Escape from FAR Manor! Part II

While the northern part of Planet Georgia is starting to slip (with a sigh of relief) into fall, it’s still summer in points south. This became apparent as I got through Atlanta (contending with stadium traffic, at least the Falcons won), and I spent a few hours trying to direct some of the breeze into the car to cool things off. Afternoon wore on to evening, and the sun finally got low enough that trees along the side of the road provided some shade. Clouds and even a little rain cooled things off further.

The trip from FAR Manor to my mom’’s place takes 8-9 hours when I’’m by myself, or 10 with passengers (or more if there’s holiday traffic). I don’’t drive any faster, it’s just that we make more stops. On my own, I stop twice: once at a rest area, once for a combined gas & food break. My mountain bike rode on the back, where it put up enough wind resistance to affect the gas mileage. It’s a boring drive, and I won’’t dwell on it further.

One thing about September here is that the evening sun lines up almost perfectly with the east-west roads... so if you’’re heading west, you need good sunglasses. But again, the clouds came to the rescue, and I got in without any trouble.

This morning, I decided to give both myself and the mountain bike a good workout. I rode up to Sand Key Park, about a 15-mile round trip, and waded into the Gulf. It’’s still pretty warm, but not the warmest I’’ve ever seen (that would be Biloxi, MS, in 1980). Gulf Blvd. has bike lanes on both sides of the road (mostly), and is flat compared to Planet Georgia, where level roads are the exception. But had I been thinking, I would have ridden south instead of north: a tailwind going out means a headwind coming back. I also didn’’t think to bring water, which meant I spent $2 for a bottle of Gatorade at the park’s vending machines. Pricey to be sure; but I figured $1 for the fluid and $1 for the bottle, and refilled it from the drinking fountain. Shake it up to get the chlorine to fizz out, and it was fine. I also soaked my shirt in the shower thing as two-wheeled air conditioning before riding back.

I was pretty ripe by the time I got back; into the shower I went while Mom fixed a sandwich for lunch. And that’’s been my day so far. At least I can slack on the exercise the rest of the day and tomorrow with a clear conscience.

Floored (or, the anti-weekend) [UPDATED]

I forgot to mention why there are 20kg weights on the floor, and slipped in another comment here & there.

We ended up checking out Friday. I had Mrs. Fetched agreeing to stay through the weekend, then The Boy started flaking out and generally becoming insufferable. The phone calls started coming with uncomfortable frequency (I now know what not to take next year… smellphones). Seems like our corner of the county just comes apart if we’re not there. Mrs. Fetched promised that we would take the entire week next year, and the chicken houses wouldn’t get in the way. I’ve had her reassurances, several related to buying FAR Manor not the least of them, not pan out far too often to put much stock in that. But we’ll see.

My boss called again on Friday morning, as we were packing up, with some more issues — if I’m so indispensable that I have to be online all through vacation, they should give me a title and salary to match. Either that, or hire me some help.

Home and unpacked, Mrs. Fetched got annoyed anew at the white carpet covering much of the house. With us both home, chicken houses not an issue for a little while, she decided that we should try putting down the hardwood floor in the hallway. We called our friends for advice — he did all kinds of construction work before he fell off a roof and broke his neck a while back. He can walk with support, and at least advise on construction projects, nowadays. Not only does he have the know-how, he has the tools. We spent much of Friday evening ripping up the mark of insanity (white carpet), gathering material and cutting the jambs in the hallway (six doors in 18 feet, GAFB) so the new flooring could be tucked under.


This morning, up dim & early to return the jamb saw to Home Despot and pick up the advisor. It took us a couple of hours to get as far as you see here. On a couple of occasions, he got down on the floor and helped — one of the few times since he had his accident that he’s done any construction work. I was concerned for him, but realized he needed to do it — he lasted about 10 minutes before he got to hurting too much though. Working through the day, me measuring and Mrs. Fetched cutting pieces, making sure they fit into place, laying down glue and finally pushing the pieces into each other and tapping them in. We got over halfway through before giving out.


