FAR Future, Episode 79: Letters From the Sand

Last exhortation to vote in my poll… closing time is 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. Thanks to all who have voted so far.

Friday, December 21, 2035
Letters From the Sand

What a wonderful Christmas present… a letter from The Boy came last week. Sounds like he’s doing well. I edited ever so slightly.

Hey. Sorry I haven't wrote until now, I just started walking one day and kept going. There's still people out on the road, even when it's getting cold like now. But I was going east, so I decided to check out the beach to see how big the flood was getting.

I got to Myrtle Beach, and somebody asked me if I wanted a job getting junk off the islands that are flooding out. The pay sounded good, so I said sure. We're working off a boat, digging up storage tanks from gas stations and getting transformers off power poles and those boxes on the ground. The government doesn't want it [messing] up the water, I guess, and the crews make some money selling what we get out. There's a couple people still living in the condos on the beach, even with a foot or two of water coming in the ground floor. They said they don't want to leave, it's their place and they're not going even if they don't have electric or water. That's so stupid. One of the boat owners said if a big storm comes in, they won't be able to leave and if the building collapses they're dead. It's not like they don't have nowhere to go, they can get a place in Atlanta, Raleigh, or Columbia.

I'm sorry I can't live with you guys yet, I've got [stuff] to work out from when they sent me to Colorado. The government gave me a card that lets me get food even if I'm not working, so I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry about anything right now, except if something breaks while I'm working and that doesn't happen anyway. At night, sometimes I play guitar in one of the bars that the salvage people like to hang out at. It's a little extra money and I guess they like my music. It would be nice if we had some electricity for some amps and a drummer, I could play some really good stuff, hahaha. Some of the people I work with are optouts, or used to be. They say they're seeing if they can get back in. They don't talk much, but they smoke with me on breaks and come to the bar to hear me play. I wrote a song for them called I Opted Out Today and they laugh when I play it and put money in my tip jar, so I try to play it every night.

So I don't know what I'll do when this job is done. It's hard working in the cold water, but they give us heated gear and it helps a lot. I guess when we get all the toxic [stuff] out, we'll either move to another place or I'll hit the road again. I always wanted to go out to California, so maybe I'll save up some of my money and get a train ticket. Maybe I'll stop in Colorado and piss on the shale. I heard they put some of the junta people there, so maybe I'll piss on them too. Well, gotta go, playing a gig in a few minutes. Love you guys.

It’s good to know that he hasn’t opted out, and he’s doing something useful (and something he likes, although not necessarily at the same time). But it makes you wonder how many people up and down the coast are sticking to their homes. I hope he gets to see California, and maybe play his guitar on what’s left of the beach out there. He sent a picture, I guess a co-worker took it, of him sitting on a car with his guitar in his lap. The water was up to the windows on the car, with a half-drowned gas station in the background and the morning sun peeking out from behind a cloud. I texted his gadget and told him he should use that picture for an album cover. He texted back, “Yeah hahaha call it Optout Beach.”

They had a segment on “coastal salvage” on the tube last week. The Boy wasn’t in it — they were showing crews down in Florida, I guess because it’s warmer down there and the documentary crew didn’t have to get too cold. Or maybe they were just getting a tax write-off for a vacation. But like The Boy said, there’s both a financial and an environmental incentive to get stuff out of there. I told Daughter Dearest about her brother’s new occupation; she said “Don’t tell Pat, he doesn’t need any ideas.”

“I thought Pat’s been getting better lately,” I said. “He and Ray like to hang out, right?”

“Well, yeah… until something better comes along, anyway. Oh, did I tell you he wants a gadget?”

“I’m not surprised. He’s a teenager; that’s the time for ’em, right? Let him connect with some other kids, maybe he won’t feel so alienated here.”

“Yeah.”

“Besides, it can be a creative tool. Don’t the newest ones have a synth? Let him start making some music like he talked about.”

“I’m afraid of what he might start making. Remember what The Boy did with a guitar?”

“Kids are always going to look for some kind of music to piss off their parents. As long as he doesn’t go in for death country, it’ll be fine. He doesn’t have any B.F.E. or Prairie Dogs tracks, does he?”

“I don’t think so.”

We ordered his gadget, it came in the Monday mail, and he immediately started in on the synth. Turns out he’s into clatter… and he’s not bad at it. If you haven’t heard clatter, it’s 90% metallic percussion… and dang difficult to do well mixing, let alone live. Done poorly, it sounds like a drunk rampaging in the kitchen cabinets; letting the noise overcome the rhythm is the surest way to make bad clatter. Done well, the noise compliments and supports the rhythms; it’s catchy (at least for those of us who like it) and gets you moving. The best part, from Pat’s standpoint, is that Daughter Dearest has little in her bag of musical lessons that applies to clatter, so he’s getting lessons from a teacher down in Atlanta (they owed us for Serena teaching them a creative writing course, so it’s all good). Now Pat just needs a bigger battery so he doesn’t run his gadget down in the middle of the day…

continued…

Foom!

When you’re running down the street, and your
hair is on fire… people get out of your WAY!”
— Richard Pryor

As I was shoveling down a bowl of cereal this morning, Mrs. Fetched asked me, “Do you want to help me with the chickens?”

“Sure,” I said, “as long as I can get to a junkyard by noon to get a jack and fake spare for the Civic.”

“Oh yeah.” I mentioned this need somewhat earlier in the week. I once had these things, but Daughter Dearest’s Civic did not and I’d rather have me stranded than her. While I have new tires on the Civic at the moment, that doesn’t mean I won’t catch a nail or just wear ’em out later on.

So while she was getting ready, I called a junkyard about a half-hour from the manor, and got no answer. Their Yellow Pages ad included a website, so I pulled that up… and found they’re not even open on Saturday. (That would explain their not answering the phone.) “Try the mechanic,” Mrs. Fetched suggested. “He might have some in his bonepile.” I have that number in my phone already, so I tried it and got the same no-answer. Having struck out, I went with Mrs. Fetched.

While we were there, she tried unsuccessfully to start the incinerator. This is a normal occurrence when it has been raining, especially as much as it has this week. “Do we have any gas?” she asked. We did, since I’d filled a pair of 1-gallon cans last weekend; one had 2-stroke mix in it, but the other was straight gas. She sent me home to get the gas while she raised a curtain that had many gallons of rainwater trapped in the folds.

When I returned, she had me pour about half the gallon into the incinerator (which is nearly full of dead chickens). “Did you bring a match?”

“I didn’t think we’d need one,” I said. “You can just hit the igniter and it should get it going.” She hit the switch…

FOOM!!! Fire belched out the smokestack and blew the access hatch off the front (the latch has been broken for a long time). I found this highly entertaining, really the high point of a morning that involved dealing with both heavy rain and stinky chicken houses, and vocalized my appreciation. “I’m glad you enjoyed that,” she groused. “It scared me.” Well, sure… but nothing happened we weren’t expecting. By this time, the rain was slacking off.

After finishing the last chicken house, we came outside to find Mrs. Fetched’s mom. Suddenly, the “we don’t have to take hay to the cows” became “we have to take hay to the cows.” Grumble. At least it had stopped raining. But the 12:30 ending became a 2:30 ending, involving me locking the keys in the truck and having to go to the in-laws to get the spare (at least Mrs. Fetched now had something to be amused about). So we went back to the incinerator and Mrs. Fetched again tried to get it going, with no success.

“Do you think we can pour some more gas in there?” she asked. There was a little smoke coming out of the stack, but no obvious fire.

“I suppose.”

“Well, be careful!”

I obliged, splashing some gas into the main opening. With no bark-back, I commenced to pour some more in. With about a quart left, I was thinking “that should be enough—”

FOOM!!! For a moment, all I saw was flame, then the normal picture returned. I’d jumped about three feet to the left; Mrs. Fetched squawked and got out of her jacket (one sleeve was on fire); the gas can was lying on its side, also burning at the nozzle end. She put out her jacket, and I slapped my head to make sure I wasn’t doing a Richard Pryor, then grabbed the can and flung it into the gravel where it continued to burn. With the immediate danger past, I started laughing — I’m sure if we’d gotten video, it would have been worthy of Jackass.

“That wasn’t funny!” Mrs Fetched said, then started laughing too.

I felt my hair. “It’s singed!” which, somehow, made things even funnier. “I guess I’ll have to get another haircut.”

“Nah, it doesn’t look too bad.” My hands both had all the hair singed off them as well, and there were tender spots on my left hand and on my forehead above my right eye. (Good thing I wear glasses all the time.) Mrs. Fetched’s jacket didn’t even look singed; I think maybe a little gas splashed on it and she put out the fire before it scorched the material.

Meanwhile, the gas can continued to burn in the gravel. “Do you think it will blow up too?”

