever seen that manages to use that much profanity and stay coherent.

And finally:

When I first started using Microsoft Word professionally, about 10 years ago, someone told me that the only thing to do to get it to work as you thought it should was to sacrifice a small goat during the correct phase of the moon.

I ran a Google search today on ‘+"Microsoft Word" +"sacrifice" +"goat"’ and got 650 hits, so clearly this belief is now widespread. (OK, so some of the hits were about obscure religions rather than tech writing, but my point is still valid.)

— D.F.

Word does (mostly) well for most people, who don’t need more than 10%–20% of the functionality it offers. It’s those of us who live and die by our word-processing skills who run into trouble with it, because we need to push it to the limit just to stay caught up. And pushing Word makes it tip over, quickly.

Message from God

Saw this in an email a while back.

One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the evil that was going on. He decided to send an angel down to Earth to check it out.

So He called on a female angel and sent her to Earth for a time. When she returned she told God, “Yes it is bad on Earth. 95% of the people are bad and 5% are good.”

He thought for a moment and said “Maybe I had better send down a male angel to get both points of view.” So God called a male angel and sent him to Earth for a time. When the male angel returned he went to God and told Him “Yes, the Earth is in decline. 95% of the people are bad and 5% are good.”

God decided to E-mail the 5% that were good and encourage them a little, something to help them keep going.

Do you know what that E-mail said?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Oh! You didn't get one either huh?

Minute by minute

I should have known that this would bite us in the @$$ some day.

When we got our smellphones, we wound up on a rather generous plan, minute-wise. We signed up for more than we needed at the moment, plus what we don't use rolls over for up to a year. So we had a pretty big pile of minutes. Had.

Turns out that M.A.E. and her totally screwed-up friend (call her Miss T, or Misty), with a little help from the rest of us (but only a little, mind you) managed to run through all our rollover minutes, plus all our monthly allocation, plus some more. The upshot was a $320 smellphone bill. And both of these goofballs managed to lose their jobs at Wendy’s in the last couple of weeks. I was more than a little cheesed to find the two-hour conference call I was stuck on week before last cost me $11 for that one call (to an 800 number no less). I don’t know why I didn’t think of using the home phone for that; probably because it hasn’t been an issue up to now.

I was ready to throw all the phones, mine included, in a drawer and leave them alone for a month or so. Naturally, Mrs. Fetched balked at that — anything that inconveniences her is a non-starter, especially if I suggest it. For reasons totally unfathomable by male logic, she also didn’t collect the phone from M.A.E.

It’s probably a good thing that both M.A.E. and Misty haven’t been around for the last couple of days. Maybe they’ll grow up, get jobs, and find their own place(s) to live. Maybe pigs will come flying out my butt in the next 10 minutes. They’re both about as likely.

Friday Night Cinema

If your cellphone bill looks like ours this month, you probably don’t have the wherewithal to go see a movie either (more about that above). And tonight’s selection might just put you off using the phone, mobile or otherwise, for a while.

Seriously, this is pretty scary. If you care about more than what’s on TV tonight, anyway.

Caught in the (first) draft

In an example of synchronicity, articles about first drafts hit both 43 Folders and MacDevCenter today. 43 Folders suggests Just Doing It, while MacDevCenter explores tools (some of which don’t exist yet) to help eliminate distractions so you can focus on writing (instead of editing).

If you read the comments in the MacDevCenter article, you’ll see where I suggest the hoary Unix line editor, ed, for first drafts. It has been part of Unix systems since the first version in 1970 and is still lurking at the bottom of the most modern version of Unix (aka MacOS X). There’s also a neat trick for disabling the GUI at login time, leaving your entire screen dedicated to a white on black console screen: type >console instead of your user name and hit Return.

Now there’s an environment for first drafts: no email, no web browser, no instant messenger; just you, your thoughts, and your keyboard. Going back and editing a previous line is more trouble than it’s worth, using ed (you can backspace though), so you mostly just keep typing until you’re done. Plenty of time to edit later.

The Phone Tree Hell escape hatch!

If you ever wondered what this Internet thing is good for, check out GetHuman.com. This is something you would never have seen in the pre-Net days — someone might have known the key to getting a real human at one or two companies, but the Net lets all those people who know a little bit find each other... and everyone can end up knowing a lot!

The database lists companies by industry (retail, automotive, etc.) and includes instructions for making Phone Tree Hell just... freeze over... for each company. Personally, I would consider shifting business to those companies that are labelled "Direct to human."

Peace & quiet

Current music: DI.fm Goa-Psy Trance
I came in from work, ran out to check over a presentation about a power line running past the church (and quite a few other places), and came back to Nobody Home. No jabbering TV, nobody Going To Die if I didn’t drop everything and fix her problem right away... sweeeet. I spent some time weeding down my inbox (now less than 100 messages from over 500 on Saturday) and catching up on some other folks’s blogs.

Digression, or maybe not: On the way home from work, I picked up a copy of Getting Things Done — it comes highly recommended in certain Mac geek circles — and made a short start of it. From the summary I saw at 43folders.com, it looks like a Master Plan for actually making Lotus Notes useful... which is a miracle that I’ve got to see for myself. I did manage, over the last couple of days, to whittle the couple-hundred messages out of my Notes inbox at work down to five (on Friday) and then to three (today). Next step is to wade through my project folders, clear out obsolete stuff, and move anything important into the Todo list.

An essential ingredient of Peace and Quiet is the lack of annoyance. Fortunately, there are few things harder to notice than something that is not annoying you. If that itch under my left shoulder blade isn’t itching, I don’t think about it. Upon finding the Monday morning meeting was cancelled (hooray!), I promptly forgot about it and did useful things all morning. I’m the kind of person who usually isn’t annoyed by low-level clutter, so I usually don’t notice it. (This is the source of some friction at FAR Manor, as Mrs. Fetched is annoyed by clutter... but often not enough to actually do something about it herself.) On the other hand, the TV is annoying, or at least distracting, so I tend to hike the iBook away from the living room and play music through a pair of earbuds.

There’s a drawback to forgetting about annoyances, though: when they come back, even when you know they’re coming back, their presence makes them twice as annoying... at least at first. I’m thinking about school buses — after the first week of summer vacation, I stop rejoicing in their absence and forget about them for the next two months (Two months? What happened to three months? This slow erosion of summer is ridiculous!).

Slumber calleth, so off to bed I go. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my work at home days, so I won’t be thinking about commuting tomorrow either.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Whether you’re a mother or another, I hope it was a pleasant one for you! If you didn’t get any flowers, please accept these Mother’s Day Roses (so called because that’s when they bloom) as a substitute.


Although it’s a 10-hour drive (when it’s not a holiday or spring break) to Mom’s place from FAR Manor, I’m still just a phone call away — I caught her before she headed over to Solar’s place; he was going to cook lobster if he could get it and steak if he couldn’t. She also got the flowers I sent; she told me she would send a picture so I could see what they look like. I gave Mrs. Fetched a hand getting the chicken houses ready this weekend — I was tired of doing work-related stuff every evening and weekend, and figured doing something filthy and mindless would be the change of pace I needed.

Mrs. Fetched wanted to show me these — she planted them last year and wasn’t sure they would make it. But as you can see, they’re doing just fine. If you know what they’re called, besides “Purple Bells,” please add a comment.

How did Mother’s Day weekend go at your place?

