FAIL, Chicken House Style

Or: How My Saturday was Shot to Hell for Me

I knew it wasn’t a good idea to agree to help with the chickens today, but Daughter Dearest and The Boy were both ready to help so I was pretty much stuck. When I got to the back of #2, one of the feed line motors wasn’t running and I assumed it was electrical. Mrs. Fetched told me different: a bolt had gotten into the feed line (sloppy maintenance at the feed mill) and we were pretty much stuck doing something about it. Amazing, how she manages to “forget” about these things until I’ve already signed up for a quick morning tour. Scope creep isn’t just an engineering plague.

After figuring out that it wasn’t electrical, we took the guard off the motor reset switch and Mrs. Fetched managed to finally make it click. “I’m going to just plug it in for a second,” she told me. “You listen and see if you can figure out where it bangs.” It took all of two rounds of that to find it. When we started looking, it was obviously b0rk3d.




Naturally, this couldn’t be close to the motor. After dorking with stuff for a while, and not solving anything, I asked Mrs. Fetched, “So what do we do?”

“We call Wesley,” she said. Wesley is a chicken house repairman — yes, there is such a thing. It requires electrical, welding, and mechanical skills, as well as a high tolerance for ammonia and dust. We broke for a late lunch (since we had a late breakfast) and Wesley showed up just as we were heading back to try to prepare for battle.




With a little help from us, they took the feed line apart at the break (it's a series of tubes, with a twisted screwy thing inside — you know, like the Internet) and pulled the auger out. We quickly found the auger was pretty seriously kinked — again, the Internet similarities are amazing. (And look! they both eat up all your free time!) After attempting to straighten it, he got the tools.





I assumed that we’d have to replace the entire auger. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Cut out the kinked part, braze in a new piece, and put it all back together. But first things first: cut the sucker. A Dremel tool with a cutting wheel did the job, with plenty of drama.





They had brought a piece of replacement auger line with them, along with a brazing rig (large oxyacetylene torch) and a jig to hold it together while putting it to the torch. The actual repair actually didn’t take very long — indeed, it was probably the quickest part of the entire procedure. Isn’t that usually how it goes?

Once the auger was repaired (and cooled off), the rest was anti-climatic. Replace the broken pipes, feed the auger line through, and hook it back up to the motor.


It’s always best to test your repairs before buttoning it all up… otherwise, something is sure to go w0rng. Fortunately, everything was doing what it was supposed to:


And that was how my Saturday afternoon went. I could think of a couple zillion things I’d rather have been doing… and at least three or four that I actually could have been doing. All indoors… it was cold and windy with snow flurries and at least the chicken houses are warm.

Odds and (week)Ends

Yet another collection of happenings and items that didn’t merit their own post. I thought that I wouldn’t have to do these anymore when I started using Twitter, but I don’t always tweet these things and sometimes there are pictures involved. I’m not sure how many of you read the Twitter box (in the margin to the right) anyway — and if your employer has weird IT people like mine does, they block Twitter and you might not be able to read them anyway. But if you join Twitter and follow me, then you’ll get up to the minute updates (when I think to send them).

I had a brief HEFOD (Hardware Engineer Freak-Out Dance) at work yesterday — fortunately, it only took a couple hours that I had to spare. I cleared a couple of major milestones this week, and several minor ones, so I’m pretty content with my work-related productivity this week.

Nine Inch Nails has released a four-CD instrumental compilation they call Ghosts I-IV. They put up the first CD in the set as a free download — I figured if I didn’t like it, The Boy probably would, and grabbed a copy. (If you tried earlier in the week, when they first announced it, they’ve added servers and bandwidth to handle the load.) I’m listening to it now; it’s definitely not what I’d have expected from NiN. I expect it will get airplay on Space Station Soma or other ambient stations before long. I’m keeping it. I doubt The Boy will be thrilled with it though.

WANT!!!
(I don’t mean the truck, or the ribbon sticker. I want the oval sticker.)

But seriously, I’ll make sure the proceeds are actually going to breast cancer research before I buy one.

Going around to visit some of my blog-buddies… stop by and wish Beth a Hippo Birdie! Meanwhile, Nancy P has gone dark until she finishes writing her next book, so send productivity vibes her way. For that matter, Beth and several other of my writing pals need some productivity vibes as well. Until Nancy’s ready to come back, Kimberly Frost is hosting the “cafe.”

Meanwhile, I’ve got some writing of my own to do (ahem FAR Future ahem), so I’ll be getting on that shortly. Actually, I wrote at least half of the next episode at lunch yesterday, and the three or four episodes after that are already written, so I’ve just got to hook it all up and I might go twice-weekly for the next two or three weeks to make up for being slow on this one. I could use a few productivity vibes as well, as long as Olga (my imaginary BSDM Muse) doesn’t decide to send too many vibes. Right now, I’m typing at a long-ish story that centers around a teenage couple and a mysterious cornfield.

Amazing, how quickly one can type (and accurately!) when squiffed. I’m actually preparing this post Friday night, but jiggered the relative dates (“yesterday” et al) to work with the actual posting time. I hope everyone has a relaxing and/or exciting weekend, depending on how you like it. Lurkers, feel free to say hello and share your weekend plans…

Weekend Cinema

Welcome back to Weekend Cinema, where you can sample both old and new, long and short (but mostly short) animations!

I didn’t even have to think about tonight’s selection — as soon as I saw it, I marked it for this weekend. So sit back, grab a handful of popcorn, and cheer on the hapless bunny who’s caught on Theme Planet…

TB02 and Other Stories

It seems like the entire blogosphere is talking about Gary Gygax’s demise. This is fortunate (the chatter, not the event, jeeeeez), because I have stuff to talk about a little closer to home. I was an avid D&D player in college, and still have all my books & figurines & so forth, but I haven’t played seriously since graduating, too long ago to comfortably think about. So after the customary moment of silence, followed by noting “DEAD-NO RES” on the character sheet and moving it to the back of the notebook…

I must have rolled snake eyes on my luck throw (or used it all up last week, more likely). Last night, we made official what I’ve suspected all week: TB02 — The Boy has come back home. AGAIN. And not by himself. There’s Snippet, of course; her mom has been living in a camper for some months (verified by Mrs. Fetched) and she is out of options, and I’m not exactly thrilled with the idea of putting a 17-year-old female on the street. A happier circumstance is EJ, The Boy’s long-time friend and probably one of the better influences in his life. EJ works at the hospital and offered to pay rent (we accepted of course). Snippet, who was “home schooled” (NOT) for several years, is signing up for GED classes and Mrs. Fetched will make sure she gets to them. ;-)

Well. The nest that was getting empty has filled right back up again. Mrs. Fetched is actually happy about it, partly because we like EJ and partly because Snippet has some experience working chicken houses, and partly because The Boy really isn’t prepared for living on his own just yet. She said something to the effect that it may work out the same as with M.A.E.: after having her around for a few months, he’ll get tired of her & ditch her as soon as she (or he, as in the case previous) can find another place to go. snort Accepting her will probably help the breakup. snort Or maybe Snippet will get tired of his ego and bail on her own. Either way, they both win.

Something ugly went down at the place he & Snippet were staying, but beyond Snippet’s friend BB (a known drama queen) trash-talking The Boy, I’m not completely sure what was going on there yet. It might be once of those “ignorance is bliss” situations, so maybe I’ll just leave it at that. EJ wasn’t living with them, but there was some kind of row between EJ, his mom, and his step-dad the same weekend The Boy and Snippet came back home — not too bright on the part of the elders, as EJ was dishing over much of what he makes at the hospital. He’s actually going to come out ahead paying rent here, which should allow him to get his own car & place by summer. The Boy is looking to start working at a nearby convenience store, and also hopes to be ready to have a more permanent TB01 by July. With any luck, Snippet will be out of the picture by then.

So let’s welcome the new cast members. Feel free to start a betting pool on how long each of them will stay around.

Bad news, good news

The DSL started crapping out on me this morning around 11. Now it seems to be flaked out entirely. I’m sending this from my cellphone.

I took a brief walk a few minutes ago, and found a sprout in the pepper bed... maybe it’s a bell pepper volunteering.

Still Dim, Still Life

Life goes on, even (or especially?) when not blogging. The work that followed me home for the weekend pretty much rolled over and gave up after a few hours. That didn’t leave me a lot of free time anyway; there was wood to split & stack and chicken houses that demanded attention. But the work stuff went OK; I had some late stuff come in this morning, one sticky comment (from my boss) was deemed OK to let slide for the beta phase. I spent much of the work day today updating screen shots and verifying CLI commands; the later is not difficult but rather tedious. Things change, even when they’re not called out in the spec, so it has to be done.

