School's in. I hate school buses.

Mid-August, and school has already started. I'm obviously not the only person who thinks this is ridiculous: several states are passing laws mandating school start on a particular date — it varies from state to state, but is fairly close to Labor Day. Good idea. I hope it catches on here too. It's not like they're holding more school; they're just building a ton of slop into the schedule now. What's the point?

On the way back from our weekend in North Carolina, I saw a road sign on a four-lane highway: SLOW MOVING SCHOOL BUSES USE THIS ROAD. I swear, my first thought was, “you mean there's some other kind?” Look, I understand the need for buses. Not everyone can drive their kid both ways. With gas prices going through the roof, Daughter Dearest is going to be riding home a lot more often (the school is only a block off my commute route, so dropping her off in the morning is no problem). She can socialize, nap, or do homework on the way home to pass the time like I did.

The problem is how the buses clog traffic. Some drivers are courteous enough to pull off at a good place and let all the backed-up commuters get by... but some seem to revel in holding up as many people as they can. Kind of like the geezers who whip out in front of oncoming traffic then crawl along at 15mph under the speed limit. There ought to be a law, where bus drivers have to let traffic go by when they have 8 or more cars backed up behind them.

OK, rant off.

Chicken House Hell: Your #1 Fan

Warning: Any post on this blog with “Chicken House Hell” in the title is not for the squeamish. You have been warned.

My in-laws, not a mile from here, have four poultry houses. One of the nice things about having a mostly anonymous blog is that I can write about family stuff and nobody is the wiser. Anyway, the chicken houses have unfortunately come to stand for much of what I don't like about life at FAR Manor. I believe that Hell is much like a chicken house: hot, filthy, crowded, noisy. Of my so-called “vacation” so far, 3 out of 4 days have involved at least some time in the chicken houses.

Long ago, I had a personal website (that probably would have been a blog if there were blogs back then) where I kept a series of “Chicken House Hell” stories. Like this one, they were rather graphic and distasteful — but you need to remember, these are the lowlights rather than everyday occurrences, from the perspective of one totally jaded by anything that happens in there. Today was a perfect example.

This time of year, it's rather important to keep the houses cool so the chickens don't overheat. To that end, each house has roughly 25 fans, about 4 feet across and turned by 1HP electric motors. The fans that aren't direct-drive have a fan belt, which require occasional maintenance and replacement to keep them turning. Some of the other natural shocks (literally) that fans are heir to include cut electrical cords and broken thermostats. All of the above were true today — and anything I want to get done, vacation or no, immediately goes by the wayside when the chicken houses need attention.

Preparing to splice a cord that got cut, I had to walk out to the Barge and get some tools and supplies (i.e. a knife, a stripper, electrical tape and wire nuts). Walking along the wall, I heard behind me a BANGsqueeeeeee — not a sound I'd ever heard before. Whirling around to see what happened, I rather wished I hadn't: a chicken had jumped into the fan directly behind me, jamming it. I jumped over there and quickly unplugged it to prevent the motor from burning up. The chicken was at the 10-o'clock position, except for some guts on the bottom of the fan housing and a wing on the floor. I suspect it was killed instantly... at least it didn't suffer.

But I did. I gave the fan a turn, and the chicken dropped to the floor as Instant Chicken Soup. Some guts were still in the path of the fan, so I left it to finish the electrical job. Afterwards, I got a bucket and stick, scooped the remains into the bucket, then plugged the fan back in. It started immediately, seemingly none the worse for wear (fortunately).

The news crew as endangered species

Technology and Society
Current music: StaticBeats Chill

It's not happening right away, but it's coming. Auntie Beeb, as usual with clearer sight than corporate media, sees it coming. A perfect storm of advancing technology and ever-tightening corporate news budgets has signed the death sentence for the traditional TV news crew. But like the typical US death sentence, there are years of appeals and delays to go through before the sentence can be carried out.

The London bombing incidents shows there's now a critical mass of mobile video phones and camera phones out there, whose owners are on the spot to cover just about any important event — long before the camera crews can even be alerted.

Mobile phones have turned members of the public into reporters and camera crews — "citizen journalists". The media are hungry for their digital images and eyewitness accounts.

The BBC received 50 pictures from the public within an hour of the first bomb going off on 7 July. By the weekend it had 1,000 images and dozens of video clips sent by e-mail and direct from mobile phones.