Part of the slowdown is the nature of the flooring underneath. Check the first pic again: there’s plywood running up the center of the hallway, but that lighter stuff to the right of the hammer is crappy particle board. Not only is it particle board, it’s mostly higher than the plywood. I took a chisel to what you see there to even it up (the only good thing about particle board is that it chisels down well), but there’s a definite slope to the floor, left downhill, near the end of the hall. That’s why you see two 20kg weights there: it’s pushing the floorboards into the glue. As we toiled away, Mrs. Fetched said on several occasions that Leon (the guy who originally built the house that has become FAR Manor) was notorious for cutting corners. She knew this all along, and still wanted to buy this house?

Mrs. Fetched is confident that she can finish the job with a little help from The Boy. Good thing, because I’m off to Florida tomorrow morning.

Escape from FAR Manor! (day 6, Mrs. Fetched escapes)

Mrs. Fetched has joined me here in the refuge. As I am typing this, she is fast asleep in the bedroom after being up all night supervising the chicken removal. We actually left FAR Manor a little earlier than I’d expected, but naturally ended up getting here a little later than I’d expected too. Stop for lunch, grab a few more groceries, take care of the car insurance (and the lady was in a gabby mood)… it adds up quick. The rain pouring down from yesterday evening until about two hours ago didn’t exactly speed us along, either.

I didn’t get the video of the chicken catching machine like I’d hoped. Turns out the cat porch was infested and Sprite & Aries were totally flea-bagged. I ended up running into town to grab a fogger and arranging an overnight stay with an animal boarder who would also flea-dip the little darlings. The cats were not happy about getting stuffed into a carrier — how I managed to do it without getting my arms shredded can only be explained by Divine Intervention — and were even less happy about sharing a room with several loud yappy dogs, even if they were all in separate cages.

While I waited for Mrs. Fetched to get ready, I finished the tub-caulking job I’d started last night. I’d already taken care of the grout — most of the grout along the tub was loose, but some had to be chiseled out — and ran the caulk. This morning, I vacuumed the chunks of old grout out of the tub and caulked over a couple of areas that were a little thin. That should keep the water where it’s supposed to be, anyway.

One good thing about being home yesterday: the Battery Fairy brought some fresh juice for my iBook. It’s nice to have a mobile laptop again. I dutifully boxed up the dead original battery and dropped it off at the UPS place for recycling on the way to the refuge. Another thing I no longer have to worry about.

A little sun is shining across the trees outside as I type on the couch. I hope that means the rain has moved off for the rest of the week. I took a looooong walk around the resort yesterday with my camera. I’ll post photos either here or on Flickr when I get a chance. I really should have done it yesterday while I had Internet access, but they’ll keep. I was too busy catching up with my blog-buddies.

We’re holding out the possibility to extend our stay here through the weekend. We’ll have to switch units, and it’s $120, but Lord knows Mrs. Fetched needs a break at least as much as I do. She’s flopping back and forth; currently in the “no” column but we’ll see how she feels in the morning. As the office is right across the parking lot from here, if she changes her mind I can have the paperwork signed before she has a chance to change it back!

Escape from FAR Manor! (evening)

On the subject of what day it is: Keith Oibermann has said all that needs to be said. I shall otherwise remain silent.

Evening on the deck provides its own symphony. But at this time of day, the cosmic mixer turns down the nature track and turns up the sounds of humanity: the flat snapping as I open a beer, echoing off first the condos and then a hill across the lake; a car bringing four ladies (a little older than me, I think) from their day’s outing; the buzz and whirr of an air conditioner starting up. Insects chirp softly; you almost have to listen for them. The geese of morning are elsewhere — they spend much of their days near the picnic area, perhaps trying for a handout.

Sunlight sparkles on the lake’s ripples, nearly blinding before thin clouds come to the rescue. Once in a while, a breeze stirs the trees and shakes loose the occasional leaf. I catch the occasional whiff of a charcoal grill; someone in Mountain Shadows, perhaps.

The spider insists on building its web next to the swing. I knock it down in the morning, and it rebuilds by evening. Someone ought to put this spider in charge of New Orleans; it’s patient and persistent, and couldn’t do a worse job than the Bush league.