Oh, almost forgot...

M.A.E.’s back, and brought a cold with her. Fortunately, the other female type (whom her acquaintances call “Psycho”) is not. The Boy considered coming back, but it hasn’t happened. I guess we all got our priorities. He and M.A.E. aren’t exactly buddies now that they’ve broken up, although they finally agreed to be civil to each other.

Sigh For a little while, I was able to traipse through the house in my underwear as was once my habit. I’ll probably have to wait until Daughter Dearest is in college for more opportunities.

Give Ya the Bird

I had a peek at the nest, evening before last, and found a new occupant. The picture sucks, but that was the best angle I could get & I didn’t want to disturb things to the point where the parents would abandon it. At least you can see the top of its head.

I'll post better shots if/when I get them.

Deep techie secrets revealed!

I got several phone calls at work late last week, mostly having to do with formatting and printing the term papers the boys finished up (after pulling an all-nighter). Most of the issues were solved by my telling them to click something or another. The only problem that wasn’t in that category (transferring a file from Mrs. Fetched’s computer to Daughter Dearest’s) could have been avoided by typing the file on DD’s computer in the first place.

Twenty years ago (I tell ya, things were different in my day! Men were men and sheep were nervous! Um...) the company I worked for bought Macs for our department. I admit to being less than impressed with them after the initial enthusiasm wore off — it took several years of improvements for the Mac to first win my respect and a couple more years before I came to love 'em. But I digress. I spent the first couple of days just exploring the menus in various programs, clicking buttons, and generally seeing what I could make the thing do. I ran into things, clicked around until the problems went away, and got confident with its limited scope.

It wasn’t too long before my co-workers ran into the same problems I’d already hit and solved. People would mention off-hand a problem they were having, I’d say, “oh, try this and such,” and it would work for them too. After a few of those, I was suddenly the “Mac Guru” and everyone in the company — including IT — would ask me for help. Since my extension was 4573 and the IT helpline was 4357 (HELP), I’d get wrong-number calls (at first) asking for assistance and then people would start calling me before they would call IT. All because I fiddled around with things.

And that, dear readers, is the Techie Secret. In fact, it’s so much a part of our psyche that we have an acronym for it: PBUSH (Push Buttons Until Something Happens). It’s so simple, and it explains a lot of our frustration with non-techies. We’re not really any smarter (well, not much smarter) than the rest of you, we’re just more curious. Any hairy hoary knowledge we’ve obtained, we’ve obtained the same way any animal does: faced with a constraint, we poke and prod at the door, especially that little latch thingie, until it pops open and we’re free! Over time, we figure out what works and what doesn’t, and we use that knowledge and confidence to attack the next gate. Beyond curiosity, there’s no innate talent — it’s all the kind of skills that anyone can acquire. Why are you calling us when you could just click around and figure out how to fix it on your own, probably more quickly than you can describe the problem?

One of the first questions you’ll hear from a support person, formal or not, is “what have you tried to fix it so far?” If you’ve tried anything that didn’t work, both of you save time because the support person can skip those suggestions. It also gives the techie both an idea of how complex the problem might be, and how involved you’re willing to be in the solution. Every platform typically has a handful of first responses — like fix permissions and run drive checks on MacOSX, rebuild the desktop on older MacOS systems, or reboot and run spyware checkers on Windows — that clear up 80% of the issues. By running these simple maintenance routines, either on a regular basis or when problems crop up, you give yourself a great deal of power over your balky toy/tool, and save time for everyone.

Careful, though — that sense of empowerment might lead you to look into those other problems, the 20% that routine maintenance doesn’t fix. You may find yourself typing error messages into Google to see if there’s any information out there (and often there is). You might start looking at those mysterious programs that came with your operating system and running them just to see what they do, perhaps finding a nice tool in the process. Eventually, when another non-technical friend has a problem, you might be the one to suggest a fix. Before too long, they’ll be calling you.

PBUSH usually isn’t dangerous to your computer, but it can turn you into a techie. Beware.

Pop goes the fake spare, and other minor emergencies

Monday, I mentioned that The Boy was having tire problems, and put the (mostly bald) fake spare on. I said at the time, “pray it holds up until he has enough money to fix the regular tire.”

Late yesterday morning, he called me: “You working at home today? That spare tire blew up and my jack broke, so my axle’s sitting on the pavement.” Unfortunately for him, I had an off-site after-hours department meeting to attend at the CTO’s place (pssssht!)... meaning I was at the office. Nobody else was around, so I suggested he call Mrs. Fetched’s parents and ask them to bring a jack. It wasn’t until afterwards that I wondered what he was going to put on in place of the fake spare. His (flat) regular tire?

On the way to the department meeting, the phone started ringing. (Have I ever mentioned I’m not a real big fan of smellphones?) First it was a friend of M.A.E.’s, who has been here off & on over the last couple of weeks, wanting to know if I can put battery cables and belts on her car. A mechanic was supposed to do it for her, but they’re balking. She’s the kind of person that other people get tired of very quickly... in my book, she’s gone from “ehhh” to “repulsive” in a couple of weeks. I told her I’d try doing it after work (today) if it wasn’t raining (it did). Mere minutes after that, Daughter Dearest wants to know if I can email a picture. Um, not on the road I can’t. Then it was The Boy, who somehow managed to get back on the road but was now out of gas. I managed to get to my destination somehow, then M.A.E. rang up with the sob story du jour.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Mrs. Fetched invited her to leave early yesterday. She and Ms. Repulsive have been hanging out with some friends the last couple of nights, and M.A.E. decided she was too sick (i.e. having too much fun) to work. And here we thought she was getting some responsibility. Mrs. Fetched was disappointed, and doesn’t handle disappointment well. At all.

After that one, I just turned the dang phone off and headed for the cooler. Funny... I was planning to decline the invitation, since there was a board meeting at church, but Mrs. Fetched pressured me to go. Turned out to be the good choice — everyone had to deal with their own problems for a change, and I got to taste some high-quality tequila (oh, what a difference). Sometimes, she’s prescient.

On the way home, I called The Boy back. He’d gotten a little gas and was OK. Until this evening, when he called again. Mrs. Fetched went, and I’m sure he paid for the fuel by listening to a lecture.

A visit from The Boy

I was doing work-related stuff on&off all weekend, so I don’t feel guilty about writing this at work during this boring Monday team meeting. Now that it’s evening, I’ll be doing more work stuff shortly.

The Boy came by yesterday for a brief band practice. Along with his other issues, he’s been suffering from a leaky tire, which turned out to be leaking around the rim. Too bad he can’t use his inflated ego to fill it (sfx: snare roll, symbol). I’m not sure if the bead is bad or there’s a problem with the rim itself, but it looks like there might be some junk caught up in the rim. After suggesting he get a can of fix-a-flat, that he has no money for, I found one in the garage. Lucky him... to an extent. There turned out to be three leaks, and the goop sealed up two of them. So close.... We put his slick fake spare on. Pray it holds up until he has enough money to fix the regular tire. Perhaps to keep up with the tire, he put another hole in himself, piercing his lower lip and putting a ring in it. Now look: I have a ring in my nose, but at least it’s metaphorical.