By the time the eastern US woke up to the news of the London bombings, the BBC website was already showing video and pictures sent in by average Brits who happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Then during an arrest in the aftermath of the failed July 21 bombings, “one woman gave a running commentary as police, through a loudhailer, tried to persuade one of the suspects to give himself up.”

How are traditional news crews going to stay relevant in a time when any incident is already being covered by on-the-spot reporters transmitting raw footage at least, and perhaps polished commentary and interviews?

Extreme Video Enabled

If you live anywhere near a CVS drugstore, you may have noticed their “one time use” digital cameras and camcorders. Their (CVS's) idea is:

1. You buy the camera ($20 for a still, $30 for a camcorder)


2. When it's full, bring it to CVS for “processing”


3. You pay $$$, they give you a CD or DVD with pix or video, they keep the camera

A very clever hacker named Maushammer, of course, has cracked the code (the link goes to his camcorder page) so you can download the video yourself over a USB port and not return the camera. You have to cobble up a cable, but there's a link to instructions & parts are readily available. The camcorder takes video at 320x240 (QVGA resolution, similar to VHS) using the Xvid video codec and mono MPEG audio. The resolution is identical to the video my digital camera can produce, except that...

I expect this to trigger a new sub-genre of home video that I call “Extreme Video” — a $30 digital camcorder will readily go places that even a low-end DV camcorder (at 10 times the price) often won't: on the ramps at a skate park, bungee jumping, motorcycling, and all sorts of other fun (and potentially painful) activities. I understand a model rocketry club in Texas has already built camera mounts for their larger rockets. If Something Happens... hey, you're only out thirty bucks. Go get another one.

One of the nice features about this camcorder is that it's completely solid state — there are no tapes or disks inside (it uses a Flash disk instead). No tape transport means you could use it to record in very quiet settings without picking up motor noise from the camera itself. Another advantage is that it should be able to stand getting jarred around in an Extreme Video shoot without causing dropouts — as long as the optics don't get misaligned, you should be able to keep shooting.

For more information than you ever wanted to know, unless you're a geek like me, check out the camerahacking forum.

Shiny objects, Boy update, beer, tunes

I didn't get a RAZR yesterday, “just” a V220. Neither the Mrs. nor I were really comfortable spending $200 on a phone; $100 was enough as it is. My primary concern was having a phone that talks to my iBook, and I settled on the V220 instead of the next model up since it has a USB port and I don't need video (the still-camera phone is good enough). I need to get a data cable; leave it to Moto to use a non-standard pinout so we can't use the camera cable that I already have.

The Boy is still at my sister-in-law's. She asked us if we wanted him to come home today; our response was “he has to make that decision.” He & his girlfriend are eating a lot of chow, and they're both going to be paying rent when their checks from the lodge they're working at start coming in. He called last night to talk to the Mom-unit; they managed to stay civil since he was wanting lunch money for school. Daughter Dearest took him $20 this morning. I expect he'll stay in school until he's 18, then quit (he has to do that to keep his driver's license).

I bottled my beer (a stout) last night, after two weeks of fermenting: four 750ml (24 oz.) bottles and 42 regular 12 oz. bottles. I thought it smelled wonderful, although the female family members disagreed. Maybe about three or four weeks from now, it'll be ready to drink.

One of the other things I got at the flea market on Saturday were three CDs from World Wide Message Tribe — they since changed their name to The Tribe, then shut down as a band. That's a shame; their music was high-energy Christian dance, a variety of trance and hip-hop that was nothing like I've heard from musicians around here. Unfortunately, not all Christian music is nearly as fun to listen to.

Look for a brief review of the Left Behind series soon.

Some good stuff

Vacation for a week & a day — woohoo! We spent the weekend at my mom's rented vacation nest in the North Carolina mountains, about 5 hours from FAR Manor. It rained all day today, including most of the way home, but yesterday was pretty nice. We hit a flea market and scored some odds & ends — my particular find was a small whiteboard we can use to for leaving notes to each other or writing down when each vehicle needs its next oil change or something. I'll talk a little about my plans for the upcoming week tomorrow.

I cashed in some stock options earlier in the week, and hit it close enough to the peak that I'm pretty happy. It went up another 3 cents/share after I did the exercise, then slid the rest of the week and lost a whole dollar/share. We'll just be paying off some credit cards with the proceeds; no toys or new cars or anything. But that will free up some money to attack other debts, and killing off a couple of credit cards should increase our credit score a bit.

