Nearly home from dropping off Daughter Dearest, I saw several pairs of eyes reflecting my headlights on both sides on the road, and got on the brakes. A few seconds later, I saw a ran-over kitten in the road, and several survivors off to the side. Dangit, I thought, some ’hole dropped ’em off. I pulled off to the side, thinking maybe I could catch all or most of them (I think there were five, some black, some tan/white), take them home, and let them live in the outbuilding until I could find homes for them. From experience, I’ve found the best way to give away kittens or puppies is to take them to a Wal-Mart. Their unwritten policy seems to be “people taking the critters will buy pet food and accessories.”
Little wild teases: they would stand their ground, let me walk right up to them, then run away as I bent over to grab them. Then I saw a bigger cat and realized it wasn’t a dump-off. The mama was a bit friendlier; she let me touch her (and was she skinny!). She was on the side of the road I’d been driving on, calling to the babies who were on the other side. So I chivvied the little buggers across the road (by pretending I was trying to catch them) and away from the pavement, then went on home. If they’re still hanging around tomorrow, I’ll take some catfood to them. That mama looked like she could use a couple of turns at the Fire Mountain buffet line.
Saturday, October 22, 2005 2 comments
Uh-oh
I drove Daughter Dearest to her first homecoming dance this evening. Oh wow. I knew this day was coming, but knowing & being ready are often two different things....
The Boy and M.A.E. were going to a movie with a friend, so I dropped them off at the friend’s place since it was on the way. And I have no idea where Lobster is tonight.
Just me & the wife here. We cracked a bottle of peach wine, and she (as usual) is zonked after one glass... too quickly for me to take advantage, as it were. :-P
The Boy and M.A.E. were going to a movie with a friend, so I dropped them off at the friend’s place since it was on the way. And I have no idea where Lobster is tonight.
Just me & the wife here. We cracked a bottle of peach wine, and she (as usual) is zonked after one glass... too quickly for me to take advantage, as it were. :-P
Friday, October 21, 2005 1 comment
The General Stickiness of Stuff
Mountain Cerridwen (aka SallyCat) wrote a fine Crass Commericalism Rant today. That, and the post immediately below it on Sally’s blog, called to mind a conversation (i.e. yakking on AIM) about materialism (I’m in red here; he’s in blue)...
I suppose part of it involves ego — the “he who dies with the most toys wins” mentality, or maybe it’s “I paid good money for that crap, I need to get something back out of it.” The latter, at least, could be dealt with by throwing a yard sale. The problem with yard sales, though, is you have to drag all that stuff out there and then drag all the unsold stuff back in at the end of the day.
A friend of mine told me about how she cruised yard sales, bought designer clothes, then sold them on eBay for a tidy profit. eBay would work for what would be high-end stuff in a yard sale, but the cheapo paperbacks & workaday clothes would wind up with shipping charges 2x-4x more than the price of the stuff.
One thing I’ve managed to do on occasion is to bundle up a big ol’ pile of stuff and take it to the local thrift store. I get a receipt I can use at tax time, and some extra space; they get more stuff to sell cheap to people who can’t afford to shop anywhere else, and those people get more choices. Everybody wins.
I have an alarming number of PowerMacs in the outbuilding. Fortunately, I have a home for one; a friend of The Boy needs a computer and knows his way around MacOS. That leaves several other Macs to give away or sell. Plus a bunch of other crap.
True. I don't know why I keep a bunch of CDs with outdated software on them, even with a dialup, but there you are....Over the top, sure, but it’s too true. It’s easy enough to identify the possessions that are really important (beyond family, of course) — but having identified those things that are important, why is it so hard to let go of the other stuff?
Yeah, totally. I probably have discs that have the cutting-edge IE and Netscape 3's. Why keep them? I don't know but I do. Nostalgia for the good old days when it was exciting to rip open the magazine plastic and see what's on the CD, read the Mac Addict letters to the edit, etc.
I don't really care anymore but can't let go of it.
Seriously, I think sometimes it's easier to just leave stuff behind than take it with you.
If I had a mind to, I could clear out of my house with all the possessions I *really* wanted to have in about an hour.
Well, you know what would be easy is to pick out the things you want, like that. It'd be easier than making a conscious decision to throw something else out. Grab your computer, some clothes, some things from a file cabinet, maybe a photo album or two, and burn the house down.
I suppose part of it involves ego — the “he who dies with the most toys wins” mentality, or maybe it’s “I paid good money for that crap, I need to get something back out of it.” The latter, at least, could be dealt with by throwing a yard sale. The problem with yard sales, though, is you have to drag all that stuff out there and then drag all the unsold stuff back in at the end of the day.
A friend of mine told me about how she cruised yard sales, bought designer clothes, then sold them on eBay for a tidy profit. eBay would work for what would be high-end stuff in a yard sale, but the cheapo paperbacks & workaday clothes would wind up with shipping charges 2x-4x more than the price of the stuff.
One thing I’ve managed to do on occasion is to bundle up a big ol’ pile of stuff and take it to the local thrift store. I get a receipt I can use at tax time, and some extra space; they get more stuff to sell cheap to people who can’t afford to shop anywhere else, and those people get more choices. Everybody wins.
I have an alarming number of PowerMacs in the outbuilding. Fortunately, I have a home for one; a friend of The Boy needs a computer and knows his way around MacOS. That leaves several other Macs to give away or sell. Plus a bunch of other crap.
The Eyes (Don’t) Have It
Wife is slowly getting over herself, although it’s taking a little longer than usual. I picked up The Boy from his job (very late) last night; he asked me “What was she mad about today?” Nothing really, just the hangover from the night before. M.A.E. grabbed an order of jalapeño bites for him on her way out of Arby’s (I ate one of them though!) so he had a little snacky before bed.
So this morning, the wife was looking at M.A.E’s schedule. They make a printout of her hours for the week & we stuck it to one of the refrigerators in the kitchen (yes, we have two fridges, and we use ’em both). The printout is pretty small — like 4-point type — and the wife couldn’t read it. She had to ask me to look at it.
So far, the most sucky part of hitting the mid-40s is the vision change (only because menopause hasn’t started, I’m sure). Over the last year or so, I’ve had to peer over my glasses to read, or just take them off. In the morning, it takes a while for my eyes to want to do their job, so I try not using the computer for the first hour of the day. A minor inconvenience. But in the last couple of months, I’ve noticed that she’s had a seriously hard time reading small print of any kind. This morning, she finally admitted what I’ve known for a while. I hope she doesn’t have to get bifocals; from everything I’ve heard, they sound like more trouble than just having two pairs of glasses.
I wonder if the R-K surgery she had done back when is a factor. I’ve always been leery of elective eye surgery myself.
So this morning, the wife was looking at M.A.E’s schedule. They make a printout of her hours for the week & we stuck it to one of the refrigerators in the kitchen (yes, we have two fridges, and we use ’em both). The printout is pretty small — like 4-point type — and the wife couldn’t read it. She had to ask me to look at it.
So far, the most sucky part of hitting the mid-40s is the vision change (only because menopause hasn’t started, I’m sure). Over the last year or so, I’ve had to peer over my glasses to read, or just take them off. In the morning, it takes a while for my eyes to want to do their job, so I try not using the computer for the first hour of the day. A minor inconvenience. But in the last couple of months, I’ve noticed that she’s had a seriously hard time reading small print of any kind. This morning, she finally admitted what I’ve known for a while. I hope she doesn’t have to get bifocals; from everything I’ve heard, they sound like more trouble than just having two pairs of glasses.
I wonder if the R-K surgery she had done back when is a factor. I’ve always been leery of elective eye surgery myself.
Thursday, October 20, 2005 No comments
Autumn nights
...mean bonfires!
I’m slightly proud of this one: I got it going with one match. Having lots of dry pine straw in the pile helps a lot.
I spent an hour or so tending it until it died down enough to feel comfortable leaving it alone. Then I had to go back out and find the camera cable. Sheesh.
I’m slightly proud of this one: I got it going with one match. Having lots of dry pine straw in the pile helps a lot.
I spent an hour or so tending it until it died down enough to feel comfortable leaving it alone. Then I had to go back out and find the camera cable. Sheesh.
Ah, nuts...
Coming back from lunch, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t getting any sound from the left side of my headphones. So after wiggling wires and looking close, this is what I found (look where the wire almost goes into the earpiece, click to get a bigger image)...
Dangit. Those were my favorite headphones, too. I switched to the old reliable set of Koss earbuds (bright yellow wires!) and I’m now getting music out of iTunes the way Steve Jobs intended.
Those of you born after the baby boom probably don’t remember when “Made in Japan” pretty much meant the same thing as “Made in China exclusively for Wal-Mart” means now — in a word, junk. But Japan put its sense of national pride on the job, and it started to show in the early 1970s. Nowadays, “Made in Japan” usually means solid stuff. But not even the Japanese have figured out how to make wires small, flexible, and kink-proof, apparently. :-P
Dangit. Those were my favorite headphones, too. I switched to the old reliable set of Koss earbuds (bright yellow wires!) and I’m now getting music out of iTunes the way Steve Jobs intended.
Those of you born after the baby boom probably don’t remember when “Made in Japan” pretty much meant the same thing as “Made in China exclusively for Wal-Mart” means now — in a word, junk. But Japan put its sense of national pride on the job, and it started to show in the early 1970s. Nowadays, “Made in Japan” usually means solid stuff. But not even the Japanese have figured out how to make wires small, flexible, and kink-proof, apparently. :-P
Wife-BOOM-ba
“It’s quiet... too quiet.”
Or it was.
The Boy has lately been reneging on his agreement to be in bed by 11 on weeknights. Naturally, this makes him harder to get out of bed in the mornings, but that’s not the issue at hand.
Last night, he was told several times to get upstairs and get to bed. Around 11:30, SWMBO ordered me to go upstairs and “find out what all that banging is about.” (His bedroom is directly above the living room, and anything that interferes with her TV watching is Not Allowed.) So I went upstairs, to find Lobster in bed and The Boy sitting on the floor next to his bed. Given the general order of the room, it looked like he’d been cleaning.
“What was that thud noise your mom heard?”
"What noise? I dropped the Xbox, is all.”
“Fine,” I told him, ”get to bed, it’s 11:30.” He got up and got in bed, I went downstairs.
“He dropped his Xbox,” I told SWMBO. “It looked like he was cleaning up his room a bit.”
“He’s supposed to be in bed now!” she barked, with a tone that implied that I was to blame for this whole thing. Like I said, next to idiots in Accounts Receivable, nothing puts her back up faster than interrupting her TV.
“I told him that,” I replied, using a similar tone. A while back, SWMBO told me I needed to stand up for myself more often. She was right. Change begins at home.
It didn’t help matters that music started coming down the stairs at that moment. Of course, she told me to go up and tell them to shut it off, then stopped me. “Just stand where you can hear,” she said. “I’m going to find the breaker and turn it off.”
So I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and she started flipping breakers. “Did that do it? Did that do it?” even after I told her that I would let her know as soon as the music stopped. I saw the bathroom lights go off and on, then Daughter Dearest came out of her room.
