John's Blog

It's organic, man!

2011-03-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to hate the word 'organic', which is a shame because it's a lovely word. Organic comes to us from Greek via Latin and Middle English, and means 'of, pertaining to, or derived from living things'. I first became aware of 'organic' in the chemical sense: organic chemistry versus inorganic chemistry, where organic chem covers carbon based compounds and inorganic chem covers everything else.

Now-a-days though, organic is being used where it has no purpose and doesn't really belong, all so the person throwing it out can sound more clever and/or hip. For instance, I recently endured an episode of a home redecorating show where one of the hosts used the word 'organic' as an adjective...about a dozen times in three minutes.

Likewise a small pamphlet that was handed out at work a few days ago. It contains gems like "organic growth based on innovation" and "our ability to convert organic and aquired(sic) growth to value". 'Organic' is superfluous in the first statement. In the second statement 'organic growth' is being used for' the growth that happens when a company takes market share away from its competitors' (what I would call natural growth) as opposed to the 'growth' that occurs when a company acquires its competitors.

That's all for now, but I think I'll tell you more about this pamphlet (or spread card, as they call it, which we are encouraged to carry with us at all times!) tomorrow.

2011-03-28T18:12:00.001-07:00

So President Obama justifies his Libya intervention on humanitarian grounds, to "prevent a slaughter of civilians that would have stained the world's conscience and been a betrayal of who we are". At the same time he declined to target Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, saying such a move would be a "costly mistake".

That makes me wonder. Since the Libyan rebels now appear to have regained the initiative in what could be called the Libyan Civil War, is Obama going to allow them to make the "costly mistake" of targeting Moammar? and if so, why?

If it isn't a mistake for the rebels to go after Mo, why would it be so for us? Killing Mo early on in this war might have ended it quickly, with fewer lives lost. Even killing him now might bring a quicker end to the fighting. (It also might not, but since you never know for sure what results your actions will bring, that's no reason not to try it.)

My thought is, Obama isn't targeting Mo because he (Obama) only and solely because he doesn't want to open himself to accusations of being a regime changer ala the man Obama and his fellow Democrats spent so much time demonizing, George W. Bush. But I'll bet that if the rebels win, and Moammar goes, Obama will claim credit for it, and count it a foreign policy 'win'.

Now, I support the Libya intervention, just like I've supported every U.S. military intervention since I was old enough to understand what was going on. Not all of them have succeeded, invariably because of bungling and/or lack of resolve on the part of politicians, but I supported all of them. Libya could be and have been handled better, and if Obama really wanted to avoid getting involved he could have told the damn Frogs to step up and act like the Great Power they like to pretend they still are, but so far all seems to be going well. I hope we stay the course, and that the rebels win (even if Obama takes credit for it).

Satellites

2010-06-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

I took Max for a walk tonight, a little after 11 p.m. While we were making our way around the block I spotted two satellites whizzing through the sky. The first one I saw was moving almost straight west to east, and well to the north of me, considering how low in the sky it appeared to be. A few minutes later I spotted another satellite. It seemed to be much higher up, because it wasn't nearly as bright as the first one. It was on a more north to south path as well. I have no idea what sort of satellites they were. All I can say with confidence is that they weren't communications satellites. Still, it's always neat to see something like that.

What's the point..?

2010-06-17T10:08:00.001-07:00

What is the point of having a drive-up window if you don't want people to use it?

I got up early (9 a.m.) because I had a 10 a.m. doctors appointment. On getting myself to said appointment, I was told the appointment wasn't until 11 a.m. Oops. To pass the time, and perk myself up, I decided to get a mocha at a nearby coffee house. Well, it turned out said coffee house had relocated since the last time I patronised it, moving to a location clear on the other end of town. Since I had plenty of time, I made the trip. As I was pulling into the drive-up lane I saw a sign. The sign said, "Coffee is ready quicker if ordered inside."

Color me confused, but isn't the whole point of a drive-up window to get business without bringing patrons inside, where you have to clean up after them? Not to mention provide various facilities for them? And if you don't want people to use the drive through, why spend the money to install one in the first place?