“I don’t think so,” but all the same we backed the truck up and watched it finish burning up from a few dozen yards away. Once the flames mostly died down, I grabbed a shovel and put out the molten remains before dousing it in a convenient mud puddle and then carrying it to the dumpster.

And we never did get the incinerator started, although we tried for nearly half an hour afterwards.

I suppose you could say we were very lucky. On the other hand, if we actually were lucky, we wouldn’t be dealing with chicken houses. :-P

Weekend Cinema

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

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

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

Polls, Jobs, and Other Incidentals

If you hadn’t noticed yet, I’ve put a poll in the sidebar (just below my picture)… just curious to see what comes back. Lurkers, regulars, drive-bys, please go hit a checkbox or three and then feel free to expand on your thoughts in a comment here. I’m going to let it run through the end of March.

The Boy… are you sitting down? … got a JOB!!! In (wait for it… wait for it) a poultry processing plant. ROFL — we can’t get away from the dang chickens, can we? He had his first day of training today, one more tomorrow, then he’ll be working the night shift. His job entails hosing down the equipment to keep it clean & mostly sterile… think of The Boy in waterproofs next time you eat chicken, OK?

Meanwhile, things got a little weird at my job today. It really started last week, I suspect, when I was working at home shooting some pix for a new product and found that the mounting holes were spaced ¾ inch too far apart. There was a scramble to fix that problem, especially since time is running out, and the payback came this morning. First, a picture on a quick install guide (for a different product) said “750” instead of “760” — which might have been an issue, if the text in question was large enough to see on the printed version without a very strong magnifying glass. They had to open the PDF and zoom waaayyyy in to see it… and of course, this was suddenly a critical item. Also critical, after not being even noticed for about a year, is that the picture of the yellow Ethernet cable is “too green.” I ended up borrowing DoubleRed’s desktop PC to use for the “connect to computer” shots… of course, it doesn’t have an Ethernet card, but I was able to stick a card in and make it look right. I’m pretty sure this was Revenge of the Engineers… they have their little freak-out dance they do when things get tight, and I don’t have to watch Dancing with the Stars because I see this performance all too often.

We’re supposed to talk with the dean of the music department tomorrow. Daughter Dearest is planning to transfer to the college just up the road next year, and the dean wants to try talking us out of it. There have been some issues… the dorm rooms have been plagued with mold (absolute hell on a music major), and the food has been somewhat short of edible at times as DD claims to have found a loogy in the salad once. Quite frankly, we would expect better from a private college with a good reputation. At least we’ll be able to afford next year.

The SXSW festival has their entire musical showcase available on BitTorrent. It’s a 6GB load, in three parts, and you’ll have to wade through it to find what you like. The torrents are organized only by artist, so you have to slog through it all. I’m still listening to part 1 (while helping to re-seed all three parts). At least I got my ratio back over 1.0 now. Fortunately, I’m fairly easy to please, so I’ve been throwing every tenth song or so into iTunes for further listening. Sometimes, a tune I’m not fond of at first will grow on me; sometimes, the opposite happens.

After I brought Big V home from the hospital on Saturday, she went right back in first thing Sunday. She may have a heart issue or a blockage; either way, it ain’t a good thing. At least she escaped the last hospital with her foot still attached. I just hope she starts doing a better job of taking care of herself. She’s getting on Mrs. Fetched’s nerves, big-time, so she isn’t in that bad of shape.

Mrs. Fetched’s mom planted four rows of potatoes today… sounds like we’ll be picking them up by the tractor bucket-load again this year. I’ve got to start my yellow pear tomatoes and get some spinach planted. And I need to plant myself in the bed…

FAR Future, Episode 78: School’s In

Please take the poll (on the right).

Wednesday, November 28, 2035
School’s In

OK, Serena thinks I really am old and decrepit. She might be half-right. But thanks to everyone pitching in, including Bobby, we had the apartments ready in time for our new boarders. Seems to be a recurring theme at FAR Manor, huh? Call them… the Smiths and the Joneses. Close enough.

Speaking of Bobby, his new best friend is Martina Smith — she’s his age and he’s spent the first week showing her everything around the place. Sean and Mary (her parents) were a little apprehensive at first, but when Pat’s not in school he’s taking the day shift in the pasture, so there was plenty of firepower in case any critter (two-legged or four) were to give trouble. As for boy/girl stuff: 1) they’re 10. 2) kids these days have no modesty whatsoever anyway, so it’s not like “playing doctor” is any thrill. I guess that happens when you spend winters sharing a house with two or three families — after a while, you just stop worrying about walking in on someone… from there, it’s a short step to polite not-seeing and then to doesn’t-matter-anyway. Meanwhile, the kids all have to pile into the bathtub together (with one at a time, only the first few would get warm water), so they’ve known little different. From the privacy perspective, the new folks were thrilled to have their own apartments, even if they’re a little small. They said on the way up here, they were wondering what they might end up with — there are stories already going around about people who are making their guests sleep in tents or the living room floor, some real horror stories. I wonder how much of that is promised help not showing up (like what happened here), and how much is people just taking the government stipend and not bothering to provide for their guests.

Ray Jones is like 6 years old, so he would have been on his own except that he and Pat hit it off somehow… don’t ask me what a half-alienated teen sees in him, or vice versa, but the oldest and the youngest are buddies. It doesn’t seem to bother the Joneses, or maybe it bothers me more than it should. It’s good to see Pat taking an interest in someone other than himself; he just seemed to be pulling himself into a shell before. His homework is starting to turn around, and he’s talking about signing up for music come spring semester. Ray and Martina didn’t take long to adjust to school — their schools were very similar in structure and use the same textbooks for all but one or two courses. Bobby and Martina help each other with their schoolwork, naturally, while Pat helps Ray with reading and math. I guess they spend a lot of time out at the tree house in the pasture.

School is a lot more fluid than it used to be when I was a kid… but back then, school wasn’t taught by volunteers with the county facilitating the community centers, administering tests, and furnishing textbooks and lesson materials. Most of us rotate teaching various classes, except that Serena always does creative writing and drama (there’s some prestige for our little school, having a known playwright on the staff) and I end up doing history. Daughter Dearest, being part of the school system staff, does most of the admin work for our group and teaches music (which might be part of what has Pat alienated; he wants to take music but not from his mom). I once suggested that Luke come up and teach important skills like barbecuing and mixology, but I got voted down. Luke said he wouldn’t have the time for it anyway; even during the fall and winter he gets traffic coming through.

I got a fun handout for history on Monday, it asked me to go over a list of acronyms and phrases you don’t hear anymore. Some of them took me back:

SUV
Homeowners’ Association
Supertanker
Religious Right
Mainframe
Jumbo jet
OPEC
FedEx
Landscaping
Muscle car

Since there were ten items, and ten kids, I cut the list up and had each kid draw one. Then they had to look up the term they drew and make a short presentation about what they found (the way I teach history, the kids absorb it almost by accident — while developing research, writing, and presentation skills). We ended up in a long discussion about the religious right, their connection to the junta years (2014-2022), and why “normal” people (who were a majority) didn’t do much to stop it. That lead to a discussion of 20th-century politics, then on to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the Revolutionary War. We ran wayyyy overtime, and cut into Rene’s biochem lesson, but he’s pretty understanding about that sort of thing. The kids can cover a week or more of material during these afternoon stream-of-consciousness discussions, even if they nearly wear me out. Sometimes, I feel like a mouse on a Google hunt. But when we get to the late 1700s again, we’ll breeze right through it and Rene will catch up. But that was just the first presentation. A few of them should dovetail together (like SUV, OPEC, and supertanker), so we can do all three presentations before triggering the info-tsunami.

I asked Rene once what he thought about teaching a class using his sister’s book. “It can’t be easier,” he said. “If something doesn’t make sense, I just give Christina a call.” Lucky him — how many teachers would even think of calling Dr. Cardenas-Roszinski with a question about The Circle of Life: Elementary-Level Biochemistry (3rd ed.), even if they could hunt down her office number? Then again, they would just call the school support staff and get the question answered nearly as quickly.

Our community center isn’t terribly fancy: a hall that we use for classrooms or community meetings, bathroom, the remote medassist room with an outdoor access, a serving area that abuts the covered outdoor kitchen, plenty of insulation to keep the place easy to heat. Maybe 2000 square feet, plenty of room for a school of 10 in a community whose population breaks 60 only if you count the animals. We put it up in 2026, during the Restoration, using materials and some labor furnished by the government. The Boy, and Kim and Christina, painted two murals on opposite walls, depicting how 21st century society has developed… one from order to chaos and order again, the other from machinery to humanity. I’ve used them in the history lessons.

continued…

Weekend Cinema

We made it!