I wonder why I stayed at FAR Manor last night. I should have known how it would go: I got about six hours of sleep, then when I woke I was too keyed up to drop off again (I tried). At least I took care of a loose end from work; a customer wanted a table of LED patterns that indicated problems and what to do about them. I had it mostly ready on Thursday, but forgot about it in the panic mode of that last day at work. I emailed it and got a “just what I was looking for” back, so the day wasn’t a complete washout.

Mrs. Fetched was sort of jerking me around last night, though. First it was, “Are you going back?” then “Aren’t you staying?” Then when I agreed to stay, she was like, “You don’t have to stay.” Sheesh. Such is the challenge of taking a vacation a mere hour away from FAR Manor; the evil of the chicken houses has a gravitational field that extends so far. For now, though, I will enjoy not having the TV on as I digest my supper.

Escape from FAR Manor! Inside the resort

The condo I’m staying in is small, but has the essentials for a week: two bedrooms, a bath, full kitchen, and the living area shown here. I’ll be shuttling between here and FAR Manor until Wednesday, at which point Mrs. Fetched will join me until it’s time to check out on Friday.


Not caring much about TV, but wanting a little music, I grabbed some powered speakers and found a convenient place to put the iPod. You can pretty much hear it everywhere inside the unit without turning the volume up very much at all.


Plans are simple for tomorrow: bicycling in the morning, a swim in the afternoon, fix pasta in the evening. Tuesday will be a non-vacation day, although I volunteered to help Mrs. Fetched get the chicken houses ready for the catchers. I hope to get some video of the catching machine in action that night or Wednesday morning — it’s pretty hilarious, watching the chickens get rolled into the cage.

Mrs. Fetched plans are: stay up all night Tuesday while the catchers do their bit, then ride up to the condo with me and sleep most of the afternoon while I put a nice supper together.

AT&T Microwave facility

On GA115 between Dahlonega and Cleveland GA.

Oh deer!

Back at FAR Manor for a couple of hours. Daughter Dearest isn’t working today, so I came back early to get the vacation posts in. Be sure to come back in a couple of days; I’m going to add some pictures to those posts when I get a chance.

Talk about dodging a bullet. Just a few miles out of the resort, a doe popped into the road. I got on the brakes and she stepped up the boogie. Still on the brakes, thinking perhaps the first deer was already across (Mrs. Fetched will tell you “there’s always two”) and I was clear, a large but still-spotted fawn leaped out. I stood on the brakes, to no avail. I think God picked the thing up and threw it, because I didn’t hear the expected thump when I would have hit it. I saw it coming toward the windshield and thinking, “oh great,” but it cleared the windshield… and landed on the roof! THUMP THUMP-THUMP THUMP of it kicking around, trying to get some traction, then it rolled off. I looked in the rear-view mirror and it was going boogity-boogity back the way it came.

Thinking that must have been the first deer I saw running back, I stopped and got out to look. No fawn lying dead off the road, even in the woods a little ways. No damage to the front of the car, and just a few scratches on top. Some hair managed to cling to the car the rest of the 40 miles home. Looks like we both dodged a bullet.



The only other thing I can say is: Whew. Thank God.

Escape from FAR Manor! (morning on the deck, day 2)

The second day of vacation is starting out tons better than the first. For the first time in I don’t remember, I slept the entire night through. Ten hours. I think I mentioned I haven’t been sleeping well lately, or maybe it was to Mrs. Fetched.

Except for someone’s little yappy dog across the lake, it’s quiet out here on the deck. A flock of geese forage in the lawn below, grunting softly. Crickets and a jay off in the distance compete with the occasional whisper of car tires.

Beyond the next row of condos, the lake is still and almost glassy. Beyond the lake is Mountain Shadows, one of those places where you build a house around your camper. If I’d had it to do over, I would have bought one of those places instead of a timeshare: you can come up whenever and stay as long as you like; a few people live there year-round. Everyone is really friendly.


Anyway. Now that the yapper has shut up, the only sour note in this audio-visual symphony is a spider web that I somehow missed seeing when I was sitting next to it on the porch swing with my coffee. Whack that, have a bowl of cereal, and then… jog, walk, swim, read, write, whatever, until I pick up Daughter Dearest this afternoon.

Vacation reports may be a bit spotty after this. See you in a while, though.