On the way into work this morning, I was thinking about The Boy and his focus on things. With a little reflection, I realized his wasn’t a laser focus — more like an electron gun in a CRT. Very sharp focus, but easily deflected. Girlfriends have not been good for him… three summers ago, he had a job, a car, and good prospects. He hooked up with M.A.E.… and a year later, the job was history, the car was trashed by a criminal who thought to use it as a getaway car & put diesel in it, and he’d dropped out of school. In some ways, he hasn’t recovered from that. Interesting that when I got home, he was at the manor (and Snippet, of course). He’s going to try to get back that job he had before, and helped out a little bit (hoping for cigarette money). Mrs. Fetched told me that on the way to do some of that work, she asked him, “Are you happy with your life, the way things are going?” He didn’t answer. I hope he reflects on it. She thinks he’s not terribly thrilled with his apartment life; he told me he and EJ (and Snippet, of course) are going to try getting their own place. What he really needs to do is put her aside & redirect his focus — but being a guy, he’ll let his nuts do the thinking until he’s 30 or so.

Some consultant invited me to join his group on LinkedIn a while back. It’s a social networking site geared toward professionals, if you haven’t heard of it. On a whim, I typed in my old college roomie’s name, and there he was (waving at CS if he’s reading). We hooked up on IM today, traded pix of our kids, and commiserated about being almost 50.

The first of several “stimulus packages” is going to arrive soon: the annual work bonus. Mrs. Fetched and I have made a list of stuff we want to get taken care of, including taking care of the cars and motorcycles. I think we’ll have a fair amount left over after the essentials are taken care of, which will take care of the Spring Break vacation in Florida. Daughter Dearest’s chorus is singing at Dizzy World, and recording part of a movie soundtrack. They’re going to spend a lot of time backstage, and Mrs. Fetched is going to be there to video things. Meanwhile, we have a condo set up near Mom’s place (with Mom’s help) and I’ll have a couple of days to air it out before they finish up their “work” in Orlando and join me. But before that, Beth is coming this way for a day or so, then continuing a dizzying travel schedule that ends up in a new home in Colorado. I’ll have to make cinnamon rolls.

Speaking of rolls, a woman at our church runs a no-kill animal shelter. I don’t know how this connects, but she gets large packages of freebies from the grocery store and brings it for everyone to pick out on Sundays. I usually grab pastries or doughnuts and take them to work; plenty of engineers are happy to dispatch the goodies. What doesn’t get eaten in the meetings gets taken to a certain filing cabinet in the office, where it has a (ahem) shelf life of about two hours. I kept the coffee cake and English muffins for ourselves, though.

And speaking of bread… seeing that wheat has gone up like 40% in the last year, and is set to double in the next year, I figured this would be a good time to stock up on flour. We went to BJs, and found 20lb packs for $6.57 — about 2/3 what you’d pay at the grocery store. I bought two packs, which will last us a little while, and tossed in a 3-liter bottle of Berio olive oil. Meanwhile, the girlies wound up getting a bunch of other stuff. Daughter Dearest found Stephanie Meyer’s second book (Eclipse, hardcover for $10) and has already read it (and the first one) twice. I guess she’ll get the next one when she gets paid.

I’m hoping things will ease up a little later this week, and maybe I can get a FAR Future episode up. One more month to vacation!

FAR Future, Episode 24: Interlude

With this post, I’ll be going dim again for a while. Work followed me home this weekend. I should have the next episode up on schedule, which means “some time late next week.”

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Sunday, May 5, 2013
Interlude

It has been pretty quiet lately at FAR Manor. I wouldn’t say the calm before the storm — I hope not, anyway — but who knows these days?

The chicken houses are winding down; after they haul this bunch away (11 days, and yes I’m counting), that’s The End. We’ll use the litter for the pastures as needed; we won’t tear the houses down right away (although I have a couple of crowbars just itching to get at it) but we’ll be selling the equipment in the market bulletin… if there are any takers. Chicken ranching just isn’t what it used to be, if it ever was; the fuel required for a factory operation is killing the industry (and good riddance). Poultry companies are actually making more money selling birds to backyard operations now. A thousand homes with backyard flocks produce as much chicken as a single chicken house, give or take, and they can also provide eggs. The margins are better for the companies, they don’t have to worry about fuel subsidies, and a loose dog means more business.

The in-laws have been taking it easy for a while; Mrs. Fetched has been managing the day-to-day operations of the farm for — well, since before I started blogging, and that’s been a while. Her mom has been helping some of the county subdivisions with their community gardens; she did organic gardening before there was any other kind, so she just had to reach a little farther back in her storehouse of memories. (Did I ever mention that she helped dig a well by hand when she was a teenager? ’Tis true.) A lot of her generation, the ones left, are finding themselves quite popular these days — they remember what it’s like to live without electricity, running water, and all the other stuff we’ve taken for granted all our own lives. Even the folks with Alzheimer’s seem to do OK; researchers found out a long time ago that recreating the environment of their prime years helps them cope, and that’s pretty easy to do these days. Some of them think it’s the 1930s, and (minus Jim Crow) it could well be.

Anyway, as poultry farming has decentralized back into backyard operations, beef is becoming a luxury item. Prices are way up — some people are saying it’s going to get to the point where selling two or three cows a year could pay all the farm-related expenses (diesel fuel, taxes, feed) before too much longer. We’ve contracted to sell whatever peppers and herbs (mostly oregano) we grow to local outfits these days. Good thing… sales have dropped off at work quite a bit, what with households “consolidating,” so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be gainfully employed. If I can survive as a gentleman farmer, especially after taking the mortgage moratorium, I don’t have a problem with that. Some of the old-timers have gone back to making moonshine, especially since it’s not as illegal as it used to be. Now I know why the Indians called it “firewater.” Whoosh.

Daughter Dearest will be done teaching classes in a couple weeks, just a few days after the chickens are gone, in fact. We’ve already opened up her old room for her, so she’ll be all set. I’m looking forward to having her around again… but I think I mentioned that.

Can you believe it’s almost summer already? We’ll be going back to rolling blackouts any day now. :-P They’ve been running PSAs almost non-stop on radio and TV, encouraging people to minimize A/C usage as the weather warms up. Those voltage sensors the power company passes out are an interesting experiment: when they get plugged in, they set a random voltage to watch for and cut off the A/C for an hour when the incoming voltage goes below that — it might be enough to stop the blackouts, or at least reduce their duration. Mrs. Fetched and I have been talking about moving our bed onto the screen porch, where we can take advantage of cooler air through the night. If we’re really careful how we use what the solar panels give us (the windmill is mostly useless from May to September), we can run the ceiling fan on low all night. I’ll probably put it on a timer, though, to cut off after a couple of hours. The vented skylight in DD’s room should help her quite a bit, as long as we leave windows and the doors to the upstairs open.

So things have been quiet for a little while. But if The Prophet is right, not for long: “The day is soon coming, Jerusalem, when your enemies of old will gather together and say, ‘We have thrown off the yoke of our king; now let us oppress the people of the city, as we did before. For we have not forgotten the old times, nor our enmity toward the people of Jerusalem.’ And when the Lord closes the heavens once again, and the land will be parched, there will be wars and rumors of wars, until He takes pity on the people and opens the heavens anew.”

Oh great. More drought.

continued…

Bumper Cars, or (Tell Me Why) I Don’t Like Mondays

When I first moved to Planet Georgia in March 1983, my first thought upon entering metro Atlanta was, “don’t these people know what traffic cops are?” In college, I watched The Dukes of Hazzard for entertainment… not realizing that people really do drive like that here.

So this morning, me and a few dozen close personal friends (none of whom I’ve met, but anyway) are all cruising down the freeway, when traffic starts knotting up. That’s not unusual. Flip the car out of gear, cover the brake, and erode the generous cushion I’ve given the car ahead of me. About the time I’d used my cushion, the cars ahead started speeding up and the cushion opened up again. I got it in gear, but I must have seen something sub-consciously that made me cautious. I accelerated, but slowly, and let the cushion build up again.

When things start getting thick like that, I try to watch as far ahead as I can — looking through windows, around, over, whatever it takes to get a read on what’s happening. I saw some brake lights again, and got ready: plenty of room in the median (I was in the left lane, passing a transfer truck) and the guy behind me was close but not drafting. This kind of scenario presents itself probably once a week, and usually amounts to nothing.

But our lucky lotto number came up this morning. Brake lights came on several cars ahead, then the guy in front of me hit his brakes hard (judging from the way his back end came up). I put one eye on him and one on the rear-view mirror, hit the brakes, and got ready to dive into the median if necessary. As the situation in front of me started sorting itself out, I saw several cars behind me weave toward the median, then saw a big cloud of steam and all hell broke loose. Two cars went into the median, and a bronze Explorer came up beside me on the right: BACKWARDS, nose to nose with the transfer truck. I bellowed a prayer, moved left, and gassed it — and God saw fit to cut me a break, because I was clear a second later. It really looked like one of those replays from a NASCAR in-car camera; one where the cars going every which way but somehow the driver in the middle of it all manages to get through it unscathed.