He quit the job at the mountaintop lodge (idiot) and now he’s doing landscaping with Big V’s husband, or so he says... I’ll have to check into that. (The pay is one thing, but I can’t wait until he finds out how much he has to pay for his meds without the co-pay.) He was living with his old friend J-zoid for a while, until he had a dispute with J’s mom late last week and he moved out. At the moment, he’s bouncing around from one friend to another, and claims to be looking into buying a house and partially funding the payments with rent from friends. I didn’t even bother telling him he would get laughed out of every bank he goes to, but suggested he keep at least a month’s worth of mortgage payment handy so he’ll be able to manage when his pals come up short. Which they would.

He’s mentioned (on several occasions) bringing some chow over for a cookout some time, but he’s already done a no-show on us twice. He didn’t ask about coming back to stay, probably knowing the answer would be: Sure. If you scrape off your druggie pals, get serious about getting your GED, and be home at a reasonable hour through the week. ... plus anything I’ve left out that Mrs. Fetched would want. Too onerous, I suppose.

After talking about this & that for a while, he snapped, “I don’t know where you got the idea my girlfriend is giving me drugs.” Um... we got the idea listening to you tell your friend she was getting them, ding-dong. “There’s more than one Ashley in the world, you know,” he managed to respond. “Her family’s redneck.” Which can mean lots of things, including growing their own weed. Color me thoroughly unconvinced. His girlfriend is 17 and is taking night classes instead of school. I suggested he do the same... he claims to be doing a self-study for the GED. Pull the other one, boy, it’s got bells on it.

Turns out that one of his band members used to be in a trance outfit; we had a great time chatting about different artists and the trance scene on this planet (or total lack thereof). Both of us turned out to be Aura fans. He also told me, quietly, that BJ wanted us to call him... which suggests he wants to tell me something about The Boy. I got wrapped up on work stuff after that, so I never got around to making the call. I’ll do that after hitting send.

Friday Night Cinema

Outta money, outta time, short movies here don’t cost a dime!

This week’s selection is a little gory, and a lot weird! The producer says it’s “Based on that silly Rumor saying mario had subliminal communist propaganda.” If you ever spent more than a few evenings playing Super Mario Bros. back when, you’ll find this both amusing and disturbing.

OK, enough blabber. Raise the iron curtains and watch The People's Mario (Flash)

Note: If the direct link doesn’t work, try the front page and look for the “WATCH THIS MOVIE!” link in the upper right.

A good introduction to malware

Current music: #Musik Club

What the heck is malware? Why is it an issue? What other silliness is going on out there? Bruce Schneier writes up a pretty good overview in Wired, Everyone Wants to 'Own' Your PC.

Keith Richards, Indestructo Man!

I hope I’m this active when I’m 62. Sheesh. You got to wonder: what the hey was he doing up in a tree?

A comedian once said that after a nuclear war, the only thing left would be bugs and Keith — if all the drugs he’s taken didn’t kill him, nothing else could.

Study hall

Two guys from the old private school where our kids used to go have been camping out here most of the week to get their senior term papers finished up (or started—they’re Cutting It Mighty Fine since it’s due tomorrow). We have amenities like lots of computers and a DSL line, plus a guy who writes for a living and several other high-speed keyboarders... what’s not to like? Yes, they’re writing the content. I gave them a few pointers about structure and so on, stuff they probably would have learned about in school if they had been paying attention.

I can’t believe there’s only two weeks until school is out. Daughter Dearest is about worn out (90 math problems for homework? Come on!) though, and is starting to get “icepick headaches” that hurt like #3!! for about 3 seconds then go away. Not good. A little R&R will do her some good, but she needs to start getting some exercise. So do I, I’ve been slacking lately although it’s not all my fault.

Been up wayyyyy too late the last few days for various reasons—one night I just couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe I’ll get to sleep late on Saturday morning.

The debate is over

That’s settled. Global warming is for real!

Who needs a TV?

Current music: DI.fm EuroDance

It is said that for a redneck, quality entertainment is a six-pack and a bug zapper. We currently have no bug zapper at FAR Manor, but we have a porch with a glass door and two cats. At night, The Bug Show comes on, and Sprite and Aries are captivated. A German hornet or moth slowly working its way up the window is sure to get them jumping. It’s loads of fun to watch.

Enough is enough

I just turned on word verification in the comments. I’m sick and tired of deleting spammer-droppings.

If you’re not familiar with verification, it’s fairly simple. Blogger creates an image consisting of random letters, distorted so spammers can’t use OCR software to figure out the magic word and enter it automatically. You have to type the same nonsense into a text box under the comment box before Blogger adds your comment. Once in a while, it’s a little too distorted to get right — no problem, it will give you a different one and not delete your comment.

Floor’s open. What’s bugging you tonight?

OUCH

Well... I guess that’s one way to get some iron in your system.

Another houseguest!

Well, at least this one just lives in the garage. I’m not sure how she(?) deals with the garage opening and closing all the time, unless there’s a hidden exit I’m not aware of. Then again, I think I know how all the bird seed got spilled out now. Sheesh. The only thing that seems to bother her is when I move the grill, which usually lives in front of the shelves here (which is how the nest managed to go undetected in the first place). Click on the picture to get a slightly larger version; look for beady little eyes under the white “eyebrows” in the center.

I'm not sure what kind of bird that is; it might be what my father-in-law calls a “jenny wren.”


I would have just chucked the nest outside, and let the interlopers build somewhere else, but I was a little late in discovering the addition. Okee-fine... maybe she’ll keep the bug population in the garage under control. If she keeps the garage spider-free, I’ll invite her in for next year.

When/if the egg hatches, I’ll post more pictures.


If you count comments, this is the 300^th post on Tales from FAR Manor!

A Tour of Microsoft's Mac Lab

As much as I like to rag on Microsoft, I have to admit that there is a good side to the company... namely, the Macintosh Business Unit (MBU). David Weiss was recently kind enough to give us all a virtual tour of the Mac Lab.

Go check it out!

Flowers

More stuff blooming around FAR Manor this morning:







What’s up at your place? Sound off in the comments or just point to a link on your own blog!

A bit stiff this morning...

Current music: John Eddie - Jungle Boy

Rule #1: It’s always going to take more effort than you think.

Facing the house, the yard to the left of the sidewalk has always been a bit raggy-looking compared to the other side, which is fairly lush Bermuda (and some kind of violet run wild out of the flower bed, but that’s another story). Looking a little closer, I found that it’s pretty well overrun with some kind of moss (it doesn’t get much sun).

I got the iron rake out and attacked. It worked better than I thought; the moss came up but the grass (and other weeds) stayed put. But it was a long, tedious process — the rake would get clogged up with moss and I’d tonk it out into the driveway. The pile behind the raked area got alarmingly large very quickly.

About halfway through, I called Daughter Dearest down, who was (to say the least) highly reluctant to leave her computer nest for fresh air and dubbayou oh arr kay. She protested the bugs would eat her; they weren’t bothering me but I got the repellant out for her anyway. After trying a couple of ways, we settled on me loosening the moss with the iron rake and her using the leaf rake (and later on, a blower) to get it into the driveway. Toward the end, I found the best way to do it was to push/pull the rake back and forth across the moss, instead of just pulling it. I hope I won’t need it for future reference, but at least I hit on that as I got to the most moss-infested quarter of the yard. That pile is almost all moss, from about 400 square feet of yard. Sheesh.