When The Boy left, he didn't take his GameBoy Advance with him. It's mine now, or at least it's mine for the forseeable future. I'm also getting his phone number, since: 1) I need a new phone; 2) He smashed his phone and isn't getting another; 3) My 2-year term of service is up and his isn't. That adds up to me getting a nice new phone, maybe a RAZR. Oh, I don't care; as long as it talks to my iBook via USB or maybe Bluetooth, and maybe has a camera, I'll be happy.

Book review: American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
(Bear with me, this is the first book review I've written since high school.)

“One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see?”

There are several ways, I've found, to write a story that people enjoy reading. One is to create characters the readers can identify with; another is to research the absolute heck out of things and create a solid backdrop. American Gods falls in the second category, though you shouldn't take that to mean the characters are cardboard or wooden (it's just hard to identify with gods sometimes). But Gaiman is either an enthusiastic student of ancient pagan beliefs or a fantastic researcher — perhaps both.

The story centers around Shadow Moon (although you never quite hear him called that), a big quiet man. As the story begins, Shadow is counting down the days to the end of three years in prison. He has a wife and a job waiting for him outside, and he wants nothing more than to get home and stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But just days before his release, both his wife and future boss are killed in an accident.

Released a few days early, Shadow struggles to get home through a storm, meeting a strange man on the airplane who calls himself “Wednesday.” He knows Shadow's name, offers him a job and refuses to take “no” for an answer. Finally bowing to the inevitable, Shadow sets out on a strange journey that takes him all across America and even “backstage.”

“What I'm trying to say is that America is like that. It's not good growing country for gods.”

To many immigrants, America was truly the Land of Opportunity, where everyone could have a place of their own and live unmolested by nobility. But for their old gods like Odin or Eostre, or mythical creatures like piskies and leprechauns, America is a desert isle where belief fades with the first generation immigrants. Worse, there are new gods to contend with: gods of steel and glass, gods of cathode rays and silicon, gods of intangibles, gods of rail and highway. There's only so much belief to go around, and Wednesday's quest is to rally as many of his fellow old gods as he can to face off against the modern upstarts. And the beliefs and culture heroes of those who came first are still to be contended with.

“You know why dead people only go out at night? Because it's easier to pass for real, in the dark.”

In the presence of gods and myths, even those who feed on human sacrifice (Old Europe's gods were bloody-minded creatures), sometimes it's hard for the dead to stay dead. But in what we like to think of as the “real” world, sometimes the living do not truly live. Shadow's wife Laura is somewhat more than a memory, and sometimes Shadow seems to just go through the motions of living. But in the end, as Wednesday says, misquoting Julian of Norwich, “All is well, and all is well, and all shall be well.”*

---

*The actual quote is “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Not even pagan gods are infallible.

Odds and ends

Stuff I wanted to share, but don't have time to turn into full individual entries....

Somewhere in Iraq, the locals have made a U.S. soldier a sheik. The moral of the story: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I know Iraq is a stressful place, especially around Baghdad; the now-defunct blog This Is Your War depicted a team of soldiers surviving IEDs and walking an emotional knife edge. But it seems like those soldiers who have gotten out and mingled with people, talking (and listening) have had a much easier time of it.

The Evil Weed: it's not just for glaucoma anymore. Scientists at Bath University in the UK have found cannibis may help with Irritable Bowel Disease (aka Crohn’s). Too bad it'll never catch on; the blue-noses would rather have people suffering than risk the possibility of someone feeling too good.

Over the weekend, I literally spent several hours cleaning out a 10 square foot space in the bedroom, next to my dresser. I half-filled a trash bag with stuff that just didn't need to be in my life anymore and created a more compact pile of reading material for the bedside. I also dug out two plastic tubs of socks — some matched, some not — and proceeded to match up about 25 pairs (maybe 1/3 of the singletons). I guess I should attack the top of my dresser next, and maybe take a good look at what's in the bulging drawers.

Priorities

This pretty much says it all.

Feuding Sisters

The wife's younger sister called us yesterday morning: "I'm going to let The Boy and his girlfriend live here — they don't have anywhere else to go." I thought to myself, "seems like we've been here before." But the wife went:

BOOM

At this point, everything they said was raw emotion, and really not transcribable.