Violets and Business Models

While I was working at home today, Mrs. Fetched had a client in for some video work. Ironically enough, this client makes (wait for it) poultry processing equipment. I had to take a gadget out to the studio for a little shooting, and noticed the wild violets were once again springing up all over the yard (clicking the photo will give you something larger than life):



Going back inside, I reminded Mrs. Fetched to tell the client that I did product photography for my day job… gotta make these Shiny Things earn their keep, after all. I’d started a blog post about a month ago called “Musings on Photography and Copyrights,” but never got much farther than the title. Technology has dealt a serious blow to photography as a profession these days…

• $1500 will buy you a pro-level (or at least prosumer) DSLR and the essentials — the barriers to entry have never been lower. But the only photo I ever sold, I took with my late lamented PowerShot (which cost about $300).


• Digital photography itself has all but wiped out the darkroom. As an old friend of mine (who now shoots weddings) told me, “I used to spend a lot of time in the darkroom, now I spend it all in Photoshop.”


• Scanners and computers have wrecked the traditional photographer’s business model. People are going to scan their portraits and print copies — it doesn’t matter (to them) if the copy isn’t quite as good, they’ve been trained to not care about quality. And their attitude toward copyright is something like, “I paid some hundreds of bucks for this, it’s mine!”

The guy with the medium-format camera and the account with a commercial film processing facility are still around, but their niche is truly a niche these days. Of course, there are always the people who work for Sports Illustrated or Time; major media will always need skilled photographers, even if they end up becoming web-only publications sooner or later.

The business model of the independent photographer has taken a mortal blow. But perhaps a new business model might work.

One facet could be summed up as “Photography and” or even "and Photography” — in other words, photography becomes a part of the business… and not necessarily the primary part. As I mentioned, I already take product photos as part of my technical writing job. It was something that needed to be done, and I learned how to do them well with basic equipment. But even if photography is secondary, it can provide a competitive edge to the business — if the client needs a good photo, there’s no need to contract with another person who might also take your primary work too.

The whole copyright issue needs to be addressed. With no negatives, digital photography might be best approached as a “work for hire,” the same way technical writing contractors work. Ideally, both you and your customer would hold joint ownership — the customer can fling a copy into Photoshop and mash it up or whatever, while you can license it as a stock shot or use it as part of your portfolio. To get people interested in your work to begin with, consider placing a few good shots under a Creative Commons Attribution license: this allows other people to use them (and spread them around) while you get credit for your work. You might as well make this whole file sharing culture work for you, right?

Of course, I might be completely off base. But this is part of my backup plan in case my day job goes away.

FAR Future, Episode 77: Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee

Yes, I’ve gotten older. But I have no intention of growing up…

Thursday, October 18, 2035
Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee

Holá — Serena here. Dad overdid it again; we walked him up to the community center and uploaded his vitals to the nurse in town. She had him wait 20 minutes, took them again, and said he was okay, so now he’s taking a nap. Rene and I try to convince him (and Mo-Dad) to pace themselves, but do they listen? Ha. He’s gotten more like Mom since she died, he used to try to slack whenever he could but now it’s like he’s got to take her place and push himself to the limit and beyond. Mo-Dad isn’t much better, but he’s always been like that. Rene says he’s still trying to earn his place here, even though Dad said he’d earned it many times over. Anyway, Dad was singing this old song while helping finish the new apartments, hammering to the beat — he’s always had a weird sense of humor, but I guess he’s right. Our new guests really won’t have to live like refugees, the rooms are almost done and they’ll be pretty nice. Rene and I joked about taking one of the apartments and letting one of the new families have our rooms upstairs, but we won’t do that. We like having the upstairs when Kim and Christina come to visit, the kids sleep in one room and we stay up half the night in the other like we used to.

The people they were supposed to send to do the apartments never got here; they probably drank their fuel, but with all of us working on it we’re about done. All that’s left to do is paint the walls and ceilings, then roll out some foam and carpeting. Two days of work, three tops, and the guests will be here a week from tomorrow. Dad wanted to call it “Stable House,” since it used to be a garage, but Rene suggested “Carriage House” and Dad liked that better. Bobby’s looking forward to having two more kids more or less his age at the manor, and he’s been a huge help getting their new place ready. Big Sister and her family will take over the old “studio” building when they move in, but Pat (their kid) is a teenager and is already talking about more or less permanently camping out in the pasture shelter (not likely). He and Bobby have different orbits, they get along OK but just don’t have that much in common; otherwise we’d offer to let him share Bobby’s room. Big Sister said he’s a lot like Big Brother at that age, although he’s staying out of trouble and mostly keeping up with his schoolwork.

The tide’s starting to come in, a little higher with each high tide, at least on the Atlantic side. Californians joke about how they always expected to fall into the sea anyway, but it’s not going to start affecting them much for a few more months. The surge mostly has to work its way around the Patagonian and African capes, and the Bering Straits will be impassible going north for a long time to come. Ships are having a time getting through Gibraltar, for that matter. Spain and Morocco say they’re working on transfer points for ship cargo, because ships sailing into the Med will be stuck there for a couple of years, along with the ones that are already there, unless they get a really heavy tailwind. I’m working on a new play, about some people on a ship trying to get out of the Mediterranean, but it’s taking a while. I don’t guess it’ll be ready for Thanksgiving. Dad and I will probably do a sketch about something else; I doubt the guests will be in the mood to laugh about being flooded out any time soon.

Christina said people are already moving into the high-rises they converted down in Atlanta for the Floridians. There’s been a lot of grousing about the units, especially from the geezers who Dad says like to complain about everything. I guess some of the friction involves families sharing floors with people who lived in retirement (i.e. geezer-only) “communities,” and some of it’s about all the activities they’re used to doing but can’t now. Some of them want to try life in the burbs, but only people who don’t know what that’s like would consider it. It’s like living here, a bunch of people living together in the houses that are left, and a lot of busy-work to grow food and keep the infrastructure working. I don’t think the burbers would accept a bunch of people who won’t (or can’t) pull their weight. I suppose there are a few who would enjoy pitching in and being part of a productive community, though.

It’s kind of hard to believe our 10th anniversary’s coming up already — end of the month. Just one of those things… neither one of us were satisfied with anyone else we dated, so we finally realized that we weren’t going to be happy with anyone but each other! The parents were all surprised but really happy about it… Dad suggested we get married on Halloween, since it was a scary idea anyway, and we went with it. The surprise for me came when I got pregnant almost right away. I love Bobby, he’s a great kid and a lot of help around the manor, we just weren’t expecting him so quick. Dad said the Big Brother and Sister were both surprises, so even if I’m adopted it runs in the family, ha! I’m glad we’re not like Kim and Christina though… so much drama in that relationship. So much passion. Kim jokes about how they fight just for the make-up sex. I really like it that the guy I love is also my best friend, and Rene feels the same way. But it seems to work for them, their kids (yeah, two, but as smart as Christina is, nobody worries about that), and their work.

Time to start supper here soon; Rene just went out to start the fire in the outdoor kitchen. We’ll probably start cooking inside just before our anniversary, but that’s OK. There’s not as many bugs inside, but there’s not as much room to move around. With the new families moving in, we’ll probably butcher a cow for Christmas. Dad’s stirring, guess I better send this before he wakes up and wants to add commentary!

continued…

Weekend Cinema

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

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

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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

What’s this world coming to anyway?

Yellowbells

From the Sunday photowalk.



Everything blooming that day was yellow. Today, the Bradford Pear trees are blooming, and those are more white.

A Tale of “Whoa”

After buzzing up to the gas station on the motorcycle, to fill a couple of 1-gallon cans for the Civic (which I let nearly run out), I found Mrs. Fetched hadn’t returned from the chicken houses. I went there to find that the field man had delayed her, there wasn’t a problem, and she would be home shortly. I came home, dumped one of the cans into the Civic, and put the bike on the stand to clean and lube the chain (it was tight/loose enough).

After spraying the chain, and putting the guard back on, I grabbed the rear wheel and shook it on a lark. Imagine my unpleasant surprise when it wiggled… the axle bolt was finger-loose. I made sure the chain was straight and tightened it down.

That would have been more than unpleasant had the axle come out while I was on the road… I guess “check the wheel” goes on my weekly checklist from now on.

At least the front wheel and steering head bearings are good & tight.

FAR Future, Episode 76: Before the Deluge

Maybe we jump the gun, but things could get bad enough this century.

And a hat tip to Odin’s Raven for guessing right…

Monday, September 10, 2035
Before the Deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high,
Let the buildings keep our children dry,
Let Creation reveal its secrets, by and by…

When the government called for people to take in refugees from the coast, we all looked at each other… then answered the call. It’s not like there’s no time; they estimate it will be several months before the East Coast starts flooding, but we offered to take in two families with kids. This host/guest database they put up is pretty clever. We entered a list of characteristics — families with kids, an interest in gardening, carpentry skills, some familiarity with rural life in general — and it found five exact matches. Unfortunately, we only have room for two. We picked at random.

