Weekend Wash-out

I should have known better than to think I was going to spend Saturday at the resort. My first hint should have been the phone starting to ring about 7:30 on Saturday morning — and I’ve let the in-laws know (several times, with various amounts of strength) that they should leave us alone until 9. I didn’t mind taking a turn at the chicken houses in the morning — Daughter Dearest had a headache and I would be enjoying the rest of the afternoon. Before we left, I threw some bread into the machine on the dough cycle, to take care of when we got back.

But as we were wrapping up, her dad came by and asked if I could help with putting an extension on the standpipe in his pond, to raise it up another foot or so. I really didn’t want to, but I’d told him some time back that I would help with that so I was pretty much stuck. Besides, I figured I could still light out right after we finished, and spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening taking a well-deserved mini-break. This pipe thing didn’t turn out so well: he had the extension bolted inside a much larger pipe; the pond water would flow up from underneath and out the extension, but the larger pipe stuck up a few more inches so debris wouldn’t have a chance to clog the outflow. Great idea on paper, but it added about 50 pounds to the weight. To make a long story short, the boat drifted backwards as I was trying to left the assembly into place and the whole thing ended up at the bottom of the pond. I was a lot more upset about it than he was; he said he’d get his grapple and try to pull it out later.

So it was time for Mrs. Fetched to deliver the coup de grace. She handed me a faucet repair kit and told me I had to fix the kitchen faucet at the rental place. $#¡+!!! Like these people are freeking paying rent anyway, more than once a whenever it won’t impact their cigarette budget. I wrote off the day and went to fix the sink.

“Oh, you can go tomorrow after church,” she reassured me. “Hey, we’ll all go after church.” Riiiiiiiiight. Like it wasn’t going to rain. I went ahead and took the photos for work that I’d figured to take Sunday, and then we all went bowling (which was actually an excuse for Daughter Dearest to meet up with a kid that she’d talked to online). The bowling outing went OK, although we would have been better off quitting after two games. The kid’s Dad, it turns out, knows a lot of the same local folks Mrs. Fetched does; we ended up yakking all evening nearly to midnight. While we were out, the rain started rolling in and lightning nailed the DSL box that I thought I’d unplugged.

Sunday morning dawned as expected: threatening. The sky pretty much opened up on us on the way to church; my little Civic hydroplaned a couple of times but I kept the car straight and the speed down, getting there without incident. It pretty much rained hard all through the service, when it wasn’t pouring even harder. We had no idea how hard until we started heading home.

Less than a mile from home, the SUV in front of us stopped and turned around. Once he cleared his bulky self out of the way, we saw why: a tree down across the road. Two ways to go around, and the shorter way involves a dirt road for a stretch. I turned around and headed back, flashing my lights at oncoming cars to warn them of impending unhappiness ahead.

All the creeks were flooding over; one usually scenic pasture on a sheep farm was especially wetter than normal. Crossing a large creek, it looked scary even though the water was still well below the road... and this is what the crossing looked like several hours later. The next creek was even scarier at that time; it was over the road a couple of inches. In one of the less intelligent moves I’ve made since moving up here in the first place, I put it in low gear and crossed it (without incident). There was another tree down just before the driveway, but the sheriff’s office had some prisoners clearing it and they finished shortly enough.

“Resort delayed is resort denied,” I told Mrs. Fetched.
“Hm. Well, you can go next weekend.”
Like I believe she meant it. July 4 weekend? The place will be packed even if I was allowed away from FAR Manor. Even now, it doesn’t do to dwell on it much... anger doesn’t solve anything for me.

Rain gauges were full, so we got at least six inches of rain in the space of a few hours — after six weeks of nearly no rain at all. Making up a rain deficit is one thing, making it up all at once is another.

But the nightmare was only beginning. Whatever wind there was in the storm blew copious amounts of rain into two of the chicken houses... unless it just went under the foundation and came up from below. Oh, and we had to shovel our driveway out of the road. Already in “I just don’t care anymore” mode, I basically shut off my brain and did whatever I was told until it was time to leave.

