Fascinating

So fascinating, in fact, that I forgot to get the camera.

When I work at home, the most comfortable place to sit (at least this time of year) is on the the screened-in (and windowed-in, does that make it a Florida room?) porch. There's a typing desk sitting out there because there was nowhere else to put it, and its location means it doesn’t get its horizontal surface buried with clutter. So with the windows open and the ceiling fan going, it's not only like having an office with a window, it’s almost like working outside. I share the space with the cats, who are glad to have someone out there to ignore.

On the storm door leading outside, a praying mantis was on the glass, busily munching a bug he’d caught. The bug was struggling feebly, at least until the mantis bit its head off and chewed it up. The mantis didn’t seem to mind having an audience.

The World’s Shortest Fairy Tale

Received in email, cleaned up slightly.

Once upon a time, a prince asked a beautiful damsel for her hand in marriage.

She replied, “NO!”

And the prince spent much time hunting, fishing, and golfing; he drank beer and farted whenever he pleased, and lived happily ever after.

Actually, the shortest fairy tale goes, “Once upon a time they lived happily ever after. The end.” But I like this one better; it has a moral.

Working at home

Current music: Moody Blues - Say It With Love
I’ve sort-of fallen into a routine where I work at home on Tuesdays. Today it worked out even better than usual: Planetary Governor Bok-Bok asked school districts to take a couple of snow days Monday & Tuesday to cushion any Rita-related fuel shortages, so I didn't have to worry about getting the kids up and taking them to school. If that weren't good enough, I turned off the alarm so I could get a reasonable amount of sleep for a change.

Time to get some work done....

Massachusetts Mandates Open File Formats

Over the strained objections of guess who, Massachusetts has mandated use of the Open Document format (ODF) for all office productivity applications. ODF is the native format supported by the Free (and cross-platform) OpenOffice program, and being adopted by the Linux-based Koffice suite as well.

This is a good thing. The taxpayers of Massachusetts will save money by not being locked into a proprietary “solution” (more like a solvent, dissolving state revenue), citizens can download a Free program instead of paying upwards of $400 for a commercial one to read government documents, and — amazing! — nobody died. Other state and national governments have flirted with the idea, and succumbed to, shall we say, “pressure.” One notable exception: the Largo, FL city government saves its fortunate citizens upwards of $1M/year by using Linux instead of that other operating system.

The question is, where did Massachusetts find their big brass ones? And will they rent them out to other governments?

Making time for other stuff

Daughter Dearest has gotten interested in playing Magic:the Gathering again. We’re both playing non-aggression decks — hers is a black/white pre-built with a couple of modifications; I use a blue-white deck I built primarily to frustrate The Boy’s green/black attack deck (which it did pretty well at). Last night, it was one of those situations where you could beat on each others’ creatures all evening and not do much damage to anything. We each had largish armies on the board; I finally ended up decking out.

Tonight, I lucked out; DD just doesn’t have the killer instinct. While I was mana-starved, she waited around until I managed to build up enough flying creatures — and protection for them — and then (as is usual with my deck) I nickel-and-dimed her to death. She could have put me away a lot earlier, and should have, and she realized it after it was too late.

We’re all going to drag the Dungeons&Dragons stuff out this weekend & have some fun. The kids who like to play are old enough to drive now, and FAR Manor has several good places to set up, so they’ll be coming here & we’ll be ready. (For some reason, they climbed into the attic once to play Magic, go figure.) I might try throwing some narrative on the blog afterwards, just for fun.

Yuck

I didn't realize how dirty my keyboard wrist rest was at the office until I dripped a little water on it and tried to rub it off. I had to get some soap on a paper towel to clean it off.

Yay, rain!

Finally, we got some rain here. The last rain we got was literally what Katrina brought, and that was what, the end of August?

Car is still in the shop, the mechanic hasn’t gotten around to looking at it. I took the van so I wouldn’t have to deal with riding the motorcycle in the soup. Tomorrow I’m working at home, so no problem there.

I Survived White Knuckle Sunday

I put the text of the sermon I gave today on Street Prophets.

Crunch

The Boy's cousin came by while I was napping, and parked his four-wheeler in the usual place in front of the garage. I got up in time to take The Boy to work, so we hopped in the van. I backed up, and... crunch. Smooth move, Ex-Lax; I just backed into the four-wheeler.

Great. Fortunately, I'd only broken out the plastic in one of the taillights. I scooped the pieces into a bag, took The Boy to work, then hunted up some airplane glue. Wife-o-licious was much more helpful than she admitted, as we played it like a jigsaw puzzle and glued the sucker back together with a little clear packaging tape for reinforcement. After the glue dries good, I'll put the lens back on.

Floored

We're the third owners of FAR Manor. We had been making noises about putting a hardwood floor in the living room, but given the finances it wasn't going to happen any time soon.

The widow of the original owner was in the area a while back; we knew them when we lived back in the woods about 1/2 mile away. She came by to visit, stepped in the living room, and said, “Why did they put that carpet down? There's a hardwood floor underneath it!” I pulled up a corner, and sure enough it was there.

