Ev’rybody’s healin’

Current music: Drone Zone
Saturday morning, whatever was in my side gave a last twinge and just... left. [Cue Hallelujah Chorus and a dance line.] By Sunday afternoon, I was producing enough fertilizer to supply all the farms in Nebraska and Iowa combined. I don’t think it was a coincidence.

Meanwhile, the cream that Mrs. Fetched is putting in her eye has helped a lot. She went into the eye doctor for a followup today; he said it’s better and “keep doing what you’re doing... oh, and by the way, you need bifocals.” I’m not gloating. It won’t be much longer before I need ’em too.

Hallowe’en at FAR Manor

I’ve considered Hallowe’en my favorite holiday for a long time. This may seem strange coming from a Christian, and a fairly conventional one at that, but it’s because we can relax on this holiday. Sure, there’s decorations to put up, and we’ll slip leftover Hallowe’en candy in Easter baskets, but there’s not the added pressure of cantatas, special church services, or shopping. Some of my bob-sisters take this holiday more seriously, and (like much of the Christian calendar) we co-opted the old Pagan holidays to make new converts a bit more comfortable. How soon my brethren forgot history...

But I digress.

Even at this time of year, there’s color to be found. Besides the fall flowers — pansies defying the frost and the more muted displays of wild flowers — the dogwood trees show deep red berries, six or seven months after the blood-tipped white of early April blooms.


Kudzu is an alien lifeform that has taken over much of Planet Georgia. At this time of year, after the first near- or actual frost, its brilliant summer green is starting to fade. In a few more weeks, the leaves will wither and drop away, leaving bare vines behind for the winter. I keep telling myself I’m going to pull down a few of the vines and try weaving again. The Boy and Mrs. Fetched made fall wreaths from kudzu vines a while back; my mother-in-law sold several at the Moonshine Festival that year.

Left unchecked, kudzu pretty much takes over. On the other hand, trying to kill it doesn’t make much difference. This is one tough plant. I’m told that the Japanese prize the roots, and think we’re crazy for trying to get rid of it. I’ve also heard of companies that get paid to plow up and remove kudzu from fields, and then they turn around and export the roots to Japan. Now that is a business model: get paid on both ends.


Daughter Dearest ready for our party, and trick-or-treating later on. Knowing that she was going to be a major babe doesn’t make it any easier now that she is.

[Quick story: Half DD’s lifetime ago, desperate for a costume, I grabbed a dress from the wife’s closet, stuffed a bra, and called it good enough. DD was extremely non-amused, and still hasn’t gotten over that.]

She helped one of our friends get ready too.


The boys all took off to watch Saw II or something similar; so much for having a bonfire. We just stayed inside and played Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix and had a great time. A couple of guests are on the floor here. That thing is fun — I’m officially interested in a video game again.


On the way back from the movie, Lobster got his very own Hallowe’en present from the local constabulary (74 in a 55, smoooooth). We made the mistake of letting The Boy take the car & pick up M.A.E., then go to the movie. On the way back, we’re told, he & Lobster were racing; The Boy was ahead as the two lanes narrowed to one, and Lobster wasn’t backing off, so he got on the brakes just in time for Lobster to go roaring by a cop. We told them it was Quota Week.... The funny thing is, it’s Lobster who has a radar detector (and had it turned off).

Oops

Guess who let the propane tank run out?

*sigh*

At least there’s plenty of firewood. I went and gathered up an armload of kindling a few minutes ago, just picking sticks up off the manor grounds, and didn’t even make a dent in the supply.

At this rate, Jimmy Carter and I will be swapping sweaters. That wouldn’t be a bad thing... if we’d listened to the man, the country wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in now.

Ouch

Last week, there was the big toe acting up. My self-therapy for that in the past has been to wear the ol’ Birkenstocks with the shaped sole. Two days later, no more problem. My tennies are about a half-size too tight, which was probably my problem. I switched to my church shoes until I get around to getting a replacement pair of tennies.

With that out of the way, now I’ve been having some soreness in my (left) side for the last few days. It hasn’t gotten worse, but it hasn’t gotten better either, so I figured I’d better have it looked at.