The kid came up, supposedly to collect his clothes. But the first words out of his mouth was "Where the hell are my CDs?" The weird thing is, I was sure he collected them last time he came over. Needless to say, this did absolutely nothing to improve the emotional atmosphere. He insisted he didn't have them, and that Lobster had seen them in the minivan before we took it to have the air conditioning looked at. I suggested they could have been stolen from the van, and he gave me a look that said he didn't want to think about that but it was too logical to ignore.

The A/C in the van, by the way, is toast. The insides of the compressor came apart and distributed themselves through the system. $2500 to fix a van that would be worth somewhere between $1000 and $1500 afterwards.

More about rain

I got curious about how much water a storm cloud can hold. Turns out to be a LOT. I decided to go with an inch of rain over a square mile: (5280x12)² cubic inches. That's about 17,378,725.5 gallons! Some of the tropical systems we got in the last month brought a lot more rain than that, and over a much wider area — easily multiple billions of gallons.

Those big dark clouds hold a mind-boggling amount of water.

Dog 1, Squirrel 0

Current music: Audible Experience with Kinetica – Orbital Grooves Radio

This actually happened some time B. B. (Before the Blog), but it's still amusing. It concerns one of our dogs, a highly-energetic Austrian Shepard mix named Buster. I call him Buster T. Butthead. In absolute terms, he's a moron. He's a dog. I repeat myself. But in dog terms, he's been known to display some smarts and even wit at times.

There was the time, for example, when he was lazing in his plastic doghouse when I came out to toss some peelings down into the woods. The back of the doghouse was facing me, so I veered over there and drummed on the roof. He came shooting out with a "What?!? What?!?" look. I laughed and walked on to toss the peelings. I heard a thumping noise, and turned around to find he'd turned the doghouse to face the garage; he had a big doggie grin that as much as said, "You won't catch me like that again!"

We usually keep him tethered to a 40-foot run in a shady area out back, letting him loose on occasion for a few days — until he forgets why he's been tied up and starts destroying the landscaping — then he goes back on the tether. During one of the tethered periods, a squirrel started coming out of the woods to visit him. The squirrel figured out, fairly quickly, that Butthead could only go so far and would stand just outside that line (kind of like in those Foghorn Leghorn cartoons) and chatter at him, just to tease him. Butthead would charge him, getting caught on the tether at the last moment. Then when he wasn't watching, the squirrel would run past him and go up the tree.

So one day, the wife let Butthead loose and watched him. He ran around for a while, then went back down to his doghouse and laid down like he was on the tether. Sure enough, here comes the squirrel. Butthead jumped up like he was on the leash, and the squirrel hopped back to the (supposedly) safe line. He stood up to watch the fun, but this time the dog just... kept... coming. She said the squirrel had about half a second to look surprised before it was All Over. Butthead carried the corpse around front and deposited it.

Since I'm at the office all day, I had no clue this stuff was going on. I didn't know about it until I saw the dead squirrel next to the driveway. That's the only time I've ever heard of a dog plotting to nail a critter.

I thought we had lots of rain here...

Current music: Jazzmusique

This is just amazing.

Officials say that more than 26 inches of rain fell in Mumbai on Tuesday.

One weather official said conditions were particularly bad because the rain had coincided with high tides.

Twenty. Six. Inches. It's pretty serious — at least 200 people dead by drowning or mudslides.

The Guinness World Records doesn't mention the greatest daily rainfall, but it lists the highest monthly total at 366 inches (also in India) — in July 1861.

It's about to rain here, but not 26 inches worth.

ADDENDUM: Our rainfall for July was 10 inches above normal on the 15^th — about an inch short of the record (for here), and the month only half gone. But Mumbai got twice that amount in a day. You can tell I'm still boggled about it.

FAR Manor Food Service

Current music: RaveTrax Radio
Being a little short of cash this week, I had the wife pick up a few frozen dinners last time we went out for groceries (Marie Callendar is a babe! she fixes my lunch), figuring I could grab one on the way out. That worked out yesterday, anyway.