Where there's smoke, there's the fire department

2010-05-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night, I smelled smoke. It didn't smell like leaves, or wood. Rather, it smelled like paper was burning. Naturally concerned, I checked around the house, but didn't find anything smoldering. I had some windows open, so I checked to see if the smell was coming from outside. It didn't seem to be. Deciding the whole thing was no big deal I turned in. I hadn't been in bed a few minutes when I heard sirens. They grew louder, until it was clear they were coming into my neighborhood. Looking out my bedroom window, I could see blue and red flashing lights illuminating the backs of the houses behind mine. Dressing quickly, I headed for the front door. Outside, at least two fire engines and two ambulances were slowly making their way down my street, sirens now off, lights still going. They never stopped, just rolled slowly along until they came to the next intersection. One turned south, one turned north, and two kept going straight. Then, apparently, they went back to the fire station. I don't know if there was any connection between their arrival and the smoke I smelled, but it was an odd coincidence.

Buy one, get four free

2010-05-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Some months ago (last December, really) I bough six boxes of cheap Hy-Vee macaroni and cheese. A couple of weeks ago, after much dawdling, I finally got around to cooking up the last two boxes. I always make two boxes at the same time, because I love my macaroni and cheese. Anyway, having decided to make the stuff, I set water on to boil, melted the correct amount of butter, and poured half a cup of milk. So far, so good.

With the water starting to boil, I opened my boxes of mac and cheese. I removed the cheese packet from the first box, went to do the same to the second box, and discovered that it had no cheese packet! At first I thought it might somehow have gotten buried beneath the pasta: no such good luck. Then I wondered if I hadn't taken it out, put it aside and forgotten about it. Nope.

Since I had everything else ready, I went ahead and made up my mac and cheese, compensating for the missing cheese packet by stirring in some parmesan cheese I had in my refridgerator. The result was, as I put it at the time, "Not terrible." In an effort to improve the taste, I made a discovery: adding onion powder, oregano and basil to macaroni and cheese results in a mighty tasty dish. Try it some time.

The next day I called the Hy-Vee customer satisfaction number (it was on the box) and told them about the missing cheese packet. The lady I talked to was apologetic and promised to send me a coupon for two free boxes to make up for my inconvenience, as well as letting the manufacturer know about what had happened. A few days later, a letter arrived, telling me to take said letter to my local Hy-Vee, show it to a manager, and collect my free mac and cheese. I did so.

I figured, end of story right there. Wrong. A few more days later I got a letter from the manufacturer, apologizing and speculating about what might have gone wrong. Apparently, each box of mac and cheese is weighed as it moves along, and any that are too light (say, because of a missing cheese packet) are kicked off the line. This one either hadn't been, or had accidentally been put back on the line when it wasn't supposed to be. They also promised to send me two free boxes of mac and cheese to make up for the whole mess. So today, I got a box from the UPS guy with two boxes of Hy-Vee macaroni and cheese in it.

I would have been happy with a coupon for $0.50 off any item in the store, but they really went all out to make things up to me. Personally, I think they overreacted a bit.

Spring

2010-04-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Spring may be my favorite time of year. Today, for example, is just perfect. It's sunny, but not too warm. I have my windows open, and don't need to run my furnace or my air conditioner. I love it. The only downside is that allergens are at some kind of all time high, but that's what Zyrtec is for. I'm happy to say I haven't been bothered much in the way of allergies, because I'm taking my pills for a change. In advance, too. I usually wait until the symptoms are unbearable, and even then I often manage to convince myself that it's a cold or something. Not this year! Best of all, Zyrtec no longer needs a prescription, and there are generic versions available, so I only pay $0.61 per pill, instead of $2.50 or more.

Rubik's Cube

2010-04-20T20:26:00.001-07:00

Who can solve a Rubiks' Cube? I can, that's who. I've been needing something a bit more intellectually stimulating than video games, so I picked up a cube on Saturday. I admit I used the hint guide that came with it, but I can now solve the thing without looking at said guide. Now I'm going to work on my time, and see if I can't get it down to under a minute (or less).

Actually, solving a cube isn't hard if you know what you're doing. Now that I do, it's actually rather easy.

Off to the park.