“What happened to the lights?” she said. I explained, while SWMBO went through the entire breaker box unsuccessfully.
“There’s got to be more breakers,” she said.
“There’s that box in the garage,” I reminded her. “Do you want to go out there, or do you want me to go?”
At this point, she got even more irrational, and repeated her assertion that there had to be more breakers. I simply repeated what I said, not that it did any good. Finally, she threw up her hands and told me to go tell them to turn off the music. (I have absolutely no clue what the problem was with going to the garage.)
So I went upstairs, and turned off the stereo since it’s right inside his door. The Boy, who was laying in bed by this point, got huffy. “I was just playing that one song for Lobster!”
“Doesn’t matter, you should have been in bed for a while now. You agreed to 11 o’clock, lights out, stereo off.”
He just shook his head. “Why is it such a big deal?”
“Because it’s bothering your mom!” I said.
She was 1) listening at the bottom of the stairs, and 2) took offense. “He can just listen to his %&#@!! music all he wants to, for all I care!!!” SLAM went the doors. I gave The Boy a dirty look.
“Why did she go off like that?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If you had done what you agreed to do, none of this would have happened, and you would be easier to get up in the morning.” I left and went back downstairs to put up the laptop.
SWMBO was in the bedroom as I came in; I just started putting things away and she huffed out. Next thing I know, I heard The Barge going out. She probably went down to her mom’s; all I know for sure is she didn’t come back. I went to bed. When caught by forces of nature, it’s best to just ride it out and move on.
After about 20 minutes, The Boy came downstairs and we talked for a while. We talked about things; he said he was going to save his money and move out by January.
“Just hang in there for a while and it’ll blow over,” I said. He claimed to take offense to SWMBO’s use of “%&#@!!” and so forth. I wanted to tell him that lying about not smoking was just as bad as foul language — SWMBO found a pack of cigs in his room last week — but it wasn’t the time. So we talked about things for another 20 minutes; after we finished I told him we needed to talk more often, but not at 1 a.m.
So I’m working at home today. SWMBO came in long enough to get a change of clothes, then off to the chicken houses. Neither of us said anything. What... ever. Like the computer said in War Games, “the only way to win is not to play.” If she doesn’t come back, I’ll put FAR Manor on the market and move closer to work. She knows that, so I expect she’ll be in by lunch and pretend nothing ever happened.
Or it was.
The Boy has lately been reneging on his agreement to be in bed by 11 on weeknights. Naturally, this makes him harder to get out of bed in the mornings, but that’s not the issue at hand.
Last night, he was told several times to get upstairs and get to bed. Around 11:30, SWMBO ordered me to go upstairs and “find out what all that banging is about.” (His bedroom is directly above the living room, and anything that interferes with her TV watching is Not Allowed.) So I went upstairs, to find Lobster in bed and The Boy sitting on the floor next to his bed. Given the general order of the room, it looked like he’d been cleaning.
“What was that thud noise your mom heard?”
"What noise? I dropped the Xbox, is all.”
“Fine,” I told him, ”get to bed, it’s 11:30.” He got up and got in bed, I went downstairs.
“He dropped his Xbox,” I told SWMBO. “It looked like he was cleaning up his room a bit.”
“He’s supposed to be in bed now!” she barked, with a tone that implied that I was to blame for this whole thing. Like I said, next to idiots in Accounts Receivable, nothing puts her back up faster than interrupting her TV.
“I told him that,” I replied, using a similar tone. A while back, SWMBO told me I needed to stand up for myself more often. She was right. Change begins at home.
It didn’t help matters that music started coming down the stairs at that moment. Of course, she told me to go up and tell them to shut it off, then stopped me. “Just stand where you can hear,” she said. “I’m going to find the breaker and turn it off.”
So I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and she started flipping breakers. “Did that do it? Did that do it?” even after I told her that I would let her know as soon as the music stopped. I saw the bathroom lights go off and on, then Daughter Dearest came out of her room.
“What happened to the lights?” she said. I explained, while SWMBO went through the entire breaker box unsuccessfully.
“There’s got to be more breakers,” she said.
“There’s that box in the garage,” I reminded her. “Do you want to go out there, or do you want me to go?”
At this point, she got even more irrational, and repeated her assertion that there had to be more breakers. I simply repeated what I said, not that it did any good. Finally, she threw up her hands and told me to go tell them to turn off the music. (I have absolutely no clue what the problem was with going to the garage.)
So I went upstairs, and turned off the stereo since it’s right inside his door. The Boy, who was laying in bed by this point, got huffy. “I was just playing that one song for Lobster!”
“Doesn’t matter, you should have been in bed for a while now. You agreed to 11 o’clock, lights out, stereo off.”
He just shook his head. “Why is it such a big deal?”
“Because it’s bothering your mom!” I said.
She was 1) listening at the bottom of the stairs, and 2) took offense. “He can just listen to his %&#@!! music all he wants to, for all I care!!!” SLAM went the doors. I gave The Boy a dirty look.
“Why did she go off like that?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “If you had done what you agreed to do, none of this would have happened, and you would be easier to get up in the morning.” I left and went back downstairs to put up the laptop.
SWMBO was in the bedroom as I came in; I just started putting things away and she huffed out. Next thing I know, I heard The Barge going out. She probably went down to her mom’s; all I know for sure is she didn’t come back. I went to bed. When caught by forces of nature, it’s best to just ride it out and move on.
After about 20 minutes, The Boy came downstairs and we talked for a while. We talked about things; he said he was going to save his money and move out by January.
“Just hang in there for a while and it’ll blow over,” I said. He claimed to take offense to SWMBO’s use of “%&#@!!” and so forth. I wanted to tell him that lying about not smoking was just as bad as foul language — SWMBO found a pack of cigs in his room last week — but it wasn’t the time. So we talked about things for another 20 minutes; after we finished I told him we needed to talk more often, but not at 1 a.m.
So I’m working at home today. SWMBO came in long enough to get a change of clothes, then off to the chicken houses. Neither of us said anything. What... ever. Like the computer said in War Games, “the only way to win is not to play.” If she doesn’t come back, I’ll put FAR Manor on the market and move closer to work. She knows that, so I expect she’ll be in by lunch and pretend nothing ever happened.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 No comments
RTF: the “other” interchange format
Category: technology
MacDevCenter’s Giles Turnbull has an article up on using RTF (Rich Text Format) as an interchange format. For non-technical users, this is probably the best way to move documents around without having to worry about whether someone can read them. Nearly all word processors that aspire to be “full-featured” provide some support for RTF these days, so it’s a good starting place.
This morning at work, I was asked to provide some information from a quick-start guide for a hand-off to a customer (who wants to write some custom stuff). We’re using FrameMaker for documentation, not Word, and Word users just seem to assume everyone else uses Word. Imagine that. (For those who wonder why I don’t use Word, this profanity-laden rant pretty well sums it up.) FrameMaker’s RTF exporter is less than wonderful, producing sloppy text formatting and losing the graphics, but the customer just wanted the tables so it’s all good.
Way back when, I brought RTF home once and used a text editor on an Amiga to make updates to a manual. We had a deadline and a snowstorm, so I wanted to make sure I could hold up my end of things even if I couldn’t get to the office. It worked, except for one minor detail: those spaces at the end of lines of RTF are significant, and my text editor insisted on removing them... so when I got back to work & opened it in the word processor, there were spacesmissing here and there. Running the spell checker fixed all but one or two of them.
So with all these wonderful real-world examples, what’s lacking in RTF compared to ODF, the virtues of which I’ve been extolling lately?
First, RTF has been one of those formats that is supposed to be well-known, but Microsoft has always had a penchant for omitting things. The newer specifications are better.
Second, there are RTF parsers and conversion tools out there, but they are far less well-known than equivalent XML tools.
Third, even Microsoft is moving to XML for document interchange.
RTF, given its Word-driven ubiquity, will be around for a long time to come and will continue to be a useful interchange format for people interested primarily in exchanging and using documents. Many people will continue to use older versions of Word and Office for a long time to come, and XML interchange won’t be feasible for them. But for those of us who want our computers to extract (and perhaps transform) the important pieces of the documents we get, XML is really the way forward.
MacDevCenter’s Giles Turnbull has an article up on using RTF (Rich Text Format) as an interchange format. For non-technical users, this is probably the best way to move documents around without having to worry about whether someone can read them. Nearly all word processors that aspire to be “full-featured” provide some support for RTF these days, so it’s a good starting place.
This morning at work, I was asked to provide some information from a quick-start guide for a hand-off to a customer (who wants to write some custom stuff). We’re using FrameMaker for documentation, not Word, and Word users just seem to assume everyone else uses Word. Imagine that. (For those who wonder why I don’t use Word, this profanity-laden rant pretty well sums it up.) FrameMaker’s RTF exporter is less than wonderful, producing sloppy text formatting and losing the graphics, but the customer just wanted the tables so it’s all good.
Way back when, I brought RTF home once and used a text editor on an Amiga to make updates to a manual. We had a deadline and a snowstorm, so I wanted to make sure I could hold up my end of things even if I couldn’t get to the office. It worked, except for one minor detail: those spaces at the end of lines of RTF are significant, and my text editor insisted on removing them... so when I got back to work & opened it in the word processor, there were spacesmissing here and there. Running the spell checker fixed all but one or two of them.
So with all these wonderful real-world examples, what’s lacking in RTF compared to ODF, the virtues of which I’ve been extolling lately?
First, RTF has been one of those formats that is supposed to be well-known, but Microsoft has always had a penchant for omitting things. The newer specifications are better.
Second, there are RTF parsers and conversion tools out there, but they are far less well-known than equivalent XML tools.
Third, even Microsoft is moving to XML for document interchange.
RTF, given its Word-driven ubiquity, will be around for a long time to come and will continue to be a useful interchange format for people interested primarily in exchanging and using documents. Many people will continue to use older versions of Word and Office for a long time to come, and XML interchange won’t be feasible for them. But for those of us who want our computers to extract (and perhaps transform) the important pieces of the documents we get, XML is really the way forward.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005 1 comment
Stinkular and their smell-phone “service”
Wife got the Stinkular bill today, and almost ended up like that guy on the T-Mobile commercial. $380.
M.A.E. didn’t realize that just downloading ringtones runs up charges... she thought you only had to pay for the ones you keep. OOOOOPS
Daughter Dearest called... Turkey?!!??? three times because a number from there showed up on the phone. Fortunately, it was “only” $2+change for each call. She also downloaded a ringtone, but only one.
The Boy’s phone showed like 4000 minutes of usage, thanks to M.A.E. being on it almost constantly, talking to family in Florida. He tends to be the heaviest user in the family without her help.... That’s going to change, she has her own pre-paid phone now. I wonder how long it will be until she talks it to death.
OK, none of that is Stinkular’s fault. Their problem (besides the signal dropping out in inopportune places, like my office... “raising the bar,” my fartpipe) is that they have a bad habit of trying to double-bill add-ons like MediaNet service. I have it on my phone, primarily so I can email pictures off the camera and do occasional forays online. But they try to bill my phone and The Boy’s.