Last night, I'd started a batch of beer (rosemary stout, now fermenting nicely gurgle gurgle) when we get a phone call from the nephew who is just now getting his act together. Seems he was helping out a couple of people, driving them different places (sound familiar? not The Boy this time, anyway) and ran himself out of gas, out of food, pretty much Out. So he calls us, naturally, wanting money. Wife tells him no, but she would bring him some food & put some gas in his car. She wasn't feeling all that great, so I volunteered to go instead. I was at a convenient break point since I'd just finished boiling the rosemary and needed to let the water cool below 165°F before pouring in the mix.

Fortunately, for him and us, he very recently traded in his pickup truck for a car. Payment is the same, insurance is like $280 less, and he said the $25 I gas-carded to fill his tank was less than half what he was used to paying to fill the truck. So he got: my frozen dinners, a box of oatmeal & toaster goodies that I was going to take to work, most of a loaf of wheat bread I made last weekend, and the deli turkey. Of all that, I miss the breakfast stuff most, and it won't cost $4 to replace (I buy store brands).

So while talking to him, I found out why The Boy had been bumped out of the band: I wasn't the only one who had noticed him losing interest in his music after hooking up with his girlfriend. Pity. All that talent, and he's just letting it go to waste.

Beating the Heat

The heat index is reaching 100 or worse around here, and naturally the A/C is broken in my car. And naturally, making payments on FAR Manor means I can't afford to get it fixed. Seeing as the hot weather comes with a pronounced lack of rain, at least for a couple of days, I decided I'd be no worse off (and probably better) riding the motorcycle instead.

Morning was no problem; I wore a long-sleeved shirt (no jacket, which is very rare for me when riding) and was warmer than I expected. Already it was upper 70s and muggy.

The afternoon ride home required a little more preparation. I keep a t-shirt in the lateral cabinet under my desk; I put it over the seat mid-afternoon. With the sun not beating directly on the seat cover, it was no warmer than the air.

On the way out the door, I poured a cup of water in my helmet, sloshed it around, then put it on. What the lining didn't soak up went all over my shirt, exactly where I wanted it. Then I opened the vents and got moving.

Except for a couple of red lights that lasted much longer than needed, I was actually fairly comfortable most of the way home. The air blast cooled my wet chest, the long sleeves kept the sun off my arms, and the face shield kept the hot air blast off my face. The shirt was dry after about 25 miles, but by then I was on the shady part of my ride home and I only needed the wind.

Maybe I can install a swamp cooler in my car.

Meet the new boss

Current Music: Creation Steppin' Radio
With all the other stuff going on around FAR Manor, I haven't really thought much about impending changes at work. I don't plan to go into deep detail about the workplace, partly because they haven't created a blogging policy. I'll have to talk a bit about the industry, though, for you to make any sense of the following. It's the supply-side of the cable (CATV) business; the company I work for makes cable modems, eMTAs (cable modems with telephone lines built in), and CMTSs (what the cable modems and eMTAs talk to at the other end of the cable). I've been writing the manuals for all but one of the products.

There's a lot of noise from analyst-types about the "triple play" in the cable industry -- that is, data (cable modems), telephony (eMTAs), and digital TV. Lately, I've been devoted full time to the latter. We're building a box that can take a bunch of digital video streams, moosh them around in pre-determined ways, and send them down the cable to your home theater or whatever.

Lately, we've been selling so many eMTAs that the management felt it necessary to divide the company along product lines -- eMTAs on this side, all the headend (cable company) stuff on the other. Just as my former boss hired a contractor to take the eMTA load off me, I got moved to the eMTA side.

I'm not complaining (for a change) -- it looks like I'm going to have an honest-to-God budget and the freedom to roll out web and video editions of documentation. I've been griping for about 7 years that we need to put our documentation online; looks like it might finally happen.

It's a bloom! It's a wave! It's... FUNKY CACTUS!

One of the fringe benefits of FAR Manor, that I don't enjoy nearly as often as I ought, is a small outbuilding. It's one of those prebuilt sheds with sheet metal siding that they bring in on a truck and drop off; it's then up to you to add the Comforts of Home™. The original owner, the guy who bought the house, had it brought in and ran a small print shop in there. Thus, it's well lit (six flourescent fixtures, two tubes each) and has 120/240 volt power & an extension for the home phone. I use it for its workbench and sometimes veg out on the love seat I brought in.