They sent us some recycled materials (and promised some labor) to convert the detached garage to a duplex. The delivery truck seemed huge, but it certainly wasn’t as big as the trucks they used to haul freight back when. The clattering diesel reminded me of the ambulance that came for Mrs. Fetched a few years ago — sometimes I feel like it came for her last week and other times an eternity ago. She told me to remind them “no extraordinary measures,” although it was too late even for that. She died right where she wanted to, in her own bed in her own house, before the medics got here.

But I’m rambling again. There’s no telling when the labor will arrive. Rene, Serena, and Bobby are doing some of the initial stuff; we cleaned out the garage and they’ve put up some of the framing. Guillermo and I have done a little bit when they’re not looking; they think we shouldn’t be doing anything but we’re just old, not dead, dagnabbit. With any luck, things will be ready when our new guests arrive. The house is pretty well full, which is why we’re converting the garage: Guillermo and Maria are still with us and still working, although they deserve to retire many times over, and Rene and Serena (and Bobby) have the upstairs rooms. The studio is for Daughter Dearest and her family when they move back this month — with the school system facilitating volunteer schooling, rather than trying to get enough fuel to bus the kids into town, they can bring the neighbor kids into the community center and do remote hookups as needed. The Boy would have been welcome here too, but he’s gone again… he’ll come back about the time I decide he’s opted-out, he always does. Kim tells me they’re renovating some abandoned high-rises in Atlanta to take in refugees, and they’re already booked. Things will get a little crowded when they come to visit, but we’ll manage somehow. Maybe we’ll put up a straw-bale house where the cows won’t eat it.

General Freakout seems to have taken charge since that big chunk of ice in Greenland let go. Some of the more delusional types think we can build seawalls all along the coasts (hunh?), and they’re already at it on Manhattan — the game of chicken between the government and private citizens ended pretty quickly, perhaps in time to actually make it work. The running joke, outside of NYC anyway, is that piling up all their garbage along the shoreline would be enough to keep the entire metro area dry. Just about the entire world is jamming the phone lines to the Netherlands, looking for help and advice — but they’re busy trying (and only partly succeeding) to hold back the surge themselves. At this point, a middling storm would flood them out. They should be OK by spring, if they make it that long; the surge is supposed to start receding as the flood works its way around the world. After a couple years, things should settle out with sea levels up around 3 meters.

The loudest outcry for the government to “do something,” not surprisingly, comes from the general direction of private beaches. The rest of us tell them, “it’s ‘your’ beach, it’s your responsibility,” and they just don’t understand why we’re not falling all over ourselves to preserve the property they don’t want us anywhere near. As if we could, given the Restoration-era laws against providing public aid to “fenced” property. They should have gotten a clue when Hurricane Tricia wiped out Daytona Beach back in 2028, and there wasn’t a big government rush to rebuild the rich people’s exclusive playground. Some of that got rebuilt privately, but it will all be under water again pretty soon. A rather rude joke I heard is that Floridians will soon be the new Okies; instead of dust, they’ll be escaping water and wandering the nation. On the Gulf, they’re just abandoning New Orleans to the coming flood. There’s some talk about either moving the Pascagoula shipyard or surrounding it with levees, but if they’re doing to do more than watch it go under they’ll have to get started chop-chop.

The water coming in will be colder than usual — an ice cube that big is going to make a difference even in an ocean — and they’re already predicting a chilly winter. We may even get a significant (1cm) accumulation of snow here, something we haven’t seen since [looking it up] January 2025. Beyond that, ask ten climatologists what the long-term effects are going to be and get 20 different answers. I’m hoping for the “cool and rainy” scenario, since that would fix a lot of problems much of the world has been having with climate change. One of the more troubling scenarios disrupts the Gulf Stream, bringing colder weather to much of Europe, but even that isn’t all bad… that scenario also involves a partial rebuilding of the Alpine glaciers and the Arctic ice cap. I don’t suppose we’ll have much choice in the matter, though. As the kids used to say before things changed, “it is what it is.” One thing’s probably a certainty… hurricane season will be really quiet next year.

continued…

What a difference a few days makes

This is what things looked like Monday morning:



Just for grins, I tried the PhotoStitch software that came with my camera and it did a fairly good job of relieving me of the grunt work. I had to pull it into Photoslobber to scale the thing down, though (it was like 7000 pixels wide!).

We somehow ended up in a sort of warm slot during the Sunday snow — it stuck north, south, and east of us, but here it was melt-on-contact. Atlanta got a fair amount of snow, but here the kids were disappointed to see the ground clear and the school bus rolling in right on schedule.

Today, it’s sunny and 70, so I grabbed the camera and took a walk I’ll be posting shots in random order, on and off this week, as I think about it. Here’s two to get started. As always, click for a larger picture or hover for a little extra commentary.

Daffodils out front of the manor. There are several stands scattered around the place. I like ’em because they don’t need much attention and just do their thing as early as they can get away with.

As you will see later on, yellow seems to be the predominant color for early bloomers around here.

The lettuce and spinach are sprouting! I have them sitting out on top of the cold frame; they won’t get overcooked that way and they’ll likely get some rain through the week. The onions are taking a little longer, but I dug up the big one out back — turned out to be eight onions growing together — and separated them into a bed out front. They happily established themselves through the winter.

I’m also planning on sowing some seeds, maybe this weekend, out back. I’ve been assured that the deer would chow down on anything I plant in the garden area out back… maybe I need some fence. I guess I'll stake out a couple of rows in the back where the kitchen water drains and go from there — not a lot of afternoon sun, but for cool-weather crops that might be a good thing.

Don’t forget to spring forward tomorrow… and a new FAR Future sub-series kicks off here Monday.

Programmers. Argh. (4.0, Premature Indigestion)

I suffered mightily from indigestion Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. I thought I was having a blood pressure spike, as the symptoms were about the same: chest pain/pressure, general feelings of uneasiness and shakiness. DoubleRed said her dad had a mini-heart attack with the same symptoms; we got out the BP machine Wednesday night and I was a tad high but the thing tends to read high anyway. Shortly after that, I began a long series of loud burps… about one a minute for an hour. Every time I’d let one loose, I felt a little better. By bedtime, I got to feeling fairly decent.

Thursday… let’s say whatever was causing the issue decided to move out. For Too Much Input, hover over this text. I still had a touch of whatever it was yesterday evening, but Mrs. Fetched attributed that to the Mexican food we had for lunch. Lord knows I’ve not exactly been eating right lately.

Skipping back a little… I got punted to a new department, which became official Monday. The new boss (not same as the old boss) came by Wednesday afternoon to get an idea of how I manage to get stuff done. I gave him a heads-up… as the new guy, he should expect a certain manager (the same one from Programmers 2.0, in fact) to start trying to poke his nose into the situation and dictating how I do my work.

I was right. I just didn’t expect it this week.

The opening shot came this morning, as part of an email chain concerning an update that we’d been handling through the week. Had I kept my mouth shut, I probably wouldn’t have had to worry about it, but I asked if we needed to update the translated User Guides as well. Another PITA engineer, who thinks his input is far more valuable than it actually is, wanted to know why we had French and Spanish for one product and Portuguese for another — the hobgoblin called Foolish Consistency rides that one hard — and the simple answer is that we sell one product through North America and the other in Brazil. “But we sell the other in Canada too,” said a manufacturing guy, and the seagull manager took wing with a comment to the new boss:

[You need] to make this multi-lingual translation routine and seemless [sic] for all our products.

I responded, “Routine and seamless? Good luck with that one.” We sell different products into different markets, and the markets often shift under our feet before I manage to finish the documentation. There is no “routine” when it comes to translation, simple as that. And seeing as it costs a fair amount of money for translation, there is no “seamless” unless we want to throw money away on translations we aren’t going to use… in this economy, that’s just stupid. I’ve already requested close to $10K for translations this year, and we’re not even through March yet. It also “seems” to me that someone who can’t even be bothered to turn on the spell checker in Notes should not be telling a writer how to do his job (“his” in this case is me).

I should have expected him to dig in… I have to give him this much, he won’t back down from a war of words even when he’s outmatched from the get-go. (Don’t start a flame war with a writer.) I suppose that’s a characteristic of empire-building; you can’t even admit to yourself that you’re on the wrong side on an argument. He whined about requirements (and there wasn’t even a Requirement Spec for this particular product), that the time and cost for translations seemed excessive (although he can’t really know since he’s not the one actually managing the process)… but the next part started (as Mrs. Fetched says) making my ass twitch:

We have impacted release dates in the past due to lack of translations. This is a problem area that needs to be fixed. […] delivery dates *MUST NOT* be gated by lack of documentation. This has to get fixed.