Escape from FAR Manor! (Vacation, day 1)

Note: Depending on when I can find a tube (the Internet is a series of tubes, you know), these posts may appear later than their dates. I'm going to backdate them to the day I wrote them.

OMG. If all vacation days were like this one, I’d just work. As it is, I may end up being the exception and saying I wish I’d spent more time at the office. At least there’s a happy ending.

You know it’s not going to be a wonderful day when the phone rings at 5 a.m. and you find that the power is out. In the course of things, we found that the house phone was out as well, but the office phone that woke us up obviously wasn’t. But I digress. When I picked up the phone, the line was dead — in my sleep-deprived state, I forgot that phone has a flaky hook switch. I also didn’t catch details like the night light and clock-radio being dark. It took flipping two light switches, and nothing happening either time, for it to penetrate my thick skull.

“Power’s out,” I told Mrs. Fetched on the way to the bathroom. “Did you forget to pay the electric bill?” (Being half-asleep does little to stop my lame attempts at humor.)

“It is?” she mumbled.

In the bathroom, I could hear the alarm from the chicken houses… seems the situation was more widespread.

“That must have been Mom, then,” said Mrs. Fetched (a good bet; nobody else would call us at 5 a.m. unless it was a wrong number or a prank). “I need to go start the generator.” The chicken houses have backup power, which helps to keep them, you know, alive during a power failure.

I lay awake while she was gone, not from choice, until she returned. I knew that a major feed incident in #1 had all but buried a feed hopper, and I’d already volunteered to help shovel feed in the morning. So when she said she was going to start that at 6-ish, I said, “I’ll come. I’m not going to get back to sleep anyway.” A little breakfast, and away we went. After making a dent in the pile, we did the daily walk-through. That took us to about 10:30.

After a shower, I sat down to check email and what all my blog-buddies are up to, and my smellphone rang. My boss. “Those documents you uploaded to the intranet are coming back ‘File Not Found’.” Serves me right to trust anything built or maintained by IT — just because it worked that last X times doesn’t mean you should ever trust it to work this time. I checked my work email, found another person with the same problem, then turned off the VPN and emailed everyone from my home account. Lotus Farking Notes is still screwing up attachments, which it has been doing for the last few months now, and now the web-based client I’ve been using has been following suit at least for forwarded attachments. Words to live by: in a crisis, don’t depend on IT. Or: “IncompetenT” begins and ends with IT. (OK, rant off.)

Noonish, we went out to eat. On the road, Mrs. Fetched started in about me calling the insurance company about the load we’re taking about against my life insurance. That reminded me about other calls I wanted to make: activate my debit card, order a new battery for my iBook, and let the phone company know the business line was acting up again — the hum was loud enough Thursday night to kill the DSL.

By the time we got home, The Boy had returned from his job and I was about dead. He went with Mrs. Fetched to shovel feed, and I crashed for a couple of hours, waking up about an hour later than I wanted (and just as Mrs. Fetched returned).

Her Imperial Highness was put out that I hadn’t made my calls yet. I’d committed the Ultimate Sin of inconveniencing her: she expected me to take M.A.E. to work; it was 4 p.m. and I had to make the calls now. Never mind that the one she wanted was to Alabama and thus gave me an extra hour. I could have called from the car, but she was already in high dudgeon and even less inclined than usual to listen to reason. Fine: I used the time to make the calls (check’s in the mail, debit card active, battery ordered) and get stuff together (i.e. packing for vacation). The fourth call, to the phone company, never happened. Just to make sure, I took an old phone out to the interface box and plugged it in the test jack. No hum. Loosening and tightening the screw terminals cleared it all up.

What with one thing and another, I didn’t make good my escape from FAR Manor until about 6:30. I stopped in Cleveland to pick up some essentials, and learned that I was in a dry county. I thought such things no longer existed… but then I remembered the sorry excuse for a Pretendersent we have these days….

An hour on the road, a half hour spent grabbing groceries (and a fruitless search for beer), ten minutes to check in, twenty to unpack: at 8:30, I called home to let everyone knew all was well (except for the beer).

I fixed a sandwich for supper and entertained myself with some music out of my iBook and reading some ancient (older than me!) Bell System Practices about maintaining 197/198-type switches (those old step-by-step boogers — am I a geek or what?). Then… blessed sleep.