We moved furniture out of the way; I grabbed a big pair of shears and cut just past the walkway.



The harder half is where the carpet still is — we need to move some other furniture out of the way before we can pull up that side. Then there's the sanding and re-staining phase to come. Fun fun fun.

Happy? Campers

The Boy, Lobster, and a cousin.

Basil blooming

The plant survived being knocked over, obviously.

Some bumps in the road

The Boy and his girlfriend have hit their first couple of issues. On his part, one morning I took him to school and he told her that he'd gotten on the bus (she wakes him up in the morning, she's the only one he gets up for). For her part, he was planning to join some friends of his camping out Friday night & she talked him out of it.

So there's a little friction going on there. Wife had a little talk with the girlfriend about not being clingy, giving him space, and I told The Boy that lying to her about trivial stuff isn't smart: if he lies about little stuff, what else would he lie about?

Must See: Pass Christian, MS after Katrina

Jimmy Johnson, the artist who draws the incredibly funny (and all too real-life) Arlo & Janis comic strip, has been a resident of Pass Christian, MS — one of the small coastal towns flattened by Katrina. Fortunately, he left well ahead of the storm and even managed to keep his website updated (much to the relief of his fans).

He and other residents were allowed to return this week and pick up some of the pieces. Fortunately for Jimmy and his neighbors, they were behind a low ridge that spared their houses of all but severe flooding (many houses in the area were floated off their foundations) and he is one of the lucky few who has been able to at least camp out in his own house. Instead of posting comics, he has been bicycling around what's left of the town and taking pictures of local landmarks, relief stations, and neighbors salvaging their belongings. Nothing I've seen in the media or the blogosphere has really brought home the devastation on a personal level like this photo gallery.

The most poignant picture in the gallery is this one of a memorial to local victims of Hurricane Camille in 1969.

Just go check it out. And if your local paper doesn't carry Arlo & Janis, you can at least read it online.

On the bike again

Yesterday morning, The Boy didn’t get up early enough to make the bus. No problem, the school is a block off my usual route to work and he needs some time to get breakfast and so forth anyway.

As I got to the school, I noticed the temp gauge in the car climbing beyond its usual 1/3 of the way up. I’d been smelling anti-freeze off & on lately, so I unloaded the kid and headed back to the gas station. When you can take the radiator cap off the car when the motor’s warm, that’s not a good sign.

Ever since I first smelled the anti-freeze, I’d been popping the hood and looking for steam. This time, I found it coming up behind the engine. I used a handy spigot at the front of the gas station, called Wife-o-licious, and she told me to drive over to our mechanic’s and she would meet me there. Got home, jumped on the motorcycle, and got off to work. The car’s still in the shop, so I’m biking it again today.

I think this brutal dirt road I drove up Sunday morning, picking up one of Daughter Dearest’s chorus-mates, poked a hole in one of my heater hoses. I’m not 100% certain, but it doesn’t really matter. I probably should have the system flushed this time of year anyway.

Ready for White Knuckle Sunday

White Knuckle Sunday is what I call days that I get tagged to preach at our little church. Being the lay leader, I’m supposed to do it once or twice a year, and it has been longer than that so....

As these events can come up without warning (I got a call on Saturday night once when the preacher developed a sore throat), I try to keep & develop some ideas in a folder on this iBook. Much to my pleasant surprise, I found something I’d worked on last year that was 99% complete. A few tweaks, and it’s ready to print out. I need a couple of props — for some reason, when I write a sermon, it seems to go better with a couple of props — but that’s primarily a piece of paper and a little box.

I’ll post the text on Street Prophets if I get a few requests. ;-)

Gimme shelter

I stopped by the shelter last night to see if they needed any help, and to bring a couple of bushels of apples for one of the peeps who was heading to Gulfport today. Turns out that the 100 or so people of the next wave that were to come got diverted: FEMA decided to put them up in hotels instead. Huh? I’m thinkin’ somebody with a hotel knows somebody at FEMA, but I certainly can’t prove anything. The upshot is, the shelter is winding down; when the last few families get placed in their apartments or houses (which are being prepared), they’re done.

The good news is, they have been accredited (or whatever the equivalent is) by the Red Cross as a disaster shelter. That does mean a bit more work: they have to have everything in a state where they can open up, literally within hours. But they’re willing, and that’s the important part. Saturday is the last volunteer day; they're going to sort the mountain of clothes & other donations, put them on pallets, and ship them to a church somewhere down in hurricane country. If they don’t find a place in Louisiana, I’m sure there’s a couple of places in Texas that are going to need some help real soon.

As I was talking to the guy, a little kid (age about 4 or 5) came by with a piece of cake. Seeing that this was getting way on beyond supper time, I was thinking, “this kid’s gonna be wired big-time.” Sure enough, he came over and started punching my gut and talking to me: “Did that hurt?” “Your belly’s hard.” “Are you gonna have a baby?” Heh. Some guys work out all the time and have only a six-pack to show for it. I have a whole keg!

Letter to the Editor: Peak Oil

I shot the following (without links) to the local paper. I got a phone call from them just now; they’re going to print it.