I might feel differently about things if I felt like I was getting support through the week — things like supper waiting when I got home from work (which pretty much makes everything else possible around here), things either clean or nobody griping about them not being clean, or if I thought anyone had any respect for projects that I would like to work on from time to time. But the way things are, everyone seems to think that I’m obligated to them from 7a.m. Saturday morning to 11p.m. Sunday night. There’s not going to be a repeat. One way or the other.

The Lord Provideth

Mrs. Fetched told me yesterday (Thursday) that she was thinking about taking the kids up to a resort where we have a membership, about an hour from FAR Manor. Naturally, I wouldn’t be able to go along, since I would be working. So I opined that I might go on Saturday. Telegraphing weekend plans to Mrs. Fetched can be a mistake some times; she has a habit of torpedoing them.

So we were wrapping up VBS this evening, and she caught me and told me what I least wanted to hear: it was our turn to clean the church, and we would have to do that before I could go anywhere tomorrow.

But The Lord Provideth: some of the other people were taking down decorations and starting to clean, so not only was it happening tonight, we were going to have a lot of help! A couple of the young teenage females even took over vacuuming the sanctuary, which is usually what I do when we clean. Naturally, I had to go over a couple of the spots they missed, and they didn't know I usually run the vacuum over the pews (which are upholstered)... but they caught on fast.

Looks like I’ll get a little poolside break tomorrow after all... unless something else blows up.

Agreement

This afternoon, as I was pounding on work stuff & Mrs. Fetched was doing the same with her own, she told me: “I can’t wait for this week to be over with.”

I said, “I’ve felt that way since Tuesday.”

Grasping the nettle

Two projects blew up on me at work this week. That wouldn’t usually be a major problem — happens all the time — except that I got volunteered to run the games for Vacation Bible School at church this week. Then someone got the brilliant idea to start VBS at 6:30 instead of 7:00, which gave me no time to run home and get prepared... but now it’s out of my hands; I had to pass off the games to my (quite capable) assistant.

A while back, I mentioned wanting to move a desk into the bedroom, and expecting Mrs. Fetched to deprecate it as she usually does any idea of mine. But now it’s too hot to work on the porch (summers have attitude in the south, and the first day of summer had it in spades here), and everyone else was at VBS, so I just went ahead and did it. Then I ate some leftovers and got to work.

The family came in a bit after 9:00. Mrs. Fetched walked in, saw my setup, and said, “Good thing you cleaned that area up. That looks good there.” I was stunned but did a decent job of not showing it.

Just goes to show... Mrs. Fetched is completely predictable if you run an idea by her. But if you just do it, she’s completely random.

That didn’t last long...

Daughter Dearest has already bailed from her first job, after just over a week. Some b***h of a customer got snippy with her, which upset her, and her boss decided DD couldn’t handle the stress. She still has the second job with our friends from church, who have an e-learning business, so she’s not completely back to nesting in her room with the laptop. She (and Mrs. Fetched) met with her erstwhile boss today, who hasn’t changed her mind but will be willing to re-hire her once she has more waitressing experience.

So I think she’s going to apply at Fire Mountain. With any luck, we’ll be able to talk them into putting her on the same shift as M.A.E. so we only have to do one drop-off and pick-up.

I know the answer, but I can’t say...

Well, I can’t say it on a public mailing list using my real name, anyway. But it’s too funny not to share.

The following conversation took place on a mailing list I subscribe to. The text in red is from a documentation manager who works for a competitor; text in blue is someone who is trying to be helpful.

Anyone with experience converting from AuthorIT to FrameMaker 7.2?

Did you have any significant problems? What sort of prep work did you do before converting?

Why are you interested in converting from AuthorIT to FrameMaker? I ask because I have just been working in a place where AuthorIT is being considered as a replacement for FrameMaker - is AuthorIT not delivering the goods?

My company uses FrameMaker and may go to XmetaL eventually. We acquired a company that outsourced the doc to a turn-key vendor that does not even store files on our corporate server, let alone use our standard templates, our file management system, and so on. This creates all sorts of problems, including putting our intellectual property at risk, severely limiting our control of resourcing projects, and so on.