I wrote a nice little email that took him apart, paragraph by paragraph. In this particular case, we have had exactly one release date held up due to lack of translations (in 12 years), but he seems determined to hold that over my head at any opportunity… completely ignoring the myriad times development issues have held up releases. Perhaps if he was focused on hardware development instead of empire-building, they might meet more deadlines, but I didn’t say that. I went on to mention that documentation release dates keep getting pulled in, and the requirements for translations at the first build means I need to have completed and approved documentation (in English) 4–5 weeks earlier than that, so the translators have something to work from.

This took me to about 11:30 a.m. I wasn’t sure whether it was over the top (and the guideline is if you aren’t certain it’s not, it probably is), so I left the mail unsent and went to make a deposit at the credit union and grab some lunch (tried a random place along the way, a tad expensive but worth it). I figured a long hour, which included a motorcycle ride since I rode Little Zook to work, would give me some needed perspective. Alas, when I got back to work and looked over the email, I did some editing but didn’t see a need to tone it down at all. I sent it to my boss, who told me to not send it, let him handle it, and thanks for the info. No problem… I preferred to get some actual work done anyway.

With that not settled, but my participation thankfully out of the way, the discussion turned to yet another product. This is a “business services” product, so it doesn’t get end-user documentation, and people started questioning whether it should be done. As a necessity, I pointed out that we haven’t ever done translations for those kinds of documents, and asked whether we needed to start. One of the responses gave me a good laugh to end the day:

Maybe you'll have better luck getting an answer than I did.

And that’s the crux of the matter… I’m not going to request two grand or more for something I haven’t been told is needed. Maybe I should stop worrying and start stimulating the world economy.

But the indigestion, and its subsequent cause, are both gone now. There are days that the life of a chicken rancher looks like an improvement…

FAR Future, Episode 75: Interlude (Pattern Shift)

In one brief episode, I cover nearly as much time as did the previous 74 episodes. To do it effectively, I had to step back from the first-person narrative just this once. I suddenly developed a few qualms about it late last week, after it had been patiently waiting its turn since mid-December, but couldn’t think of any better way to handle the span of time. So we’ll be back to the blog of the moment, when the episode number and my age are both 76…

2023–2035
Interlude: Pattern Shift

From the cosmic to the sub-microscopic, there are patterns to be seen everywhere. The galaxy dances with its partners in the Local Group; the sun orbits the galactic center and the earth orbits the sun. In its orbit, the earth turns on its axis: the universal tarantella. On the other end of the scale, electrons whiz about their nuclei, while sub-atomic particles dance in patterns that science has only partially mapped.

But patterns leave room for free will and chaos. In the vast middle area, weather patterns spin, some clockwise and some counter-clockwise. Biological and geological patterns respond to the weather… and vice versa. Humans continue to pump, mine, and burn fossil fuels, but less than they once did. In some places, people abandon the land and nature begins the dance of succession, reclaiming what has always been hers. The new wild nature differs from the old in some respects: some plants and animals reclaim their old niches; other niches are left empty, until another native species or an adaptable invasive claims it. Sometimes, humans attempt to help nature rebuild what they had destroyed, with varying degrees of success. In other places, they try to build a landscape that suits their needs while using the old nature as a template.

Little by little, the patterns of human civilization begin to shift, adapting to a growing understanding of what’s at stake: the species must either clean its nest or suffocate in its own waste. In the west, a new ethos is born with the speed that only a well-wired populace can comprehend.

The east becomes a laboratory for other ways to cope. Nations with high birth rates attempt to export their excess people, triggering wars and horrors that give the survivors lifetime nightmares. Large cargo ships are outfitted with sails, crammed with people, and cast off to find harbor where they may… or sink. Uncounted numbers of people die on these journeys, and many ships never reach a port. Japan’s elderly become its coast guard, proud to die defending their nation from invading immigrants — for a nation that cannot feed itself is beholden to others. India and Pakistan balkanize along ethnic and sectarian lines, but somehow manage to avoid nuclear war. Dark whispers of cannibalism are heard in both the east and west. Much of Africa returns to its past, thriving and dangerous coastal cities and a mysterious and deadly interior. But not all the news from Africa is bad: changing weather patterns create a new monsoon cycle in the west, and the desert begins to retreat in Mali and Niger.

In many places, human birth rates fall below the replacement level: those people cherish their few children, plant trees, and live as much as possible within the means of the energy nature gives them. Others live in cultures that are essentially incompatible with the new reality; the Four Horsemen ride them down until they learn a new culture. Human population spends a few years on a plateau, then begins to fall. Not quickly, nor uniformly, but one day the media reports that there are half a billion fewer people alive than 30 years ago. It’s a start.

The CO₂ level reaches a plateau, but warming continues… thanks to soot from wood fires, a little slower than previously. The poles sweat, while climatologists keep a nervous eye on ocean levels and far-flung weather stations.

The patterns continue, from the cosmic to the sub-atomic. At either extreme, patterns are either static or change so slowly that humans have not detected the changes. In the middle, patterns change — usually gracefully.

But one late August night, a crack and a roar that goes on for days signals a more abrupt pattern shift.

continued…

Weekend Cinema (political edition)

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Spring #5

The forecast low was 32 last night, but I don’t think it ever got down that far. It’s 39 now, according to two nearby weather stations — Weather Underground’s WunderMap is one cool piece of work — and we’ll stay above freezing the rest of the week.

I woke up a little early this morning, which is good. The last two mornings, Brand X has called needing a ride to school — Jam has some kind of intestinal bogey and has been blowing her groceries — and since I was still in bed, I didn’t have time to make coffee before jumping in the car. That’s brutal… starting early without coffee. Not an issue this morning, thankyouverymuch. It was also good because the fire was down to a few coals. Mrs. Fetched had brought in some small sticks last night, perhaps anticipating this might happen, so I had it quickly rebuilt.

Unfortunately, we’re out of cat food, so the cats will be having a bad day for a while.

FAR Future, Episode 74: The Opt-Outs

This one’s a little long, but next week’s is a little short. It evens out.

Tuesday, July 4, 2023
The Opt-Outs

July 4 really meant something this year: for the first time in 9 years, we actually have some freedom to celebrate. There are still plenty of junta-symps around Planet Georgia, of course, and the Great Backlash against the churches isn’t exactly helping with that — but even the symps were in a festive mood this year. The President kicked off the celebrations on Saturday, and they ran pretty much through today. We spent the weekend in town again, and they had the fireworks (huge!) last night so everyone could be home before dark today. Of course, they had another “recognize the vets” moment. Rene said, “This whole war-hero thing is kind of embarrassing. Major Shevchuk and Manny Velasquez are the real heroes… they walked out and faced down the tanks while me and Sammy hid up over the dunes with RPGs.”

“You’re what we’ve got,” I reminded him. “Besides, when the shooting started, it was you and Sammy drawing the fire. It’s your day as much as theirs. Besides, didn’t Manny go to RoT?” The funny thing was, his fling-girl and the two brothers who accosted him at the chautauqua were there and cheering for him as loud as for any of the others. I guess it goes to show… well, I’m not sure what it goes to show. Maybe celebrity conquers all?

Kim and Christina set up a table where they sold a few drawings. They made more money doing portraits… I think some people paid just to watch them go at it, side-by-side, switching sides and filling in each other’s parts and blending it into a consistent whole. People were taking pictures and video, and some of them were media stringers. One video taker had release forms and even interviewed them. I had to remind myself how fascinating it was to me when I watched them work like that when they were kids. But I still thought it was funny, how the interviewer was a little taken aback when she learned that Christina the artist is also (at age 19) closing in on a Ph.D. in biochemistry. At least they don’t use their old Spanglish argot anymore (except for “Holá, y’all”); they got out of that habit after they got drafted (or signed up, in Rene’s case).

People are on the move this summer — lots of young people are taking that first summer after high school to see a little of the country before settling into college or work, as well as some older folks with no family ties or any other reason to stay put. Not many my age though… but there’s a few. I don’t see much traffic at the bicycle stop now that Luke opened up his place down at the crossroads; most people just keep rolling by and refill their water bottles there. But there are some who skip Luke’s and come up here.

We came home from town this morning; I went down to check the water jug and it was dry. When I brought it back, I saw a ratty-looking bike lying in a patch of weeds toward the road and smelled the tobacco… you don’t see many people smoking nowadays, especially travelers (who need all the wind they can get). The guy associated with the bike and smoke, nearly hidden in the shadows of the pergola, looked even rattier than the bike. He started up, and I waved him back and set the water jug next to him.