About a hundred yards up the road, I pulled into the median and ran back to check on the others who weren’t so lucky. There were four vehicles involved; all the drivers were on their phones or chatting amongst each other. One guy was surveying the tangled mess that was once the front end of his car, shaking his head, and making his phone call. Nobody was hurt at all, thank God, and a guy in scrubs came running across the median from the northbound side to make sure. I offered several of them an “anything I can do?” and got a chorus of “no thanks,” so I figured I should just get back to it. But I’ve smelled the radiator fluid from the smashed-up car, on and off, all day.

I really wanted to be retired by now. :-P

A Quiet Improvement

Oh grey water, keep on flowin’
Planet Georgia moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me…

As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had some issues with the septic system (we’ve had to have it pumped a couple times since then). A few months ago, it occurred to me that if we could divert the non-toilet drains into an irrigation system, we could take a lot of non-essential load off the septic system and, if not solving the problem entirely, at least put off replacing the field lines. My father-in-law and I put in the field lines at our old place; it wasn’t too difficult but he no longer has a backhoe — so it’ll be a multi-thousand dollar fix now.

Since the in-laws have a handyman living & working on the farm at the moment, Mrs. Fetched’s mom decided to jump into the project with both feet… or at least toss the handyman into it. It was the work of a morning for him to punch a hole in the foundation, run a 2-inch pipe through it, and divert the kitchen and laundry room drains. I consider the job half-done — ideally, I’d like to divert everything but the toilets — but this may be all we can do practically.

This project may have also decided for me where I’ll locate the forest garden. I like the idea of using water twice, especially if we’re going to have more drought… which doesn’t seem likely at the moment, but you never can tell. I also like the idea that being less wasteful could save us some money (like with the fireplace insert). There’s still a little more work to do once I’ve figured out where the water will go, a bit of ditch-digging and pipe-laying… nothing I haven’t done before.

Weekend Cinema

A blah ending to a crappy week… but hey, blah is an improvement, right? Things are getting better going into the weekend! We hope.

I always get a chuckle out of this video, even if I don’t understand the lyrics. The only question I have is, are those Mao jackets or Meow jackets?

Lunar Eclipse [UPDATED]

Of course it would be a cloudy night,
with a lunar eclipse happening tonight!

This was the best I could do. I had better (less) cloud cover earlier, but all I had then was my cellphone and that didn't work so good.


UPDATE: About an hour and a half later, just past totality, it cleared up and I got another shot that I didn't have to fight the clouds for.

FAR Future, Episode 23: The Prophet

I’ve been debating about whether to include this episode, or just work it in sideways. But if I don’t post something, who knows how long before I’ll get the next one done? Sometimes, you just have to go with what you got.

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Friday, April 19, 2013
The Prophet

There is a prophet in Atlanta. Or so they say.

He surfaced (is that the word?) early this year, standing and preaching on street corners like so many more before him. But some people have made a pastime of capturing his sermons with cellphone cameras, and there’s a website dedicated to gathering and collating those pieces of video. It makes for some interesting watching.

Fortunately for The Prophet’s “chroniclers,” he tends to preach the same sermon for several days, then change only parts of it. That gives them a chance to piece together most of an entire sermon. They still haven’t caught the beginning of any of them, though, so the site has to go on eyewitness reports to provide complete transcripts.

In the videos, The Prophet is a black guy, maybe 5-foot-9, and looks bulky (although that could be the coat). He has a buzz cut, a ratty trench coat, and of course he carries a Bible. He has a big knot on the right side of his forehead, like someone clubbed him a good one. In the videos, he refuses cash donations (which sent my respect for him up about six notches) but blesses anyone who leaves food or bottled water. He has a refrain when people put food or water bottles in a cardboard box at his feet: “Those who leave so much as a glass of water for the servants of God will not lose their reward.”

The mainstream preachers aren’t exactly thrilled with the attention he’s getting. The kahuna at the big Baptist church down in Atlanta gets this sour look on his face every time a TV reporter asks him about the Prophet, but he says mostly neutral stuff like “preaching The Lord’s word and doing His work is always honorable.” But there’s a big contrast that he can’t paper over, and the TV reporters don’t overlook it — the wealthier churches have set up soup kitchens where you have to go — when people give food to The Prophet, he takes it to where it’s needed. (People have followed him a few times.)

He was recently giving a 21st Century Beatitudes (cut & pasted from the site):

“Blessed are those, who open their homes to neighbors and sojourners in Jerusalem, for the Lord shall open the gates of heaven to them.” (He refers to Atlanta as Jerusalem, according to the site.)

“Blessed are those, who bring firewood to the cold, for they shall be warm in heaven.

“Blessed are those, who bring food to the hungry, for they shall feast in heaven.

“Blessed are those, who look after their neighbors, for the Lord in heaven shall look after them.

“Blessed are those, who continue to work and pay their debts, yet all debts will be erased. Their faithfulness is written in the Book of Life.

“Blessed are those, who make peace with their enemies, for they shall live without fear.

“But woe unto those who hide away from the stranger at their door! for the Lord shall shut the gates of Heaven against them!

“Woe unto those who hoard their fuel, for the fires of Hell will be bitter cold to them!

“Woe unto those who withhold their food from the hungry, for Hell shall not feed them!

“Woe unto those who say, 'I have earned my ease, let my neighbors look after themselves,' for the Lord will surely turn His back on such!

“Woe unto those who say, 'Why should I pay my debt, even though I can?' for the Lord will surely blot out the names of the faithless from the Book of Life!

“Woe unto those who take up arms against their enemies, for ever shall they live in fear of their lives!”

There are some videos of people coming to his cardboard box altar for salvation and baptism. He opens a bottle of water and baptizes them on the spot. :-) Some of them look like they're dressed pretty well, so I guess the Prophet is reaching more than just the poor in town.

Heavy stuff. I'll transcribe more if something jumps out at me.

continued…

Weekend Cinema

When you don’t have much time,
When you got you no money,
You want that Weekend Cinema
To bring you something funny!

Archive.org is a treasure trove of old stuff. Some of it you have to see to believe.

Some of you may be old enough to have seen this in school; I think they stopped showing it shortly before my time. Or maybe I blocked the memory. In any case, it’s worth looking at — first for the laugh, and then the sobering “what if” that is Duck and Cover. (10 minutes)

They have smaller versions for dialup users, although it still runs into some heft (like 10MB worth). Try one of the "64kB" links to the left if you need it.

TB01 (Maybe this one will last)

Mrs. Fetched is getting better now. [cue SFX: stadium cheer] She wasn’t quite up to prom dress shopping with Daughter Dearest as planned, but she did get out of the house with DD to pay some bills and the like. Seeing that her world of the previous 48 hours was the living room, hallway, and our bedroom (mostly the living room), this is a big improvement.

But that’s not what I’m here to tell you about. I’m here to tell you about The Boy.

The Boy, as always, was gone all last weekend. But come Monday, he didn’t show up in the evening as usual — with or without Snippet. He swung by late Wednesday evening, when I would have been at choir practice except that I was looking after Mrs. Fetched.

“I got an apartment with [two other guys],” he told me. “I’m just here to get some clothes and stuff.”

[cue SFX: stadium cheer with The Wave] TB01!

It was pretty cold that particular night, and I found his heavier jacket for him and made sure he took it along. He also picked up a loaf of bread (not a problem) and some CDs (ditto). I didn’t think to ask him if he’d found a job, and he didn’t volunteer the information. He had said last week that one of his friends’ grandparents were going to pony up for an apartment, so he may have been straight with us. If so, they could be on the hook just for food & utilities. I hope they know (or learn) how to cook. This time of year, it would be ridiculously easy to cook: buy a crock pot, dump meat & veggies in it in the morning, come in & eat it for supper. I never could get him & M.A.E. to stand still long enough to show them how to eat cheap & healthy; maybe if he comes by and complains about groceries, he’ll be willing to listen.

I really hope this works out for him. Taking care of himself will teach him responsibility more effectively than we ever could.

Mrs. Fetched is Sick

Mrs. Fetched decided this morning that she had me take her to the doctor about whatever it is she has.

He isn’t sure!

It’s not the flu, and it’s not strep throat. Probably a bacterial thing, but who knows? A couple of prescriptions and she’s actually getting some rest for a change. I just wish she was healthy and getting some rest.

Forgot what I was gong to write about

I had something kind of knocked together in my head yesterday that I wanted to put here, but then I forgot to post it last night and it’s completely gone this morning.