The doc, who oversaw The Boy for the first few hours of his diabetes, didn’t have a good explanation. Worst case, I’m getting an ulcer. which would be strange — it’s not like we have four teenagers here... oh, wait a minute... we do. I could (nearly 30 years after having my spleen removed due to a car wreck) be getting “adhesions,” in which loops of the intestines start sticking together. I have no clue how that’s treated, and I’m not sure I want to know. So she suggested I take an antacid; if the pain goes away that points to an ulcer.

Then she asked, “have you have a strep pneumonia shot in the last 5 years?” With my usual style and flair, I replied, “Hunh?” Turns out that I’m at risk, as I’m missing a spleen, so she called in the nurse with a vaccination for me. She would have also given me a flu shot, if she’d had vaccine available. The Boy and I will both be getting it later, I guess.

The shot hurt worse afterwards than it did going in. It’s sore as all get-out now, 11 hours later. Oh well, I’m no stranger to pain. After all, I’m married.

Friday Night Cinema

When you don’t have time to go to the theater and watch a feature-length movie... there’s plenty of shorts just a click away. I have enough of these lined up to do one a week for quite a while.

Type: Political
Format: Flash (SWF)

What 2000 Looks Like

Sounds crazy

So crazy, in fact, I want to do it. But not this year.

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the writers’ version of motorcycling’s Iron Butt Rally. It’s a simple contest: during the month of November, write a short (50,000 word) novel. But like haiku, there’s deep water beneath that simple surface.

Both NaNoWriMo and Iron Butt are endurance tests, of both operator and machine. Both require the participant to forego luxuries like sleep, regular meals, entertainment, and family. NaNoWriMo throws in another little monkey wrench, the minor detail of a major holiday (Thanksgiving, at least in the US) — toward the end of the month, when contestants will be pushing hard to wrap up, no less. Not to mention the 8.33% of us who happen to have a birthday in November.

To give you an idea of what 50,000 words is like, look through the October archive for Tales from FAR Manor. Read it all. Then multiply by 4. And I only thought I’d been writing like crazy this month. To really have a shot at completing NaNoWriMo, I would probably have to use up most of my vacation time (by taking November off, which ain’t gonna happen due to deadlines) kick the renters out of the old place in the woods, and move in there for the month.

Quota week?

Going into work this morning, I saw no less than five cop cars out & about. One of them pointed the ol’ radar gun my way.

Now I ding Planet Georgia for various reasons, but one thing they do right is tightly regulate local police activity with regard to writing speeding tickets — mainly in reaction to the big black eye that crooked towns like Ludowici gave the planet. One measure limits revenue from traffic tickets; others mandate a 10MPH tolerance for local/county cops.

It’s funny, though: cops can be appreciated or reviled, depending on whether they’re directing traffic through a busy intersection or running a speed trap, and they could do both in one day.

Outrage du jour

Just another reason to avoid Wal-Mart like the plague. It isn’t enough that they tell their suppliers to move manufacturing to China... they’re trying to figure out how to squeeze employee health benefits and get away with it. The link goes to a somewhat raggedy-looking PDF; I’ll summarize the lowlights:

• Make it harder to insure spouses. “Spouses are by far the most expensive plan members to cover...”


• Lower life insurance coverage.


• Use more part-time employees (because it takes longer for them to qualify for coverage).


• Push employees into Health Savings Accounts (as if they can afford them).


• Cut 401K matching from 4% to 3%.


• Encourage less-healthy employees to leave, thus saving their health care costs, by “[designing] all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g. all cashiers do some cart gathering),” and “dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart.” Sheesh.

I suppose it’s better than what they do now: give people information on how to apply for Medicaid.

Wal-Mart definitely has a self-inflicted image problem. Only 48% of eligible employees use their healthcare plan (vs. the national average of 68%). The memo further admits that “46 percent of Associates’ children are either on Medicaid or uninsured.”

Tell me again: in these days of runaway medical costs, when we spend more per capita for healthcare than any other developed nation and receive less for our trouble, when one of of five Americans can’t even afford health insurance, why a nationalized health care system is such a bad idea?

M.A.E.: You Got Served

“Someone called from the lodge today,” M.A.E. told me Friday evening. “She said a cop was up there looking for me.”

I reacted swiftly and decisively: “Huuhhh?? Why would a cop be looking for you?”

“I don’t know, unless my mom is pulling something again. Everything is OK with the probation officer, and I know I haven’t done anything to get arrested.”