2010-03-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

I took Max to East Park today, for the first time in a long while. He was so excited to be there that when I set him on the ground while I was getting his cart out of the car, he went tearing off, dragging his hind legs behind him. Fortunately he's not nearly as speedy or agile as he used to be, and I was able to catch him easily.

Once I got his cart onto him, we spent quite a while exploring. Max likes the bridge that carries Carolina Avenue over the Winnebago river on the west edge of the park, so he sniffed around there for a bit, before heading east into the park itself. I suppose we were there for an hour or so while Max reacquainted himself with everything. Not a bad way to spend the middle of the morning, and good for both of us.

Also, it seemed to me that Max was moving his hind legs a little bit as he wandered around. Not very far, but back and forth, like he was walking. That's something I hadn't noticed in the past. Hopefully it is a sign of things to come.

Max's new wheels

2010-03-10T10:35:00.001-08:00

The cart/wheelchair I ordered for max showed up yesterday. It's pretty neat, weighing in at less than two pounds, with some ability to be adjusted.

Most important of all, Max doesn't seem to mind it one bit. We took it for a short walk yesterday, and a much longer walk today (around the block). Max didn't move very fast, probably because he's still getting used to this new way of getting around, but he made it the whole way on his own power.

Now all I have to do is make a ramp for the front porch, and Max will be able to go in and out on his own, at least in the summertime.

Max Update

2010-03-09T17:01:00.000-08:00

Just to let you all know, Max is doing much better now. He still can't move his hind legs, but he's eating his usual dry dog food. He no longer dribbles urine (at least not often), but still needs me to squeeze his bladder empty several times a day. His stools have firmed up, and I've learned to recognize the signs that he needs to go: he whimpers a bit, and his tail starts bobbing up and down. Speaking of Max's tail, he can wag it bit now. He also gets around by dragging himself with his front legs. This morning when I asked him if he wanted to go out, he scooted from his bed to the front door in no time flat. Also, the doggy wheel chair I ordered for him arrived today. Somewhat to my suprise, Max took to it right away, without any fuss. We even went for a short walk to try it out. I don't know if Max will ever be able to walk normally again, but he should enjoy a reasonable quality of life despite his handicap. That's pretty cool, and a great relief to me.

Max Update

2010-03-02T08:02:00.000-08:00

Just letting everyone know how Max is doing. Saturday he hurt his back again, this time by jumping off the couch. At least that's what I think. I didn't actually see what happened. Seeing that he was in pain I gave him a little baby aspirin, and that seemed to help. He was at least able to rest that night.

Sunday morning he was hobbling around, again in pain but able to eat, drink, and go outside and relieve himself. By noon, though, he was unable to move his hind legs. I medicated him the best I could, with aspirin for his pain and benadryl to calm him down (it works as a mild sedative in dogs), and Monday morning I took him to the vet. There, Max got a shot of steroids and tranquillizers, and I got prescription pills to dose him with at home. Once home he commenced resting again, zonked from the drugs, and spend the night in relative comfort.

I say relative because he's having trouble urinating on his own. I tried to "express his bladder" as they say, but I was squeezing in the wrong place. So today I had to take him back to the vet to learn how to do it right. The Doc had Max peeing like a racehorse in no time, and from the volume I'm sure max was in plenty of discomfort. One good sign is that once the Doc got him going, Max was able to assist in the process to some degree.

The Doc also wants me to flex Max's hind legs on a regular basis, which leads to another good sign: while I was doing so today Max resisted a little. I could feel it as I moved his legs back and forth. This all makes me more optimistic that Max will pull through this. He might end up needing one of those doggy wheelchairs, but that's far from the worst that could happen.

Car fixed, for now

2010-02-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Well, at least it was something simple. Apparently my battery decided to short itself out. That's why it showed a full charge when I put my charger on it. That's one of those things I would never have guessed, and would have been unable to figure out. So the car is working. At the moment. For now. Until something else goes wrong. These last two weeks have been nothing but trouble it seems, at least in the automotive department. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the end of such matters.

More car trouble

2010-02-13T05:48:00.001-08:00

I had my car in the shop the other day to have a leaking brake line fixed. Big deal, they're made of mild steel, they rust, and Iowa winters can't be easy on them. Thing is, I got the beast back on Wednesday the 10th. I drove it that day and Thursday with no problems. Friday morning I wanted to go to the store. The car was totally dead. No lights, no engine cranking, not even a click from the starter solenoid. My first reaction was, "Dammit, I left the lights on, or the door ajar, and the battery went flat. So I threw the charger on it. Full charge on the battery.