Two glorious weeks of vacation, the first two-week vacation of my working life. I’ll be bouncing back & forth for a few days to FAR Manor, but Mrs. Fetched will join me here for a couple of days starting Wednesday. Next Saturday, off to Solar’s for a week in Florida.

Appropriate

The community yard sale was yesterday. We finally stopped talking about it and actually took a pile of stuff over there to sell. After booth costs, we cleared about $110 and came home with several empty boxes. Less stuff, more money — it’s a good thing. I might go next month with just some books and surplus electronic devices (old Macs, commercial-grade VCRs).

This afternoon, I crawled under the house and cut (and removed) a bunch of copper pipe while Mrs. Fetched and The Boy yanked out the old registers from the living room. I think I only left two registers uncut, and those are on opposite ends of the house (one in our bedroom and one across from the washer & dryer). Lots of copper and aluminum to take to the recyclers, and now we can remove the furniture and rent a sander.

A little later today, I split up the rest of the Romas my mother-in-law gave me and put them on the dehydrator. If I can get another 5 pounds or so, I should have enough dried tomatoes to get me through the winter.

And now you know why it’s called Labor Day weekend.

Hey Solar...

I seem to have lost your phone number. Gimme a call when you get this, OK?

Do-it-yourself camper

Lordy, my cellphone camera bites. But I refuse to be shackled to Stinkular for two more years. Anyway...

Zinged!

Standing outside at the in-laws’ this evening, after eating watermelon: Mrs. Fetched, Daughter Dearest, me, and Mrs. Fetched’s mom. And a bunch of half-grown herd dogs, putting their cold noses on bare legs and so forth.

After one dog nosed Mrs. Fetched, she jumped and complained. Daughter Dearest said, “Did he stick his nose up your butt too?”

“No.”

Then the mother-in-law chimed in: “He was just smelling your ‘cats’.”

I was the last one to get the joke. Daughter Dearest was shocked that she said it, but I’ve been around them long enough to know both of them will zing you when they feel like it.

Shorties

A few bits and bobs that don’t merit their own posts…

***

A guy at an OEM company we’re dealing with at work goes by the name of “Raining Cao.” I guess that’s not as bad as Wayne King (say it out loud).

***

Q. Why are northern nudist camps better than southern nudist camps?
A. It's colder.

***

Is Blogger ever going to fix the blog search? You’d think at a site owned by Google, that would be the last thing to break. But it hasn’t worked for at least a week. I think it broke about the same time they rolled out the new “Blogger beta” that has had a somewhat spotty record to date. Homeless Guy was unable to post for several days; he thinks he lost 200 readers to the glitch. I guess it’s fortunate for me that I didn’t get invited to try out the beta, given how search is(n’t) working.

***

Lobster really seems to have gotten it. He was talking to Mrs. Fetched last week and saying things like, “I was an idiot. Why didn’t I finish school?”

***

Mrs. Fetched’s video business has started picking up again. A local performance boating place is having her clean up some video they shot, and we’re doing taping for a park/rec league football team. “My” “new” camera perches on my monopod like it was made to work the sidelines. I made some mistakes last week, probably because it was the first time in nearly two years that I’ve done sideline camera work, and had an unfamiliar camera to boot. Mrs. Fetched gets a wider view from the sound booth… I’ll have to see if she can get a still of my backside down on the sidelines or something.

***

The Boy is doing sheetrock work now. I have to get him up at 6 a.m., but at least he gets moving with a minimum of hassle. The only friction right now is from band practice; he does this twice a week during the week and gets home around midnight. At least he’s getting some money here and there; he should soon be able to get his car fixed. He needs to get himself an alarm clock that will Do The Job though… when he gets his own place, I’m not coming over there to get him up every morning.

***

Hello, Ernesto. I was starting to wonder if we would (thankfully) have a dud of a hurricane season. All it takes is one, though, in the wrong place… and as warm as the Gulf is, it’s definitely the wrong place. Gas prices have been dropping for the last week or so (I saw $2.69 on the way home), but not even election-year price manipulation is going to overcome the panic that will ensue when people hear “hurricane in the Gulf.” I suspect prices will turn back around by the middle of next week, unless Ernesto fizzles out. Pray it happens, not for the gas prices but for everyone who lives along the Gulf.