So we ended up with a huge pile of moss in the driveway. After trying to carry it off a rakeload at a time, I grabbed the tarp off the woodpile and we were able to cart it off in two loads. DD, at this point, said she was “whupped” and left. Not that seeding & feeding is all that difficult, although I ran out of daylight while spreading the straw across the area.

And so, as I was about to settle down last night, write this, then go to bed — Mrs. Fetched’s mom called to inform us of a wiring problem at one of the chicken houses. I was ready to fling the phone down the hall, needless to say. Her brother, Mr. Sunshine, did most of the work while I mostly held a flashlight. Splicing a 240-volt line doesn’t take too long, especially when the breaker is off and there’s plenty of slack in the line. Replacing a 50-amp breaker (it protects a sub-panel that runs the feedline motor among other things), especially when you don’t have a replacement at hand, takes a little longer. As usual, “only a few minutes” was an hour and a half. If we win one of those huge lotto jackpots, I swear I’ll pay the Air National Guard to use those chicken houses for live-ordinance target practice while I get video.

Good news, bad news

My trip to the doctor’s started well enough. I’d lost 15 pounds since I’d been in last, my blood pressure was normal (woooo hooooo!)... she was so happy, she stuck me for blood to see if my cholesterol levels had changed.

They haven’t. I got the results in the mail, along with a prescription for Lipitor. Yucko. Looks like I’ll also have to cut out the Mexican food, which is a bummer because I like cheese.

Mrs. Fetched wants me to try this packaged herbal stuff called "red yeast rice” that’s supposed to do a number on cholesterol first. I suppose it’s worth a try.

Ejected!

The Boy was home the other morning, and Mrs. Fetched was heading out the door. She started up, then remembered she needed to tell him something. She honked the horn a couple of times, but he didn’t hear, so she went back inside.

He was already on the phone to one of his buddies, one that we really liked back when. He was in the stairwell and Mrs. Fetched could hear his end of the conversation: “[new girlfriend] is getting paid today... yeah, she said she was going to get us some stuff... you know, pffffft.” The conversation continued, but that’s all Mrs. Fetched needed to hear. He finished up, came down the stairs, and got that deer in the headlights look when he saw her.

“Yup,” she said. “You can just pack up and get out since you’re not going to stop doing that crap.”

“I don’t know what you think you heard,” he tried to bluster. It Wasn’t Working this time.

“I know exactly what I heard. You can either get your clothes, or I’ll bag ’em up and leave ’em outside.”

He left. Mrs. Fetched confiscated a couple of guitars after he left as collateral for about $300 he owes us. I guess he’s staying with his friend, but I thought that was a rather precarious situation for his friend. But hey, anything The Boy tells us is probably a lie anyway. He’s working really hard to lose a job with great benefits, if he hasn’t lost it already. He’s even going back to losing interest in his music. I have no idea how this is going to end, but I don’t have The Warm Fuzzies.

So that leaves Daughter Dearest, who pretty much nests in her bedroom anyway, and M.A.E. The latter has bounced back from the breakup, it seems. I’m hoping she’ll have her act together to the point where she can support herself in a few more months. If this keeps up, I won’t have much to write about beyond home improvement and recipes.

Parsley gone iNSanE!

Three weeks ago, it was about half as high as the rosemary plant (the light one to the right) that it’s trying to engulf. Now it’s waist high!


It was sprouting dozens of seed pods like this; I picked off all but two of them, hoping it would slow things down. I can think of worse things to be overrun with than parsley (cough kudzu cough), but this I can maybe do something about.

Ramen done right

It could use some mushrooms, but otherwise the broth turned out loads better than I expected! Chuck that sodium packet in the trash and Know the Potential of Ramen. As with all my CubeDweller recipes, all of the ingredients can be stored in a file cabinet or other dry place (no refrigeration required).

CubeDweller Ramen Soup

4 c. water
6 sun-dried tomatoes, broken
4 pearl onions, peeled and quartered
1 clove garlic, diced

Herbs (substitute as you please, this is what I used but would have added basil if I had some):
1 sage leaf
1/4 tsp. marjoram
1/2 tsp. black pepper
Mrs. Dash® Tomato/Basil Blend
3/4 tsp. chives, chopped
1 large parsley leaf

pinch of salt
1 tsp. olive oil
1 packet ramen
Protein source of choice, cooked if necessary (optional, I used a tin of sardines packed in water)

Put tomatoes, onions, garlic, sage, marjoram, pepper, olive oil, salt, and 2 cups of water in a microwave pot. Cover tightly and microwave on high for 10 minutes. Stir. Add ramen, protein source, and remaining water; microwave on high for 2 more minutes. Garnish with chives and parsley.

Serves two with a side dish, or one if you’re hungry.

Amen, amen, and amen

Douglas Crockford hits it on the head talking about “introduction” web pages:

What a Flash intro says to me is "I hate my job. What I really want to do is make films. But they won't let me do that because I don't have talent. So watch this Flash intro."

Web sites end up getting polluted with crap like Flash and JavaScript for various reasons, but perhaps the single most common underlying issue is that “designers” have no content to give you, so they substitute an “experience” for something useful. Yeesh. I don’t spend (way too much) time on the Internet to have an “experience,” I just want to get some information or look at pictures or something. It’s kind of like the now-defunct Damon’s, a restaurant chain that sported multiple big-screen TVs tuned to various games. They billed themselves as “A Dining Event!” I tend to think of a “dining event” as something like that time when The Boy found a dried-up roach in his cereal — I don’t want a “dining event,” I just want something to eat (preferably insect-free). Same with the web: I don’t want Flash and Java$#!+ substituting for content. If I wanted to waste time with mindless garbage, there’s a TV in the living room.

Think of a web site’s “design” in the same way you would think about packaging a product — what you’re really interested in is what’s inside. Apple is widely acknowledged these days (at least in high-tech) as the masters of package design — and guess what? The decorations are muted, even minimal. Even Microsoft (internally) acknowledges that they’re way behind Apple here (and everywhere else IMO).

Macromedia describes Flash as “the solution for producing and delivering high-impact web sites.” High-impact on my bandwidth, CPU, etc. I’ll show you “high-impact,” as soon as I find that sledgehammer.

---

Thanks to Doc Searls for providing both the inspiration and supporting links for the above rant.

Finally rain

We finally got some storms in here with some much-needed rain. We might get more tomorrow.

It does cramp our gas-saving program, because I don’t much like to ride in storms after almost getting hit by lightning a couple of years ago, but it also means we don’t have to worry about watering the plants.

Two down?

The Boy has been coming in extremely late again... and there’s some question as to whether he’s even going to work. His entire life seems to revolve around hanging out with his friends, and probably smoking herbal substances of questionable repute. Now he’s worn out the rest of his welcome — Mrs. Fetched told him he needed to find somewhere else to live by Saturday.

That just leaves M.A.E. — once she finished paying a fine, she can get a driver’s license, then her family in Florida might help her with a car, then she can get independent too. Hooray!

Comma comma down, dooby doo down-down

It’s official: The Boy has broken up with M.A.E. She’s not taking it too well, even though she kind of expected it. Actually, he announced the breakup while we were coming home from Florida, but I’ve learned to not take statements from most of the denizens of FAR Manor at face value. He has another girlfriend already; I’m not sure if he was seeing her before.

I’m hoping this doesn’t drive M.A.E. back to old behaviors or anything. It might be touch & go with her for a while.