It’s not like it’s the first time they’ve tried to pull this crap. We wind up going into the st00p1d store each time we get the bill because they’ve messed something up. They take it off, but it comes back just about every time. Seems like they fix one thing, they screw up another. I guess the retarded howler monkeys from the hospital’s billing department moonlight at Stinkular. Or the other way around.
If it’s Cingular to you, what’s your secret? One phone, barebones service?
M.A.E. didn’t realize that just downloading ringtones runs up charges... she thought you only had to pay for the ones you keep. OOOOOPS
Daughter Dearest called... Turkey?!!??? three times because a number from there showed up on the phone. Fortunately, it was “only” $2+change for each call. She also downloaded a ringtone, but only one.
The Boy’s phone showed like 4000 minutes of usage, thanks to M.A.E. being on it almost constantly, talking to family in Florida. He tends to be the heaviest user in the family without her help.... That’s going to change, she has her own pre-paid phone now. I wonder how long it will be until she talks it to death.
OK, none of that is Stinkular’s fault. Their problem (besides the signal dropping out in inopportune places, like my office... “raising the bar,” my fartpipe) is that they have a bad habit of trying to double-bill add-ons like MediaNet service. I have it on my phone, primarily so I can email pictures off the camera and do occasional forays online. But they try to bill my phone and The Boy’s.
It’s not like it’s the first time they’ve tried to pull this crap. We wind up going into the st00p1d store each time we get the bill because they’ve messed something up. They take it off, but it comes back just about every time. Seems like they fix one thing, they screw up another. I guess the retarded howler monkeys from the hospital’s billing department moonlight at Stinkular. Or the other way around.
If it’s Cingular to you, what’s your secret? One phone, barebones service?
Short-item roundup
I didn’t feel like doing separate posts for these little things...
Daughter Dearest scored a 17 on her all-state chorus audition. It’s a decent score; whether it will make the cut remains to be seen. I’ll follow up when she finds out (and tells me)....
M.A.E. started her new job at Arby’s today (yup, it came through). With colder weather coming, I’ll be eating at Arby’s more often. The reason: the ones in this area have an atrium-like area with a live tree under the skylights. I can eat lunch there on sunny days and pretend it’s not January or whatever....
Lobster was thinking about moving home, but didn’t follow through on it. I think he was just miffed because we made him get out of bed Sunday for church, after being up later than he should have been. He (and The Boy) need to get a little more responsible about getting up in the mornings; they have both gotten several tardy notices and will probably end up with detention or something....
DD also announced today at dinner that she set up a Myspace... page? site? I said, “I have a blog.” She grunted, wife looked at me like she wanted to say, “what’s a blog?” but didn’t want to {pick one: look uninformed || hear a lengthy technical explanation, which I do have a history of doing}. Further exchange between DD & I made it clear, saving us the trouble. I have no idea whether she cares or not; she has a poker face that would be right at home on ESPN’s games....
Our minivan’s transmission continues to deteriorate. Wife keeps talking new car; I keep bringing up minor details like no spare change for payments. The mechanic says he’s afraid pulling the motor will kill it. huh??? We keep pouring transmission fluid through it for now, about a bottle a week. Cashing in stock won’t help much; the price cratered here in the last week (on good news, no less)....
Hurricane Wilma (I keep thinking of the Flintstones every time I hear that name) looks to miss us completely now. My mom, on the other hand, has something to worry about (besides her broken wrist, healing slowly). So does Cuba — but Castro will, once again, school Bush-league and his crony (formerly) at FEMA on how to evacuate a major city....
Be sure to read the next entry down. Possibly wonderful news.
Daughter Dearest scored a 17 on her all-state chorus audition. It’s a decent score; whether it will make the cut remains to be seen. I’ll follow up when she finds out (and tells me)....
M.A.E. started her new job at Arby’s today (yup, it came through). With colder weather coming, I’ll be eating at Arby’s more often. The reason: the ones in this area have an atrium-like area with a live tree under the skylights. I can eat lunch there on sunny days and pretend it’s not January or whatever....
Lobster was thinking about moving home, but didn’t follow through on it. I think he was just miffed because we made him get out of bed Sunday for church, after being up later than he should have been. He (and The Boy) need to get a little more responsible about getting up in the mornings; they have both gotten several tardy notices and will probably end up with detention or something....
DD also announced today at dinner that she set up a Myspace... page? site? I said, “I have a blog.” She grunted, wife looked at me like she wanted to say, “what’s a blog?” but didn’t want to {pick one: look uninformed || hear a lengthy technical explanation, which I do have a history of doing}. Further exchange between DD & I made it clear, saving us the trouble. I have no idea whether she cares or not; she has a poker face that would be right at home on ESPN’s games....
Our minivan’s transmission continues to deteriorate. Wife keeps talking new car; I keep bringing up minor details like no spare change for payments. The mechanic says he’s afraid pulling the motor will kill it. huh??? We keep pouring transmission fluid through it for now, about a bottle a week. Cashing in stock won’t help much; the price cratered here in the last week (on good news, no less)....
Hurricane Wilma (I keep thinking of the Flintstones every time I hear that name) looks to miss us completely now. My mom, on the other hand, has something to worry about (besides her broken wrist, healing slowly). So does Cuba — but Castro will, once again, school Bush-league and his crony (formerly) at FEMA on how to evacuate a major city....
Be sure to read the next entry down. Possibly wonderful news.
Fingers crossed tightly!
The Boy had a trip to the endocrinologist yesterday. Being diabetic, he gets stuck for blood every few months to see how well he’s controlling his glucose levels1. His A1C is a little higher this time, not horribly so given what he did between tests. The nurse-practitioner2 was going through his records, and said he was Type II diabetic. We said no, he’s Type I.
This prompted the NP to look a little more closely. “Oh,” she said finally. “The doctor did decide he’s Type I. But some of these tests say one thing, and the others say something else.” So we got to talking about his Summer of Discontent, during which he admitted he took very little insulin (but said he didn’t eat much either). “In that case,” she said, “you could be Type II. The C-Peptide [I think that’s what she called it —FF] test went that way, and you’re still taking a relatively low amount of insulin. You could still be in the honeymoon period, but we can run the test again and maybe you could replace the Novolog with pills.”
Needless to say, we’re overjoyed. I’m really trying not to get my hopes up, but this would definitely be a plus for The Boy — instead of four needles a day, he would only have to use one (for his Lantus overnight) unless his glucose started getting high. He didn’t show much emotion, but maybe he’s trying to manage his expectations as well. He did agree to use his meter more often (that’s one of the things we’ve been nagging him about) so he & the medics can get a better picture of what’s going on.
If you’re the praying type, please pray for him. This could be a huge boost.
1Be careful what you ask for... if you want more control over your life, you could end up doing what your pancreas does for you. :-P
2NPs, it seems, get all the responsibility of a doctor in general, just without the recognition or prestige.
This prompted the NP to look a little more closely. “Oh,” she said finally. “The doctor did decide he’s Type I. But some of these tests say one thing, and the others say something else.” So we got to talking about his Summer of Discontent, during which he admitted he took very little insulin (but said he didn’t eat much either). “In that case,” she said, “you could be Type II. The C-Peptide [I think that’s what she called it —FF] test went that way, and you’re still taking a relatively low amount of insulin. You could still be in the honeymoon period, but we can run the test again and maybe you could replace the Novolog with pills.”
Needless to say, we’re overjoyed. I’m really trying not to get my hopes up, but this would definitely be a plus for The Boy — instead of four needles a day, he would only have to use one (for his Lantus overnight) unless his glucose started getting high. He didn’t show much emotion, but maybe he’s trying to manage his expectations as well. He did agree to use his meter more often (that’s one of the things we’ve been nagging him about) so he & the medics can get a better picture of what’s going on.
If you’re the praying type, please pray for him. This could be a huge boost.
1Be careful what you ask for... if you want more control over your life, you could end up doing what your pancreas does for you. :-P
2NPs, it seems, get all the responsibility of a doctor in general, just without the recognition or prestige.
Monday, October 17, 2005 No comments
Happy #21, M.A.E.!!!
Yup, The Boy’s lady fair is 21 today. They celebrated at a steak&sushi place.
That’s the last birthday this month at FAR Manor.
Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!
People dying everywhere,
Misery is in the air,
Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!
That’s the last birthday this month at FAR Manor.
Saturday, October 15, 2005 2 comments
To any Virginia readers...
You might want to know a bit more about Jerry Kilgore as he tries to slime his way into the governor’s mansion.
UPDATE: Austin Post has some more thoughtful commentary on the race.
UPDATE: Austin Post has some more thoughtful commentary on the race.
Happy Birthday, Daughter Dearest!
OMG, number 16. She’ll be taking her driver’s test pretty soon, although she’s in no hurry (either to take the test, or behind the wheel in general).
So on this wonderful Saturday morning, she had auditions for all-state chorus. Long drive, she snoozed a little but that’s fine since I was driving (she needs more practice with a manual transmission too). I plotzed around with the iBook in the cafeteria, putting some edits on a short story I may post here later, and banged around Yahoo on my cellphone when I get done with that.
She thinks she messed up on sight-reading, and she was supposed to bring a blank cassette tape (or be auto-DQ'ed) but her instructor saved the day with a couple extra tapes. So now we get to settle in & wait to hear if she made the cut.
From experience (she was in all-state three years ago, last time she was in public school), there’s a second audition... primarily to make sure the kids have practiced the music. So here’s hoping.
We finished out the day by getting her some Magic:the Gathering cards (three decks!) and eating (very late) lunch at one of her favorite restaurants.
So on this wonderful Saturday morning, she had auditions for all-state chorus. Long drive, she snoozed a little but that’s fine since I was driving (she needs more practice with a manual transmission too). I plotzed around with the iBook in the cafeteria, putting some edits on a short story I may post here later, and banged around Yahoo on my cellphone when I get done with that.
She thinks she messed up on sight-reading, and she was supposed to bring a blank cassette tape (or be auto-DQ'ed) but her instructor saved the day with a couple extra tapes. So now we get to settle in & wait to hear if she made the cut.
From experience (she was in all-state three years ago, last time she was in public school), there’s a second audition... primarily to make sure the kids have practiced the music. So here’s hoping.
We finished out the day by getting her some Magic:the Gathering cards (three decks!) and eating (very late) lunch at one of her favorite restaurants.
Friday, October 14, 2005 2 comments
Laziness and Open Document Format
Categories: technology, work
Current music: Groove Salad
Just before I took off for lunch today, the contractor who picked up the projects I was working on before the reorg motioned me over and asked me, “how did you do it? You put together the whole shell of this project, and I’m just hanging stuff on it. Especially the command-line stuff... how did you get so much of it done with nothing to work with?” Pulling miracles out of my, er, back pocket has been a lot of what I’ve done at the office for the last few years. I got deadlines, limited access (at best) to equipment, a little help from my boss when he’s not swamped with other stuff, very little in the way of specifications, and somehow I managed to maintain documentation for three entire product lines.
My secret is: I’m lazy.