***

Off to bed. I have a very non-relaxing Saturday to look “forward” to.

The Rise of the Creator-Consumer, Part IV

Continued from Part III
(start at Part I)

IV. The Passives (reprise)

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever think things would be… I don’t know… different?”

She looks up from her book, slightly concerned. “Different how?” she asks guardedly.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, silencing the voice of his god with the Mute button. “I mean, we have all this shit, or at least we’re making payments on it. But we sit here most evenings, we don’t really have a clue about what our kids are doing… and did you have any dreams when you were younger?”

Her mouth tightens involuntarily for a moment, caught between annoyance and amusement. It’s finally happened, she thought, he’s having his mid-life crisis. Aloud, she says, “Sure. Didn’t you?” Let him talk it out.

“Yeah,” he laughs nervously. “Kyle kind of reminded me. When I was his age, I wanted a Super-8 movie camera. I was going to interview a ghost in a haunted house… make my own movie, like Kyle and his friends. But I couldn’t afford it, and neither could my parents.

“What about you?”

Trapped! he had opened up, now it’s her turn. “Well…” she waves her book. “I wanted to be a reporter, an investigative reporter. I guess I’d have been a cross between Lois Lane and Woodward and Bernstein. But we couldn’t afford J-school —”

“J-school?”

“Journalism school. I got a scholarship for Annenberg, in California, but it wasn’t enough. I went to vo-tech, and it was good, but… well, I started a mystery novel about an investigative reporter, but never finished it. It probably wouldn’t have gotten published anyway.”

“Hey, you never know. You can prob’ly write better stuff than that,” he gestures dismissively at her paperback.

“This book won an award,” she sniffs. “I didn’t even try to get mine published.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I don’t know. And I’m not sure why we’re even having this conversation.”

He laughs. “You say we don’t talk enough all the time; now we’re talking and you don’t know why.”

She opens her mouth to retort, then stops. “So what brought this on?”

“I guess it was Kyle and his movie-making buddies. He’s supposed to be home in a little bit. Hey, what do you say we walk down to the Thurmans’ and see what they’re up to? That’s where he is.”

She looks at him for a moment. “You know, I don’t remember the last time we went out for a walk. It might be nice.”

To be continued…

Making something of bleeps and boops

Sometimes, following links takes you to some odd places.

This particular oddity odyssey started with a MacDevCenter article, which led O’ReillyNet, and from there to an article on BoingBoing.

Near the bottom are two links to audio files. The first is a short, silly thing made of System 7 MacOS beeps over a funky beat; the second is a complete song whose soundtrack seems to be made up entirely of Nintendo snippets and MacOS beeps, plus the MacOS startup chime. The strangest thing about it is that it works.

Go have a listen and be amazed, amused, or disgusted.

He’s back!

No, not The Boy, although he was gone for a couple of days. I’m talking about this guy:


There’s a lot of weird bugs in the world, but to me the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth stands out as one of the weirdest.

The butterfly bushes have been a little scraggly this year, up to the last week or so when they finally got the idea. We have to cut them back pretty severely each year to keep them from taking over the manor grounds.

When You Rule the Tools

About a week ago, I complained about our tendency as tech writers to become slaves to our tools. Tonight I provide a counter-example — what becomes possible when you, the technical writer, is in charge of the tools.

At work, we’re building a box with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities and routing. Since that’s a fairly well-explored theme, we contracted a company in Taiwan to supply the Wi-Fi router. Like most routers for home networks, this one provides a web-based interface to configure the box, with links to context-sensitive help and a global glossary. As it turned out, the help that they furnished us was already owned (copyrighted) by another company. Since I work under the same department as the people driving this particular product, they brought me a working prototype and asked me to rewrite the help.

I’d seen an earlier prototype a few months back, so I already knew what was there. This time, though, I hit “View Source” in the browser — and was presented with a mishmash of HTML and <script> tags. Digging a little deeper, I realized that every single string in the web interface was being written by ECMAScript (the polite name for JavaScript hockkkk, ptui aka JavaSchit). The strings were stored as variables in files called language.js and langcont.js. The names explained the method to their madness: translating the interface requires changing only two files instead of 30.