“I put this rest stop up for everyone,” I said. “Most people go on down to Luke’s now, but I know people still use it — the water jug gets emptied out.”

He nodded, took one more drag on his hand-rolled cigarette, then gently stubbed it out and pinched the end. I realized he was a lot younger than I thought at first — not much older than Kim, if that. He had aged before his time.

“Yeah,” he said finally, fishing an old pill bottle out of a pocket. He twisted the cap off, made sure the end of his cig was cold, then dropped it in and closed it up before pocketing it again. “We appreciate it.” He glanced toward the corner; I followed his cue and saw markings scratched on the post:



“What are those?”

“It means this is a safe place to rest a while.”

“Oh… like hobo symbols? From the Depression?”

“There’s a depression goin’ on now, ’case you haven’t noticed.” He shook his head. “No… sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. You try to help out, anyway. We know who’s good people.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

He pulled his cap off and scratched his head for a moment. It looked like he cut his own hair, as short as possible… and suddenly remembered I’d seen several people like him at the festivities over the weekend, always around the edges of the crowd. “I guess you’d call us opt-outs. We didn’t want to live under the junta, so we opted out. Then there’s the junta-symps who don’t want to reconcile. Hard life, but it’s a free life.”

“The junta’s gone now.”

“Yeah. But it ain’t that easy. Once you’ve opted out, it’s hard to come back. You got no idea how hard it can be to come back.”

“I’ve tried to help people get started back when,” I told him. “I think I have a pretty good idea how hard it could be.” I was thinking of one of The Boy’s old girlfriends… what did I call her? (Ms. Almost Einstein, but I had to go back and look it up.) She lived with us for a bit over a year back before stuff went pear-shaped, and I figured it would take a minimum of $7000 (in 2006 dollars) to get her on her own two feet: about half of that for a decent car, deposits on apartment and utilities, gadgetry and clothing, and basic living expenses until the paycheck started kicking in. Not too many people drive cars nowadays, outside of special occasions, but you still need a good head start to get started.

“Betcha haven’t been there yourself though.” He fished the pill bottle out of his pocket and started playing with it. Probably needed more smoke.

“You’re right,” I said, “but I think I at least understand it. Here, let’s sit outside where you can smoke.”

He nodded and we carried the stools out. He lit up as quickly as he could without looking desperate. “We pretty much keep movin’, that way nobody gets tired of us bein’ around,” he said. A lot of guys go north for the summer, south for the winter. Me, I’m goin’ northwest then west this year. I figure to spend the winter out in San Diego, if I get that far. Oregon if not.”

“How do you eat?”

“However we can. One reason I’m goin’ west this year, I can forage. Stuff will be picked over pretty good if I took I-95 or US-1 up the coast, or the Nashville-Indy-Chicago route up I-65. Where foraging doesn’t work, I’ll try to get a job on a farm somewhere. If nobody wants to let me work for my food, I’ll steal it.”

I chewed on that for a minute. “I’d rather get a little work out of you than let you steal out of my garden,” I laughed. “Not that I think you’d steal here.”

“Not here,” he agreed. “Junta-symps might do it, but most of us won’t take from someone who gives us water and shelter. The junta-symps, maybe. Not the rest of us though.”

He took one last drag on his cig, then put out the last half-inch and dropped it back in the pillbox. “We get outta the habit of talkin’ to anyone still in — in the system, I mean. Guess I’d better be goin’.”

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Yeah. I try. You do the same.” He wheeled his bike to the pavement and rolled on down the hill without looking back.

continued…

Scope Creep, and Other Incidentals of Weekend Life

Yesterday morning, Mrs. Fetched asks me oh-so-innocently: “Would you like to come with me? I just have to give the cows one bale of hay and talk to one of the guys.” As long as I’ve been married, I fall for this line every time. We’re not even out of the driveway before her phone rings… it’s Jimmy down at the chicken houses.

In the high-tech world, this is so common they have a phrase for it: scope creep. A project is humming along, on time and on budget, when someone goes, “Hey, can you make it do X?” and a manager says, “I was talking to a customer, and they’ll commit to 100,000 units if it will do Y.” Next thing you know, just like with anything that starts with “all we have to do is” at FAR Manor, you’ve added A and E and working on B, C and W, and R and B, and me and the chimpanzee agree… but I digress. This one was unique in that we actually dropped one of the original parts; it was warm enough that the cows didn’t need more hay.

So the next three hours were spent tightening down louver vents, fixing a broken roof corner, incidentally finding (by smell) and tightening a leaky gas regulator. We broke for lunch and Mrs. Fetched unloaded me, seeming to recognize that there were things I wanted to get done today (as well as things she wanted me to do and couldn’t have me do them otherwise). Besides, somewhere in the morning festoovities, I came up with some lower back pain. I’m not sure where it came from — I wasn’t doing any heavy lifting except to haul the occasional armload of wood into the living room — but it (or more likely, the other chore which I will mention shortly) was enough to release me.

The primary thing I wanted to get done this weekend was to have a look at the garden spot out back and decide how I wanted to set it up. The only compass in the house that I could find was one on the end of a survival knife, and it’s a Tates compass (as in, “he who has a Tates is lost”), but I got it to mostly behave and used the afternoon sun to get a rough confirmation of directions. By 4 p.m., I had a pretty good idea of where afternoon shade would fall and thus a fair idea of what should go where. The spot is like twice as large as I want to deal with, which is good because I can use half of it at a time and swap sides every couple of years. I need to run pipe from the kitchen drain down to it for irrigation (it’s all downhill, which is helpful) and bang up some kind of tool shed. After that, it’s one part water, two parts sunshine, three parts prayer.

Having a good visual on what ground is to be broken next month, I went on to the task at hand: re-attaching a fallen duct under the old place. The renters probably figured it out the way we did when we lived there… felt cold air coming out of the vent. Mrs. Fetched, ever helpful in these matters, made sure there was a roll of Gorilla Tape out where I could find it. I gathered up a trouble light and two extension cords. The fun part is that there’s 2–3 feet of clearance under there, and breathing through your mouth is a fine way to invite fiberglass and whatever else to come visit. I only lost the light once, when the cord tangled up, but got that fixed and managed to crawl over pipes and wires and under support trusses to get to the problem spot. Judging from the packaging tape still stuck to the duct, I’d been here before. 10 minutes to prepare, 10 to crawl in, 10 to fix it, 10 to crawl out (chasing out the renters’ stupidog that wanted to see what was going on), 10 to make sure the cover was on good & tight. Then 20 minutes for a shower.

Last Sunday of the month means potluck day at church. Mrs. Fetched fixed lasagna, presumably using up the rest of the kotijuusto. She and DoubleRed want me to make another batch so they can tackle a cheesecake. OK…

We can has Fire! and Battery!

Working at home is always useful.

About 4:30, I grabbed the w0rNg battery and took it back to the motorcycle shop, and got a new one. Ironically, the smaller battery cost more — WTF? But now I have it and I’ll be ready to ride as soon as it warms up again.

After returning from the shop, I ran a chain down the chimney and it was clear all the way down. I should have known that by the way the sheet I put in front of the fireplace was getting sucked into the chamber. I brushed off some more of the accumulated crud above the damper, shoved the insert back into place, and Mrs. Fetched let 'er rip. Just in time: Winter #5 is upon us, after a rather ugly line of storms yesterday evening. The insert is burning better now than it has in a long time, nice and clean, and it’s warming up nicely in the living room.

Maybe the storms carried the Vortex of Suck™ away with them.

[Holy moly… post #900!]

Random thoughts

I haven’t just brain-dumped for a while… probably because I dump things on Twitter instead. It’s long past time.

One of the things that turned out pretty well this past weekend: I made kotijuusto (Finnish for “home cheese”). I got the idea from my bob-sister Faboo Mama, who settled on making kotijuusto after a fruitless search for rennet. It’s a simple recipe, but it makes a lot of cheese. It has a consistency much like ricotta, which gave both Mrs. Fetched and DoubleRed the idea of making lasagna with it… which turned out pretty good (and it’s good and gone!), but there’s plenty of cheese left. DoubleRed just cooked some into her scrambled eggs and gave me a taste… dang good. We’ll have to use that stuff up soon, and hey I can always make more. Here’s the recipe I got from Faboo:

3 eggs
5 c buttermilk
1 gallon + 1-1/2 c milk
salt

Whip eggs and buttermilk until fluffy. Bring the milk to a boil, add the egg mixture, and beat well. Turn off the heat and allow the mixture to cool slowly. (Liquid will form on top, and the cheese will settle on the bottom.) mostly… some of it floats

Line a strainer or mold with cheesecloth. Remove the cheese with a slotted spoon and put it into the strainer, sprinkling a little salt between layers. Cover with a plate as a weight, and refrigerate for 12 hours. put a bowl underneath, you’ll catch at least a cup of whey Turn out into a serving dish. Serves 4-6.