Oh well. I need to go rebuild the fire in the insert. Mrs. Fetched has the flu, I think, and she’s not in any condition to go out and gather firewood.

Weekend Cinema

“WTF?” — FARfetched

“That’s just WEIRD.” — Daughter Dearest

So some guy who calls himself “Buffalax” took a music video from India and added subtitles consisting of English that sort of sounds like what they’re singing.

So grab some popcorn, but put down the drinks for this one… and maybe you’ll figure out who put the goat in there.

FAR Future, Episode 22: Why Are We Still Here?

A brief interlude as part of the story. I’m about ready to start the next cycle.

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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Why Are We Still Here?

It’s a nice spring afternoon out here today. I’m sitting out front with the laptop. Stuff is growing, the sun is shining, the windmill is turning slowly… I’m not exactly feeling gloomy, but I’m not nearly as sunny as this day has turned out to be. I guess the word is “introspective.”

The right-wing spins one way or another these days, like an old Chevy stuck in the mud, looking for traction wherever they can find it so they can get back in the race. They end up slinging mud everywhere, spinning their wheels, and sliding around. Their talking points still work with the most delusional among us, but not even their old crazy base is safe territory anymore. The opinion polls that came out after the bill to kill heating assistance last winter, for example, showed a 3-point drop in support for the goplets.

Even the most un-evolved knuckledraggers seem to have accepted that “they” just can’t pump more oil now, or enough more to make a difference. Therefore, rationing makes sense — nobody gets all the gas they want, but everyone gets some and there’s a way to get more if needed (on the exchange). They accept not driving the SUV unless they need the cargo capacity, and that their beloved NASCAR is changing their format to reward the most fuel-efficient vehicles. They’ve even (on the whole) accepted climate change and the need to address it, although many believe that declining fossil fuel usage will do the heavy lifting.

So it’s been a rough couple of years for the Spewers of Spin. The latest attempt to gain a little traction goes, as Shotgun Sam put it yesterday: “We’re interconnected, more than we’ve ever been in history. Push on one thing, and you create a ripple of push one way, and a ripple of pull the other. And this so-called ‘peak oil’ is, if you believe the liberal liars, is a mighty big push. They tell us that oil is the lifeblood of our economy, and we have to do all these Big Brother type things — rationing, h– [I think he barely managed to catch himself before saying heating assistance, which would have turned off his listeners big-time] mortgage relief for people who weren’t responsible enough to live within their means, tax hikes, draconian regulations on our automakers, all that. It’s killing jobs, it’s killing your jobs, and if we’d just let the free market handle things, we’d be fine.”

Predictably, this didn’t exactly resonate with the listeners. You can’t train people over the years to not think very hard about what they’re hearing, then hit them with something that complex. All the callers were nit-picking about whether the free market would have supplied enough gasoline for everyone, or why it was so bad to keep people in their houses, and completely missed the first point about how everything is interconnected.

Sam’s was a classical tactic: start with the truth, say “therefore,” and then tell a pack of lies that have little or nothing to do with the first part of the statement. Yes, this is a highly interconnected world — and yes, dwindling oil supplies gave it one hell of a push. But every time I hear the word “interconnected,” I think back to the good ol’ days of the Y2K wars. Among those who were paying attention, there was a pretty solid rift between “doomers” (Y2K is going to kill us all) and “pollies” (Polyanna, maybe a few disruptions but nothing earth-shattering). It would have been easy — but facile — to put right-wingers on the doomer side and lefties on the polly side. As it turned out, there was some weighting in that direction, but you could find plenty of people representing the entire political spectrum on both sides. I met CPR after I came over to the polly side, and he was a bulldog & a major Bush-league supporter. I participated in the endless flame wars, and watched and listened to arguments on both sides, and finally identified the dividing line:

Y2K doomers considered interconnections to be a weakness.
Y2K pollies considered it to be a strength.

Of course, it turned out the pollies were right — a domino falling was caught and supported by its neighbor, rather than knocking that neighbor into the next domino. But we’re not dealing with a fixable bug in a computer’s date programming, we’re dealing with something much deeper and more far-reaching. Fuel shortages have knocked over a bunch of dominoes. Fortunately, there’s still enough resilience in the system to keep things (mostly) upright — most people really didn’t feel a direct pinch until we had to give up almost a fourth of the fuel we used to consume back in Y2K days.

What’s falling, is falling slowly — small comfort to those who froze to death last winter, or died of less direct causes — but it’s up to all of us to make sure those people didn’t die in vain. Go look up that “Coming Together” article that ran on Time’s website last month — unemployed people went around to check on their neighbors, offering to “share the fire,” or brought chunks of a dismantled house to people who couldn’t get firewood for whatever reason. Some lives were saved, probably thousands more than what the media wrote about. Others pooled their grocery money, sent one or two cars to get groceries for the entire neighborhood, and made sure everyone had food. From what I’ve seen and heard, the bonds forged in winter’s cold furnace aren’t being broken now that spring is here — in what’s left of the 'burbs, they’re starting community gardens.

That’s a huge difference nowadays: people are getting to know their neighbors and make sure they’re OK, then work together for something — anything — instead of whining about someone painting their house the wrong color or having too big an antenna on their rooftop. When energy was so plentiful that anyone could drive their own car, nobody needed anyone else and the far-right was able to exploit our selfish streak to their own ends. But now, people know they have to depend on each other to get by… and selfishness has gone out of style. Way out.

One of the major chains down in Atlanta has started a “neighborhood pickup” program — the neighborhood picks an abandoned house and leaves it intact. People pool their grocery lists, and the store delivers to the pickup house. Then everyone walks in, pays the driver, and collects their food. It’s proving to be wildly popular, and the other chains are trying to get in on the action too. (How many people live within walking distance of a supermarket?) A lot of large developments are encouraging dwellers to park their cars near the road and leave the interior streets to bicycle and foot traffic now. You don’t have to convince the kids that it’s a good idea, and the parents are slowly coming along. One of the stories in that Time article talked about some kids who realized a particular geezer wasn’t chasing them off the sidewalk; they told the parents, who ran over to find the guy fighting for his life with the flu. He lived, and the kids were heroes. Doesn’t mean the geezer is any nicer to them, though. :-)

So in the long run, I still have a lot of hope. That doesn’t mean I don’t expect major trouble ahead, or that I’ll get through it personally, but things will be OK in the future for our descendants. Speaking of which, Daughter Dearest wants to “vacation” with us this summer after school’s out. It’ll be nice to see her here again.

continued…

Another fire

This is pretty much all that’s left of the house just down and across from FAR Manor. It seems the old guy was cooking in the kitchen and something got away from him. His grandson came in and got him out, so nobody was hurt. But the house… well, you can see it. There’s not much left even to clean up.

Daughter Dearest said she heard the car (one of which you can see through the trees) blow up.

I’m not sure where the former residents went. They put up a “caretaker” trailer (going behind the zoning board’s back), but the grandfather is in a wheelchair.

General stuff

I hadn’t been doing a very good job of updating this week. A couple nights I felt like reading instead of getting on the computer.

We’re starting to get the hang of the fireplace insert. It’s still a little smokier than we’d like when opening it up to feed it, but it’s getting better. Mrs. Fetched likes how it projects the heat into the room; the fireplace would get the mantle hot above it. When it’s really going, running the blower can about cook us out of the living room. Of course, we’re in the Dr. Jekyll phase of winter on Planet Georgia right now; it’s barely getting to freezing at night (if that) and the grass is greening up quickly.

The Boy asked to borrow the car the other day to look for a job. We had some serious misgivings, but he did his usual song and dance and Mrs. Fetched told him to be back so she could take the car to the chicken house. Of course, he showed up around 11:30 that night… with Snippet in tow. I gave them the choice of going to bed right away (because I had to get up the next morning) or I’d take her home right then and there. After he stalled as long as he could, he found somewhere else to stay. It’ll be interesting if he even bothers to ask to borrow the car again.

We were supposed to have performance reviews this week, then the boss got sick. They do a yank-and-rank system at work, much like Microsoft, which basically means the employees get the crumbs of the “raise pool” after the management eats its fill, and your raise depends more on the performance of your boss in what they call the “peer review” than your own performance (and since the boss went into those reviews sick, I can guess how that’s going to go). I tacked a sticky note to the corner of my monitor with my motto of the moment: Pretend It Matters.

Amazingly, I'm not feeling all that stressed. Off to write a piece of flash fiction and do some reading. The latest Asimov’s came in the mail yesterday, hooray!

Oops, I almost forgot. While you’re waiting for the next installment of FAR Future, go check out Yooper’s Trails. He’s putting up his own story — a bit darker than mine, but anyone who wants to write should be encouraged, right?