“Could be.” I once described M.A.E.’s mother as “a serious piece of work,” and nothing has happened since to change my mind. “But she can’t have you arrested without some evidence of a crime... you think she’s having papers served on you?”

“That’s probably it,” M.A.E. agreed. “She called me and gave me a bunch of crap about how I need to stay away from my sister, blah blah blah...”

Sometimes, you just need to bite the bullet. M.A.E. is brave, or really believes in the system: she marched into the sheriff’s office today and asked why the deputies were looking for her. About 10 minutes later, they got it together and handed her a restraining order that accuses her, among other things, of being on meth 24/7 and violent. I’m 95% sure she’s not on meth at all, let alone 24/7, and 100% sure she’s not violent. So she’s going to get a drug test, which will put the lie to SPOW (Serious Piece Of Work) and likely get her zapped for making false statements or even perjury.

I’m not impressed with M.A.E.’s past. But she’s trying to put that past behind her for good and live the life of a respectable citizen, and that does impress me. I just don’t understand why someone — especially a relative — would try to throw wrenches in that.

News briefs

All the news that you didn’t hear about (but probably should have).

One reason I avoid blogging from work: even if you have free time, you don’t want to get in the habit if there’s no set policy. That’s one good thing about Microsoft that I’ve mentioned before: not only do they allow blogging, they let developers blog about work.

You just can't make this stuff up. The in-laws just installed an incinerator at the chicken houses; maybe we need to plant flowers around it.

Viagra could cut heart stress... well, sheesh. I can tell you why: one thing you don’t feel after nookie is stressed out. Well, unless you’re committing adultery and somebody’s spouse comes up the driveway, you don’t. (I’m guessing that would be the case anyway; I have no first-hand experience in that matter. No, really.)

OpenOffice 2.0 has been released. No piracy required, just download and enjoy.

You Are Now Informed.

Rosa Parks and determination

A lot of people have posted tributes to Rosa Parks today, and deservedly so. It took a lot of guts to say I ain’t movin’ in that time and place. You can only work within the system so long, especially when the system is rigged to consider you a lesser being, and there comes a time when playing nice and following the rules just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The bus boycott that followed Ms. Parks’s arrest and fine was another display of determination. When the bus was your primary means of getting from place to place, it was a real hardship to stay off. When the black people refused to play the inferiority game, it took courage to continue in the face of bricks, bombs, and bullets. It took something beyond mere courage — it took guts — to refuse the easy road of retaliation.

Some years later, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed — shortly before he was to turn the civil rights movement to the needs of American poor, both black and white. I think it was no coincidence.

Meta-blogging

... or blogging about blogging.

Seems like Blogger got the performance probs fixed last week — a tip of the ol' beer mug to the guys who keep this thing going. I’m sure the admins get their fair share of complaints, but I hope they know how much we appreciate them making this available for all of us. Now, guys, lemme tell you about these nifty features I think everyone would love....

I converted all my blog bookmarks to RSS feeds in Safari early this week. It saves tons of time and I don’t miss anything.

Anyone reading for a while has probably noticed I’ve been throwing postings up here left & right. I thought I’d do well to make three posts a week, but it’s been closer to three a day for the last some weeks. Except for Mystery of the Haunted Vampire, I think I’ve been out-cranking everyone on my list — and Carnacki has like four people posting there. October has always been a busy month for me, just not in this particular way. I’ll probably slow down in a while; I was cranking out haiku pretty steadily a while back and then it dried up for a couple of weeks. (But I’ve put up four new verses in the last couple of days, maybe the drought is over.)

Gotta admit... it fits.

Results from the What Muppet are you? quiz. I don’t know how they did it, but it fits.

You are Dr. Bunson Honeydew.

You love to analyse things and further the cause of science, even if you do tend to blow things up more often than not.

HOBBIES: Scientific inquiry, Looking through microscopes, Recombining DNA to create decorative art.

QUOTE: “Now, Beakie, we’ll just flip this switch and 60,000 refreshing volts of electricity will surge through your body. Ready?”

FAVORITE MUSICAL ARTIST: John Cougar Melonhead

LAST BOOK READ: “Quantum Physics: 101 Easy Microwave Recipes”

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT: An atom smasher and plenty of extra atoms.

brought to you by Quizilla

Publishing moves on

On Saturday, I wrote about publishers suing Google over the proposed Google Print service. Like the music and movie industries, book publishers also consider the new technology as a threat instead of an opportunity. Call it hidebound management or corporate culture, call it a failure of imagination by the very companies that survive on selling imagination. Either way, analog media companies are faced with wrenching change — and they can’t do anything but react, badly.