Looking at the text itself, I was less than thrilled — we make stuff for cable companies; the help text talked about DSL and even ISDN, but not cable — and I had some better descriptions for other terms. The bolded term was run into the rest of the paragraph instead of broken out into a glossary-style list. I needed to add some cable-centric terms and remove the DSL- and ISDN-centric stuff.

So I fired up a text editor and got to work. It took all of five minutes for me to realize that I was going about it the wrong way. The string variables look like this:

h3='<b>Term</b> The definition…';

So if I wanted to add a new definition in between two existing ones, I’d have to either renumber everything following or create variables like h3_5 in between. Meanwhile, there was a corresponding <script> call in help.html:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">dw(h3);</script>

To turn down the bloat a little, they had created dw as an alias for document.write. But the thing was, for every term I inserted or deleted in language.js, I’d have to make a corresponding fix in html.help. Since this is tedious, repetitive, kind of stuff — and I’m lazy — I decided to let the computer do the work for me. With a few global search and replace runs, I turned my text into HTML and then banged out a couple of scripts to transform it into the format needed by each file. It took an hour or so to get the scripts working, but I’d still be pounding on it if I had to do it by hand.

This is the kind of thing that you can’t do, or at least do easily, in Microsoft Weird or even FrameMaker. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be nearly as efficient. Sometimes, you even have to make tools to do a custom job on the spot. But when you rule the tools, the tools do the work for you so you can engage in some good old guilt-free slacking.

Disaster Averted

Shortly after getting home from work on Wednesday, Mrs. Fetched told me a tale of… “whoa.”

A while back, some friends of ours moved out of a trailer and gave us their large-ish propane tank so we could replace the ones we were renting. (For those of you who don’t have one of these, most people rent their tank and are locked into a single supplier. If you own your own tank, you can get propane from the low bidder.) Wednesday was the day when the incumbent came to cart off their tanks and install ours. They’re happy to do this... for a price, of course.

In this case, the price included three or four hours of labor. The regulator on our tank was shot, and had to be replaced. Then there was the minor detail of the old system being two small tanks ganged together; that gave them some grief too. The real fun started when they did the leak test... and found (and fixed) two leaks. Under the house. Next to the furnace.

Mrs. Fetched told me all that to complain about the $420 bill. “We should have just paid the $51 tank rental.”

“Um,” I replied, “Not that I’m all that fond of this place, but I would prefer it didn’t catch fire some night in October.”

“It wouldn’t catch fire, it would probably blow up.”

All the more reason to not worry about the $420… especially since the furnace is under the downstairs bedrooms. Not that I care so much about the house, but I would prefer not to have to escape in the middle of the night and try to remember grabbing my wife, kids, M.A.E., and laptop on the way out.

Whither Lobster?

The last time we saw Lobster in this chronicle, back in May, he had: no wheels (lost his truck to Big V); not much education; no permanent abode; and knocked up his girlfriend. I originally put “worst of all” in the latter item, but that seemed to give him the Attitude Adjustment that he sorely and truly needed.

Having a kid on the way seemed to give Lobster a focus. At first, he was quite happy contemplating supporting a family on welfare and his meager KFC earnings. But as he began to reflect on his situation (a miracle! in itself), he made peace with his parents (another miracle) and then moved back in with them (you could have knocked me over with a feather at this point).

The miracles just kept a-comin’ — he started working toward getting his GED (his reading level is atrocious though), got a job at the new Wal-Mart while continuing at the KFC, and (best of all) his pregnant girlfriend dumped him for another guy. So in less than three months, he has completely turned his life around… and life has given him a clean slate. I have no idea whether he’s managed to get a set of replacement wheels, but he lives less than five miles from both KFC and Wal-Mart now — he could ride a bicycle and save a potload on gas, insurance, and maintenance. Some habits, however, are a little more ingrained than others. I suspect he either gets rides from his parents or has bought a beater.

First M.A.E., now Lobster. I can only hope The Boy soon gets a similar attitude adjustment (minus the knocked-up girlfriend, of course).