Today and tomorrow are set to be the hottest of the year so far, mid-90s, so I finally broke down and went in to put the room air conditioner unit in the window. And here's what the cactus in the next window over was doing:



The light-colored part on top is all new growth. Sheesh, I just gave it a little water two weeks ago, you'd think it wouldn't be all that surprised. :-P

Here's a close-up:



Plants can do some weird things sometimes... and now the mint is blooming, shooting out a small blue cone-shaped flower. I'll post a pic of that when it fills out.

Come and dig my herbs

Current music: di.fm Goa-Psy

Like I've said, it's not a 24/7 suck-a-thon here at FAR Manor. I started a few herbs last year: mint, Greek oregano, rosemary, and sage. The first two went into a flower box that I could bring inside for the winter; the others went into the ground. Turned out there were two sage plants in the little pot, so I separated them and planted them both.

Everything thrived, so I added some more this year: parsley, marjoram, basil, and thyme. Given all the rain we've been having, everything is continuing to thrive. Basil especially seems to like lots of light and lots of water -- if it doesn't rain, I pretty much have to water it every day. I made some pesto with it already (it was GREAT by the way), and it took all of two days for the plant to sprout replacement leaves.

I've included a macro shot of the oregano in bloom. I think it's cool how the buds look like tiny green roses. Actual size is about 2mm across.

Lobster on the Boil

Current music: Transonic - Space After (on Groove Salad)

In all the excitement with The Boy, I neglected to mention that Lobster has been rather scarce this week. Scarce, as in I hadn't seen him at all. Wife-o-licious saw him once or twice as he came in long enough to grab something and leave.

So some phone calls happened. The fast-food joint he works at sent him home because he was too tired to work (think going face-down in the fry machine... bad news). Then they called here to tell him that someone had called to say the police had an APB out for him, for one. We were getting ready to go look for him ourselves, when his mom called and said he was over there. Yay!

Shortly thereafter, she calls again and says he's screaming and carrying on, so we pile in the van to go over there (expecting him to have flown the coop). He was still there, though. Wife called the sheriff to verify what I'd already guessed: the "APB" call was hot air. I have a pretty good idea who it was, but no proof.

So now we get the real story. He's been hanging out with The Boy and Boy's girlfriend pretty much all week, taking them wherever they want/need to go, and finally getting tired of being used like that. He was parked a little ways down the road the other night when Boy said he had walked all the way (told ya he was lying). Funny that he didn't take a guitar though... although I think with his hormones carbonated by the girlfriend, he's temporarily lost interest in his music. They stayed at one place for a few days before getting kicked out, and the girlfriend's crash pad doesn't have room for them. I don't know what The Boy is going to do about sleeping arrangements, but so far he hasn't tried coming back home.

So Lobster, at least, is realizing that he needs to keep his own head on straight and not enable his so-called friends (even if I'm talking about my own son here) to continue on their wrong path. Just in time; school starts in about 3 weeks. Funny, Lobster tells me there are several adults working at the fast-food place who still act like The Boy. "Yeah," I said, "and they're still working in a fast-food joint. That's fine for high school, but don't you want more out of life?" He nodded.

Well, I have a brother who was 30 before he got his act together, and my nephew is just now getting at least a veneer of respectability at 23, but neither of them have the diabetes complication. I just have to keep remembering it's in God's hands.

Answered prayer

Current music: Groove Salad

One of the last coherent thoughts I had before falling asleep last night was praying that The Boy would get serious about dealing with his diabetes, and wondering if I was even getting through to God.

So at 3:30 this morning, we were wakened by a tapping on the window. He'd returned to pick up a bag he'd packed Saturday — apparently he was planning the move-out before his tantrum. Before I could say anything, he filled a zip-lock bag with ice and put his insulin in it. He claims to be living with "a rich guy" about 30 miles away; he also claimed to have walked the entire distance and was going to walk back. Riiiiiiight -- if this "rich guy" is buying him clothes and letting him stay with him, why didn't he loan the kid a car? He's either staying close by or had someone waiting for him a little ways down (probably the former; he would have taken a guitar if he wasn't going to walk too far).

He also told me he was probably going to marry his girlfriend once he's 18... probably to shock me. I wanted to counter-shock him by telling him to not have kids, but refrained because of his bullheadedness. Given his ego and congenital lying, and her being not so bright, that combination would give us something much like GW Bush.

The important thing is, he's at least thinking about what he needs to survive for now. Maybe he'll stay out of the hospital.