Look, I sit in front of a computer all day. If I can get the computer to do something for me, especially if it’s something that needs to be done more than once, I’ll do it. For example, our original (now “legacy”) product line came with about 4000 pages of documentation scattered over about 20 different manuals. We provided a master index, a 110-page book of its own, as a way to let customers zero in on which manual(s) covered a particular topic. The first time I did the master index, it took two solid weeks of nothing else. This is one of those prime examples for automation: I had to build a book in FrameMaker of all the other books, tag each chapter in each manual, run the index, convert the tags to document references (for example, change “EG” to Engineering Guidelines), remove all but the first reference to any chapter, blah blah blah. To make a long story shorter, I wrote a handful of AppleScripts that eliminated literally 80% of the grunt work: instead of two weeks, I could build the master index in two days. Yesterday, I wrote a script that created index entries from headings (which is OK for a first pass at indexing commands) that saved me a day’s worth of work.
I told you all that to tell you this.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Massachusetts adopting Open Document Format (ODF) for state government documents. Between than and now, OpenOffice 2.0 went into beta test; yesterday, OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) submitted ODF to the International Standards Organization (ISO) for consideration as an international standard for office document interchange.
The neat thing about all this is that the ODF format is easy to pick apart and fiddle with. Internally, content, graphics, and style information are separated and the whole thing is rolled up in a ZIP file. Content and style files use an XML format, which is important for two reasons: XML is plain text, and there are lots of utilities to work with it. So what does that mean? There are several Free programs that support ODF already (OpenOffice and AbiWord run on most computers, while Koffice also runs on Linux systems). But the really fun part is, given a document format both open and relatively easy to parse, you don’t need an office application to do things with ODF files.
In the computing world, when a group like OASIS sets out to nail down a standard, they form a Technical Committee (TC) of interested parties. In the case of the ODF TC, some of the interested parties include companies that make content management systems (or CMS... the alphabet soup is sloshing around quite a bit tonight!) — suffice it to say that a CMS allows you to store, retrieve, and process documents to make something new (kind of like putting basil leaves in a food processor and making pesto). Given the job of a CMS, it usually doesn’t just store a document as-is. In the case of an ODF file, the CMS would probably unzip it and extract just the content and metadata (data about the data) components. The graphics are already stored in the CMS. Let’s say I send a document to the CMS and come back for it a couple of months later. During that time, some of the artwork has been changed. The CMS grabs the original content and metadata, rolls in the updated graphics, and hands me an ODF file. Oh cool, I didn’t have to update the graphics myself!
Another handy utility might be nightly publishing runs. Sometimes, I’m working on a manual that’s getting change requests and bug reports coming in fast & furious. Some of the manuals I deal with have a lot of bitmap graphics, and can take nearly an hour to generate a PDF. Remember, I’m lazy... I don’t want to sit at work an hour overtime just to watch the computer make a PDF. In my theoretical ODF-based system, I simply send in the stuff I worked on during the day, and the CMS builds a new document and emails it (with a summary of what changed) to all the reviewers. The reviewers get fresh hot documentation every morning; I get to go home, sit on the porch, and write haiku before it gets dark.
With the manual finished, I have to send it to the translators. Currently, this involves gathering all the various files together and archiving them (and sending missing pieces or assuring them that the extraneous files aren’t important). In my dream system, I tell the CMS to give me an ODF document of the book. Boom, all the pieces get wrapped together, nothing gets dropped, nothing extra gets added, and I send one file to the translators.
I’m willing to put some effort into making this a reality. After all, I want the computer to do the work for me.
Current music: Groove Salad
Just before I took off for lunch today, the contractor who picked up the projects I was working on before the reorg motioned me over and asked me, “how did you do it? You put together the whole shell of this project, and I’m just hanging stuff on it. Especially the command-line stuff... how did you get so much of it done with nothing to work with?” Pulling miracles out of my, er, back pocket has been a lot of what I’ve done at the office for the last few years. I got deadlines, limited access (at best) to equipment, a little help from my boss when he’s not swamped with other stuff, very little in the way of specifications, and somehow I managed to maintain documentation for three entire product lines.
My secret is: I’m lazy.
Look, I sit in front of a computer all day. If I can get the computer to do something for me, especially if it’s something that needs to be done more than once, I’ll do it. For example, our original (now “legacy”) product line came with about 4000 pages of documentation scattered over about 20 different manuals. We provided a master index, a 110-page book of its own, as a way to let customers zero in on which manual(s) covered a particular topic. The first time I did the master index, it took two solid weeks of nothing else. This is one of those prime examples for automation: I had to build a book in FrameMaker of all the other books, tag each chapter in each manual, run the index, convert the tags to document references (for example, change “EG” to Engineering Guidelines), remove all but the first reference to any chapter, blah blah blah. To make a long story shorter, I wrote a handful of AppleScripts that eliminated literally 80% of the grunt work: instead of two weeks, I could build the master index in two days. Yesterday, I wrote a script that created index entries from headings (which is OK for a first pass at indexing commands) that saved me a day’s worth of work.
I told you all that to tell you this.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Massachusetts adopting Open Document Format (ODF) for state government documents. Between than and now, OpenOffice 2.0 went into beta test; yesterday, OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) submitted ODF to the International Standards Organization (ISO) for consideration as an international standard for office document interchange.
The neat thing about all this is that the ODF format is easy to pick apart and fiddle with. Internally, content, graphics, and style information are separated and the whole thing is rolled up in a ZIP file. Content and style files use an XML format, which is important for two reasons: XML is plain text, and there are lots of utilities to work with it. So what does that mean? There are several Free programs that support ODF already (OpenOffice and AbiWord run on most computers, while Koffice also runs on Linux systems). But the really fun part is, given a document format both open and relatively easy to parse, you don’t need an office application to do things with ODF files.
In the computing world, when a group like OASIS sets out to nail down a standard, they form a Technical Committee (TC) of interested parties. In the case of the ODF TC, some of the interested parties include companies that make content management systems (or CMS... the alphabet soup is sloshing around quite a bit tonight!) — suffice it to say that a CMS allows you to store, retrieve, and process documents to make something new (kind of like putting basil leaves in a food processor and making pesto). Given the job of a CMS, it usually doesn’t just store a document as-is. In the case of an ODF file, the CMS would probably unzip it and extract just the content and metadata (data about the data) components. The graphics are already stored in the CMS. Let’s say I send a document to the CMS and come back for it a couple of months later. During that time, some of the artwork has been changed. The CMS grabs the original content and metadata, rolls in the updated graphics, and hands me an ODF file. Oh cool, I didn’t have to update the graphics myself!
Another handy utility might be nightly publishing runs. Sometimes, I’m working on a manual that’s getting change requests and bug reports coming in fast & furious. Some of the manuals I deal with have a lot of bitmap graphics, and can take nearly an hour to generate a PDF. Remember, I’m lazy... I don’t want to sit at work an hour overtime just to watch the computer make a PDF. In my theoretical ODF-based system, I simply send in the stuff I worked on during the day, and the CMS builds a new document and emails it (with a summary of what changed) to all the reviewers. The reviewers get fresh hot documentation every morning; I get to go home, sit on the porch, and write haiku before it gets dark.
With the manual finished, I have to send it to the translators. Currently, this involves gathering all the various files together and archiving them (and sending missing pieces or assuring them that the extraneous files aren’t important). In my dream system, I tell the CMS to give me an ODF document of the book. Boom, all the pieces get wrapped together, nothing gets dropped, nothing extra gets added, and I send one file to the translators.
I’m willing to put some effort into making this a reality. After all, I want the computer to do the work for me.
Death by Number 33
We went to one of the local Mexican restaurants last night (there are two in town, and two more in the retail district — people here like their tacos, I guess). Since I was on the way, they ordered #33 (chili relleno, tostada, quesadilla) for me. The barking started soon after leaving the restaurant; Daughter Dearest made the mistake of riding with me and I got to “share.”
It gets worse: the wife tells me the snoring (from both ends) went on most of the night and she ended up sleeping in the living room. I was even more oblivious than usual.
It continues to get worse: they haven’t completely gone away yet, over 24 hours later.
It gets worse: the wife tells me the snoring (from both ends) went on most of the night and she ended up sleeping in the living room. I was even more oblivious than usual.
It continues to get worse: they haven’t completely gone away yet, over 24 hours later.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 1 comment
Not so fuelish
I find myself returning to this topic a lot, perhaps because it’s something that affects both the cast of characters (and I do mean characters) at FAR Manor and everyone else around us. I don’t intend for it to become an energy blog though.
Fuel supplies on Planet Georgia are still hovering close to barely adequate or maybe slightly less. Gas stations still run out on occasion (especially a certain BP station close to my office), and it’s not uncommon to see other stations having only one grade of gas available. Prices are a tick below $3/gallon, which is eating Lobster alive. [I told him to look for something smaller than the truck, but he wasn’t listening. He was in love with that Ranger.] Rumors of a climb to $4/gallon this month haven’t materialized... yet. Thank God.
On the other hand, I’m seeing some hopeful signs that people are getting fed up and actually doing something about it. My in-laws started driving less after prices got above $2/gallon. The president of Shell Oil thinks demand will decline (which is why they don’t plan to build more refineries) — current vehicle sales trends seem to confirm that. Demand for big new SUVs has dropped to the point where Ford stopped making Excursions at the end of September. SUV owners are trading in their gas guzzlers in droves, getting smaller cars.
No less than four motorcycle dealers have set up shop between FAR Manor and the office — certainly, some of them are “power-sport” or “lifestyle” oriented, but one Suzuki and United Motors (a Chinese make) dealer had a sign out front recently: “We get 70MPG. Do you?” With fall settling in and winter on the way, some of those new bikes will end up in the garage for a few months; but when it starts warming up again, I’m looking forward to not being the only rider on the road in the morning. (That’s not totally true even now; I’m seeing more bikes on the road but I’m not sure if it’s gas prices or fall weather bringing them out... probably both.) Come spring, there could be a lot of bikes on the road, especially if predictions of honest-to-God shortages over the winter come true.
In the long run, or even the medium run, moving to more fuel-efficient vehicles won’t be enough. If we’d continued to bite the bullet we bit back in the 70s, it might have — but Reagan pretty much p!$$3d away that opportunity, and his successors made (at best) token efforts. Some of the changes coming will be positive — manufacturing and markets will become local again, at the expense of national or international chains — but we will end up being a much less mobile society, and that will be a wrenching change for many people.
Forewarned is... half an octopus.
Fuel supplies on Planet Georgia are still hovering close to barely adequate or maybe slightly less. Gas stations still run out on occasion (especially a certain BP station close to my office), and it’s not uncommon to see other stations having only one grade of gas available. Prices are a tick below $3/gallon, which is eating Lobster alive. [I told him to look for something smaller than the truck, but he wasn’t listening. He was in love with that Ranger.] Rumors of a climb to $4/gallon this month haven’t materialized... yet. Thank God.
On the other hand, I’m seeing some hopeful signs that people are getting fed up and actually doing something about it. My in-laws started driving less after prices got above $2/gallon. The president of Shell Oil thinks demand will decline (which is why they don’t plan to build more refineries) — current vehicle sales trends seem to confirm that. Demand for big new SUVs has dropped to the point where Ford stopped making Excursions at the end of September. SUV owners are trading in their gas guzzlers in droves, getting smaller cars.