At this point, I should mention that I have a pretty good idea of which company it is that got acquired: one I used to work for about ten years ago, in fact — although the outsourcing bit must have happened recently. And so the thread continues:

Thanks! That sort of outsourcing takes a lot of courage, or faith in your supplier, or stupidity!

You can probably guess what my vote would be. I was happy for the employees of this particular ex-corporation to see them get acquired; that’s a place in dire need of a culture enema. In fact, once the enema has been administered, I would consider working for them again.

I thought about jumping in on a thread on one of the other mailing lists that the competitor posted to, where my email address isn’t tied to the company I work for, but I don’t have anything to say that they probably aren’t aware of already — there isn’t a trivially easy migration path. You have to do what engineers call a “double-pump,” convert to an intermediate format that both programs understand, then convert that to your target format. If they are using structured FrameMaker, they could create AuthorIT templates to export XML in a format that their FrameMaker setup could use directly. Otherwise, they should export to Word format, using the same style names as their FrameMaker templates, and expect some cleanup work.

A question that will be harder to answer, but the manager is going to have to ask soon, is “Do we clear the decks of any ongoing work and do this conversion all at once, or convert each document as it’s needed?” There are advantages and trade-offs either way. Doing it all at once means you might miss some deadlines (which tend to slip on their own anyway), and you may end up converting documents that you won’t need later on, but you also don’t need to keep a rather expensive AuthorIT database around. Doing it piecemeal is probably easier, but you have to keep the old rig around (unless you just export everything to the intermediate format and do the second conversion later) and the goal line is hard to see (how do you know when you’re done?).

Such are the decisions a manager has to make. I suppose if I were the one making the decision, I would export everything to the intermediate format, and archive anything not being actively maintained. Then I could decommission the AuthorIT rig and “insource” some writers to import the active projects and get to work.

The frustration of forgetting

The usual pre-visitor cleaning frenzy is well under way at FAR Manor. Let me be frank here: I usually don’t bother doing any cleaning until Mrs. Fetched gets into a lather about it, because it’s a losing battle. The 80/20 rule applies here: 80% of the clutter is caused by 20% of the people (one, and that’s Mrs. Fetched). She’ll come in and drop whatever she’s carrying — groceries, mail, tools, church stuff — on the most convenient horizontal surface because she’s too tired or too busy to deal with it right away. Naturally, she denies it. (I suppose I would too.)

The real problem arises when I try to do (or suggest) something that might be something approaching a solution. Any time I’ve done anything, she immediately shoots it down with no consideration of discussion. Fool that I am, I keep forgetting this and need a reminder from time to time.

So during the cleanup, a couple of dusty paper trays (in/out boxes) turned up. Hey, I thought, we both end up with magazines and miscellaneous bits of paper strewn around the house — why not put these to use as a way to collect those things we haven’t dealt with yet? Since there was plenty of “test data” on the kitchen table and the built-in desk next to it, I laid the trays side-by-side on the desk and started sorting stuff into them. I guess The Boy gets his ability to construct elaborate fantasy worlds from me — I had the idea all laid out in my mind. Anything we weren’t ready to sort through would go in our inboxes; we could put stuff in each others’ boxes as long as we didn’t care what happened to it next. No more clutter all over the place, right?

WRONG.

Mrs. Fetched took one look at it and immediately said, “That can’t go there. I’m putting the bread box there.” No curiosity about what I had in mind, no consideration given to the idea — and when I tried to explain, it immediately became open hostility. It was my idea, it was a solution, therefore it had to die and quickly. I tipped the contents of her box onto the desk, picked up the few things of mine and dropped them in the bedroom, then took the trays to the outbuilding where they might see some use.

Mrs. Fetched isn’t very big on solutions, she much prefers to complain about the problems instead. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and it just doesn’t seem to stick in my mind no matter how often it’s been hammered in (probably because I can’t even imagine such illogical thinking). She would rather complain about mice in the house than let the cats in, for example. I suppose it would be OK if my entire home life consisted of following her around and cleaning up after her, but that’s too high a price to pay. In the last couple of years, I have begun to understand why some men will go from work to a bar for several hours — there’s no supper (but lots of complaints) waiting at home, why would anyone rush to go home to that?