Inserting an Insert, The Grand Finale

The big day arrived at last. We wanted to make it as easy as possible, so we had moved stuff out of the way, including removing the door between the kitchen and living room.

We scooped out the ash as much as possible, and pulled out the grate (which got cleaned off and will be used as a wood rack).


It occurred to me to brush down the sides and top of the fireplace. This yielded a rather large quantity of black soot, more than I’d expected, but I just pulled the cover off the ash hole and swept it all in there. Then I vacuumed in the corners.


At this point, Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest headed off to an extended “check us out” weekend at a nearby college. I stayed on target and tackled the glass doors. It turned out to be held on by two clamps inside the fireplace; loosen two bolts and the whole thing came right out. I sat it outside to scrub the soot off the glass and get it out of the way.

Of course, with the doors out of the way, I was clear to get more soot and ash out of the fireplace. This I did, and followed it up with one more vacuum run to get it all cleaned up.


George’s son Roland showed up first. We chatted, waiting for George… and waiting… and waiting. Finally, Roland figured he was looking for the drill that Roland already had, and took off to look for him. I remembered that I needed hardware, and took the opportunity to scare up some screws. I also measured the door into the living room (29-1/2") and then the insert — and learned that the only way we’d get through was to tilt it on its back and bring it in sideways. Sometimes, delays are a good thing.

Roland showed up with his dad in tow, and the festoovities began. They tipped the insert up onto the dolly, while I scared up a piece of plywood so we wouldn’t have to carry it up the steps. I had to grab from the top and pull, while they pushed from the bottom, but it came in fairly easily.

We had laid down blankets and throw rugs in the living room to make sure the floor would be OK. It rolled right into place.

George and Roland managed to pick the insert up without damaging themselves and pushed it into place. George wasn’t sure there would be enough front-to-back clearance to get the insert all the way in, and was telling me about some workarounds they could do if necessary. But they ended up having to pull it back out a little bit — there was plenty of clearance.

With the insert in position, they attached the trim panel and centered it up. We tossed a couple pieces of paper and a small cardboard box in side and Roland lit it. The smoke went straight up the chimney, just like it was supposed to. George was concerned that some of the smoke might make its way to the front and seep out through the mortar joints in the brick, but that wasn’t a problem.

And that concludes the latest improvement at FAR Manor, minus any little details that might come up. George suggested that if we get smoke out the mortar joints, there’s some stuff at Home Despot to seal that up. It’s a fairly nice day right now, so I’ll light it up this evening and try it out.

FAR Future, Episode 21: Awakening

The drought here may be over — we’ve had above-normal rainfall for a month now. It’s not wiping out our deficit very fast, but maybe we’ll do OK anyway. I have this and another post lined up, so I hope the episode deficit is getting addressed too.

As I type this intro, I see a little moth at the window, the first of the year.

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Saturday, March 23, 2013
Awakening

It’s finally spring. The earth awakens from its restless winter slumber.

Mrs. Fetched’s mom and I have a few zillion tomato plants in starter trays, not to mention the peppers. The perennial herbs wintered over just fine, minus some deer attacks (flavored meat if we catch ’em at it), and we’ve got the annuals started. She’s happier than I’ve seen her in a while — she was asked to conduct some basic gardening seminars for the people in big subdivisions who are starting the community gardens last month, and they were all well-attended. As Mrs. Fetched said, “her idea of a ‘small garden’ is 5 acres,” and they’re scaling up from there. Her kind of gardening — including a couple passes with a tractor and plow, just to get the sod dug up. There’s some concern about pesticides and all, but the extension office says that most of the people who abandoned their houses had quit intensive lawn maintenance before giving up altogether. The bad stuff has had plenty of time to break down.

Not all the “planting” is crops, though. Time capsules are a fad at schools again, another “planting” activity this spring. They’re including photos and student-written essays about various aspects of life, along with the usual newspaper clippings and tokens. They use a small candle, lit just before sealing it, to get rid of most of the oxygen inside the capsule before burying it. It would be interesting to be around when they open the capsules in 100 years — will “they” have figured out how to deal with energy shortages by then? Or will there even be anyone to dig them up? I remember being a kid, and hearing about the moon bases (and Mars, etc.) and flying cars we’d have by now. Of course, the closest anyone came to dreaming up home computers or the Internet was this idea that you would get a tailored newspaper delivered via fax every morning. I remember incredulously asking my dad, “You didn’t have TV when you were a kid?” With my kids, it was “You didn’t have computers?” My grandkids, if I have any, probably won’t have cars and might not have computers — but they may have stuff we haven’t even thought of now.

Now that winter is giving way, they’re finding people who didn’t make it through the winter and were never checked on. In some cities, the cops started patrolling with dogs and marking the houses like they did in Miami after Kim a couple years back (or New Orleans after Katrina). Some of the larger metro departments had burglars sitting in jail, and brought them along to pick locks in exchange for a reduced sentence. One of the network news shows interviewed one of the latter (face blocked); he said, “There’s not much worth stealing anymore anyway — why not help? The smell is pretty bad sometimes, but they give me a mask and the cops don’t make me go inside anyway. I just get the doors open for ’em.”

Even in the salad days, though, people died. They died of diseases, starvation, cold, heat, accident, combat, and old age. There aren’t any new ways of dying, but more people are dying of the same stuff than before. Except for disease and old age, though, it was “them” who were dying, not “us.” People who didn’t have the basics weren’t “our” people, so it was easy to ignore what has always gone on. Now we’re “them,” or “they” are us… maybe both, and it’s not just nature that’s awakening.

I’ve got more to write about this, but there’s stuff to do.

continued…

Clocks Cleaned While You Wait

Of the places we lived when I was a kid, I guess I’d have to say the house on Sherman Street was my favorite. The back yard bordered on woods, woods that had dirt bike trails that would take us as far as a tank of gas or nerve would let us go… with maybe a couple hundred yards of scooting down public roads on an off-road vehicle. There was the crawl space under the stairs that we used for indoor camping. But most of all, the neighborhood had plenty of kids our age to hang out with. We’d have occasional snowball fights in winter (if the snow wasn’t too icy or slushy), bicycle races and water wars in summer, and hide & seek on weekend nights.

For whatever reason, I got to thinking about this water war story, and thought it might be amusing enough to share with everyone. In the early 1970s, there were no Super Soakers — a typical squirt gun had a range suitable for hand-to-hand combat, not much more. For longer range, we had grenades (water balloons) and fixed artillery (a water hose).

There were unwritten but strict rules that we observed during water wars:

1) All combat took place either in the street, or in front/back yards of combatants.

2) Adults and girls were non-combatants (the girls would have been welcome to join us had they been interested — we were 13 or 14, and they would have been in bikinis, 'nuff said). Anyone else was fair game, declared or not.

3) Cars were non-combatants, unless they belonged to an older sibling. People on bicycles were fair game — part of the fun was to run the gauntlet, after all.

There was a kid named David directly across the street from us who wasn’t really old enough to join the water fights, but he usually wanted to participate so Rule #2 applied to him. His problem was, he would want to join in, then want to quit as soon as water got anywhere near him. None of us really had a problem with him being on our “side” — we’d take him on as an extra because we knew he’d quit before he got to be a pain.

We had enough water hose to squirt most of the way across the street, so our house was pretty much the designated house for running the gauntlet on a bicycle. We’d run the gauntlet if we didn’t feel like running around with water balloons (or if everyone had run out), and that’s what we were doing this particular afternoon. David was riding around with us, fully understanding what we were doing but thinking he was somehow privileged. My brother (not Solar, the other one) was manning the hose, and I was standing next to him, having just taken a break from running the gauntlet, when David came out on his bike.

“I’m not playing now!” he yelled.

“You know the rules,” one of us yelled back. “If you’re in the war zone, we can get you.”

“No you can’t!” he yelled defiantly, and proceeded into the crossfire. Phil lobbed a water balloon and missed — but my brother’s hosing was accurate enough, and David ran inside crying to mommy. A minute later, Mrs. Smith came marching down her yard and across the street. Phil was not the brightest bulb on the string, and I could see he had a mind to introduce her to a water balloon, but he wasn’t that dumb (his brother Paul, now… fortunately, he wasn’t there).

Even though my brother was holding the water hose, Mrs. Smith chose to start screaming at me — probably because I wasn’t as openly defiant of authority as some others on the block and wouldn’t stand up for myself so much (I’ve improved in that regard, but not enough). “He knew he was going through the war zone,” my brother and some of the other guys explained. I just stood there.

“IF YOU DO THAT AGAIN, I’M GONNA CLEAN YOUR CLOCK!” she screamed, and walked away. I had a really hard time suppressing a smirk at that… and after that, whenever there were two or more of us together and she was anywhere in sight, one of us would say, “Clean your clock, Mrs. Smith” in a snarky undertone. Both we and Mrs. Smith banned David from further participation in water wars (or snowball fights) — one thing we could all agree on — but we included him in other things, sometimes to his (and our) detriment.

