Rainy funk kind of night

Current music: Beat Blender
Tammy’s wet sloppy kiss has left me not much motivated to write much more than a haiku, and that was this morning in the car. I’ve just been hitting “Next Blog” and bouncing from place to place this evening. One I stumbled across that might prove interesting is Militant Leftist — it’s a new blog, only four entries when I found it (all recent), so it could grow or die. Time will tell.

What was that statistic? 55% of all bloggers continue to maintain their blog(s) after several months? — that means 45% of new bloggers just let it wither. ’Course, I did a head-fake along those lines; if you look at the Archive list you will see no posts for June after starting Tales from FAR Manor in May. I’ve come to enjoy blogging though; I think somewhere around 20 people read me at least occasionally, and knowing that is gratifying.

The soap-opera that is life at FAR Manor continues, mostly calm with a few minor issues. I’ve recently revised my opinion of The Boy’s girlfriend, though: she’s not as dumb as she thinks she is. I’ve worked with people no smarter than she, and they were called “managers.” IMO, what she lacks is a belief in herself, and a spark that would motivate her to push beyond her current boundaries. I can relate; on evenings like this the mental & emotional sloth reminds me I have no reason to think myself superior. I didn’t study very hard in high school because I could get As and Bs without making much effort. But I digress. She’s no Ms. Einstein to be sure, but she could become more successful than she thinks. Lobster is kind of in the same state... he’s content. He has his truck, his job at KFC, and he’s on track to finish high school this year. He doesn’t have a clue about afterwards, and I fear that he’ll put his money where his politics are and join the Army.

The Boy is a major question mark. He has talent and drive, but no interest in playing by any rules other than his own. That usually doesn’t work out unless you were born into the elites (Kennedy, Bush, Morgan, Windsor, the Illuminati), but can also lead to greatness — boom or bust, not much in between. I really believe in him & his potential, although the road he’s on is like rolling percentile dice and hoping for a double-ought. I keep prodding him to hatch a Plan B and keep it in his back pocket, just in case, but I don’t see him doing it yet. Well, at least he’s honest with himself: he’s not the type to “play the game” just to make it. Stardom or bust, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, that’s The Boy.

Daughter Dearest is the only one I see taking a conventional road, and she’s not all that conventional once you scratch the veneer. I’ll talk about her another time, though. Right now, it’s past my bedtime.

Sheesh. I came to write a paragraph, and ended up rambling.

Now that’s weird...

Daughter Dearest demonstrated an ability to do the Vulcan Salute with her foot....

Yeesh.

My ad hoc home office

I thought I’d start the day by describing my work-at-home setup before I get to work.

Last week, I said I work out on the screened-in porch/Florida room with the cats. I set at the windows, looking out over a very rough back yard that needs some serious log removal and weed-eating. The woods takes over about thirty feet away, so it’s a fairly narrow strip of yard I’m talking about.

I sit at an 80s-vintage typing desk, a steel frame with a pretty good composite veneer over who-knows-what for a working surface. I use two phone books to raise the iBook screen up to (almost) eye level... I suppose I ought to get one or two more to get it really right. The Boy’s old iMac “donated” its Apple Pro Keyboard & my MacAlly wheelie mouse (he likes it better than the Pro Mouse and I don’t use it that often) for the day.

The Force is strong with the litter box this morning. Daughter Dearest is supposed to scoop it at least every other day, and we’re lucky if she gets to it twice a week.

Time to start working, after I grab a cup of coffee... and a couple more phone books....

Pandemic Flu Awareness Week

October 3–9 is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week.

News coming out of southern Asia, particularly Indonesia and Vietnam, suggests that the H5N1 strain of flu (often called “avian flu” or “bird flu”) is slowly but surely figuring out how to effectively transmit itself from person to person. Statistics alone point to a worldwide pandemic coming soon (we get one every 30 or 40 years, on average, and it’s been 37 years since the last one in 1968). Like a hurricane, we simply can’t predict where and when the next one will hit, so keeping an eye open and having a plan is an increasingly good idea.

Check out the Flu Wiki (link above), there’s plenty of good information out there.

It must be fall...

Because the wife has once again caught Pointless Furniture Moving Disease. Which means that everyone who can move gets drafted to move furniture from here to there.

Actually, there are three changes of season that trigger it. I get a break on the spring-to-summer transition most years, but that summer-to-fall one is a killer. Fall-to-winter usually is limited to rearranging the bedroom.

This year, though, there’s actually a meaning behind the movement (for a change). I mentioned the living room carpet that needs to be pulled up; some of the furniture is getting shifted out of that area this time around. My feet hurt, but at least we’re done (for now).

Gnarly-Top Wheat Bread

I really need to start adding a little more water to the dough when I put the bread machine on dough cycle. Quite often, the dough is good & tight, and I have to prod and pull and stretch to get it to fill the pan. Tonight’s wheat bread needed some extra water — not only was it on the dry side, it was bogging the machine down to the point where the motor wouldn’t turn without some help, and that was after I added more water.

Naturally, those finger-pokes and so on don’t flow or rise out of the dough after it goes in the pan, so the result looks like the above. It’s still good though. I’ll cut it up first thing in the morning. Right now, it’s bed time!