No less than four motorcycle dealers have set up shop between FAR Manor and the office — certainly, some of them are “power-sport” or “lifestyle” oriented, but one Suzuki and United Motors (a Chinese make) dealer had a sign out front recently: “We get 70MPG. Do you?” With fall settling in and winter on the way, some of those new bikes will end up in the garage for a few months; but when it starts warming up again, I’m looking forward to not being the only rider on the road in the morning. (That’s not totally true even now; I’m seeing more bikes on the road but I’m not sure if it’s gas prices or fall weather bringing them out... probably both.) Come spring, there could be a lot of bikes on the road, especially if predictions of honest-to-God shortages over the winter come true.
In the long run, or even the medium run, moving to more fuel-efficient vehicles won’t be enough. If we’d continued to bite the bullet we bit back in the 70s, it might have — but Reagan pretty much p!$$3d away that opportunity, and his successors made (at best) token efforts. Some of the changes coming will be positive — manufacturing and markets will become local again, at the expense of national or international chains — but we will end up being a much less mobile society, and that will be a wrenching change for many people.
Forewarned is... half an octopus.
Monday, October 10, 2005 No comments
Voices from the Borg
As much as I dislike Microsoft — mostly their business practices, although I’ve lost too much work to Word over the years to trust it — I have to admit it’s pretty cool that they let employees blog about what they're doing at work. For example, Brian Jones discusses the development of the XML-based file formats in Office 12; Cyndy Wessling covers the PDF output capabilities of upcoming versions. (If Visio ends up creating decent PDF, there will be a lot of happy FrameMaker users out there.)
For a view of the corporate culture, Mini-Microsoft recently hit the “blogs of note” list and provides an unvarnished look at the ossification of a large corporation as it happens. I’m sure there are other blogs about Microsoft by Microsofties... if you run across any, leave a link in the comments.
For a view of the corporate culture, Mini-Microsoft recently hit the “blogs of note” list and provides an unvarnished look at the ossification of a large corporation as it happens. I’m sure there are other blogs about Microsoft by Microsofties... if you run across any, leave a link in the comments.
Something you don't see everyday
I was getting my 3 p.m. joe to see me through the rest of the afternoon, and managed to get a whole cup for a change. As I was starting the next pot, the president of our division came in, said hello, then stooped down & picked up a couple of pieces of trash & dumped them in the wastebasket.
I guess that represents why I’ve stayed there for 7 years.
I guess that represents why I’ve stayed there for 7 years.
Dangit
I managed to forget my cellphone and my badge/passkey this morning.
The Boy took M.A.E. to a county fair last night. They went with a mutual friend (the guy that introduced them, may a camel give birth in his bed :-). The friend and The Boy have an interesting fit: friend has a car and no driver’s license, Boy has a driver’s license and no car. Soooooo... he trundles in last night, only 7 minutes late (about as well as his mom does), with his friend’s car and no friend.
“He didn’t want to drive it home without a license,” he explained. “I’ll drop it by his house in the morning and Lobster can take me to school.” Fine, whatever. The deed is done, nobody got hurt, wife didn’t go ballistic, so if the friend’s parents are OK with it so are we.
Except that, of course, Lobster is nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning: he’s gotten worse than The Boy, actually. When I started harassing him, he started whining about gas money (he’s getting eaten alive by gas prices). The Boy was just laying in bed, fully dressed, waiting for Lobster to get moving. Time was running out to get him to school on time, so I told him, “I’ll pick you up. Let’s go.” I had to turn off the coffee pot, big deal. He got a 3-minute head start while I bagged my iBook and told the wife good-bye. To make a long story short, he got to school just in time. I hope he was able to get some breakfast.
The Boy took M.A.E. to a county fair last night. They went with a mutual friend (the guy that introduced them, may a camel give birth in his bed :-). The friend and The Boy have an interesting fit: friend has a car and no driver’s license, Boy has a driver’s license and no car. Soooooo... he trundles in last night, only 7 minutes late (about as well as his mom does), with his friend’s car and no friend.
“He didn’t want to drive it home without a license,” he explained. “I’ll drop it by his house in the morning and Lobster can take me to school.” Fine, whatever. The deed is done, nobody got hurt, wife didn’t go ballistic, so if the friend’s parents are OK with it so are we.
Except that, of course, Lobster is nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning: he’s gotten worse than The Boy, actually. When I started harassing him, he started whining about gas money (he’s getting eaten alive by gas prices). The Boy was just laying in bed, fully dressed, waiting for Lobster to get moving. Time was running out to get him to school on time, so I told him, “I’ll pick you up. Let’s go.” I had to turn off the coffee pot, big deal. He got a 3-minute head start while I bagged my iBook and told the wife good-bye. To make a long story short, he got to school just in time. I hope he was able to get some breakfast.
Sunday, October 09, 2005 1 comment
On responsibility
Being wrapped up in my minor agony yesterday, I forgot to mention something fairly important: M.A.E. (Ms. Almost Einstein, The Boy’s girlfriend) finally managed to lose her “housekeeping” job at the mountaintop lodge yesterday morning. She called in sick a couple of days with back problems and so on, and that was apparently the last straw.
The Boy is displeased. “That was a good job! She needs to be more responsible!” he told his mom yesterday. “I don’t like my job all that much, but I go and do it.” Judging from the reports I’m getting, he does pretty well at it too (at the same lodge, he’s a dishwasher, like the dad in “Robots” who dreamed of being a musician... spooooky). His 90-day review is coming up soon, and he’s probably going to get a fairly substantial raise. I don’t know if he remembers he was pretty much the same way about a year ago. He would give it everything he had, at least when he didn’t have something else going on that he wanted to do (like band practice). He blew off one job that way, without having another one lined up, and wound up not working for several months. Maybe he did learn some lessons during his summer of discontent.
So M.A.E. put in apps at several restaurants in the retail district. An IHOP opened recently, which the wife is itching to go to. She wasn’t with us yesterday when M.A.E. did an app there; we joked about eating there & telling her about it afterwards. That would have Not Pleased Her At All. One of the non-manager (unfortunately) people at Arby’s was ready to hire her on the spot.
I wonder if she has a mild form of clinical depression: she certainly sleeps enough for it. She wants to become independent, but doesn’t push herself hard enough. The housekeeping job was better than most in a lot of ways; she had a decent benefits package (the lodge is in a state park so they get state bennies) and reasonable pay for unskilled labor. She was talking about landing a “hostess” job at a fancier restaurant, but she’ll probably have to work her way up to that.
The Boy is displeased. “That was a good job! She needs to be more responsible!” he told his mom yesterday. “I don’t like my job all that much, but I go and do it.” Judging from the reports I’m getting, he does pretty well at it too (at the same lodge, he’s a dishwasher, like the dad in “Robots” who dreamed of being a musician... spooooky). His 90-day review is coming up soon, and he’s probably going to get a fairly substantial raise. I don’t know if he remembers he was pretty much the same way about a year ago. He would give it everything he had, at least when he didn’t have something else going on that he wanted to do (like band practice). He blew off one job that way, without having another one lined up, and wound up not working for several months. Maybe he did learn some lessons during his summer of discontent.
So M.A.E. put in apps at several restaurants in the retail district. An IHOP opened recently, which the wife is itching to go to. She wasn’t with us yesterday when M.A.E. did an app there; we joked about eating there & telling her about it afterwards. That would have Not Pleased Her At All. One of the non-manager (unfortunately) people at Arby’s was ready to hire her on the spot.
I wonder if she has a mild form of clinical depression: she certainly sleeps enough for it. She wants to become independent, but doesn’t push herself hard enough. The housekeeping job was better than most in a lot of ways; she had a decent benefits package (the lodge is in a state park so they get state bennies) and reasonable pay for unskilled labor. She was talking about landing a “hostess” job at a fancier restaurant, but she’ll probably have to work her way up to that.
(Nearly) cured
The cramp is still there this morning, but at a much lower intensity. It still pings when I take a deep breath, but it’s where I can mostly ignore it.
Too bad Blogger doesn’t polls. I'd have a “which did the most good” poll: the ibroprofen horse pill the wife gave me last night after supper, the heat pad, the chiro-cracker, or all of the above. I’m leaning toward the heating pad myself.
Too bad Blogger doesn’t polls. I'd have a “which did the most good” poll: the ibroprofen horse pill the wife gave me last night after supper, the heat pad, the chiro-cracker, or all of the above. I’m leaning toward the heating pad myself.
Saturday, October 08, 2005 No comments
Warm buzzy feeling
The electric heating pad we have also has a "massage" switch. I just shut off the buzzer after letting it run for about 10 or 20 minutes.
I sort of weiner'ed out of attending a party with Daughter Dearest. A friend’s dad “hired” the school chorus for his b-day party, so I took her over there. My back started twinging so I handed DD my cell phone & begged off. I didn’t tell her what was going on because I didn’t want her worrying (and potentially hosing her part).
I don’t know if this heating pad is going to do any good. I suppose it will take a couple of hours.
I sort of weiner'ed out of attending a party with Daughter Dearest. A friend’s dad “hired” the school chorus for his b-day party, so I took her over there. My back started twinging so I handed DD my cell phone & begged off. I didn’t tell her what was going on because I didn’t want her worrying (and potentially hosing her part).
I don’t know if this heating pad is going to do any good. I suppose it will take a couple of hours.
Back spasms?
It’s closer to the side than the spine, around the back, but this pain keeps cramping up & it won’t let me sleep. I think it started Thursday night, although it wasn’t bad then. It’s in the muscle, not appendicitis.
I wonder if this is a back spasm. I have a friend at church who gets them from time to time & they incapacitate him (or maybe it’s the pain medication he takes for it). I’m able to function now, but if I don’t get any more sleep I might have to revise that.
Well, at the least the wrong-number phone call that just came in (wrong area code) didn't wake me up...
UPDATE: Chiro-cracker thinks it's a cramped muscle. He said there’s an outside chance it’s a kidney stone, but it’s not in the right location for typical stones. Wife-o-licious had a huge one a few years back (as in, bigger than the kidney it destroyed). She said the pain is too high & she should know. So I guess it’s time to find the hot pads.
I wonder if this is a back spasm. I have a friend at church who gets them from time to time & they incapacitate him (or maybe it’s the pain medication he takes for it). I’m able to function now, but if I don’t get any more sleep I might have to revise that.
Well, at the least the wrong-number phone call that just came in (wrong area code) didn't wake me up...
UPDATE: Chiro-cracker thinks it's a cramped muscle. He said there’s an outside chance it’s a kidney stone, but it’s not in the right location for typical stones. Wife-o-licious had a huge one a few years back (as in, bigger than the kidney it destroyed). She said the pain is too high & she should know. So I guess it’s time to find the hot pads.
Friday, October 07, 2005 No comments
Bloggin' at the KFC
I didn’t feel like going home right away (see below). Lobster is working at KFC today, and I got a free drink. And a much-needed bathroom break.
The spammers are thick today; I got two of them within a minute of posting.
The spammers are thick today; I got two of them within a minute of posting.