I then considered setting up a small desk in our bedroom where I can keep my things organized, but I know exactly how that would play out. First, there would be resistance to bringing a desk in — it would make it harder to reach the blinds, it would block the window, it would block the vent, it doesn’t look right, etc. etc. etc. Even if by some miracle I brought the desk in without her disapproval, it would rapidly become useless to me. She has no concept of “my” space: it’s her house, her kitchen, her furniture... I just pay for everything.

Proof: In the house we lived in before, she suggested I take over a room that had been added on and was connected to the rest of the house through an opening where the dining room window used to be and a door that opened on the porch. I had the place all set up the way I wanted it... and then anything she didn’t want to deal with, she started throwing in that room. I’d clean it up and she would throw more stuff in. Before too long, I was having a hard time keeping enough floor space clear to walk from one end to the other. After a while, I gave up — then she complained how messy it looked. I told her to stop throwing her crap in there and she escalated hostilities. I’ve never been one for confrontation, unless pushed to the wall, and that works against me (but some years back, every time she complained about clutter, I would automatically respond “Stop buying more crap at Wal-Mart all the time then,” until she actually stopped). At FAR Manor, the reason my outbuilding hasn’t been treated likewise is because it’s not part of the house — it’s more convenient for her to drop things on a table than walk 30 yards (round-trip).

So I guess I’ll have to start spending more time out there. I have enough air conditioning, but need better heat in the winter. I also need to get Ethernet or wireless run out there somehow (wireless might be easier if I can get a signal through the sheet-metal siding), and get a small refrigerator where I can keep some beer, then I’ll be home free. Daughter Dearest said about this plan, “and we’ll never see you again.” Well, maybe, at least until Mrs. Fetched is ready to do more about problems than complain.

Making lemonade

When you’re confronted with a device designed to be used against you, how do you react? Geeks find their own uses for technology.

This is precisely why attempts to firewall access to naughty sites is ultimately futile — motivated kids will eventually break through whatever obstacles you throw at them, or (like in this case) turn them to their advantage. You have to trust them to make good choices — in our case, we’re batting .500 at the moment.

Things that make you go “hunh!”

One of the good things about the Techcomm list is that it’s not archived. That means we can gripe about our jobs, or make jokes about Britney Spears, or otherwise say what’s on our mind, without it coming back to haunt us when a prospective employer googles our names.

So during the silly jokes about June 6, 2006 being the Day of the Beast, a couple of people asked what that was about... and the discussion quickly turned to comparative religion. Somebody posted a link to Beliefnet’s Personality Quiz, that is supposed to compare your personal beliefs with those of various religions and denominations. The Techcomm tradition is to take whatever quiz is given and post the results for all to see (remember, no archives!).

But I have to admit being boggled by my results (top 5 of 26 shown):

1. Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (85%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (75%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (72%)
5. Liberal Quakers (70%)

Along with the obligatory oatmeal joke, one of the responses pointed to the Quaker Wikipedia entry. I like what I saw, although I suppose I’m predisposed to like it given my quiz results. The funny hats are mostly gone, a result of Quakers realizing that their dress code was becoming a badge of pride — that takes guts, admitting that one of your most distinctive features is getting in the way of your faith. Nowadays, “plain dress” means having the clothes you truly need and avoiding designer brands or other ostentation. I guess I could give up the Hawaiian shirts.

Not that it matters; finding the funny hat and so on would probably be easier than finding a Quaker congregation on this part of Planet Georgia. There are several “meetings” (as they call them) in metro Atlanta, but that’s a long drive from FAR Manor. Fortunately, where I am now (Methodist, see #2 on the list), the church is flexible enough to accommodate most Quaker beliefs and would indeed consider many of them to be virtuous. So unless I find myself moving to Pennsylvania or Ohio, I don’t see myself changing churches any time soon.

Take the quiz, if you dare, and post your results in the comments. This could be fun.

The wisdom of a teenager

Daughter Dearest wound up, on a Sunday afternoon of all things, being the only waitress at the lodge. The other one called in sick. She summed it up thus: “Real life sucks. Almost as much as the other kind.” There’s a kind of Zen-like quality to that statement.