A pleasant thought

Catching up on reading Motorcycle Consumer News, I found a comforting piece in the “M/C Bulletins” section about bikes that are most and least likely to be stolen or crashed. At the top of the “least likely to be crashed” list was my current ride, the Virago.

It probably says more about the riders than the bikes, but still.

Outdoor blogging

I’m sitting in a folding camp chair on the sidewalk outside my front door. Behind my right shoulder is the guest bedroom where the wireless hub lives, so I have a pretty strong signal. It's cloudy enough that the screen is a bit dim but still readable.

I should do this more often. Fresh air & blogging, yes you can have them both!

MUCH better

Sharpening that chipper-shredder blade made the difference between useless & useful. It will now happily chew up 2-inch (5cm) limbs where it couldn’t handle bits 1/4 that thick before.

I need to find a deflector or bag for it now... it didn’t come with one. I really don’t want to buy one at the moment, because its ownership is somewhat ambiguous. My brother-in-law doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get it back, but once he finds it actually does something worthwhile now, he might change his tune. As it is, I had to rake up all the mulch; it was scattered up to six feet away from the machine and several inches deep in places. I filled two 5-gallon buckets with chips & still have a pretty good pile.

Sharpen the saw chipper-shredder

As I’ve mentioned before, I had the ever-so-brilliant idea to use a chipper-shredder to turn all the brush and downed limbs into mulch. My brother-in-law the landscaper loaned me a Troy-Bilt that he was given to pay off a bill.

In two words: it sucks. It’s still here, I think because he really doesn’t want it back.

So today, I had another brilliant idea: sharpen the blade, and maybe it would suck a bit less.

Troy-Bilt, I’ve learned, didn’t design their toy to be easily serviced. I took off a cover (forcing the big plastic knobs to turn all the way off to get the cover off, tried to get the flywheel off but it’s on there to stay, then pulled off the chute assembly. With all that off, I was able to put an Allen wrench on one side and a 1/2-inch socket on the other (oh yeah, this thing is a lovely mishmash of English and metric fasteners) and loosen the three nuts & bolts holding the (single) blade on.

Now I have to take it down to the in-laws’ and introduce it to the grinder.

Busy Saturday

I got my car back yesterday, with an admonishment from the mechanic about making it sure wasn’t still leaking. Huh? I’d better not have spent $350 on a water pump I didn’t freeking need. As Planetary Governor Bok-Bok's gas tax moratorium expires very shortly, I went ahead & topped up my tank — and I got the last gallon of regular, and they were already out of mid-grade, so I had to finish up with premium. So much for saving money. :-P But Wife & I went out this morning and got chiro-crunched, got her bangs trimmed, got some groceries, and paid the cellphone bill.

I’m still smelling anti-freeze, but the mechanic forgot to tighten the overflow cap so there might be some slop sitting in little areas under the hood. If it’s not good & gone by tomorrow, back it goes Monday.

Somehow or another, we didn't get around to eating breakfast. We heated up leftovers for lunch.

The Boy’s girlfriend dyed her hair jet black (from dirty blonde) today. It’s as black as mine used to be. Maybe I ought to try that, just to see if anyone notices.

Wife got a short for pay (yay!) video project yesterday — seems a WWII vet earned a Purple Heart during the war, but the fire that injured him also took out his records so the military has just gotten around to issuing this guy the medal he deserved like 60 years ago. He’s 92 now. Wife taped the ceremony, having to dodge a rude newspaper photog who kept bumping her video camera & finally asking her “what are you doing here?” The only reason I’m here blogging instead of delivering video is that they called & asked for two more VHS tapes (which tacked an hour on). I guess I can stick the bread in the oven when I get back.

Soaked... in more ways than one

Current music: Groove Salad
I got a spit of rain on the way to work this morning, just enough to worry me since I was on the motorcycle and had neglected to grab the fanny pack containing my rain suit. What little rain there was dried out by the time I got to work.

Wife called, relaying a message from the mechanic: he thinks it’s the water pump that’s leaking, not a heater hose. Looks like $350 parts & labor. I have half a mind to ask him if he has to go through that A/C line he said was broke, and to replace it if he does. Maybe I can get working A/C out of the deal, especially now that I won’t be needing it for a few months. (It’s supposed to get down to 50°F Friday morning!)

Meanwhile, the spark coils I ordered for Big Zook (an old Suzuki GS1000G I used to ride) came in, and I swung by to pick them up on the way home from work. Of course, it was raining when I came out, and a bit more than the spit this morning. The front of my jacket was pretty well soaked after a few miles, by which time the rain slacked up and eventually stopped. Riding the bike always tacks 20% onto the rain probability, and forgetting the rain suit adds some more.

So the dealer either forgot, or didn’t realize, that Suzuki had upgraded the spark coils (like most of the electric parts on that bike)... and doubled the price from $46 to $92. And each coil runs two cylinders (on a four-cylinder engine). So the young lady at the parts desk agreed to eat half the extra cost, and I told her I’d have to pick them up later in the week when I get some more moolah. Thank God I get paid Friday.

I’d really like to get Big Zook running though. If it runs good, it would make a great winter bike, what with the full fairing. It’s also big enough to handle a sidecar (although I won’t be the one to do that). We might just sell it; gas prices are heading north again and people are getting interested in alternate transportation again. One of the more optimistic futures I see for us could be titled Biker Nation....

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.