A taxing situation

The one redeeming feature about tax season this year is that TurboTax has a vastly improved interface over the last time I tried it. I switched to TaxCut some years ago, but they dropped the Mac version so I’m back to the old one. I’ll have to admit, it did a pretty good job of knocking out a rather complex return (wife’s business, lots o’deductions, capital gain income from selling the timber and some stock options) — in fact, it went so well that I had already e-filed before realizing I’d forgotten a couple of items. The IRS phone support people told me to just file an amended return and it would be fine. Fortunately, I got that taken care of Saturday (the 15^th).

If that sounds rather chaotic, consider some friends we helped out with their taxes. They hadn’t filed since 2002, and decided to catch it all up. The IRS was rather surprised to hear that they were wanting to get things cleaned up, and gave them some slack. To add insult to injury, it looks like each year would have resulted in a refund so far (we have 2002 and 2003 done, and he got disabled in late 2003 so there won’t be much of any income for the next two years).

Then there’s the handyman dude that helps Mrs. Fetched with the chicken houses and the in-laws with the farm. He summarized all his stuff for last year and asked us to take care of it. At the last minute. With him gone somewhere with a full voice mailbox on his smellyphone. Needless to say, I hit two show-stopping snags early on during the Monday night marathon session and couldn’t get it finished. As of Wednesday night, we still haven’t heard from him or been able to reach him. Maybe he lit out for Brazil or something. He had H&R Block do his taxes last year, and they charged him over $80 to do a 1040-EZ and Planet Georgia’s form (which is simple enough to do in 15 minutes on paper with a calculator).

I’m seriously considering looking into whatever needs to be done to do this stuff for money next year. I’ll just figure I won’t have a life from March 1 to April 15, then take whatever I make and go on a two-week vacation. Our piano player at church works for a CPA, and they’re totally swamped during tax season... maybe they would funnel the piddly jobs to me. I could charge maybe $50 for an EZ/state package; if I got only 20 of those I could take a nice vacation. I tend to be fairly conservative about what can and can’t be deducted or claimed... maybe I leave a few bucks on the table here and there, but I don’t worry about audits.

Fair warning

If I ever find the spamming cretin who owns degree-programs-online.info, it won’t be pleasant.

Figures that the buttmunch has hosting at theplanet.com; they’re pretty spam-friendly from what I’ve heard.

Full bloom

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz —
I wonder where the birdies is?

So goes a favorite doggerel of an old college buddy, whom we called Johanna Banana back when. The current answer to her question might be “Florida,” judging from the birds we saw in abundance there last week. Anyway....

We came home to find everything is in bloom around the manor. Dogwoods usually flower around April 1 on this planet.


This tree stands guard at the corner of the garage. This time of year, it buzzes to warn intruders away... or maybe it’s just the bees who swarm the top of the tree and leave us the bottom eight feet.


A closer look at that tree.


On the opposite corner of the manor house, there’s a flowering cherry tree. Cherry blossoms are supposed to be a favorite subject of haiku poets.


The dogwood tree by my outbuilding. During the summer, it provides a little shade. It won’t be long before I have to hoist the air conditioner unit into the window, though.


The dogwood bloom resembles a blood-tipped cross. That, and its flowering close to Easter, has obvious connotations among us Christian types. As a kid, I pointed that out to a Catholic friend and he promptly ate one — much to my astonishment. He didn’t get sick, but I wouldn’t make a habit of that. Some plants are toxic, after all (cherry trees are toxic to cattle, for example).


Planet Georgia’s flower is the Cherokee Rose, but if I’d had to guess I would have said it was the azalea. Or kudzu.


My sage plants are about to bloom and the parsley has gone absolutely bonkers in the last two weeks — it’s starting to produce seed and is threatening to engulf the adjacent rosemary plant. I picked up pennyroyal and lemon balm, and another rosemary (it looked so cute) while out and about yesterday as well.

Busy afternoon

Errands, errands, errands.

First, it was off to Home Despot to get some outdoor stuff & some other stuff to shore up the bug defenses. I think I wound up getting a bag of grass seed for free. Not sure how that happened.

After that, I had to zip by the auto parts place for some oil (I already have a filter or two) and a new battery charger for the bike. I also got gear oil for the final drive, but I don’t think I’ll have to change it yet. Mrs. Fetched is going to start driving my Civic around, since it gets twice the gas mileage as Barge Vader, on days when I take the bike to work (which will be as often as possible). Did I mention that gas is up to $2.75 here?

Speaking of gas, the last stop was to get some for the lawn mower; I topped off the Civic while I was at it. It took a while, since the gas station was crowded with motorcyclists and other tourist-types stopping by. I just parked & listened to the iPod until a pump opened up; it only took a couple of minutes.

I got the oil changed in the bike, in between doing a few other things (like fixing a dog pen a bit too late to keep one of the stupidogs from getting through to visit another stupidog in heat). I noticed a leaky fork seal, so I need to get that fixed before too long, and I figure the tires might last until June. So beyond a need for a good cleaning (the bike, that is), I should be ready to rumble tomorrow morning.

My back is a bit stiff from the bending over. And I need to get in bed anyway.

Third time the charm?

In the Roundup post below, I mentioned that Lobster was supposed to cough up the rent but I figured he wouldn’t. This one was a little on the spectacular side.

So yesterday evening, Mrs. Fetched caught him and asked him if he had the rent money.

“No,” he said. “That’s not important. I don’t have to pay it anyway.”

“Then pack up and get out,” said Mrs. Fetched, starting to switch to Battle Mode.

“You can’t make me leave,” he said, “it’s against the law.” (Have I mentioned that Lobster has pretty much turned off his brain lately?)

I chimed in at this point, “Show me a lease, foo’.” He had a chance to sign an agreement, which could perhaps have been construed as a lease, but never did it.

Mrs. Fetched didn’t say too much, but I’ve seen her Axe Murderer look before. Charles Manson would have thought twice before messing with someone giving him that look. After disagreeing with our choice to drop off his stuff, Lobster suddenly realized he needed to be at work and left precipitously.

Next thing I knew, garbage bags were dropping down the stairs and landing in the hallway. I went up to help, and so did The Boy. We loaded up all his stuff, dropped it on his parents’ porch (after calling them), then went to get groceries. Since Lobster works across the highway from the supermarket, I popped into the KFC to let him know where his stuff was, not to come back to FAR Manor, and to let us know if anything was missing. Having heard nothing since then, I presume he has it all.

Never say never, but I don’t think he’s coming back. I guess he just finished wearing out his welcome. This (unfortunately) being a real-life soap opera, nobody is ever completely written out of the script — but everyone is glad to see him go. After talking to Mrs. Fetched the way he did, I guess he’s lucky he didn’t have to pick his teeth off the floor with broken fingers or something.

Roundup

I spent two of the last three weeks in Florida... unfortunately, it was the week in the middle I was at FAR Manor (two trips). As I’ve done in the past, I’m going to collect a bunch of short items into a single post. I might come back and update this tonight or tomorrow if I think of anything else.

The first week, you pretty much know about already.

Lobster is (as usual) late with the rent. He seems to think he can just blow us off and spend it on clothes or whatever. WRONG! I’m hoping he’ll just move out, personally — he’s pretty much worn out his welcome as far as I’m concerned. If he takes the money and runs, fine.

From the Wishful Thinking Department: At work, I got a purchase requisition signed off for a translation project. I’m hoping to come back to work Monday to find it’s well under way.