Once upon a time, the dream was to write the Great American Novel. The Hemingways and Steinbecks of a previous generation were the rock stars of their time. Video may have killed the radio star, but the novelist was wounded in a collateral damage incident and now the video star is sick in bed as well. Like any large industry in decline, book publishers (and to a lesser extent, music & video) turned first to wringing more out of the formula that worked so well in the past. When that didn’t work, instead of looking for new ways to do what they do best, they cast blame hither and yon, and fell even farther back onto formula.

it’s a truism that “nobody wants to read anymore,” and I’ve often said it myself — but blogs give the lie to that factoid. It’s not that people don’t want to read, they just don’t want to read the goop on bookstore shelves. There are exceptions, to be sure; I mentioned Neil Gaiman in an earlier posting, but without much promotion (that I’ve noticed, anyway) beyond a new Stephen King release or one of the Left Behind series from a while back, how do you find good new stuff?

Well, your host has never shied away from stating an opinion. Since Hallowe’en is just around the corner, I’ll offer up a couple of horror novels on other blogs.

First, my friend and bob-brother Carnacki’s novel, The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire. Its style is a series of diary entries, which naturally works well when published on a blog. It takes a different angle on the traditional vampire story by casting vampires — or rather, a particular vampire — as the hero. I don’t want to spoil it for you, just go read.

If your tastes run toward werewolves, What is happening to me? delivers. It’s structured as an actual blog, so you have to start with the first post (to which I pointed you) and work your way up from the bottom. Someone described it as an “epistolary novel," a story using a series of letters (or diary entries) as building blocks. There’s an immediacy, a “life as it’s happening” quality to it that the traditional novel would be hard-pressed to offer.

One thing both stories have in common: their plots twist in ways I didn’t expect. That can be dangerous, but in both cases I found it delightful. Surprises are good, as long as they don’t go off in some random direction — the plot twist has to connect the new direction to earlier elements of the story is all.

Again, go forth and read. And shiver.

Please Standby

Category: Work
Music: Groove Salad
I got included in an email chain at work late last week. To make a long story short, one of our customers was returning eMTAs (embedded MTA, a cable modem with phone lines built in) complaining that they could get dial tone but no Internet access. Our lab techs hooked them up to the test equipment, which reported No Fault Found. Upon further investigation, it turned out that somebody (whether a subscriber or an installation tech) was pressing the Standby button — which disconnects the Ethernet and USB ports from the cable network. The latest generation removed the Standby switch, since subscribers would also bump it unknowingly after installation, then complain that their service was out.

In some ways, we’ve made great advances and gone backwards simultaneously as far as user interface design goes. 40 or 50 years ago — let’s pretend personal computers were as available then as they are now for the sake of argument — a Standby switch would have been a big ol’ toggle switch on the front panel, clearly marked “STANDBY” up and “NORMAL” down. It would have been very easy to tell what mode the modem was in without trying to decipher a pattern of LEDs on the front panel. Product design these days is all about contours and smooth curves — a practical, easily visible toggle switch pokes out and just doesn’t fit today’s style.

Whatever happened to “form follows function”?

The eyes have had it

Last night, Mrs. Fetched asked me to see if she had anything in her eye. I didn’t see anything, but it did look a little red. It was still hurting her this morning, so she went to an eye doctor to have it looked at. Not good news: her eye got dry, stuck to some skin in the socket, and the membrane got torn. The eye doc told her to get some goggles to wear outside; if she gets it infected she could well lose the entire eye. So she has to put cream in it and will start on eyedrops next week.

She doesn’t deserve this.

[Almost forgot:] This isn’t really related to her blurry vision. Once the cream does its work, the doc can figure out what her prescription should be.

Somebody else's tax dollars at work

...for a change. The Register always manages to find the most compelling human interest stories.

El Reg... news about IT and other weird things. It don’t get much better than that.

Moonshine Festival — Dawsonville, GA

If it’s October on this planet, it’s time for fall festivals. My mother-in-law makes (and sells) quilts and bonnets at two of these outings a year, so I managed to drop by and get a few pictures before my camera batteries wheezed.