’Course, the bright side was that she got all the tips for the afternoon & evening. Just the credit card tips came to $75, and her cash tips tend to match the credit tips, so if she made less than $140 on the night I would be surprised. We were joking yesterday that she would be able to afford a car before she got her real driver's license. If she has a few more nights like that, it won’t be a joke.

“Chigger Weed”

That’s what Mrs. Fetched calls them, anyway. It’s growing wild in front of an azalea along the driveway. Each flower is about the size of a dime.

I noticed them this morning while weed-eating, and decided to get a picture instead of mowing them down — sometimes, I’ll take the bribe of flowers or berries that a weed offers. But I wailed on a lot of briars, grass sprouting here & there, and small pine trees (and I’ve pulled up hundreds of the little suckers). I also ran enough sticks through the chipper to supply our mulch needs for the forseeable future, and used the Mantis that we bought at a yard sale last week to uproot all the weeds in between the sunflower rows.

If you’ve never seen a Mantis, they’re a cool little gadget — basically, a mini-tiller powered by a two-smoke chain saw engine. I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and the way it bounces when it hits a rock is quite amusing. I got two feet of air once last night, chewing up the grass in a flower bed. It really does great when the dirt is soft, digs in and starts throwing rocks at you out the back. When it gets too much vegetation wrapped around the tines, I hang it in a tree and pull out the strings.

Here in the late afternoon, it’s too hot to work outside. I finally broke down and stuck the window air conditioner in the outbuilding.

Her First Job

I picked up Daughter Dearest from her first day being a waitress. She was exhausted, footsore, and had about $35 in tips.

Seems that the lodge’s idea of waitress training involves teaming you up with two more experienced servers and throwing you to the wolves having you serve a party of 57. She only messed up the drinks once, pouring unsweet tea into sweet tea glasses, and spilled a little coffee on her leg. Not bad for her first day. She’ll get used to being on her feet pretty quick; I figure it won’t bother her at all in about a week. We just have to make sure she has good shoes.

She’ll be doing this five days a week, all summer long. She’ll probably pull in $200 a week, which isn’t fantastic but not bad for a high school kid. It will be enough to get a car, or maybe a scooter or small motorcycle. (She has always loved the wind in her face.) They'll cut her hours back when school starts, probably to three evenings a week, but that will be enough for gas and so on.

Just think: In two years, God willing, we’ll be packing her off to college.

Pesto season has arrived!

My basil plant finally got big enough where I felt comfortable harvesting some leaves for pesto. Next thing I knew, it was blooming. I’m going to snap off the flower/seed stalks, mostly, so it doesn’t get four feet high overnight.

Click on the tight close-up to get a wider view.

Bee and Spanish Lavender

Taken in front of a Mexican restaurant yesterday. I just happened to have my camera with me. The bees were all over the lavender, but didn’t stay in one place very long. I just kept shooting until I got a couple of bees more or less in focus.

Lost in Translation

Another gem from Techcomm.

There were red faces in the Ordnance Survey office when its English surveyors returned from compiling a list of house names in mid- and north Wales. The results contained an unusually high number of properties called “Gwyliwch rhag y ci” or “Caewch y git,” better known in English as “Beware of the Dog” or “Shut the Gate.”

What’s worse than a song stuck in your head?

Answer: one stuck in your head that you’re dancing to.

This is all Daughter Dearest’s fault. Night before last, she introduced me to Cascada. iTunes has her album, Every Time We Touch, but for a whole CD’s worth of tunes I’d rather spend a couple extra bucks on the disc than download the songs and deal with even Apple’s lightweight DRM.

So yesterday we were out & about, Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest were getting DD some tan pants for her new job (she starts Friday). I figured instead of hanging around a clothing store, which is right up there with a trip to the dentist in my book, I’d pop into Target on the way home to see if they had the Cascada CD. They did, I called the wimmin to let them know, and headed on home.

So I loaded up the iPod and gave it a listen. Whoa... just the stuff I like: high-energy, massively upbeat. And then I started spontaneously twitching to the song, now well stuck in my head. Thank God I didn’t have any meetings today. As it was, I was constantly trying to keep a lid on it while anyone else was around. (If you want to hear what has been bedeviling me all day, hit the above link and select “Everytime We Touch” on her jukebox.)