A year or two after that, they moved away, and Carrie the Barbarian moved in. But that’s another story.

Weekend Cinema

Short, free, and you don’t even have to leave the seat you’re in now! (Wow… has it really been November since I posted one of these?)

I’ve mentioned Stranger Things before — it’s a video podcast that (in their own words) “depicts a world of ordinary people stumbling into the secret lives of the paranormal, the metaphysical, the unnatural, and the strange.” Imagine a 21^st-century version of The Twilight Zone, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s about.

The episode I’m highlighting here, One of Those Faces, would be up for an Academy Award for Best Short if there were any justice in the world. Good story, fantastic ending. A little less than 16 minutes means you can take it in at some odd moment. Check out the other episodes; they’re all good but the first two have rather dark endings.

I’m not sure what facilities they have for dialup — perhaps a DVD will be coming soon?

How cool!

I’ve always wanted to do something like this.

“The most splendidly pointless space experiment of all time” — and they expect it to survive the trip down!

FAR Future, Episode 20: Spreading the Wealth

Stay warm, everyone. Spring’s comin’. In FAR Future, it’s about here.

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Friday, March 8, 2013
Spreading the Wealth

This has been all over the local media. A gang of suburban “mainstream” (i.e. WASP) teenagers have been stealing all sorts of stuff that’s easy to fence these days — bikes, motorcycles, solar panels, siphoning gasoline, etc. — and either selling them to pay their parents’ utility bills, or giving them to neighbors who need some help. The parents had no idea what was happening. “We thought we’d been put on an assistance program, and to be honest, we didn’t want to ask questions in case it was a mistake,” said one weepy mom.

Opinion is running every which way. The media always uses the phrase “suburban teenagers,” which brings to mind your wholesome, blond-haired, blue-eyed A student looking forward to starting a “good” college and then a professional career. “Robin Hoods” is another phrase being beaten into the ground. It sort of fits; they were going into the hotsy-totsy developments, the country clubs and so forth. Through the winter, they posed as the gutter cleaning or landscaping services; some of them wore makeup to darken their skin (since Hispanic folks do most of the work) so nobody paid much attention to them. They took ladders, went up and actually did the work, then scarfed stuff and tossed it in the panel truck they were using. They didn’t rob each house they went to, either — which was smart, they had a little more leeway before they inevitably got caught.

They spread the proceeds around pretty thoroughly; like I said, they paid utility bills, gave solar panels to people who needed them, and not just to friends and neighbors. The Atlanta civil rights groups are defending them, saying they only did what should have been done in the first place (“made sure that people could keep their houses warm and the lights on”). Their victims, obviously, disagree. Seeing that the patron class were the primary victims, Shotgun Sam and the others are trying to push the idea that they were a gang of rogue teenagers who were in it for their own enrichment. Things got a little interesting when one caller objected: “It turns out they helped my Aunt May with her utility bills. They were about to cut off her gas, and those Robin Hood kids went in and took care of the bill for her. She’d’a froze to death without them doin’ something for her.”

“Well, she obviously has family — you, for example. Why didn’t you help her?”

“I didn’t know how bad off she was; I’m in Columbus and she didn’t say nothin’ to us.”

“So that means it’s OK for someone to give her stolen property?”

“Them people that they took the stuff from ain’t hurtin’ for nothin’. Why ain’t they helpin’ out? They can afford to.”

Sam stuttered for a moment. “Well… they didn’t have a chance, they got robbed before they could do anything. You ever think of that?”

“Bleep. They ain’t gonna take their solar panels off their roof and give ’em to Aunt May. They’d’ve bought some for her, if they were gonna.”

Sam cut him off and went to a commercial break — a long one — then came back whining about the Wal-Marts that got closed. A few more people wanted to put in their two cents about the theft ring, but Sam insisted that they were on a new topic. When you’re losing the argument, change the subject. Another Wal-Mart closing is a topic that’s usually sure to get his listeners upset the way he wants them upset.

One of the TV stations pixellated one of the “Robin Hoods” and distorted her voice (I’m pretty sure it was a “she”) to get an interview. She said she’d do it again because it was the only way they could keep the lights on — for themselves and their neighbors. They know they’re in a big ol’ pile of trouble, but (she said) they did what they had to. They talked about quitting when the noose started to tighten, but then they saw that news piece about the people up north who died in the Arctic storm and decided they had to keep going to save lives. Some of the civil rights lawyers are offering pro bono defense, and one DA recused himself (it turns out the kids helped out one of his own relatives), so they might get a light sentence if they can find anyone who wants to be cast as the “Sheriff of Nottingham” and actually prosecute them.

What the country club set doesn’t seem to realize is that it’s their time to step up. If things get a lot worse than they are already, those guys will fall faster and land harder to get to the same level as everyone else — they need to start making friends before that happens.

continued…

What part of…

“Come home alone by 7” did The Boy not understand? I’m guessing two parts, “by 7” and “alone.”

As I mentioned Wednesday night, The Boy found some slick stuff on the way home. We were expecting him to call and tell us, “I’m in a ditch,” but instead it was “I fishtailed, so I went back to DJ’s” (a friend in town). Mrs. Fetched wasn’t thrilled, but she also didn’t follow through on her threat to come get the car either. I guess she realized I couldn’t drive two vehicles home.

I had already set myself up to work at home yesterday, since I needed to take some photos for work, so I didn’t get out. School was out, but Daughter Dearest is pretty quiet anyway and I was too busy working to notice how quiet… too quiet… it was. In fact, I didn’t close up the work laptop until around 9pm. (Working at home has its drawbacks, sometimes.)

So I brought the laptop out into the living room to enjoy the fire, and thought maybe I’d get to bed around 10:30 and get a decent amount of sleep for a change. It Was Not To Be: about 11:30, we saw and heard The Boy roll in. But he didn’t come inside right away. “Why isn’t he in?” Mrs. Fetched asked… which is Wifese for “go see what he’s doing.” I put on my robe and fuzzy feet, figuring I could warm my legs up on her legs when I got back in bed. :-P But when I saw The Boy smoking a cig with J and (aw geeeeez) Snippet, I slammed the door and went back in.

After telling Mrs. Fetched what had happened, I didn’t get a chance to put my cold legs on her warm ones: she got up and locked the door. Naturally, I’d forgotten to turn off my smellphone, so he shortly called it. Then popped the lock on the door, somehow. (I’ve written about security at FAR Manor before.)

The mood wasn’t much better the next morning when Mrs. Fetched went upstairs to find The Boy and Snippet crashed out on his bed. Clothed, fortunately — J was also in the room, but still. They know where the guest bedroom is (downstairs), and that’s where Snippet should have been. She’s blonde, but not that blonde. However, she brought a bad cold — or maybe the flu — with her, so Mrs. Fetched was inclined to let her stay here. (Her mom is living in a camper right now.) But The Boy has lost his driving privileges, for at least as long as Mrs. Fetched finds it convenient.

Snow Day

You know you’re in the South when the forecast includes an inch of snow and it’s the Top Story in the media.

I grabbed a treadmill in the workout room at the office late in the afternoon; I came back to people lined up along the windows. They had roped off half the parking lot along the side of the building today, so I figured they were doing something interesting with a crane. Seeing nothing like that, I said, “what’s going on?”

“Snow!” one of the gawkers said. Yup. Flake-here-flake-there, but it was snow. The morning forecast said “little or no accumulation,” so I really wasn’t paying much attention. I lived in Michigan the first 22 years of my life, so light flurries were nothing to marvel at.

About 5 o’clock, The Boy called. “It’s snowing pretty heavy out there now. It’s starting to stick to the ground, and it’s blowing around on the roads, too.” I looked out the window again: still light flurries, more than before but nothing to worry about. “OK,” I told him. “Nothing like that here though.”

Not ten seconds after he hung up, Daughter Dearest called. “It’s snowing a lot out here. I’m coming home from [her job]. You need to start coming home.”

“OK, nothing like that here, but I’ll be leaving in ten minutes or so. Just be careful going downhill and over the bridges.”

Five minutes later, Mrs. Fetched: “It’s snowing heavily here. They’re saying we could get six inches. When are you leaving?”

“In a few minutes. I have to do a photo shoot, so I’ll work at home tomorrow anyway.”

So much for “little or no accumulation” — by the time I got to town, snow was sticking to the ground and covered the used car lot. About five miles from home, it started sticking to the road too. A traction check told me there was nothing to worry about… except for the guy in the pickup truck in front of me who slowed to 25 whenever he saw a patch of snow. Sheesh.