Driving to Florida on a Spring Break Friday is not something I would advise under any circumstances. Between the time it took just to get through Atlanta, the road construction on I-4, and the usual delays (including dropping off M.A.E.), we got to where we were staying at 3 a.m. (about four hours late).

Speaking of M.A.E., I joked with BJ a few weeks back that we might just drop M.A.E. off at her aunt’s and “forget” to pick her up on the way back. Bad move: it got back to her and she thought I was serious. While we were in Florida last week, she called us just about every day to make sure nothing had changed.

As usual, there was nothing available in Orlando this time of year so we stayed at a timeshare in Titusville. Getting there at 3 a.m., we didn’t realize that the unit we were staying in was actually on the street instead of the little lane where the office and five of the units are. It took us 15 minutes to figure that out, at a time when we really didn’t need that aggravation.

Mrs. Fetched and I agree: we like Titusville. That’s probably because it’s not primarily a tourist area; Kennedy Space Center is the primary economic engine and there isn’t a beach area nearby. Even though it’s on the water, there’s only one high-rise condo development and it’s under construction. The only hurricane damage that we saw was the demolished fishing pier. Another part of its charm is that it’s separated from the Orlando (aka Tollando) area by 17 miles of marshland — fat chance that will get developed any time soon! It has that scruffy but comfortable feeling of a favorite pair of shoes. I could see myself living there more than just about any other part of the state. Not that I ever expect to escape Planet Georgia, but you never know.

Toll booth operators hate it when you pay in pennies. Tough $#!+ — if you’re going to screw over the people that pretty much keep your economy afloat by charging them to get from Point A to Point B, you need to expect some pushback. Especially when people are down to their last few bucks.

We ended up spending a night over at Mom’s — we had invited them to visit us, but they started hitting problem after problem (sound familiar?) and gave up. We decided to check out a day early and go over there instead. Very nice!

From the Rant-o-rama Department: One of the more egregious pieces of happy horse$#!+ I heard (last week or ever): men consider the “ideal woman” to be totally subservient and totally uncritical. Talk about gritting one’s teeth to keep from making a scene. Personally, that would be boring after a short while. I’d settle for someone who thinks she is (and actually is) equal, rather than superior in every way, and isn’t compelled to point out every freeking mistake (in her mind) that I make, especially when she doesn’t want to do it herself — or worse, set me up to knock me down. For example, we got in about midnight last night. Mrs. Fetched decided that the four eggs in the refrigerator were probably bad — even though I’m totally strung out from driving the last 13 hours, I’m supposed to hear (and remember) not to use the eggs on one side of the tray. (I guess making an effort to throw them out was totally out of the question.) So she wants me to fix eggs for breakfast and gets them out. Naturally, I got the “wrong” eggs. Of course she had to tell me that she knew I would get the wrong ones; but again, actually making an effort to prevent me from doing that must have been beneath her — either that, or she wanted me to get the “bad” eggs so she’d have something to gripe about. It’s getting harder and harder to scream “F**K YOU” and leave when that crap happens. I’m starting to wonder if she’s trying to kill me with stress for the insurance money.

Going north on a Spring Break Friday isn’t much better than going south. The first 100 miles were stop-and-go, finally opening up around Gainesville FL. But the freeway was pretty much carrying its capacity all the way up to Atlanta. Breaking for a picnic lunch at a rest area is probably the best way to cope with it, although things won’t necessarily be better when you get back on the road.

Finally: road atlases definitely have a shelf life. They should probably be replaced every three years or so, especially if there’s a lot of construction in areas where you’re travelling.

Two in a row!

Daughter Dearest’s chorus brought home the Musicfest 1^st place trophy for class AA! They missed the Grand Champion trophy by one point — a show choir won it.

I’d do the happy dance, but the four guys who went to pick up the trophy did it for me. We got video, but people stood up and Mrs. Fetched couldn’t get the tripod up off the benches. I’ll extract it and post it in this entry a little later.

Adios, Sonny

Early yesterday evening, cancer finished the job it started on my uncle Sonny a couple of years ago. He was unresponsive by the time we got to his place (in Florida) yesterday morning — he pretty much started shutting down Sunday evening — but perhaps he could hear us. He was surrounded by his friends and relatives at the end, and went peacefully and probably painlessly.

So Mrs. Fetched and I are staying another couple of days; the service is on Saturday and we'll head home Sunday morning.

This is a choka rather than a haiku, so I'll post it here:

The cook was puzzled:
Why were his loved ones weeping?

What they cried over
Was naught but an empty shell —

While Sonny himself,
had not felt better in years.

Recent memories:
Nephews thanked him for his help;

His two sons, stricken,
Struggled to express their love.

His partner, Colleen,
Not as ready as she thought.

His sister told them,
"Finally, he is at peace."

Friends and relatives
Praying for a miracle.

He told them good-bye,
Knowing they could not hear him —

Looking at the light,
He let it pull him upward.

The light flooded him,
Both around him and through him.

He heard bells and song,
It was new but familiar.

Finally he stopped,
A gatekeeper greeted him.

"Have a beer, Sonny,"
A frosty can of nectar —

"I'm ready to work,"
Was the master cook's reply.

"Oh, you'll work, alright;
The kitchen is waiting now.

"But those gone before —
They want some time with you first.

"Time to cook later;
Now there's a celebration.

"You gave much on Earth;
It's time for you to receive.

"Riches uncounted
For the open-handed ones,

"Who give all away,
Without thinking of themselves.

"Now enjoy yourself!
You can start cooking later.

"When the party's done,
Start preparing a big feast

"For those left behind,
Who will join you when it's time."

So heaven rejoiced,
As Sonny walked through the gates,
Into the Eternal Joy.

Impromptu road trip

Actually, I knew this was coming, but was hoping to put it off for another week or two.

My uncle in Florida, mom’s brother and dad’s best buddy (even after the divorce), is rapidly losing his battle with lung/brain/etc cancer. We’re heading down in the morning to see him for a couple of days, probably for the last time.

The Boy wanted to come, but couldn’t get the time off work. As it turns out, my other bro is coming in & so there wouldn’t have been room anyway. Daughter Dearest is stuck with school; chorus is getting ready for the national competition next week. Just Mrs. Fetched & me, it looks like. I hate leaving DD in charge of the asylum, especially since she’s not been getting up for the school bus lately, but Mrs. Fetched’s mom and brother will be up checking on things at random intervals.

Meanwhile, I’ve loaded up the iPod with a handful of audio podcasts and a couple of video podcasts — Mrs. Fetched can watch a Photoshop show if she likes; I grabbed a couple of cooking shows (and all my audio subscriptions) for me.

Bonus babies, aka new toys

They passed out bonuses at work on Wednesday — a little earlier than I was prepared for, because I’d like a new MacBook but want to wait on the next hardware revision. So to assuage the technolust, I settled for getting an iPod and all the stuff I’ll need to go with it. Seeing my iBook is fairly old, it took nearly four hours to copy all my music and photos over a USB 1.1 port... just an incentive to get that newer laptop, I guess. We also picked up a 250GB hard drive for Mrs. Fetched’s video editing system — that G4 dualie has churned along for nearly four years now with no hardware upgrades, and it seems like 80GB drives aren’t as big as they used to be — and a set of noise-cancelling headphones.

I’d like to say one thing about the headphones: They. Are. FANTASTIC.