It’s finally flushing out... maybe because I’m listening to DI.fm Hardcore and I have something external to make me twitch.

66(0)6

Today is June 6, 2006, considered the Day of the Beast by some (6/6/6, geddit?). JohnB on the Techcomm list dredged up some information that might be... uh, handy.

My personal favorite is 666F.

660 Approximate number of the Beast

DCLXVI Roman numeral of the Beast

666.0000 Number of the High Precision Beast

0.666 Number of the Millibeast

/ 666 Beast Common Denominator

(-666) ^ (1/2) Imaginary number of the Beast

1010011010 Binary of the Beast

1-666 Area code of the Beast

00666 Zip code of the Beast


Phillips 666 Gasoline of the Beast

Route 666 Highway of the Beast

666 F Oven temperature for Roast Beast

666 mg Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast

666i BMW of the Beast

668 Next-door neighbor of the Beast

766 Upstairs neighbor of the Beast

333 The semi-Christ

Daughter Dearest, photo artiste

Daughter Dearest had a little fun with the camera and iPhoto today, and came up with a couple of good ones. She was gracious enough to allow me to share them....

The Eyes have it


Self-portrait

This is SO true

Go visit Shout Out Out Out and click the link for “Forever Indebted.” The lyrics are quite rude, but sometimes The Truth doesn’t come in pretty packages.

For some light humor with family-friendly lyrics, try the next song down: “Nobody Calls Me Unless They Want Something." Perfect song for the Robot Dance, and I can relate.

I survived the weekend

The wedding shoot went OK. No dead batteries, no mangled tapes, nobody fell out of the balcony/hallway (which would have been me since I was the one up in the balcony).

So Daughter Dearest (who ran the third camera) applied for a waitress job at the iHop yesterday... and got a waitress job at the mountaintop lodge where The Boy used to work. I’m still trying to figure out how that worked.

Looooooong day

It began at 6 a.m. this morning (and I especially don’t like getting up that early on weekends) to help set up the church yard sale. It continued first with hauling furniture to the yard sale, then a quick shower and over to a wedding rehearsal (we’ve videotaping the wedding tomorrow & wanted to figure out where to put the cameras and what to shoot).

After the rehearsal dinner, we trundled home for a while. I just got back from picking up M.A.E. from her new job at Fire Mountain (which she is doing quite well at in the first few days, learning what she needs to and everything). So I’ve been going for nearly 19 hours straight.

Bedtime.

It never registered

As the time for refinishing the wood floor in our living room draws ever closer (i.e. we’ll get it done someday), questions come up. One of the big ones is what we’re going to do about the baseboard heaters lining many of the walls.

The baseboards are the original heating system in the manor. There’s an oil-fired boiler in the basement that used water from the original well (a second well was drilled somewhere along the way, because of the taste of the water in the first); the system would simply send hot water (steam?) through the baseboards. If I remember correctly, the house I lived in through high school (in Moline, MI) had a similar system. You would hear an occasional gurgle, and that was about it.

Over the years, a couple of problems developed with the system: the chimney cap came off, and a water pipe broke somewhere upstairs. The previous owners threw up their hands, installed a gas furnace (actually one upstairs and one downstairs), and shut down the baseboard system. The chimney is blocked up with a piece of tin, with a couple of bricks to keep it there, to keep rain water from running in.

A friend of ours used to do construction work, until he fell off a roof a couple of years ago and broke his neck. He cruises around in a wheelchair most days, but on good days he manages with a walker or even a cane. He’s trying to get back into the saddle, as a designer & supervisor if nothing else. So when we told him we were planning to refinish our floor, he advised against it — he explained the process, and the many things to go wrong, irreversibly so. But when we got quoted $4200 to have it done (which would about cover a new floor entirely), we’ve pretty much decided to take our chances.