Are they trying to drum up business?
Daughter Dearest broke her ankle about a year ago, badly enough that it required surgery to put back together (two pins & a plate, won’t she have fun at the airports). We made the mistake of taking her to the nearest hospital to get the deed done. It’s not that they do a bad job on the medical end, except that there have been times in its history where you about had to be spurting blood on the ceiling to get quick help, but their billing department seems to be staffed by retarded howler monkeys (and that’s defaming retarded howler monkeys everywhere).
But today tops even those. Wife calls me at work, wanting to know the number of someone at the insurance company. Turns out that the hospital can’t figure out their own code for the pins they put in DD’s foot, and the insurance company rejected the claim. So they’re threatening to screw over our credit record because they can’t figure out how to write their own bills! So she’s totally overreacting, which stresses me out...
Makes me wonder if they’re trying to make people sick to stay in business or something.
Let me say it one more time: retarded howler monkeys.
- We’ve caught them trying to double-bill us on a couple of occasions for this and other work (The Boy spent was diagnosed with Type I diabetes there last April, and DD got appendicitis about two weeks after that — last year would have been bankruptcy time if we didn’t have decent insurance).
- On another occasion, they sent a paid bill to a collection agency. Like I said, retarded howler monkeys.
But today tops even those. Wife calls me at work, wanting to know the number of someone at the insurance company. Turns out that the hospital can’t figure out their own code for the pins they put in DD’s foot, and the insurance company rejected the claim. So they’re threatening to screw over our credit record because they can’t figure out how to write their own bills! So she’s totally overreacting, which stresses me out...
Makes me wonder if they’re trying to make people sick to stay in business or something.
Let me say it one more time: retarded howler monkeys.
Something I forgot to mention last night
I've found that when hitting “Next Blog,” one of about every four blogs that comes up are worth further exploration (exception: you can hit a string of blogs written in a language you don’t read). The interesting thing is that Blogger’s list of notables has about the same quality ratio.
Thursday, October 06, 2005 1 comment
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005 1 comment
Now that’s weird...
Daughter Dearest demonstrated an ability to do the Vulcan Salute with her foot....
Yeesh.
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....
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....
Monday, October 03, 2005 No comments
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).
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).
Sunday, October 02, 2005 3 comments
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.
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!
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.
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.
Saturday, October 01, 2005 No comments
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 No comments
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....
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005 No comments
The World’s Shortest Fairy Tale
Received in email, cleaned up slightly.
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.
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....
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....
Monday, September 26, 2005 No comments
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?
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, September 25, 2005 No comments
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, September 24, 2005 No comments
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?
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?
Friday, September 23, 2005 1 comment
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.
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.
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. ;-)
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. ;-)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 3 comments
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!
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!
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 1 comment
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.
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.
Sunday, September 18, 2005 1 comment
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:
I’ll be going back as often as I can in the next week.
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.
Saturday, September 17, 2005 No comments
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.
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.
Thursday, September 15, 2005 1 comment
The Pledge
A lot of my misguided brethren are up in arms over a court ruling that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance infringe on the rights of school kids who are expected to stand up and recite it every morning (often garbling it — I remember when I thought it said “and to the republic for witches’ stands”).
A couple of thoughts...
First: the words “under God” do not appear in the original pledge — they were added in 1954, at the urging of Republican role model Joseph McCarthy (yes, that McCarthy). It’s important to remember that religious demagoguery is certainly not a new force in American politics; it has always been lurking in the tall grass, ready to bite any politician that strays from the broad middle. Removing those words simply restores the Pledge to its original form.
Second: welcome, my brethren, to the push-back. You have worked tirelessly for generations, attempting to establish your theocratic dystopia, and crying “persecution!” when you are simply not allowed to impose your beliefs on other citizens or our government — eventually, you provoke the wrong people and they won’t be intimidated. For every “Sponge Dob” Dobson and Pat Robertson trying to push non-Christians to the margins of society, there’s going to be a Madeline Murray O’Hair or Michael Newdow pushing back at us. Naturally, it doesn’t end there: I imagine that Newdow is getting death threats tonight, and we know Ms. O’Hair came to a bad end.
Third: this could be the work of God Himself. Personally, I think that the 1963 Supreme Court ruling that banned required prayer in schools (kids can pray on their own, and “they took prayer out of schools” is simply a Big Lie) was the result of God running out of patience. Why would God want His name taken in vain, through kids forced to pray in segregated schools? I think if Christians in general had been in front of the civil rights movement, rather than far too many white Christians fighting for the status quo, we might have a very different situation today. But now, we have segregation by class — poor school districts get the cast-offs of wealthy ones, and Christians largely either don’t want to see or (especially in the wealthy areas) actively oppose any kind of revenue sharing. Again, if Christians were in front of a movement to insure equal education for all in this country, we would be living in a different country.
Perhaps we are being judged. But not with a hurricane.
A couple of thoughts...
First: the words “under God” do not appear in the original pledge — they were added in 1954, at the urging of Republican role model Joseph McCarthy (yes, that McCarthy). It’s important to remember that religious demagoguery is certainly not a new force in American politics; it has always been lurking in the tall grass, ready to bite any politician that strays from the broad middle. Removing those words simply restores the Pledge to its original form.
Second: welcome, my brethren, to the push-back. You have worked tirelessly for generations, attempting to establish your theocratic dystopia, and crying “persecution!” when you are simply not allowed to impose your beliefs on other citizens or our government — eventually, you provoke the wrong people and they won’t be intimidated. For every “Sponge Dob” Dobson and Pat Robertson trying to push non-Christians to the margins of society, there’s going to be a Madeline Murray O’Hair or Michael Newdow pushing back at us. Naturally, it doesn’t end there: I imagine that Newdow is getting death threats tonight, and we know Ms. O’Hair came to a bad end.
Third: this could be the work of God Himself. Personally, I think that the 1963 Supreme Court ruling that banned required prayer in schools (kids can pray on their own, and “they took prayer out of schools” is simply a Big Lie) was the result of God running out of patience. Why would God want His name taken in vain, through kids forced to pray in segregated schools? I think if Christians in general had been in front of the civil rights movement, rather than far too many white Christians fighting for the status quo, we might have a very different situation today. But now, we have segregation by class — poor school districts get the cast-offs of wealthy ones, and Christians largely either don’t want to see or (especially in the wealthy areas) actively oppose any kind of revenue sharing. Again, if Christians were in front of a movement to insure equal education for all in this country, we would be living in a different country.
Behold, this was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.--Ezekiel 16:49
Perhaps we are being judged. But not with a hurricane.
When Icons Exceed their Shelf Life
Current music: BlueTonicWorld - Paradise (slow-mo-tonic mix)
I rarely — never, actually — post from work. If I run across a topic I want to blog about, I'll tuck it into a Sidenote pane and (with any luck) give it some thought.
So when I saw this posting about Garrison Keillor waving lawyers at a blogger for his parody T-shirt, my first thought was to rip the superannuated geezer a new one. You mess with one blogger, you mess with all of them — and God help you if your offense gets noticed by the likes of Kos or Commander Taco. I’d be willing to bet a doughnut that there are more people reading blogs than listening to Prairie Home Companion (which is a trademark of Garrison Keillor, and I couldn’t care less).
But upon reflection, it struck me as sad. In a way, Keillor’s radio show was an early form of blogging: he talks about stuff that’s happening around him and throws in a little humor. It’s ironic that, as I type this, he responded to a letter-writer (on a different topic), “it's pretty much an established rule in American life that when you are in power, you are the object of satire.” Unless, of course, you can file SLAPP suits against people satirizing you. Instead of keeping his show relevant to the changing times and media, he has let his brain ossify. It’s one of the saddest things of all, when a formerly creative mind gets rigid: the first sign of death.
I’d been planning to give his show a listen some time. Now I don’t think I’ll bother.
I rarely — never, actually — post from work. If I run across a topic I want to blog about, I'll tuck it into a Sidenote pane and (with any luck) give it some thought.
So when I saw this posting about Garrison Keillor waving lawyers at a blogger for his parody T-shirt, my first thought was to rip the superannuated geezer a new one. You mess with one blogger, you mess with all of them — and God help you if your offense gets noticed by the likes of Kos or Commander Taco. I’d be willing to bet a doughnut that there are more people reading blogs than listening to Prairie Home Companion (which is a trademark of Garrison Keillor, and I couldn’t care less).
But upon reflection, it struck me as sad. In a way, Keillor’s radio show was an early form of blogging: he talks about stuff that’s happening around him and throws in a little humor. It’s ironic that, as I type this, he responded to a letter-writer (on a different topic), “it's pretty much an established rule in American life that when you are in power, you are the object of satire.” Unless, of course, you can file SLAPP suits against people satirizing you. Instead of keeping his show relevant to the changing times and media, he has let his brain ossify. It’s one of the saddest things of all, when a formerly creative mind gets rigid: the first sign of death.
I’d been planning to give his show a listen some time. Now I don’t think I’ll bother.
Monday, September 12, 2005 No comments
They’re here!
Rumors condense to fact: the local megachurch wannabe is taking in 150 evacuees. Not 150 families, 150 people. They’ve put out a flyer listing all the stuff they’d like to get help with — furniture not the least of it. We’re batting around the idea of converting part of the detached garage into living space & inviting a family, but the climate control would be a nightmare (even if the walls & roof are already insulated).
Looks like CNN finally got wind of the SOBs from Gretna blocking the bridge. They had the police chief on, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying in the way of excuses, because it was in a pizza joint & the sound was off. I truly hope some of those responsible (in Gretna, not the pizza place) do jail time.
Looks like CNN finally got wind of the SOBs from Gretna blocking the bridge. They had the police chief on, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying in the way of excuses, because it was in a pizza joint & the sound was off. I truly hope some of those responsible (in Gretna, not the pizza place) do jail time.
Crazy land
Some friends of ours have a flaky daughter, who’s 21 and has 3 kids (all at once — triplets). She “tried” to commit suicide today; I use quotes because it was one of those attention-getting mechanisms, the usual post-fight-with-boyfriend kind of thing. She did leave a note, “love to everyone and sorry I’m such a screw-up” or some such tripe.
It backfired on her though; she got a bit more attention than she wanted. They're keeping her in the hospital overnight for “observation” — meaning they’re going to ship her to a psychiatric hospital as soon as there’s an opening. whoops!
Wife’s bro and his wife are splitting up too. Everyone’s wigging out around here. We probably ought to have the water checked or something.
It backfired on her though; she got a bit more attention than she wanted. They're keeping her in the hospital overnight for “observation” — meaning they’re going to ship her to a psychiatric hospital as soon as there’s an opening. whoops!
Wife’s bro and his wife are splitting up too. Everyone’s wigging out around here. We probably ought to have the water checked or something.
Spider wisdom
Spiders and me are not exactly the most compatible creatures on the planet. The little SOBs seem to think it’s great fun to run a guy line across a walkway, about the same distance from the ground as my nose. For my part, if I’m wearing shoes and I see one near the ground, it’s stompin’ time.