As always, click a picture to get more detail.

My mother-in-law at her booth. I said she usually does two of these outings a year, but this year, she had decided to do none until the Moonshiners called her and begged her to come. She was one of a tiny handful selling honest to God crafts this year, so that explains the call.



The vendor’s-eye view of the festival.

Aside to Mom: this is about where I was standing when I called you this afternoon. That blue Mustang was making all the racket.



Outside the friendly confines of a vendor’s booth, it’s wall-to-wall people.



Dawsonville claims to be “the birthplace of NASCAR,” and it’s a strong claim. NASCAR was born out of moonshine running, which required fast, nimble cars to get to the markets in the cities (and to outrun the “revenoors”). Dawsonville was well-positioned to be the “moonshine capital” — it boasted a sparse population yet is fairly close to buyers in Atlanta — and many of NASCAR’s first generation of racing champions were from Dawsonville or nearby.

The cars here are restored racers from the 1940s and early 1950s. Every hour or so, the owners fire them up, and all conversations along the street pretty much stop until they shut down.



The engine in a vintage Chrysler 300M race car (not the new one, obviously). This car is capable of 130MPH average lap speeds — that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but this car raced in 1953 (over 50 years ago)!



The moonshiners and cops were in a technological arms race of sorts: to catch a moonshiner, you had to be able to keep up. But some of those drivers, like local legend Lloyd Seay, had both horsepower and skill on their side. One story about Seay says the cops were waiting to arrest him in the winner’s circle after his last race on September 1, 1941. Instead of stopping, he just drove through a fence and roared on home, with too much of a head start for the cops to even think of catching him. The next day, he was shot dead by a cousin in one of those violent disputes that moonshiners were reputed to have often.



Lest you get the idea it’s all NASCAR and vendor booths at Moonshine... there’s song and dance as well. Daughter Dearest helped open the festivities yesterday morning with her high school chorus (the sound equipment arrived an hour late, but they simply changed their playlist to a capella numbers and the show went on). This particular group (didn’t catch the name) was playing some hard-thumpin’ variant of country. Local bands often strut their stuff here, everything from gospel to metal (and if The Boy has his way, they’ll combine the two soon).



A separate performance area hosts clogging (and other Americana-style dance) troupes. These young cloggers were just starting their performance.



At this point, my batteries gave out and I helped mother-in-law pack up for the trip home.

Interesting thought

Heard during sets on a streaming Internet station last night: “If Jesus had a tape recorder, how different would things be today?”

Google Print and stupid lawsuits

From a student paper, dated October 21, 2782. Don’t ask me how I got this.

The following is one of the recovered fragments of The Book of Internet. There are gaps in the translation, due to disk errors on the ancient and rusted hard drive, recovered from the archeological digs in Silicon Valley.

... then Google was born, and indexed the Internet. And it was good.

... Google looked at the world, and asked itself, “what else can I index and make available to my mighty Search Engine?” And it came to pass that Google passed a bookstore. “Eureka!” cried Google. “I shall scan all these books, cause them to be searchable, and display small snips, that users of my mighty Search Engine may locate books and perhaps buy those that please them.” And Google obtained The Mother Of All Scanners, returned from the Public Library with an armload of books, and got to work. ...

But the Publishers were wroth, and gnashed their teeth and waved their lawyers at Google, crying “Cease and desist! For your scheme will surely allow your users to read our books online, without paying us for the privilege!” ...

Then was the wrath of the Authors stirred up against the Publishers; and they spake unto the Publishers, saying, “your lawsuit is not helping me or my book.” ....

It is plain from this and other surviving records that purveyors of “analog” technologies (printed books as well as recorded music and video) were having trouble adapting to the digital realities of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

Unfortunately, the knee-jerk refusal to embrace digital technology only hastened the demise of the old gatekeepers. Not only was digital media easy to transfer, it was easy to create. It seems odd that there was ever a time that people were passive consumers rather than consumer-creators, but such was the reality as humanity entered the Third Millenium. The pace of change at the time seems almost mythical, and may explain the toxic political and pseudo-religious movements that dominated the first few years (as a coping mechanism by those unable to understand or participate in the rapidly changing world of the time). Many people of today consider the people of the early 21^st century (if we think of them at all) as ignorant, benighted savages. However, it is important to remember that they are not only our direct ancestors, they gave birth to the society we enjoy today.