This happened to me once before, when I first had this car. Something called a fuzable link in the battery cable melted, killing all power instantly. Pretty surprising, considering that I was driving at the time. Fortunately I had just made a turn and was moving slowly. Anyway, I'm hoping that's what happened this time as well. I certainly can't think of anything else that might cause such a thing. It's weird and frustrating, though, to have so many automotive woes crop up all at once.

On a somewhat humerous note, the towing of my car nearly resulted in another disaster. the tow company I called uses a flatbed truck where the bed tilts down to form a ramp, and the car is winched up onto it. The driver had attached his winch cable to my car with two hooks on a chain at the end of the cable. When the car was halfway onto the truck, one of the hooks came loose, as the bracket the driver had attached it to broke off the car. Fortunately the other bracket held, otherwise I would have been getting a new garage door, "Courtesty of me," as the driver put it.

Lots of Snow

2010-02-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the above image, from Sunday night, through all of Monday, and into Tuesday morning, we got about six inches of snow. My roof is piled deeper with snow than I think I have ever seen it before. The snow on my front lawn is two and even three feet thick in places, and the same goes for the back yard. My neighbor across the street, with whom I had a brief chat whilst taking this picture, is eager for spring because he is running out of places to put all the snow. My front yard is bigger than his, and there is a lot of open space to the east of me, so I don't have that problem, but I heartily agree with him. My main problem is my driveway. It has been cracked in many places ever since I bought this house, but this winter it has a terrible case of frost heave. It's so bad under the garage door itself that today the door didn't want to close. I finally managed to get it shut, but I imagine I'll have to adjust the closure of the door if things get any worse. One thing is for sure, come spring I'm patching as many of those cracks as I can. I know of a kind of tar rope that you shove down into the cracks and then melt with a torch. It's much better than caulk or plasti-crete.

As if that wasn't enough, my car is in the shop for a leaking brake line. I borrowed the truck from Chris (actually, legally its mine, so I guess I just reclaimed it), but it's being difficult, running its battery down and not wanting to hold a charge. I suspect it needs a new battery. What it really needs is to be taken to the scrap yard and replaced with a much newer truck, one that doesn't drink gasoline like there's no tomorrow and leak transmission fluid.

On the bright side, though, I did get the truck to start today, when I thought it was done for. I had gone out to start it, but it would only crank, not fire. On the third try it kept cranking, even after I turned the key off, until it died. Amazingly, an hour or so later, when I tried it on a lark, it turned over and caught. Strange.

Avatar (review incl. spoilers)

2010-02-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

Just got back from seeing Avatar with Chris, and wanted to share my thoughts on this movie that seems to be taking america by storm. I give it 5 out of 10 stars, for its impressive visuals. And they are impressive. James Cameron did a great job in that area. Chris and I saw it in 3D, which was...okay. It was my first 3D movie, and while at first the effect startled me a few times, it quickly became amost unnoticable and/or annoying. Also, there was some kind of artifact in the center of the screen, like a cloud of insects, that was visible whenever that part of the screen was light.

It was too long, the characters were one dimensional, the plot was predictable, and said plot had gaping holes.

On the characters, the bad guys were so obviously bad that I never even suspected that they might have changes of heart; while the good guys were so obviously good that I never really doubted they would lose. Even the nominally bad guy chick pilot was set up from the get go as a sheep in wolf's clothing.

As for plot predictability, there were no real surprises. Not a one. Oh, there were some visual surprises, but no plot plot surprises. Head Badass proves Too Tough To Die before The Final Duel; check. Scientists side with the natives, check. Lone outsider becomes part of the tribe, check. And so on and so forth.