So one night a while back, the night I finished bottling my beer in fact, I had cleaned up the equipment, loaded it up in its box, and carried it to the outbuilding where I keep it in between batches. I had some extra bottles, so I had to make several trips. Coming out onto the small stoop, I saw one of the biggest spiders ever, off to the left, hanging on a guy wire. He saw me too, and immediately started (wisely) putting some distance between us. It was dark, and I didn’t have a stick, so I glared at him (which made him back off even farther). He had a huge web between the uprights of the stoop and a tree, that much I could see in the dark.
Next morning, I armed myself for battle and marched over to... nothing. The spider had taken down the entire web, except for a single guy wire, and left for parts unknown! Smart little barstid — which is probably how he lived to get that big.
So one night a while back, the night I finished bottling my beer in fact, I had cleaned up the equipment, loaded it up in its box, and carried it to the outbuilding where I keep it in between batches. I had some extra bottles, so I had to make several trips. Coming out onto the small stoop, I saw one of the biggest spiders ever, off to the left, hanging on a guy wire. He saw me too, and immediately started (wisely) putting some distance between us. It was dark, and I didn’t have a stick, so I glared at him (which made him back off even farther). He had a huge web between the uprights of the stoop and a tree, that much I could see in the dark.
Next morning, I armed myself for battle and marched over to... nothing. The spider had taken down the entire web, except for a single guy wire, and left for parts unknown! Smart little barstid — which is probably how he lived to get that big.
Saturday, September 10, 2005 No comments
Some thoughts on the “debit cards”
Among the government and private assistance (finally) being offered to victims of Hurricane Katrina is a $2000 debit card being offered to various households. Experience with The Boy's girlfriend1 suggests that $2000 is, at best, barely adequate to establish a single person who has nothing. I seriously doubt it would be enough to get a family of even three set up, even with all the other help they might be getting.
The girlfriend, I figure, might be able to get established in her own place with $2000. She would need: deposit on an apartment plus a month's rent, a car (no public transport out here!), insurance & fuel for the car, deposits and payments for turning on lights, gas, and phone, maybe some furniture (like, you know, a bed & a dining room table for starters) if the apartment doesn't have any, and enough food to tide her over to her next paycheck. Oh, and there's cigarettes, but don't get me started on that. Evacuees need all that to get back on their feet, plus a job or two (the girlfriend has a job at least). It might take $2000 or more just to live on until they find work.
It's difficult to be independent when you're starting — or starting over — from scratch. Some will go back to rebuild their city... and I wonder if some of the refuseniks stayed because they hoped to be first in line getting cleanup and repair work. Others will be glad to relocate, especially with people wanting to help them get started. For all the noise we make about New Orleans “charm” and so forth, living poor would certainly obscure the charm. I suppose it would be like that for me if I moved to the beach: it's a nice place to visit, but if I lived there I'd have to fight traffic every morning, and I'm not used to living cheek-by-jowl with hundreds of people; beach communities don't seem to have a problem cramming a thousand people into the same amount of land as FAR Manor's acreage, where it's just the six of us (including Lobster and girlfriend).
Maybe that's why hurricanes do so much damage these days.
1I really need to come up with a nickname for her....
The girlfriend, I figure, might be able to get established in her own place with $2000. She would need: deposit on an apartment plus a month's rent, a car (no public transport out here!), insurance & fuel for the car, deposits and payments for turning on lights, gas, and phone, maybe some furniture (like, you know, a bed & a dining room table for starters) if the apartment doesn't have any, and enough food to tide her over to her next paycheck. Oh, and there's cigarettes, but don't get me started on that. Evacuees need all that to get back on their feet, plus a job or two (the girlfriend has a job at least). It might take $2000 or more just to live on until they find work.
It's difficult to be independent when you're starting — or starting over — from scratch. Some will go back to rebuild their city... and I wonder if some of the refuseniks stayed because they hoped to be first in line getting cleanup and repair work. Others will be glad to relocate, especially with people wanting to help them get started. For all the noise we make about New Orleans “charm” and so forth, living poor would certainly obscure the charm. I suppose it would be like that for me if I moved to the beach: it's a nice place to visit, but if I lived there I'd have to fight traffic every morning, and I'm not used to living cheek-by-jowl with hundreds of people; beach communities don't seem to have a problem cramming a thousand people into the same amount of land as FAR Manor's acreage, where it's just the six of us (including Lobster and girlfriend).
Maybe that's why hurricanes do so much damage these days.
1I really need to come up with a nickname for her....
Energy gloom
I saw several stations on the way home with bagged-up pumps yesterday. The BP near the office, that had been out for two days, finally got a shipment in though. Around home, the gas stations have nothing but regular, and now at least some of them put a 20 gallon limit on purchases (“during this temporary energy crisis” says the sign). I'm getting the impression that supplies are really tight at the moment, and it wouldn't take much to create out-and-out shortages.
As if gas(oline) was our only problem. Natural gas production got hosed up big-time by Katrina too. Economist/blogger Jerome a Paris wrote, “Now that [natural] gas costs 3-4 times more, power prices are set to increase by 50-100%.”
Got wood?
As if gas(oline) was our only problem. Natural gas production got hosed up big-time by Katrina too. Economist/blogger Jerome a Paris wrote, “Now that [natural] gas costs 3-4 times more, power prices are set to increase by 50-100%.”
Got wood?
Morning runaround
The lawn mower is finally fixed. No sooner had I put the blade on, Daughter Dearest mowed out back until the replacement bolt I put on the handle came off & got lost. I went by the lawn mower place (among other things) and the guy let me take a couple of the bolts with big plastic wingnuts (lets you fold up the handle for transportation or storage). Other things we did on the trip this morning:
- ate at Waffle House
- got groceries (I put some ice in a cooler, which helped keep the milk & ice cream cold coming back)
- complained to the cellphone peeps about my phone's camera being out of focus (they gave me a number for a warranty exchange, yay)
- swung by the library to pick up a loaner (Haiku: This Other World by Richard Wright)
- gassed up the minivan — more on that in another post
Friday, September 09, 2005 No comments
Here they come
I'd forgotten that schools have a pretty good rumor mill. The kids are telling us that a largeish church is taking in either 100 or 150 families, just that one church. They've heard that something like 700 kids will be signing up for school soon. Seeing as the system currently has about 2000 kids, that's going to be a pretty big influx. I presume the actual number will be somewhat less, but if they can do it without problems, bring 'em on.
Now we're hearing the death tool in New Orleans may not be as horrendous as we thought. Good, let's clear out some space and make room for them, then.
Now we're hearing the death tool in New Orleans may not be as horrendous as we thought. Good, let's clear out some space and make room for them, then.
Funeral for a friend
It’s been said that nothing travels faster than bad news, but the cosmic rule that makes me the last to know something takes precedence even over the speed of bad news. Wife called me this afternoon: a kid that used to go to our church got himself killed in a car wreck a couple of nights ago. Not even a year older than The Boy, and *poof* he's gone. Ran wide in a curb and hit another car, according to the papers.
I told The Boy that this was exactly the reason we worry about him. He laughed.
I told The Boy that this was exactly the reason we worry about him. He laughed.
The stuff I have to document...
One of the products I write about at work has a command-line interface (CLI) used for debugging and troubleshooting. Customers got wind of it, requested documentation, and that’s usually where I get involved.
One particular (or should I say peculiar) troubleshooting command is “ti_ts” — which starts a troubleshooting routine on some TI chips in the box. I tried to get them to change the name, to no avail. So on this development cycle, they added a “codesperms” command (which translates to “active codes per minislot’). I have a pretty good idea what the next oddly-named command will be, but don’t want to give them ideas just in case one of them stumbles across this blog....
One particular (or should I say peculiar) troubleshooting command is “ti_ts” — which starts a troubleshooting routine on some TI chips in the box. I tried to get them to change the name, to no avail. So on this development cycle, they added a “codesperms” command (which translates to “active codes per minislot’). I have a pretty good idea what the next oddly-named command will be, but don’t want to give them ideas just in case one of them stumbles across this blog....
Thursday, September 08, 2005 3 comments
Brevity
This is what happens when you try to be a little too concise with your writing:
On the other hand, the shoe fits....
On the other hand, the shoe fits....
Wednesday, September 07, 2005 No comments
Sign of the Times
“No Fuel”
I noticed the place where I usually get gas had run dry overnight, while I was on the way in this morning. I gassed up last night there, and they only had regular, so it wasn't a complete surprise. But I saw several stations with bags on their pump handles on the way home this evening.
Given the situation along the coast, gas being hard to find is nothing to complain about. Just sayin’.
I noticed the place where I usually get gas had run dry overnight, while I was on the way in this morning. I gassed up last night there, and they only had regular, so it wasn't a complete surprise. But I saw several stations with bags on their pump handles on the way home this evening.
Given the situation along the coast, gas being hard to find is nothing to complain about. Just sayin’.
More FrameMaker 7.2 Leakage
A post on the FrameUsers mailing list (thanks Thomas!) suggests doing a Google search on “FrameMaker new multiple undo” and then reading the cached page from Adobe UK (the first link when I tried it). Doing this turns up some more new features:
A sidebar had links for Solaris and Microsoft updates, suggesting that MacOS users are still left out. Figures.
- multiple undo (one of those long-standing malfeatures I griped about yesterday)
- some support for XML Schema (probably conversion to EDD)
- support for native Photoshop (PSD) files
A sidebar had links for Solaris and Microsoft updates, suggesting that MacOS users are still left out. Figures.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005 1 comment
The Boy: Good News, Bad News
The Boy grabbed Stephen King's Dreamcatcher from the school library last week. He's been at it pretty heavily, taking it to work with him and reading it on breaks & waiting for me to pick him up. It's good to see him that interested in reading; it has to lead to improving his spelling skills.
That was the good news. The bad news I expected: he's once again gotten difficult to get up for school.
That was the good news. The bad news I expected: he's once again gotten difficult to get up for school.
Homebrew, glorious homebrew
I opened the first bottle of Proud Mary — a stout with some fresh rosemary boiled in. I've achieved a personal best with this one; there's no edge to it. Just smooth, dark beer.
My only beef: it could use a little more carbonation, in contrast to the last batch that had a bit too much. The difference may have been the first fermentation — last batch went for a week; I left Proud Mary going for two. Next batch, I'll try 10 days and see what happens.
My only beef: it could use a little more carbonation, in contrast to the last batch that had a bit too much. The difference may have been the first fermentation — last batch went for a week; I left Proud Mary going for two. Next batch, I'll try 10 days and see what happens.
Adobe Leaks FrameMaker 7.2 Info
In which I take a break from chronicling my personal life and talk about work stuff.
Over the Labor Day weekend, various pages on Adobe’s website mentioned the unreleased version 7.2 of FrameMaker, the preferred tool of the trade for most technical writers (who often affectionately call it “Frame”). Adobe (usually one to hold its cards close to the vest) has since revised the pages, although the old ones lived another day in Google’s caches before those too were updated.
But haste often leads to things getting skipped over, and that was the case with a migration guide white paper on Adobe Germany’s site. I grabbed an unrevised copy of the PDF Tuesday afternoon; the good people at Adobe.de have certainly gone home for the day but I expect the white paper to be sanitized first thing tomorrow morning (by about 2 a.m. EDT).