Hurricane Rita notwithstanding, it looks like refineries and pipelines are getting put back together and gas stations almost always have fuel to sell now. Things seem to be getting back to normal.

At least for now. The International Energy Agency, the official energy watchdog for Western nations, is now predicting non-OPEC oil production to peak in about 5 years. How much longer to OPEC’s peak is in question. By “peak oil,” the IEA means that those producers simply won’t be able to increase production anymore: there’s still oil in the ground, but we’ve nearly exhausted all the easily-extracted oil even when taking new discoveries and advances in technology into account. What oil is left will simply require more and more effort for less and less return.

Couple this fact (and even the big oil companies like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron admit it) with increased demand in Asia, as the economies of China and India expand, and we’re going to reach a point — probably sooner than peak oil — where demand grows beyond supply. Even the biggest fish in the pond, Saudi Arabia, is already nearly producing at maximum capacity, so saying “pump more oil” isn't going to do us any good. It will be obvious when we reach this point: we’ll see shortages and price spikes like the last three weeks, but they won’t go away. Ever.

We’ve built our whole lives around an assumption that we can simply drive anywhere we want, without worrying about the availability or price of fuel. Perhaps as early as next year, probably within five years, almost certainly within ten, that era will be over for good. Fortunately, we have some time to make some basic lifestyle changes and develop habits to help us cope. The aftermath of Katrina has shown that we can’t depend on our government to do much more than get in the way — it’s up to each of us to help ourselves, our family, and our neighbors deal with the coming changes.

An Evening at the Shelter

We didn’t get a truck — which turns out to be a moot point, as I’ll explain shortly. Instead, we cleaned out our closets and took a vanload of clothes on over to the shelter early this afternoon.

We got over there, and before we could take our stuff in we had to wait for... a truck & trailer hauling furniture out. Turns out that various organizations are “placing” families in houses & apartments in the region, and (at least) this shelter is simply a whistle stop on the railroad. Good thing, because more are coming in next week; rumor has it that the next group of evacuees includes Vietnamese fishing families (which I remember being a point of ethnic tension the summer of 1980 that I spent in Biloxi). It’s kind of strange: we’re going to have new neighbors of ethnic groups heretofore unknown in “these here parts,” and it almost seems like they’re depopulating the coastal region — given the long-term environmental effects of flooding hitting all those toxic sites in Louisiana, that's probably for the best. I plan to avoid Gulf seafood for... pretty much the rest of my life.

But I digress. Later in the evening, I went back and signed up for a shift at the shelter, offering to do whatever was needed. It was a very educational experience. Some of the things I learned, in no particular order:

• If this shelter is typical, they’re getting overwhelmed by the amount of material pouring in. The first part of my evening was spent tossing bags of clothes (including some I recognized) onto a mountain of stuff to sort through later. There are also two semi-trailers parked at their loading dock, literally packed with bags of clothes. In another part of the shelter, they have clothes that have been sorted through on long rows and racks, in a size to rival some department stores. It’s very likely they don’t need any more clothes.


• There is a list of things they need, but it changes from day to day. If you want to donate material, and you want your contribution to be of immediate use, bring things they want (don’t trust yesterday’s list though!) and mark them. Those things (diapers, I can almost guarantee being one of them) will be whisked into the distribution.


• Don’t expect a well-oiled machine. Nearly all the people at the shelter, including those running the show, have maybe a few days more experience than you do on your first night. If you’re willing to do whatever needs to be done, you’ll stay busy for as long as you want to be there. Ask for directions, someone will point you the right way.


• At this particular shelter, they need volunteers most between 9–11 a.m. and 9–11 p.m. I suspect that the evening shift is going to be pretty universal, because people are helping the families settle down for the night & get their kids to sleep.


• Just don’t donate used underwear. Period. I guess anyone intelligent enough to read Tales from FAR Manor has enough sense to know this, but I’d have thought anyone with a room-temperature IQ (in Celsius) would know it. Lordy.


• Volunteering at your local shelter is worth the effort, even if you don’t interact with (or even see) the people you’re helping. Stuff needs to be done, just go do it.

I’ll be going back as often as I can in the next week.

The Routine

Current music: Red Rockers - Eve of Destruction (not as good as Barry McGuire’s original)
Went to see Just Like Heaven last night with the girlies (The Boy and his girlfriend saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose). I’m rarely in the mood to go to the theater, although I usually enjoy what’s set in front of me when I get there, and last night was no exception. A halfway-decent plot line and a little ghostly physical humor helped. The Boy liked Exorcism so that went well.

So work is work and life is life. I was hoping to get up to the resort today, but wife found out some of the evacuees are getting moved into otherwise unoccupied houses here & there. They have places to put people, they have furniture, but they don’t have a truck to move the furniture. Neither do we, but that’s never stopped her before. If we find a truck, that’s what we’ll be doing today. I’ll update later (with pictures, I hope) if things go off. Seems like something happens to scuttle relaxing weekends at least 90% of the time, but this one is actually worth the effort for a change.

“We’ll go next week,” she said. That’s what she said last week too, but (as usual) I refrained from saying so.