Plot holes. James Cameron has a very broad imagination, but not a deep one. If he did he would have realized... Well, it was said in the movie that "The aliens were sent back to their dying world." The implication was that Humans had wrecked the Earth (natch). The thing is, a race capable of rapid interstellar travel (six year journey from Earth to Pandora, where there is an economically viable mining operation that exports back to Earth) would have no trouble at all engineering their world into a garden paradise. Terraforming the Earth, Mars and Venus would be trivial compared to travelling to even the nearest star. And any race capable of genetically engineering something like Human/Na'vi avatars could probably create from scratch any lifeform they needed back home. That's the biggest plot hole.

Others include: ever hear of shaft and drift mining? No need to bulldoze the native village, we'll just tunnel under it, and they'll never know we were there.

That deposit of unobtainium (that's what they actually called it) under the native village is the biggest within two hundred klicks, but is it the biggest on the whole planet?

Gotta destroy a native village or a secret sacred place? Send in the atmospheric flyers (so the natives have a chance). Or, how about a nuke, or maybe a kinetic strike (drop a rock on 'em from orbit)?

When telling a story, if a character or side is capable of doing something, either by explict description or by implication from other explict capabilities, then when it is appropriate or logical for the to do that thing, they'd better do or at least try it, or you better have a good explanation why they don't. James Cameron didn't.

The Old Home Town

2010-02-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

I went back to my home town of Lake Mills, Iowa, today, partly to apply for a job, and partly to see it again, as I hadn't been there in five or so years. The job was a bust, for now, as the starting pay was only $10.50 an hour. That's not worth an eighty mile round trip every day, not until I get desperate.

What was interesting was that the job was at a company called Dielectric Corp. I hadn't heard of such a place before, and it was much bigger than I expected. I thought it might be like a tool and die shop operating out of a pole shed not much bigger than a two car garage, but instead found a good sized building made of cast concrete. It seemed to be doing well, judging by the number of cars in its parking lot, and it wasn't the only one. Lake Mills appears to be doing quite well, business-wise, both manufacturing and retail. There are four convenience stores, a supermarket, large auto parts and hardware stores, restaurants, and so forth. It wasn't anything like the ghost town I expected after I heard Cummins, the largest employer, was shutting down its plants there. I don't know if they changed their minds or what, but the place seemed as busy as ever when I drove by it.

There were changes, of course. There are a lot of new houses, some of which I would describe as mansions. The old Holiday Bar and Grill on the southeast corner of Main St. and Lake St. is gone, replaced by apartments. The Dairy Queen is gone, its building taken over by Norsemen Trucking. The park by the Post Office with the Sherman tank has been remodelled. The funeral home that was just west of said park is also gone. Don's Motor Mart, where I spent a lot of time playing video games, has been completely rebuilt and is about three times bigger than it was before, as well as set back a bit farther from the highway.

Change, for good or ill, is inevitable. The changes I saw in Lake Mills are, I think, for the good. The town is trying to grow, and seems to be succeeding. Mason City could learn something from my old home town, methinks.

Bleach smells like bacon...

2010-02-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

How do I know this, you ask? Well, today I had to run out to Menards to get a new filter for my humidifier. When I removed the old one to install the new one, I noticed a coating of yellowish goo in the bottom of the humidifier. Apparently there is some kind of bacteria that likes humidifiers, and that is what the yellow stuff was. Since I already had a sink full of hot soapy water from doing the dishes, I went ahead and washed the base. But the yellow stuff didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped. So I ran some more hot water into the base, poured in a splash of bleach and let it sit for a few minutes. A quick rinse and reassembly later, the humidifiers was doing its thing. Then I noticed an odd scent in the air, a scent that reminded me of bacon. Sure enough, it was coming from the humidifier. Why that should be is a mystery, but that's how it is. Weird.

Taxes

2010-01-28T14:59:00.000-08:00

Preliminary indications are that I'm going to owe the Feds some money come April 15th. I got my W-2's and a couple of 1099's in the mail today. Not all of them, of course. I still need my mortgage interest report, for example, amongst others, though I doubt I'll be able to itemize. If I have to, I'll wait to send my money until the very last day. Oh well, it could be worse. I could be one of those chumps that gets a huge refund every year and thinks it's a great thing, not realizing that he's letting the government use borrow his money interest free.

What a difference...

2010-01-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday we had howling winds and blowing snow so thick that it caused two multi-car pile-ups in north central Iowa. Businesses all over cancelled their second and third shifts, highways and interstates were closed, and pretty much every hotel room was snapped up by stranded travellers.