Monday, I spent the morning at the office then went to the doc and got a shot for the poison oak I contracted 10 days ago. The shot works quickly… a little pain for much gain. While I’ve decided I’m through giving 300% to the company for crappy raises (or no raises) and no promotion, I’m still pounding away at a to-do list and I’ll be working at home tomorrow taking a few pictures for a rough-out of the new wall-mount template. A word of advice: if you ever consider technical writing as a career, hit yourself in the head with a hammer until you think of something else.

The choir director settled on the Easter cantata this year: something we did… oh, 6 or 8 or 10 years ago with a few modifications. Someone said, "10 years isn’t that long ago." I pointed out: "10 years ago, my kids were 11 and 9 years old!” And I didn’t have a blog… then again, there was no soap opera to write about back then, just Chicken House Hell.

Snippet tried calling The Boy like two days after we bailed him out. Fortunately, he was smart enough to refuse the call. Like I said, he only did what all of us would like to have done, with much less provocation. If there wasn’t a potential kid involved, I’d dance for joy if the judge made the “no contact” injunction permanent. I might dance anyway.

Republicans are such hypocrites. I mean, how does a conservative these days manage to get through a week without drinking Drano or something? “The economy? Um… Oh! look! a fag in a wedding dress! Vote for us, quick!” Yes, having no imagination is almost required for a conservative, but c'mon. I could make six Republicans with a 7404 chip, a toggle switch, and some LEDs. (I told that to a right-wing engineer back in the Clinton years… he didn’t want to laugh, but he knew it was funny. And true.)

Mrs. Fetched is down in Decatur, visiting Big V at the hospital. Big V’s husband came home from his truck-driving job last night & she took him and her mom down to see her. She’ll be home late tonight, if at all. Big V got her foot put back together yesterday; she has a long recovery ahead of her and it remains to be seen if she’s willing to do her part.

Daughter Dearest wants to go to Florida for spring break. Good idea, sez I, except for the (lack of) money part. I’m thinking about going with her, but making a pact to leave the laptops at home and trying to discover (perhaps with some help from Mom and Solar-bro) some of the local attractions. It might be interesting. I know the original Hooter’s is around there, and DD has one of the more tasteful Hooter’s shirts, so we could hit that, the beach, a bird sanctuary, the beach, a park or two, the beach… you get the idea. I could cheat with my iPhone, of course, and post stuff to Twitter and TwitPic if nothing else.

DoubleRed just got a fling dot com popup, so she’s installing Spybot. And this is why I don’t like Dozeboxes in my house.

W00T! Mrs. Fetched just got home. Big V might get transferred to the long-term facility on Friday if her foot doesn’t get re-infected.

FAR Future, Episode 73: Serena’s Chautauqua Story

Monday, June 5, 2023
Serena’s Chautauqua Story

Here’s Serena’s chautauqua story. It’s partly about me, but I just blew her cover is all.

Hola, y'all. (I got out of the habit of saying that when I was in the service, but now that I'm home it's coming back to me.) I know Rene liked to say it a lot, and still does.

We all got home just in time to miss spring planting, aren't we lucky! I was kind of surprised that Kim and Christina made a point of spending their days with everyone else instead of each other — those two will still be going at it when they're old and decrepit like Dad (gotcha!). [Watch it kid, I’ll whack you with my walker as soon as I remember where it is. —FARf] But they fall asleep on the couch in the living room a lot, so I bet they don't get much sleep at night. It's good to have everyone home again; I missed helping Mom and Maria with the cooking, and all the other stuff. But it's different now; we're adults, done with school and all that. I guess Christina's going to be teaching at some college or another by next year, and they'll be gone. So will I. I'm not sure about Rene yet.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time at the chautauqua last week, even if Rene hooked up with an ignorama for a couple of days. I'm glad they started the chautauquas, it's a lot easier to bring culture to the people than it is to bring people to the culture nowadays. They did different things on different nights. Dad liked the drum&brass performance; he said it reminded him of the electronic stuff from when he was younger. I could tell he liked it, the way he was bobbing and twitching to the beat. There's a lot of beat in that stuff, and not much else. Give me a good marching band any day. But it was amazing how the two drummers would switch back and forth, one played while the other one rested. I never realized drumming could be so physically demanding.

I volunteered to help with security for the week, and it came in handy with Rene on Wednesday. It figures, the only time I was really needed all week and it was my own family! The sheriff was happy to have a volunteer with some MP experience, and even deputized me for the week. But I walking by the stage Thursday evening and overheard some of the troupe talking:

“Paula can't finish a line without coughing her lungs out.”

“What do we do then? Nobody else can play Susanne.”

“Well, we can't just cancel. We have a commitment.”

Curiosity got the better of me. “What's wrong?”

They looked me over, with the orange SECURITY vest and the Army patrol hat I like to wear when I'm out. “Our leading lady's sick. She can't perform.”

“That’s too bad. What were you presenting?”

“The Discomfiture of Lord Riot. We figured people would like it.”

“Oh. Um… I know that play. I did Susanne a couple of times. I'd be glad to step in.”

The guy they had playing Kip ran through a few random lines with me, and was satisfied with my delivery. “There's not going to be a problem with you doing the play and working security?”

“I'll let the sheriff know. I'll be able to see better from the stage anyway. I can probably bust a troublemaker without dropping a line.”

They laughed, and we shook on it. I went to let the sheriff know I would be sort of undercover for the play, then came back, scanned the lines just to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, and got dressed. Paula's costume was a bit big on me, but we got it to hang all right and the show went on. I saw the family down in the crowd, grinning like a bunch of clowns.

So of course Dad and Mom came by after the play, and of course Dad had to open his mouth.

“She's your daughter?” the guy who'd played Riot asked. “She really did a great job.”

“She should have,” he said. “She wrote the play.”

“Dad!” I yelled.

“What? You didn't tell them?”

“Wait…” the guy who’d played Ronald said. “You… you're Serena Broward?”

Dad about fell down laughing, and Mom just looked at me. “I can't believe you weren't going to tell them,” she said.

The hubbub grew until Paula came out of the trailer. “What's going on?”

“Your sub,” the guy who played Farfet said. “She's Serena Broward!”

“Serena?!” she squealed like a fangirl, then started coughing and fell back inside.

How the word spread, I have no idea, but the entire troupe was suddenly out there mobbing us. I got Dad back, telling them how he'd played both Farfet and Riot in the very first production, and then the actors were all over him wanting details and critiques.

One thing led to another, and they offered me a job with the chautauqua writing new material in between acting or directing (everyone takes turns). I'm shocked; I never knew that my plays Dad uploaded to the samizdat were spread all over the place and performed so much. I figured a few people put them on, but to hear these guys talk I'm some kind of cult figure to the New Chautauqua movement.

I'm thinking about it. Dad said I should do it, and if I didn't like it I could always come back home.

She ended up taking the job and I’m happy for her. She’s always loved writing plays and putting on the Thanksgiving productions. I told the troupe about those, and they offered to come this year and do a play for us. That would be nice — we didn’t have them the last couple of years, since Serena was in Germany and nobody else took the initiative. I had to tell them about The Dialogues, in which two people (i.e. Serena and I) would do the stage equivalent of flash fiction serials, and they wanted us to tell them all about that too.

So I guess our growed-up foster daughter is about to leave the nest, not too long after coming back. That’s life.

continued…

This Week [UPDATED]

This was our week:



Things began their spiral into the Official FAR Manor Vortex of Suck™ Sunday morning, although (as usual with such things) it seemed like a minor incident at the time. I’d charged the battery on Little Zook Friday night and Saturday morning, and it fired up fairly quickly that afternoon. I ran my errands and parked the bike, figuring I was set for the ride to work Monday and Tuesday mornings. (Wednesday and Friday had rain in the forecast, and I work at home on Thursdays.) Since nobody else was ready for church Sunday morning, I jumped on the bike and hit the starter… and got the zzzzzzz noise that indicates a weak battery. As I’d been using it only a day ago, that’s a pretty obvious clue that the battery needs replacement.

After church, the Evil Twins’ family came to visit and to help cut up a tree that had gone down by the pond. I had completely forgotten about them coming, and they were making noises about having to leave in a few hours, so Mrs. Fetched offered to pick up the battery for me while I was whacking at the tree.