It seems to be an axiom that whatever the absolute worst cube in the office is, it will be assigned to me. The dwelling place I’ve been stuck with for the last couple of years is certainly a candidate if not the runaway winner — as far away from the windows as possible, along a main traffic route, and directly across from a training room with at least one of everything we make. Many of those products have fans, and they run all day. The only thing that drowns it out is the blare of the trainer, whose voice carries through most of that part of the building — he “can’t” shut the door because it would get too hot. The new headphones don’t do much for the chatter, but they easily knock out 80% of the fan noise emanating from the training room. Switching off the noise canceller produced a roar that I thought at first was blood rushing through my ears (like you might hear with a seriously good headset with no sound coming in), but was actually the training room.

I was impressed enough to risk official opprobrium by wearing them on the drive home, playing my iPod into the ’phones instead of through the FM transmitter thingie. Like wearing earplugs on the motorcycle, I think I hear better with the headphones: all the wind noise and road noise and climate control fan noise simply fades away; leaving only the hum of the engine, a little residual background stuff, and the music... which I can play at a much lower volume.

The only drawback is that they're the kind that hook over your ears, with the connecting band going around the back of your head. For whatever reason, they irritate my ears after a few hours.

I would pay some serious money for a “cone of silence” headset — something that would cut out both white noise and external chatter.

Status quo

Things are rapidly getting back to what the problem children call “normal” — staying out waaayy past 10:30p.m. curfew and the like. Mrs. Fetched is again making noises about clearing them out. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Emotional constipation

Have you ever felt like something wasn’t right, but you can’t articulate it? That’s how I’m feeling tonight.

Or maybe it’s just an excuse to hit the rum a lot harder than I really should be. BWI, Blogging While Intoxicated, that’s me tonight. I guess I should go back to my card game.

Signs of spring

The last two weekends have involved yard work. It’s amazing how a simple thing like mowing down some border plants (they grow better when they’ve been zapped) leads to all sorts of other stuff. First you see all the fronds in the yard, so you rake ’em up. There’s a big bunch of grass raked up with the fronds. Next thing you know, you’ve got the generator out of mothballs, a blower plugged in, and then there’s an enormous pile of leaves and clippings burning. And what passes for a front lawn at FAR Manor is a little longer than the house and no more than 15 feet deep. Mrs. Fetched saw what I was doing and started in on the other side of the driveway (which parallels the front of the house). Thus does a 15 minute job run all afternoon.

The back yard is a bit bigger, and has been neglected for quite a while. I finally got tired of looking out the bathroom window at a bunch of sticks and twigs on the ground, got out the rakes & blower again, pulled up a zillion little pine trees (Dad helped with that quite a bit) and made a border with some logs that I will probably never get around to splitting. This side will be the yard, that side is the woods. The leaves I threw in the dog run area, also known as the moonscape.

There’s not a lot of lawn out back, which has a lot to do with the trees that nearly took over. Since some of them were leaning toward the house, we had some people come out to cut them down. Others we had a lumber company pay us to take away (they wanted the pines, which had pine beetles in them anyway). But I digress.

Warm days have brought the potted herbs outside until tomorrow afternoon (it’s supposed to get chilly again tomorrow night). I’m hearing the frogs (a spring kigo for haiku writers) peeping in nearby ponds or creeks. I can’t seem to get grass to grow right (hey, less mowing that way), but lots of other stuff just comes up on its own.

Wild onions in the yard. I added some (domestic) chives to my potted herbs, so I haven’t need to harvest them. Besides, with the dogs running around loose... yuck.


Daffodils on the roadside. They’re hardy little boogers; they grow alongside most of the roads around here and you can see them down in the woods. A cheerful reminder that winter is almost over.


The pansies are also hardy; Mrs. Fetched keeps some out through the winter and they’re still hanging around. I’ll remember to get pictures. Maybe.

Talk about lucky...

Almost like hitting the lottery....

Monday Night Cinema — special edition

This one just won’t wait for Friday night — it’s a jaw-dropper!

Turn up your sound and check out Chris Bliss: Must-See Finale

Oh hey...

I sold a photo this week! Or I should say, Mrs. Fetched sold it. It was a shot of Amicalola Falls that also appears in Fall at the Falls from November.

A local indie coffee shop bought it to screen onto their “Amicalola Blend” coffee. Not much money, but lots of free coffee coming out of this one....

Dad’s here!

Stopping by on the way back to Michigan. Updates will probably be slow (again) for the next couple of days.

Well, I’ve started...

The boss told us in the staff meeting that the word for the year is “automation.” I told him I could automate quite a bit of my work by going to a markup-based system, and he said go for it.

So I’ve stopped talking about dumping FrameMaker for groff and started doing it. Not a moment too soon — the new Intel-based Macs won’t run Classic applications, of which FrameMaker is one. I’m probably going to be getting a MacBook at work soon, and getting one for myself as well.

It helps that the latest version of groff adds support for links and bookmarks in PDFs, and the HTML output continues to improve, so I shouldn’t lose any functionality.

A Boy and his wheels

The Boy has had a Chevy Lumina sitting in the driveway for a couple of months now, waiting for the title to come in so he could get plates and insurance on it. The title arrived late last week, and Mrs. Fetched took him to get the paperwork done yesterday. He’s happy.

It’s kind of nice, not having to worry about taking him to work (or picking him up) now. At least until he runs out of gas....

Impressions from a bus ride

Busy week so far. Tuesday night, Daughter Dearest and her high school chorus got to go to downtown Atlanta to sing the national anthem at a Hawks game. I went along to videotape it, but they wouldn’t let me bring the camcorder in. Grr. But I got to see what turned out to be a pretty good game, and the home team won it for a change.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. We spent a pretty good while on a yellow school bus getting into town, and there were a few thoughts that impressed themselves on me during the ride (there and back).

I’ve always known there’s some kind of barrier between the freeway and the not-freeway, but perhaps since I was reading The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (good book if you haven’t read it — things haven’t changed much in 65 years) I saw that barrier in a different way. Instead of a safety measure, I saw a boundary between two worlds, mobile and fixed. In some places the boundary was little more than a token: a guard rail or “portable” concrete barrier, something easy to step over. In other places, the guard rail was backed by a high chain-link fence, sometimes topped with barbed wire; sometimes the fence stood alone without the guard rail. The most extreme cases were the metal or concrete sound barriers that loomed 10 feet or more above the roadside.

I still have the ability to read a book and shut out the hubbub around me. The tap on the shoulder I can’t ignore, and never was able to. Daughter Dearest was impressed that I could ignore the noise and read. The kids double-up on an iPod: one earbud in each head.

Bus seats aren’t nearly as comfortable as they were when I was 17 and weighed 140 pounds.

The height of school bus hijinks these days seems to be boys parading shirtless up the aisle. The “freeze-out” I remember from my high school days, and it was much more effective in a real winter.

The security people were very pleasant, in stark contrast to the job they’re doing. I had to ask the guy about his twisted locks; he said he’d been working on it for seven years. Amazing.

Trying to read email on a cell phone is a pain under any circumstance, and twice as much on a jouncy bus.

No-Good, Very Bad...

Warnings: Very long post, graphic

I have to say, I’ve lived a relatively sheltered — one could even say “whitebread” — existence. What I’ve called a “bad day” up to now usually involves interactions with in-laws these days: a shouting match, forgetting whatever plans I had for the weekend to take care of a die-off in the chicken houses, getting pushed into buying a house I didn’t want and can’t afford... the usual everyday stuff in a rural middle-class existence.