Today, we have no wind to speak of, clear, cloudless blue skies, and brilliant sunshine. You might think that's amazing. No. It's just typical Iowa weather.

Big pile of snow

2010-01-25T13:39:00.000-08:00

I was at Hy-Vee East a week or so ago when I noticed a veritable mountain of snow, piled up from clearing the rest of the Eastbrook Mall parking lot. A big pile of snow isn't that rare around here, but some clever person had planted a U.S. flag at the peak of the thing. I've been meaning to snap a picture ever since, but only got around to it today. I reckon that pile is at least twenty-five feet tall, and may have been even taller before the rain we got on Saturday.

Recommended for you..

2009-12-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes. Chris and I went to see it tonight, and he and I both thought it was good. He even said it was "DVD worthy." For my part, I was pleased that the movie wasn't dumbed down, as so many action movies seem to be these days. I never felt like my intelligence was being insulted. So check it out, if you haven't already.

Great success!

2009-12-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

I have a rather unusual window in the south wall of my house. It is actually nine windows, each about 26" high and 46" wide set in three rows of three and forming, in effect, one huge window. As I told a contractor giving me an estimate on a modern replacement, it's basically a glass wall.

Unfortunately, it's a single-pane glass wall. To avoid losing huge amounts of heat through it in the winter, I've long made a practice of fitting it with that tape on, shrink with your hair dryer plastic stuff, which works well. Where once I'd have tons of moisture build-up on the glass every morning when I drew the curtains, the panes behind plastic are condensation free.

One little problem is, since I got Max, I couldn't put plastic over the bottom row of panes, since he would no doubt shred such plastic any time a squirrel, other dog, or pedestrian went by. I've known of a solution for a while, but laziness kept me from implementing it. This year, being laid off and looking to save on my heat bills, I finally remedied the problem. I taped on and shrunk the plastic film, then, over the two panes Max would actually have access to (the one behind the couch is safe, I think) I installed 1/8" thick sheets of plexiglass. Those keep Max and his claws at bay, and there is no more morning dew on those panes. I can't really notice a temperature difference, but I'm sure I'm losing less heat, and that means lower bills for me.

Caffeine sensitive?

2009-12-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

I think I may have reached a point in my life where I can't tolerate nearly as much caffeine as I used to be able to. I made a pot of coffee late this morning. It was dark roast, and so had less caffeine than a lighter roast like Breakfast Blend. I drank less than half of it, and not all at once. About 1:30/2:00 p.m. this afternoon I warmed up my still half full cup and downed a swig. Within a few minutes I felt twitchy, a touch short of breath, and like my heart was beating faster. These are all symptoms of caffeine overdose. I used to be able to drink as many as two pots a day, though that was a rare occurrence. I seem, though, to have been slowly decreasing my caffeine intake over the last year or so. Maybe I was subconsciously aware that my tolerance was decreasing, and cutting back in response. I know there were nights at work, toward the end, where I wouldn't even finish the thermos of coffee I brought with me every night.

Right now, an hour or so on from the start of my symptoms, they've dissipated. Strange that there is such a thin margin of tolerance.

Winter Wonderland

2009-12-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

Today is much nicer than yesterday was, as the photo shows. It's bright and sunny, with little wind (at least in town) and not terribly cold at seven degrees above zero. The only downside is that, just after I snapped the picture, a city plow came by filled in the end of my driveway. Fortunately the snow is dry and fluffy, and it only took me a few minutes to clear it away.

I also won $2.00 in the Hot Lotto! Woot! I'm rich...or at least, less poor. I almost broke even.

Winter is here.

2009-12-09T11:22:00.001-08:00

As you can see, winter has decended on north central Iowa with a vengence. Our first real snowfall of the year turned out to be a bona fide blizzard. Fortunately, while the wind gusted as much as fifty miles per hour, it wasn't all that cold. So I spend a half hour this morning trying to start my snowblower, which didn't want to run.

It is an inexpensive (i.e. cheap) Simplicity single stage blower, and pretty anemic even by single stage standards. After many tries and several removals and cleanings of the spark plug, I finally got the thing started, after which it ran fine. Once that was taken care of the driveway and sidewalk went quickly enough.