The Vortex began accelerating: a vine growing up the side of the tree turned out to be poison oak; I figured it was February so it would be mostly dormant, and (after cutting into some of it with the chainsaw) I peeled it off and threw it in the brush pile. Meanwhile, Mrs. Fetched had neglected to get her purse out of the truck… and used that as an excuse to not get the battery. (Had this been important to her, she would have found a way to retrieve her purse.) We cut wood until the chain got dull, loaded up all but the biggest pieces, and got it up to the house. The Twins decided that the event they were attending was not that important, so they ended up staying through supper.

Monday dawned; I headed to work. Mrs. Fetched said she was going to get the battery before the chicken catchers showed up late in the evening, but when I came home… of course, it hadn’t happened. Her excuse: she spilled her purse in the truck, and the check she was going to cash slid under the seat and she didn’t find it until much later. That’s so lame it’s probably true… but her dad had earlier offered to loan us the money to get the battery. Once again, if it was important to her, she would have gotten it done. The chicken catchers came for the birds that night; I just got well-acquainted with Mr. Bacardi.

Tuesday afternoon, I noticed the first poison oak blisters on my arms, which did nothing to improve my outlook. Even more annoying was the phone ringing every few minutes that evening, just after I started thinking about going to bed. Everything finally settled down, and we went to bed…

…and the phone rang at 3 a.m. Mrs. Fetched grabbed it on the first ring, before she was even awake, and answered, "mm haaaooo?" To make a long story not quite so long, Snippet had another one of her psychotic episodes, ostensibly because The Boy was in another room with a friend for a drink and light conversation. After she whacked him across the head with a Guitar Hero controller, he tried to wrap her up until she calmed down. Didn’t work, and after she started drawing blood… he hit back. The upshot is, Snippet plays the innocent little girl card extremely well (the only people who like her don’t know her), and The Boy was the one who got busted. It took pretty much all day Wednesday to get him bailed out… which we did because we know Snippet and how she operates, and The Boy only did what most of us want to do without nearly as much provocation. But here’s the upside: They’re enjoined from having any contact with each other until their court date in May. We’re hoping he’ll lose interest in her before then and get on with his life.

There’s one little complication, though… yeah. That Complication. The Boy wants to do the right thing, but Snippet (and her mom) are making it just as difficult as possible… threatening to take the kid and disappear. Nice people, huh? I give it a pretty fair chance that it’s not The Boy’s kid, and the doctors gave as high as 50/50 odds of a miscarriage.

Next to that, the poison oak from my hands to elbows is a minor annoyance. I’ve got an appointment with the doctor on Monday if it doesn’t start drying up.

Thursday evening, we got a broadcast email at work: “Blah blah, great quarter, blah blah, anticipating problems, blah blah, we’re canceling merit increases this year.” The sub-text: the economy’s crappy, what’cha gonna do about it? Suckaaazzz…

And now: the high point of the week. I saw a bumper sticker that said, “When life gives you lemons, get a bottle of tequila.” Excellent advice. I suppose it was too quiet around here lately anyway.

FAR Future, Episode 72: Adventures at the Chautauqua

Things are weird now. In a much weirder FAR Future, I wouldn’t expect that to be different.

Sunday, June 4, 2023
Adventures at the Chautauqua
Sunday, June 4, 2023

The chautauqua was in town last week. It’s a great idea, one they revived from the 19th century but without the Sunday school part (churches are somewhat out of favor these days, except in this region and a few scattered outposts). The local one is based in Gainesville, and they travel around northeast Georgia from late spring through late fall. So we got our screen tents together, loaded up the wagon, and made a week of it since the town was letting people camp in the park.

Rene got a little more than he bargained for, but I’ll let him tell the story…

Holá, y'all. Monday afternoon after the chautauqua troupe set up their portable stage, but before they started the performances, they asked all the former service people to come up on stage to be recognized. There were a bunch of people besides Serena, Kim, and me, and most all of us felt the same way about it — we'd had our fill of military life, but even after you're out you still have to do your duty, right? Their little band played the national anthem, everyone cheered, wave the flag, USA, USA. I guess I should be less cynical since they offered my family a lot in return for a couple years of my life (and I got out early anyway), but you could also say that the junta shouldn't have given us so much grief in the first place.

The good part, at least for me, was getting noticed by all the girls. They noticed Kim too, but he still only has eyes for Christina, and she can be a little territorial anyway. One of the girls hung onto me, it was kind of flattering and I'm not used to that. Half of my life, the only girl I knew who was my age was Serena, and she's been my best friend instead of anything romantic. I never had time to meet anyone in the army — boot camp, EDID training, deployment, then the war heated up just as I got a little leave… they say the truth is the first casualty of war, but my love life was the second, jejeje. So I palled around with Amber for the next couple of days. Farf-Mom didn’t look too happy about it; she said that Amber’s family has a long history of being troublemakers in the county. Papa just gave me The Look — the one that says, “This won't end well.” Of course, Christina might say that hormones speak louder than parents (and I would say she should know!).

Things were cool until Wednesday night. That's when the troupe's band started playing some mariachi music, and Mama and Papa got up to dance. I was about to point them out, but she was shaking her head. “Bad enough the damn wetbacks live here,” she said. “I don't see why they have to encourage them.”

I was stunned, and she was on a roll. “Stupidest thing the junta did was to let 'em stay —”

“Hey,” I said. “Those are my parents! And I'm one of those 'damn wetbacks' who took the army's bargain, if you hadn't figured it out. Does 'Cardenas' sound like a gringo name to you?”

“I'm sorry — I — but you —”

“Save it,” I told her. “I don't think I want to see you anymore,” and walked off.

Of course, she went crying to her family, and a couple “representatives” came by our tent shortly after supper. “Who's the beaner that's been messing with our sister?” Bubba One demanded.

I was still mad about the whole thing, especially not listening to Farf-Mom. I stood up and faced 'em — two big lugs, slow and not too bright looking. “That's Señor Beaner to you, Billy Bob,” I said. “And I never asked her to hang all over me, by the way.”

They swelled up at that, but next thing I knew Kim was on my right, Papa on my left, Farf-Dad had my back, and Serena walked up behind them. She’d volunteered to work security for the week, and just happened to be on duty. I know that she learned some tae kwan do when she was little, and got a refresher course with her MP training, so I don’t doubt she could have taken them both herself if it came to that.

“What seems to be the problem here?” she said. They turned and sized her up in her security blazer — she nodded at them like they were dropping by for a friendly chat, but at the same time you knew she wouldn't take any crap off them. The MPs in Dooby were like that — it didn't matter what your rank was, or how big you were; if they had to take you in, it was going to happen. Respectful and authoritative at the same time.

“Ain't no problem,” Bubba One said. “We just came to tell this —”

“Good,” she interrupted. “Because I'd hate to see you guys get hurt. This guy took on three Iranian tanks in Saudi Arabia; I don't think he'd have much trouble with two rednecks.”

I opened my mouth to say something like “Your move, bubba,” but Serena gave me one of those looks and I kept quiet. She does that authority thing pretty well, did I mention that?

“Stay away from Amber, y'hear?” said Bubba Two, already moving off.

“No problemo, niños,” I said. Bubba One paused, but Bubba Two nudged him and they kept moving. Serena shook her head at me and went back to her rounds, and she had a few words for me when she finished up for the night. She took her volunteer job seriously.

After she finished lecturing me, she, Kim, and I set night watches for the rest of the week in case they wanted to try to surprise us, but we didn’t see any of them (especially Amber, gracias a Dios) for the rest of the week. I think they just cleared out. Farf-Dad took the motorcycle back to the manor to make sure they hadn’t tried anything at home, but either they don’t know where we live or they wised up.

Such is life on Planet Georgia. I hope Rene doesn’t have to re-up just to find a girlfriend.

continued…

Meow? and Odd Jobs

A week or so ago, one of Big V’s horses got mauled and killed behind her place. We contacted the DNR people at the state park, who said, “there aren’t any big cats in this area. It must have been something else.” Um… claw marks on the horse’s neck (the photo we got is rather graphic, and would have been beating a… never mind) say different. As does the four-inch paw print one of the people helping with the lawn-care business found this morning — on the manor grounds no less. We went out and got a few pictures. Denial ain’t a river in Egypt.

Anyway…

If I’d thought it through, I would have painted the bottom of the cold frame last week — then I could have dropped it where it's going to go and painted the top. Oh well. I need to run to Home Despot to find some spinach (and maybe lettuce seed), plus a grocery run for some other stuff, so I can let the last of the paint dry while I'm gone. I’m thinking about taking Little Zook… it needs a warm-up run because it looks like I’ll be able to ride to work at least Monday and Tuesday.

It’s nice to have the sun making things warmer for a change.

Prediction followup: Score One for FARf!

On New Year’s Eve, I posted my Predications for 2009. Looks like I got one of them partially right anyway: Congress just voted to postpone the digital TV cutover.

The automakers have two more months to admit they’re failing. I hope I’m wrong about that one.