If you download too late, here’s what searching the PDF for “7.2” turned up in the way of new features:
All this is structure-related, which doesn’t do you much good if you aren’t interested in moving to structured Frame. I’m sure that there will be the usual bug replacements (i.e. removing some known bugs and introducing new bugs) as well.
A group of vendors and trainers have been constantly flogging their “FrameMaker Chautauqua” conference on various mailing lists where FrameMaker is either the main or a common topic. The conference includes presentations by Adobe and will be held in early November, so I expect that Adobe will officially announce version 7.2 either at the conference or shortly before. If I’m right, it’s safe to assume that 7.2 is in beta testing right now.
FrameMaker has languished in a near-limbo pretty much since Adobe bought up Frame Technologies some years back. Frame has benefitted from minor updates from time to time, but long-standing bugs and malfeatures have persisted. That, and an abortive foray into porting the Unix version to Linux, have lead many to believe that Adobe is less than enthusiastic about supporting the program. The final straw for some of us was in January 2004, when Adobe dropped support for MacOS citing lack of sales (largely brought on by Adobe’s reluctance to modernize the MacOS version to run natively on MacOS X, leaving FrameMaker one of the last reasons to ever use the “Classic” environment).
Pretty much all summer, the “Chautauqua” people have been hyping Adobe’s presence at their upcoming conference, promising Frame users that they won’t be disappointed by what Adobe has to say about Frame’s life expectancy. Unfortunately, there’s no word on re-introducing MacOS support, preferably for MacOS X. That’s a show-stopper for me and many others: if the rest of the tool chain works well, why change the underlying platform if one tool is no longer supported?
Personally, even if Adobe repents of Windows-centricity, I’m not convinced that page-oriented WYSIWYG tools like Frame are the way forward for technical writing — in a world where our final output is more likely to be PDF and HTML than paper, it doesn’t make much sense to work on the electronic equivalent of a printed page. It makes more sense nowadays to work with markup, either directly (ooo, icky tags, say my less-technical brethren and sistren) or indirectly through an interface that provides formatting hints but no fixed margins or other page-centric details. LyX is a good example of the latter kind of program.
In the end, I expect little or no surprises come November. I’m certainly not going to ask my boss for $695 + hotel to attend a conference for a tool I’m currently planning to abandon, even if the conference is close enough to drive to.
Over the Labor Day weekend, various pages on Adobe’s website mentioned the unreleased version 7.2 of FrameMaker, the preferred tool of the trade for most technical writers (who often affectionately call it “Frame”). Adobe (usually one to hold its cards close to the vest) has since revised the pages, although the old ones lived another day in Google’s caches before those too were updated.
But haste often leads to things getting skipped over, and that was the case with a migration guide white paper on Adobe Germany’s site. I grabbed an unrevised copy of the PDF Tuesday afternoon; the good people at Adobe.de have certainly gone home for the day but I expect the white paper to be sanitized first thing tomorrow morning (by about 2 a.m. EDT).
If you download too late, here’s what searching the PDF for “7.2” turned up in the way of new features:
- XSL processing at XML import and export (alongside existing read/write rules) — this is a feature I’ve wished for, but (see below) probably won’t get.
- Conversion tables, which add structure to unstructured files, can create a “first draft” EDD (a combination of DTD and style sheet).
- Conversion tables also support a “root element” to be applied to the converted document.
All this is structure-related, which doesn’t do you much good if you aren’t interested in moving to structured Frame. I’m sure that there will be the usual bug replacements (i.e. removing some known bugs and introducing new bugs) as well.
A group of vendors and trainers have been constantly flogging their “FrameMaker Chautauqua” conference on various mailing lists where FrameMaker is either the main or a common topic. The conference includes presentations by Adobe and will be held in early November, so I expect that Adobe will officially announce version 7.2 either at the conference or shortly before. If I’m right, it’s safe to assume that 7.2 is in beta testing right now.
FrameMaker has languished in a near-limbo pretty much since Adobe bought up Frame Technologies some years back. Frame has benefitted from minor updates from time to time, but long-standing bugs and malfeatures have persisted. That, and an abortive foray into porting the Unix version to Linux, have lead many to believe that Adobe is less than enthusiastic about supporting the program. The final straw for some of us was in January 2004, when Adobe dropped support for MacOS citing lack of sales (largely brought on by Adobe’s reluctance to modernize the MacOS version to run natively on MacOS X, leaving FrameMaker one of the last reasons to ever use the “Classic” environment).
Pretty much all summer, the “Chautauqua” people have been hyping Adobe’s presence at their upcoming conference, promising Frame users that they won’t be disappointed by what Adobe has to say about Frame’s life expectancy. Unfortunately, there’s no word on re-introducing MacOS support, preferably for MacOS X. That’s a show-stopper for me and many others: if the rest of the tool chain works well, why change the underlying platform if one tool is no longer supported?
Personally, even if Adobe repents of Windows-centricity, I’m not convinced that page-oriented WYSIWYG tools like Frame are the way forward for technical writing — in a world where our final output is more likely to be PDF and HTML than paper, it doesn’t make much sense to work on the electronic equivalent of a printed page. It makes more sense nowadays to work with markup, either directly (ooo, icky tags, say my less-technical brethren and sistren) or indirectly through an interface that provides formatting hints but no fixed margins or other page-centric details. LyX is a good example of the latter kind of program.
In the end, I expect little or no surprises come November. I’m certainly not going to ask my boss for $695 + hotel to attend a conference for a tool I’m currently planning to abandon, even if the conference is close enough to drive to.
Sunday, September 04, 2005 No comments
Slow progress
Current music: di.fm EuroDance
I haven't addressed the pile of logs that need splitting in some time now. I started whacking at them a little bit today, but decided instead to pick up some sticks in the back; it's about at the point now where I can start weed-whacking without getting the string tangled in a fallen branch. I also need to address the front of the place, on the other side of the driveway, where we had the timber people clear the pines. Picking up the sticks, tilling or plowing the ground to smooth it out, and planting grass seed are things that remain to be done; later this month is the best time to do it.
We got a new lawn mower blade today and I put it on. The boys are now out of excuses to mow the lawn. (I'm sure they'll find some new ones though.)
I helped Lobster change the oil in his truck today... meaning I did most of the work while he watched. Rangers mount the oil filter vertically, leaving very little room for a strap wrench (I told Lobster to get a cap wrench next time he went to the parts place). That sucker was tight. But eventually we succeeded, just in time to get him off to KFC. Then I put my Civic up on ramps and changed the oil in it too. But I'm kind of surprised that Lobster's dad never showed him what to do — he works for one of the pipeline companies (yeah, one that got clobbered by Katrina) and has weird hours, so maybe that's the reason. Or maybe he makes enough $$$ that he just has it done.
Chicken house duty for a couple of hours today as well. Hope everyone else's Labor Day weekend is work-free and fun....
I haven't addressed the pile of logs that need splitting in some time now. I started whacking at them a little bit today, but decided instead to pick up some sticks in the back; it's about at the point now where I can start weed-whacking without getting the string tangled in a fallen branch. I also need to address the front of the place, on the other side of the driveway, where we had the timber people clear the pines. Picking up the sticks, tilling or plowing the ground to smooth it out, and planting grass seed are things that remain to be done; later this month is the best time to do it.
We got a new lawn mower blade today and I put it on. The boys are now out of excuses to mow the lawn. (I'm sure they'll find some new ones though.)
I helped Lobster change the oil in his truck today... meaning I did most of the work while he watched. Rangers mount the oil filter vertically, leaving very little room for a strap wrench (I told Lobster to get a cap wrench next time he went to the parts place). That sucker was tight. But eventually we succeeded, just in time to get him off to KFC. Then I put my Civic up on ramps and changed the oil in it too. But I'm kind of surprised that Lobster's dad never showed him what to do — he works for one of the pipeline companies (yeah, one that got clobbered by Katrina) and has weird hours, so maybe that's the reason. Or maybe he makes enough $$$ that he just has it done.
Chicken house duty for a couple of hours today as well. Hope everyone else's Labor Day weekend is work-free and fun....
What do you want out of life?
Perhaps the best way to get what you want from life is to know what you want from life in the first place. As I cruise toward what I hope is the mid-point of my life, I think I know what I want of life and (being a guy) it's a fairly short & simple list:
Beyond that, a quiet, modest life with a quiet, modest retirement would pretty much wrap it up.
I'm halfway there: I have a place to stay (FAR Manor) and lots of toys. The rest is a faraway dream. I haven't had nearly enough to drink to willingly expand much beyond that. I'm interested in hearing what other people want though, and how far along they are to getting it.
- A place to stay
- A few toys
- “Whoopie” a couple of times a week
- Weekends mostly available for rest and/or recreation
Beyond that, a quiet, modest life with a quiet, modest retirement would pretty much wrap it up.
I'm halfway there: I have a place to stay (FAR Manor) and lots of toys. The rest is a faraway dream. I haven't had nearly enough to drink to willingly expand much beyond that. I'm interested in hearing what other people want though, and how far along they are to getting it.
Friday, September 02, 2005 1 comment
We're on our own... aren't we?
Given the lackadaisical initial response to the New Orleans flooding, one has to wonder what would happen if we had a nationwide disaster, like the Spanish Flu pandemic, that affected more than a “mere” million people in a few hundred square miles of coastal territory. Given the reports we've seen this week, we can pretty much assume we'll be on our own. “Our” government has dumped too many resources on, and given too much attention to, a war we didn't have to fight to worry about details like saving lives at home. You know it's serious when reporters tee off on a Senator, telling her he saw rats eating a corpse on TV.
In the middle of all this, Daughter Dearest asked me if we could get a picture of the night sky. I cranked the aperature wide open, put the shutter on its max of 15 seconds, and took a few shots. She was able to use iPhoto's one-click Enhance to get something worth keeping:
(The thumbnail doesn't do it justice, click it to get the full-size picture.)
Looking up at all those stars, some of which we know have planets, you can't help but think that there's someone out there, someone who maybe has figured 'most everything out. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, because the alternative is almost too terrible to give much thought: that we're alone in the universe, stuck on a planet run by the worst of us.
The mayor of New Orleans is right: God is watching. He knows why it took so long to get aid rolling in. I cannot curse, I cannot condemn, for that is not my place. Perhaps feeling empty like I do is better in that respect.
In the middle of all this, Daughter Dearest asked me if we could get a picture of the night sky. I cranked the aperature wide open, put the shutter on its max of 15 seconds, and took a few shots. She was able to use iPhoto's one-click Enhance to get something worth keeping:
(The thumbnail doesn't do it justice, click it to get the full-size picture.)
Looking up at all those stars, some of which we know have planets, you can't help but think that there's someone out there, someone who maybe has figured 'most everything out. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, because the alternative is almost too terrible to give much thought: that we're alone in the universe, stuck on a planet run by the worst of us.
The mayor of New Orleans is right: God is watching. He knows why it took so long to get aid rolling in. I cannot curse, I cannot condemn, for that is not my place. Perhaps feeling empty like I do is better in that respect.
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