As I write this, the snow has all but stopped falling. The wind is still blowing fiercely however, and travel isn't recommended. In town is fine, but there are white-outs in the country, or so I'm told. All in all, a good day to stay indoors.

Cookin' up a storm

2009-12-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

With so much free time these days, I'm starting to watch more TV. Specifically, the Food Network. As a result, I've started to do more cooking. Not super fancy stuff, but more complex than usual.

For example, I got a receipe for tomato soup off the Food Network website. It involved canned tomatoes, yellow onion, carrot, celery chicken broth, cream, and so forth. Yesterday I whipped it up. It wasn't bad, but it was awfully rich. That was no doubt due to the 3/4 cup of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter the receipe called for, in addition to the cream.

So I went back to the store, got more ingredients, and tried again. This time I cut the olive oil to 1/4 cup, substituted skim milk for the cream, and added tomato sauce to make up for cutting the amount of carrot, celery and onion in half. When I was done it was less rich, but still too rich, to my way of thinking. The texture was disappointing as well. I have an immersion blender, which I used to puree the soup, but I think I need a regular blender to get really good results.

Thinking about re-enlisting...

2009-11-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

I've seen commercials about the Guard needing officers, and I'm not yet quite too old. Of all the jobs I've had, being in the military has been the least stupid, and the most rewarding. Gonna have to check this out.

Kitchen inventory...more shelf space!

2009-11-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

For something to do today, I inventoried my spices, getting rid of stuff that had passed its expiration date, or in the case of the lemon pepper, solidified in its container. Truth be told, I don't even remember where that lemon pepper came from. All I can say is that I can't think of anything I'd use it for. Well it's gone now, along with redundant chili power (consolidated) and some cayenne pepper so old it was in a metal can.

The lemon pepper wasn't the only oddity either. What on earth is anise for? Or caroway seed? Anyway, my spice shelf is no longer a disorganised mess.

Cell phone diving...

2009-11-27T07:31:00.000-08:00

Pops cames around this morning and he and I went for a drive around town. One of our stops was at an old gravel pit turned lake called Big Blue on the south side of town. There were a number of people out fishing, despite the chill. While Pops chatted with some of them I went out on the dock to see if I could spot any fish.

Big Blue gets its name because its waters are very clear. From the end of the dock I could see the bottom, which was probably six of so feet deep. I didn't see any fish, but I did see a red, rectangular thing that, on closer examination, turned out to be a cell phone. Oops. I don't know how long it has been lying there, but I'm sure it'll be there until spring or summer at least. I know I wouldn't dive into icy cold water to fetch it.

New toothpaste

2009-11-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

When I ran out of toothpaste a few days ago, I bought a slightly different variety than normal. Usually I get Crest mint gel paste. This time I picked up a tube of Crest Pro Health clean mint and I have to say, I don't like it. Not one bit. Not only does it have a different texture than I'm used to, it also (and most importantly) has a truly nasty aftertaste. It is so unpleasant that I may not use up the rest of the tube.

I've been polled

2009-11-22T17:56:00.001-08:00

I got a call tonight from some polling outfit. Since it was something to do, I agreed to take part. It was an odd poll, and I have to admit I have no idea what they were trying to figure out. The poll started out with questions about customer service versus getting great deals, then moved on to what news stories I was following and to what degree. From there it segued into vitamins and nutrition, then the swine flu, and finally the Super Bowl. All togther a rather perplexing way to spend half an hour.

No Imagination

2009-11-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

I was in the bookstore today, just browsing around (it was something to do), and I was surprised and disappointed that there is so little originality and/or creativity in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. With Twilight and its sequel being so popular these days, there is of course a glut of vampire romance/fantasy to be had - gotta jump on the bandwagon and make a few bucks, etc. Of course, vampires and romance have always had a weird (and to me inexplicable) link, and vampire romances are nothing new. How someone could associate romance with a blood sucking parasite is beyond me.

Of the other stuff in that particular section of the store, I saw only a couple of titles that seemed worth picking up, and none of them kept my interest long. One was a book (part of a series, I believe) whose concept was exactly the same as another series I saw published ten or twenty years ago.