So I got home. The Boy had left class a bit later than he should have, so he called about an hour later and said he’d fishtailed outside of town and went back to spend the night with a friend. Mrs. Fetched was, shall we say, less than thrilled.

We didn’t get six inches of snow, but we got an inch & a half. The crazy rhododendron bush has already had a bloom cycle interrupted by a hard freeze; I suppose we’ll be snapping these buds off too. It doesn’t care.

Farf the Guest-Blogger

I’ll be guest-blogging tomorrow at Eat4Today — Katiebird is under the weather and asked me to post the regular “Just 4 Today” feature and whatever else comes to mind tomorrow.

If you haven’t been to Eat4Today, and are interested in weight control and personal health, it’s well worth making the daily stop. Katiebird’s philosophy is that weight control is more of a daily commitment than a matter of “just” diet and exercise. As she puts it: “Before, I was looking for a program that I could follow for the rest of my life, now I’ve got a program that only has to work for today. Just today.” That also means if you blow it, you’ve only blown it for today. You can make a fresh, stress-free start tomorrow.

So drop by tomorrow and say hello. If you like what you see, leave a comment — better yet, bookmark it and keep coming back!

Inserting an Insert, Part 2

When the weekend comes, use Rust-Oleum
— Ad jingle from the '60s

The sun was shining, a beautiful beginning to the weekend. After a slow morning, taking our time dragging around, I grabbed the spray can and a roll of masking tape, and got to work.

Being in a hurry to get started, I elected to start painting on the side(s) that didn’t have any labelling to worry about. That took all of five or ten minutes, then I had to put down the spray can (my fingertip was already black) and pick up the masking tape.


After masking off the labels here and there, I got at it. After painstakingly attempting to fold a round piece of paper to mask the decorative ceramic thing on the door, I realized that two bendable tabs held it on. [DUHHH ← me.] I painted the door and finished the insert… by this time, the paint can was getting pretty light but no problems.

With the insert painted, I went back to the drill and attacked the trim panel. This turned out to be slightly more difficult than I’d anticipated: I had to lift the edges up off the driveway to get to them. But perseverance paid off in the end, and I hung it up and hit it with the spray can. The spray began to stutter about 3/4 of the way through, but I (barely) managed to get it done before all I got was a hissss.

The instructions on the can say to wait “less than one hour, or more than 48 hours between coats.” I got the new can today, but I’ll wait until tomorrow to finish it up. I think there's a couple of places that need to be smoothed off first anyway.

A House Full of People Begins to Awaken…

It’s safe to say I was the first person up this morning. I slept until 8:30, which wasn’t bad because I’d gotten to bed before midnight. My back decided I’d laid on it long enough and drove me into motion.

The Boy’s birthday is tomorrow, and he has a pack of his closest friends and FOFs over to celebrate. We’ve been watching carefully to make sure nobody was smuggling in beer; EJ (the only friend of his we trust now) was reassuring in that respect. They spent mucho time out in the detached garage, playing Final Fantasy 3 on an old Super Nintendo someone brought over. I can keep an eye on things under the pretense of working on the insert (painting starts today, pictures tomorrow). Things were pretty quiet, overall.

One of Snippets friends, whom they call “BB” for no known reason, is one of the guests. She wears these plastic-frame glasses that give her a nerdy look I find strangely charming — but she smokes, and that kills all the charm. Just as well, I guess.

So I dragged myself out of bed, threw on my robe, grabbed my laptop and started a pot of coffee. BB was huddled under a quilt on the couch; The Boy’s tall (as in 7 feet+) friend in a recliner, and other guy wadded up on the love seat. That left one recliner for me. After the phone rang, with one of these pseudo-charities (do-not-call list notwithstanding) losing me to a bad connection, Mrs. Fetched dragged through and grabbed a bowl of cereal. I’d threatened to make cinnamon rolls last night, but it was already 11:30 and I figured these kids would inhale them. Oh well. I got up and got my own cereal, and fed the cats.

As I was finishing the cereal, Daughter Dearest rolled in. After a kitty-cuddle, she took it on herself to come in and start making enough noise to wake the dead The Boy’s guests. So BB sat up all at once — reminding me of how The Boy used to wake up when he was little — found her glasses, and tried to smooth out her hair. “I won’t lie,” DD told BB. “You’ve got bad hair.” Everyone, including BB, laughed.

Then BB stood up, and the “fun” began. After a stunned moment, I said, “Um… you might want to pull up your pants. You’ve got the plumber thing going.” She went whoops and yanked them up, thankfully. It didn’t seem to embarrass her too much otherwise, though. Low-rider jeans are dangerous that way.

In the time it’s taken to write this, the kids have arisen and cleared out. One has a job (and The Boy had to find his keys for him, which fortunately he did). Others have other places to go. The only noise is coming from the kitchen, where Mrs. Fetched is making stuff and straightening up. I suppose I should go see if she needs help. Or I could go paint the insert.

FAR Future, Episode 19: Up Against the Wal

I’ve been doing a fair amount of writing, and some of it on future episodes. I hope to (eventually) return to a twice-weekly schedule, but for now I’ll try to do at least one a week.

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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Up Against the Wal

From the “right thing for the wrong reasons” category: WalMart closed a couple of stores last week. “Low performers” is a phrase we’ll probably hearing a lot more out of Bentonville. Looking at a map, I’m guessing that those stores were using more fuel than the beanie counters want — they’re likely at the end of the supply line. That “warehouse on wheels” became a warehouse on rails pretty fast, but they still have to truck the stuff from the depot.

Speaking of WalMart, that article about Chinese factories knocking down outside walls so they can work by daylight was interesting. Even more so are the Chinese freighters being rigged with sails — people used to move a lot of freight that way, but how quick they can train a new generation of sailors is beyond me. There’s no telling how long it will be before they can start shipping a significant about of stuff that way, but I’m guessing it’s a bluff to keep people from reshoring (love that new buzzword, it rhymes with “restoring”). Just think: in a couple of generations, “Chinese junk” went from a name for a kind of boat, to the stuff they put in the boat to ship here, and now it’ll become a boat again. Long supply lines — or rather, the fuel costs associated with them — have to be eating up any advantages in labor costs… especially since the workers have woken up and started demanding a bigger share of the pie.

I haven’t seen anything on the US news sites, but there was a brief mention on the BBC site about container-loads of stowaways taking the slow boat from China to wherever. The only places where I’ve seen details are the nationalist (i.e. racist) sites — not even Shotgun Sam has brought it up yet — and I tend to discount most of that drivel. But either they’re sourcing the same lies, or they’re sourcing the same facts. Anyway, as the story goes: the Chinese government is outfitting shipping containers with food, water, toilets, and hammocks, loading about 10 or 20 people in each one, and putting several containers on each ship leaving the country. They ship to warehouses controlled by some front group, get the stowaways fake papers, and turn ’em loose. The only primary differences I’ve seen in the stories is who’s behind it: either the government (letting volunteers ride for free to get them out of the country) or a tong/mafia group (high payments, indentured servitude on this end of the ride). The US government is (supposedly) looking the other way in return for the Chinese government not calling their notes all at once. The Chinese have been collecting on our debts, but slowly, probably to keep from crashing our economy (or inviting a default), and probably to subsidize worker pay hikes.

Meanwhile, back here at home, Wally don’t wanna play with the locals, but I suspect it’s inevitable — if they want a store fill of crap, they need to fill it up somehow. But the domestic companies aren’t giving WalMart much of a discount these days, especially the ones who have reshored their operations. Wal-Mart naturally wants cost-reduced versions of stuff like microwaves and furniture, but I’m sure they’ve seen the surveys too. People buying appliances don’t want throwaway crap anymore, and they’ll pay for stuff that’s going to last a while. The “Site-to-Store” feature they’ve had for years accounts for a huge percentage of their sales now — I think anyone who has wasted gas going to Wally-World for something that was out of stock has become an instant convert.

Ironically, Wal-Mart’s cutthroat pricing policies are exactly what has come back to bite them. Higher-end retailers have barely seen any price moves; there are plenty of margins to cut into and a lot more goodwill with their suppliers. Not so with the razor-thin margins “enjoyed” by Wally’s suppliers: if labor costs go up, if shipping costs go up, if materials costs go up (and all of them have lately), Wally either has to absorb the increases themselves (and pass it on to their customers) or lose another supplier. So the prices are going up at the low end a lot more than the mid-range or high-end, at least so far. That’s one jaw of the pliers: the other is that much of Wally’s price-conscious customer base is spending all their dough just to keep the heat on. You would think that would be offset by formerly higher-end shoppers looking to stay on a budget, but the ones who have spoken out about it said the price breaks aren’t worth the hit to quality.