It was the process of getting the quote that led to the question of the baseboards. A floor sander can’t quite reach the corners, so normally you cover that up with some molding. The baseboards protrude nearly two inches from the wall, and are mounted about an inch above the floor, so they’ll have to come off (the quote included removing and discarding the baseboard). When I mentioned that to our friend, he got a funny look and asked us why we wanted to take them out — hey, they’re not working anyway.

“Some people use them for cooling,” he said. “You bury a water tank and pump water through the system. It works about as good as air conditioning.”

“That system pulls water out of its own well,” I pointed out. “What if we just ran a return line to the well instead of using a tank?”

He looked awestruck. “That would be cold water coming out of a well!”

So I need to find and fix a water line upstairs, locate the original well, and run a return pipe to it. If it doesn’t pan out, there’s not a lot of investment involved. Low risk, potential high return, what more could you ask? But now we’ll have to remove the baseboards to do the floor and replace them afterwards.

Of Tires, Jobs, and Cameras

We picked up The Boy yesterday, planning to help him put a tire on his car (parked near some apartments close to the retail district). The tire part went by the wayside rather quickly: the rim he had was a six-holer, and his car is a five-holer. He (and a friend) came home with us anyway. I tried grilling some burgers & frying some bacon, got distracted by the guest(s), and ended up burning everything. Fortunately, Mrs. Fetched had some chicken in the oven.

So after borrowing the Barge, and a failed attempt at an unauthorized side trip, he came on home and spent the night with us. He agreed to help with the chicken houses in the morning, but it took me an hour & a half to get him moving after Mrs. Fetched left.... I ended up getting him there with the job about halfway done. I rigged a mulch bag onto the chipper and had barely started chopping some pine limbs when they returned.

With The Boy back, the next order of business was to get a tire for his car. He said his jack was no good, so I grabbed one we had laying around and off we went... only to find two tires flat. The one he knew about was ripped open pretty good, and the other (both of them were on the front) was showing metal at the corner. Fortunately, his “no good” jack turned out to be serviceable, and we hoisted both sides of the car and got the tires. We put the fake spare (which is flat) on one side and left the other jacked up, then went to get the tires.

Two hours and $150 later, we were back at the scene. The left side tire was giving us trouble, primarily because the jack wasn’t lifting high enough, but The Boy hit on the idea of putting the second jack under the axle and we got all the lift we needed pretty quickly. We told him he needed to either repay or work this off — he’s still sticking to his story of instant riches in August, but he said he’d work it off.

As I was getting ready to head home, Mrs. Fetched called — turned out she was just across the highway from us. Upon joining them, I wound up with M.A.E. as a passenger; Mrs. Fetched was going to get some groceries and she didn’t want to hang around. We got a mile down the road when she gasped, “Crap! I’m supposed to talk to the Fire Mountain people today about that job!”

“It’s 3:00,” I said, “and you’re supposed to be there some time between 2 and 4. Looks like a good time to do it.” I turned around at the builder supply place and took her back. Good thing... she got the job. They wanted to see if she cared enough to show up, she did, they needed to fill a position, everybody’s happy!

With a few minutes at home to wash my face and arms, we then went to see the guy Mrs. Fetched has worked with on video projects in the past. He’s retiring, selling his house, and leaving for smaller pastures. Mrs. Fetched has lusted after his XL-1 camcorder for a while, and he was ready to sell everything for fire-sale prices. She wound up with two pro-level camcorders, a seriously high-end tripod, and a VHS duplication rig, for $2700. Then he said, “I’m also going to sell my portrait camera.” He named a price for the entire kit that was ridiculously low. “You can turn around and sell it, or keep it, whatever you want to do... I don’t care.” This isn’t low-end stuff... a Mamiya RB-67 with several lenses, extensions, backs. Pretty much an entire portrait studio (minus lighting) in a hard-shell case. My first thought was a co-worker who’s single and a camera buff... he might want a medium-format camera. My second thought was that I’ve been taking a lot of product portraits lately, maybe I should keep it and stop wrestling with my digital camera. I could probably get a digital back for this thing, but it would be a) overkill b) hideously expensive.

I’ve floated by Mrs. Fetched the idea of starting our own documentation service — she does video, I can do text and still photography. We could pretty much cover everything between us. Maybe with some good equipment in our hands, this is the time.

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.