Yesterday redefined “bad day” for me and Mrs. Fetched. For The Boy, it was easily orders of magnitude worse. This gets a bit gross down below, You Have Been Warned.

The day started shortly after midnight. Lobster (who seemed to have got the attitude adjustment we’d hoped for, and got his repaired truck about the same time) had volunteered to pick up The Boy when the latter was done at work around 10 to 10:30p.m. But The Boy had called and told me he wanted to go to the apartment tonight because his roommate (we’ll call him “Jimi” here) was sick. “He was having trouble breathing this morning, and BJ (a mutual friend) called an ambulance but he wouldn’t go to the doctor. He has asthma and I was going to take him an inhaler.” The Boy had an inhaler from a bout of bronchitis (misdiagnosed as first-stage emphysema at the time) to give him. Having heard lies upon lies from The Boy, I was naturally skeptical about this — sounded like a massive load of fertilizer, in short.

“The agreement was, you could spend Mondays and Tuesdays (his days off from work) there. You’re supposed to be home tonight,” I reminded him. In one ear and out the other, and no explanation of what they had been doing for the previous two hours. Another friend was in Lobster’s truck (an extended cab Ranger), leaving one more open slot. M.A.E. came bouncing out to go along, and was disinvited by The Boy.

“We’re picking up another friend, so there won’t be room for you,” he told her.

Lobster, always one to take a dig at M.A.E., said “I’ll come back for you if you can give me gas money,” knowing that she didn’t.

M.A.E. came huffing back into the house and got on the phone, which is something she does a lot when she’s mad at The Boy. Since it was so late, we told her to get off the phone and she wound up talking to us until past 2 a.m. At this point, we were ready to tell The Boy to just stay at his apartment, get his GED whenever he felt like it, and find his own rides until he gets his car licensed (the title came in earlier this week).


All that went in the dumpster when the phone rang at 5:15a.m. Mrs. Fetched got it, because it’s on her side of the bed. The Boy was hysterical, barely coherent, but we got the gist of it: Jimi had died in the bathroom, with one of The Boy’s syringes sticking out of his arm, and he wanted to move out of the apartment and come home for good. Three hours of sleep or not; when you get a phone call like that from one of your kids, you get moving.

As it turned out, The Boy had actually been telling the truth about the health of his roommate for a change, even if some of the details were wrong. He was coughing up blood (never a sign of good health), and BJ called an ambulance for him and offered to pay for Jimi’s medical care if necessary. Jimi insisted that he was OK, although he certainly didn’t look OK, and refused to go to the hospital. The chronology, as best as I can piece it together so far, goes like this: about two weeks ago, he hooked up with somebody, which precipitated a relapse of his cocaine habit. When you’re diabetic, you’re the best buddy of every druggie out there, because you can buy syringes without raising suspicion... and The Boy never had to worry about securing his needles beyond the usual disposal issues. So all Jimi had to do to get a syringe was to grab one out of the bag on top of the refrigerator. I don’t know if shooting coke rips up your stomach, or he had some other issue, but it certainly wasn’t helping matters. Earlier in the week, The Boy gave Jimi his half of the rent money ($200) and told him to give it to the superintendent (two doors down). He then told the super that Jimi had the money and would bring it over when he got his half from his brother. Jimi, as far as I can tell, went and spent $100 of that on some coke.

Now we get to the events of early Saturday morning. They picked up the fourth friend, and went to The Boy’s apartment. Jimi looked horrible, but was in good spirits, walking around and talking with them. They decided to make a trek to McDonald’s (nearly an hour round trip) and grab some chow; Jimi begged off and said to go without him. So they went, and spent another hour hanging out at a gas station where another friend was working. At some point during this two hours, Jimi locked himself in the bathroom, shot up some coke, passed out immediately, vomited blood, and choked.

Having absolutely no clue as to what was going on, they dropped The Boy off at the apartment around 4:30 and drove off. He tried the bathroom door, knocked, got no answer, then started to worry after a few minutes. He knocked again, got no answer, then remembered there was a screwdriver on the dresser. He took the doorknob off, opened it up, and there was Jimi. He tried to wake him up, then called Lobster. Lobster came back, took The Boy to BJ’s (who lives nearby), then drove off. What a friend we have in Lobster, eh?

So BJ and The Boy went back up, tried to revive Jimi (here opinions diverge: I’m pretty sure he was dead before The Boy got back to the apartment; Mrs. Fetched is equally convinced The Boy saw him die), called 911 somewhere in the process. BJ left again, and The Boy called us some time after the cops arrived. We got there about 6 a.m., to find three cop cars (and a fourth soon blocked us in). We’re standing around in 28F, freezing away, The Boy barely maintaining. BJ returned, wearing a shirt from some security outfit, and talked to us and the cops. Eventually, they brought out Jimi. The Boy and Mrs. Fetched preferred not to watch this, but he was in a body bag with a sheet draped over that so there wasn’t much to see anyway. I offered a silent, clumsy benediction.

Shortly after, one of the cops asked The Boy to talk with him in the warm car. You can imagine my relief when they opened the front door for him. Presumably they got a statement, then let him out and drove off. The cops said they were done with the apartment, and the super said if the place was clean The Boy could get his security deposit back. OK, fine, we went home to regroup.

The Boy couldn’t get out of working, so after a catnap I took him up (11am to 7pm shift). Mrs. Fetched, her mom, and I gathered up cleaning supplies and went on back. The bathroom should have been declared a biohazard area; there was blood all over the floor and some on the carpet outside (The Boy and BJ dragged Jimi out partway, trying to revive him). Never one to dodge the nastiest part of any job, Mrs. Fetched donned rubber gloves and went in with the mop. I used a spot cleaner on the carpet outside, achieving partial success. Mother-in-law attacked the kitchen. After the spots, I started bagging up Jimi’s clothes, getting some help from Mrs. Fetched when some of The Boy’s got mixed in.

One surprise: even when cleaning up the effects and blood of a dead man you’ve never met, you get hungry. I ended up popping up to a nearby supermarket to get some apples, soft drinks, and the Girl Scouts were out front so I grabbed a couple boxes of cookies... and they had those roasted green peas I fell in love with a while back (wasabi flavor!). We broke for a quick snack, then finished up the job. BJ and his family came by while we were at it; Jimi’s relatives were looking for his diary and a picture of his parents (Jimi was raised by his aunt & uncle after his parents died when he was very young). BJ went through Jimi’s things, finding the diary and lots of The Boy’s syringes in the process, but never turned up the picture. There were lots of very good drawings, mostly in the heavy metal theme — he was quite talented.

Some time after BJ left, mother-in-law opened a kitchen drawer and found the picture. I called BJ, but got no answer, so I loaded Jimi’s things in the back seat of Barge Vader, The Boy’s stuff in the back, and the furniture went into the in-laws’ pickup truck. We left that place one heck of a lot cleaner than it was before The Boy moved in, I can tell you that. If there’s any money knocked off the security deposit, I’ll want to know why — in detail. We drove away, forever I hope, about 4 p.m.

After a day like that, we imposed a permanent 10:30 curfew (only exception is working late), and were in no mood to hear any arguments about it. People tend to get arrested or dead in the wee hours.