At work, we didn’t so much reshore as reshuffle. Our manufacturer in China is still making stuff for the Asia-Pacific market. A company we bought a while back has a factory in Mexico, so that’s where we moved Western Hemisphere production. Finally, we contracted with a factory in Italy to handle Europe/Middle East/Africa products. One of the manufacturing guys I talk to about one of our products says that’s becoming a trend: build the stuff close to where it’s being sold; sending information is still dirt-cheap and you can save big on shipping costs. Translating documentation is another inflation-resistant service — it’s all handled electronically and the people doing the actual translations often have wind or solar power (like me) to avoid blackout issues.

Things got a little shaky at work late last summer; the blackouts made it pretty difficult for our customers to deliver the goods to their customers, and we had an alarming dip in orders. Fortunately, things improved with cooler weather, and they’re pledging to not get caught out like that again, so maybe I’ll stay employed for another year. Our new product, an EMTA that can go 2 days on battery power, with data and two phone lines in constant use, made us one of the few growth companies last year… which is why I was able to afford my own backup power; our stock zoomed up and I cashed in some options. Go us. :-)

It’s already starting to warm up; the in-laws have started trays of tomato plants. We’ll be starting our gardens before you know it. This year, we probably won’t be going to Wal-Mart for much of anything, though.

continued…

The Boy Matriculates

I was trying to be positive, but I couldn’t actually bring myself to believe it was going to happen until it did. The Boy started at Lanier Tech this week.

He’s enjoying the classes, although none of us are enjoying the prices on textbooks. At least the Hope Grant he got knocked off a lot of that as well as his tuition. He finally got the battery in my car, with the incentive of being able to drive it to school (hey, it wasn’t my idea, I didn’t know about it until I came home to no car in the garage). With the front tires as worn as they are, driving it anywhere farther than the nearest tire store is a rather risky proposition at the moment.

But I digress. I think with his artistic bent, The Boy could find custom paint & body work a rather lucrative field if the economy picks up again.

Inserting an Insert, Part 1.1

After an evening using the big drill with a 3" wire wheel, I figured there had to be something bigger that would let me get the job done faster. After some evening errands Sunday night, I swung by Home Despot. Although it was 7:53, the girl at the door told me they were closed (they nominally close at 8) and wouldn’t let me in. Fine: if Home Despot doesn’t want my business, there’s a Lowe’s near my office.

So on the way home from work, I picked up a 6" wire wheel and a 3" cone wheel for the odd corners, strapped them to the back of the bike, and headed home. The 6-incher made a huge difference; I got the top, back, and right side done in the same amount of time it took to do the left side with the old 3" wheel. That left the hardest part, the front — that iron filigree work was a bear to work around and through.

Somewhere along the line, I plugged in the blower and hit the switch. It came on, with a bit of a groan but got going after it remembered what to do. I still have to de-rust the trim panel and, but it’s flat so I don’t expect much problem there.

Tomorrow is probably going to be a down-day, with choir practice eating up the evening, but I’m still holding out the possibility that we’ll install it this weekend.

Inserting an Insert, Part 1 [UPDATED]

Some friends of ours decommissioned an Earth Stove fireplace insert some time back, and had it sitting under their porch ever since. When they learned we were talking about getting one, they were only to glad to give us that one. Of course, there were the minor details about getting it delivered (as it’s several hundred pounds of steel and firebrick) to the manor, and what kind of shape it was in. The Boy has been disappearing all weekend for most weekends, and then I managed to hose my knee. But then their sons showed up: J and his older brother, a skinny Marine home on leave; they devised a roller system with some PVC pipe (which you can see under the insert) and rolled it on his truck and then off into our detached garage.

I had a little time yesterday, and the anti-inflammatories have done a pretty good job (my knee still aches but it’s only annoying), so I spent half an hour getting stuff together. Wire brush, dust mask (plenty of those around, thanks to the chicken houses), jacket, gloves… and the camera, of course.

I opened it up to find several inches of ash still inside the thing. I guess I can’t complain about a freebie though; but I could (and did) scoop it out and toss it in The Boy’s firepit.

With the initial preparations out of the way, I took wire brush in hand and got to work. The rust on the box is actually pretty light, except toward the bottom — I think a lot of what came off was dirt. I’ll probably go over it with some medium sandpaper, just to make sure, but I’m already half-done with the initial phase of the project (Phase 2 = painting, Phase 3 = installation).

There are two possible wrinkles that I need to be aware of. First is the blower; they told me it worked when they plugged it in a year ago, but it’s been sitting in a non-climate controlled area since then. So I’m going to pull that unit out and have a look at it before plugging it in. Second is Mrs. Fetched… she’s not sure she wants black. Rust-Oleum has several colors of high-heat paint; I have some black paint (put to good use painting an old grill & a motorcycle tank), but she’s not sure she wants black. She certainly doesn’t want green, though. There’s a “copper” color, which might be interesting… I might use it on the trim panel and maybe the door & hood if nothing else. But I have a little time to make those decisions.

UPDATE: I has a drill. They use large DeWalt drills in the chicken house as winch motors; like anything in the chicken house, they develop problems. The thing I like about them is that they are built to be repairable, and Mrs. Fetched brings them to me to repair. I happened to have a couple drills in the queue; I tried one and it shot fire out the back. I snagged the brushes out of a “parts” drill, added some gear oil to the gearbox to quiet down the shrieking, and it run fine. I put the wire brush on it and got to work. The drill is heavy as all get-out, but never even got warm and it took nearly all the rust off that the hand brush missed. The insert is much more black than rust color now, at least on the side I did.

FAR Future, Episode 18: Political Theater

The in-laws have a superstition that whatever you do on New Year’s Day establishes a pattern for the year ahead — thus, it’s a good day for doing things you want to do all year and avoid things you don’t want (like work). I’m not sure if it’s a southern belief, or specific to the in-laws — but I figured holding back on this FAR Future post for one day might be just the thing I need to establish a pattern I want in the year ahead. By this time next year, I hope to be posting Episode 60 or thereabouts.

Happy New Year, everyone, and don’t forget to go easy on the fossil fuels!

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Friday, February 8, 2013
Political Theater

The whole secession thing died back for a while — it turned out a lot of the people who were willing to pander to the lowest common denominator weren’t quite willing to cut the cords. Planet Georgia, as I said back in December, huffed and puffed about “respecting our values and concerns” after the people turned out to be seriously conflicted about the whole matter. Other states mostly followed suit, although Wyoming and Utah look a little shaky these days. After this week, though, it might start making more noise again. Or not.

The new Congressional leadership agreed to “hear and seriously consider the proposals of the minority,” which is even smaller than before. I don’t know how they managed to say “seriously” with a straight face; the goplets, which great enthusiasm, took the opportunity to really show their butts to the entire nation. They crafted a big ol’ grab-bag of their pet legislation: drill ANWR (nobody believes it will make a difference anymore, but that didn’t stop them), abolish the NFRB (rationing), eliminate heating fuel subsidies for low-income families, big tax cuts for their patrons, eliminate pollution controls (in the name of “energy efficiency” of course)… basically, attempting to re-do all the damage that Bush-league did and we’ve all worked so hard to undo.

I think at the highest levels, their plan was to introduce the legislation, let it die in committee or via filibuster, and tell the base that the government wasn’t interested in their wants. Instead, the committees let each bill go through, with no amendments and no serious opposition — the last few rational goplets started trying to kill the bills themselves when they saw what was happening, but to no avail. C-SPAN then got to show the supporters doing some incredible verbal contortions. Naturally, when it came time for a vote, each bill went down in flames. “Hear and seriously consider” has nothing to do with “support,” thankfully.

Boy, did Shotgun Sam get an earful though! A bunch of callers were complaining “what were our guys thinking, wanting to kill heating assistance, me and my family would be freezing to death without it!” and “whose brilliant idea was it to try repealing rationing, it’s the only way I can get enough gas to get to work.” Once again, he was having a hard time steering the mood of the listeners. Indeed, repealing heating assistance went down 427-6 or something like that — the only goplets with the stomach to deal with their voters on that one were in Florida or some of the high-income districts. Or both. I guess it goes to show that not even the most rabid right-wing voter has more sense than their candidates, who seem willing to hurt himself for “the cause” — in the end, the goplets ensured that a few more of their own voters will sit the next election out, and maybe lose a couple more seats.

Well… we’ve gotten past the worst of the winter, unless we get a late freeze. In a few months, we’ll be wishing it was cold again. We’ll be “looking forward” to blackouts all summer long, I’m sure. I’ve got as much wind & solar generation at FAR Manor as I could afford, and it should be enough to run my computers for work and keep a fridge or two (mostly) going. I’m actually looking forward to some warmer weather; going to the creek to cool off is tons easier than chopping food & feeding a stove.

continued…