When I pick up a book, if I bother to open it, I give the author the first page in which to hook me. If they don't succede the book goes back on the shelf. Occasionally I'll give them the first chapter, but that doesn't happen often. Needless to say, I came home empty handed today.

It is as if a dreary sameness has fallen on the world of fiction. There are lots of books, but most of them are just imitating each other, and are hardly worth reading.

Worn out weiner

2009-11-15T14:54:00.000-08:00

Max has had a busy weekend. Friday he spent five hours at Pop's house, and Sunday he spent two more. He slept most of Saturday, and he's still sleepy today. That's what happens when you're a twelve year old dog I guess.

Kitchen Patrol

2009-11-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

I've been working on my kitchen a bit lately. Today I scrubbed the majority of my cabinets. A little Murphy's Oil Soap, a rag, and some elbow grease, and I was rewarded (an hour or so later) with a bucket of surprisingly dirty water. Of course, this is only the second time since I moved in that such a thing has happened, so maybe it isn't so surprising. Maybe tomorrow (or Monday) I'll finish the scrubbing. Then I'll tackle the pulls.

The pulls are interesting. Not only are there fifty-three of them, more or less darkened with age, but they aren't solid brass. I tried polishing a couple of them, and while they cleaned up fairly well, it was soon apparent that their brass coating was more or less gone. Some of it came off as I was polishing, while the rest had eroded away from years of neglect and/or handling. I'm not sure what they are actually made of. All I can say for sure is that they aren't steel. Maybe aluminum or pewter.

I may be wrong about them not being solid brass. I went and looked again, and now I wonder if they weren't coated in varnish or something.

I think I'm going to try and polish all of them. I'll need to remove them to do a thorough job. Maybe Chris still has his Dremel laying around. That might do the trick. The only other matter is one of aesthetics: the pulls aren't always lined up as well as they might be. Part of that is due to the layout of the cabinets themselves, but part of it is the fault of whoever installed them. See the picture below for what I mean.

As you can see, the pulls on the doors of the lower cabinets aren't lined up with the drawers immediately above them. I'm wondering if I should put any effort into correcting that. They aren't very nice cabinets, and I'm not sure they're worth the effort.

Ye Olde Water Softener

2009-11-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

Once again, my water softener is failing to fulfil its function in life. I took the venturi assembly apart again, and discovered that the gasket therein (the whole assembly having nine seperate parts) was disintegrating. Little pieces of it were caught in various screens and other places, basically gumming up the whole works.

I drove all the way to the other end of town, to the Sears store, only to learn that they carried no spares in the store. I was basically told to go home and order what I needed on-line. So I did.

The gasket couldn't be purchased individually. I had to but a kit that contains at least one other part of some kind. Total cost: $16.95, not including shipping and tax. The lowest shipping will take a week and was $8.99. Add on $1 in tax and the total bill came to $26.71. Oh well, it's still cheaper than calling the repairman.

2012

2009-11-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

So there's this movie coming out next week, an end-of-the-world disaster flick based on the fact that the Mayan (or Aztec, maybe: I can't remember which and I'm too lazy to check) calendar ends in 2012. As a movie premise I suppose it's all right, and I can understand other people jumping on the bandwagon to make some bucks, but even that presupposes that there are people out there who take this whole "the world will end in 2012" crap seriously.

Sadly, that presupposition appears to be spot on. That baffles me. Or rather, it reaffirms my belief that most people are idiots. The fact that the Mayan calendar system ends in 2012 is an interesting tidbit, and is a reflection of Mayan religous beliefs, but that's all it is. And it makes sense for the Mayan calendar to end when it does, because it ends when the Mayans believed the world would end (no point in having it run any further if no one would be around to use it, right?) The Mayans no doubt sincere in their belief, but that doesn't mean they were right. After all, they also believed that cutting out someones heart and burning it nourished their gods.

It's actually kind of depressing that any modern person would fail to immediately dismiss the Mayan prediction as the superstious nonsense that it is. It's too bad my conscience won't let me become a con man. I could start an end times cult and get rich. One guy did it for decades, moving the 'end time' back every so often so it stayed in the near future. And his followers bought it!

Laid Off/Detox Blues

2009-11-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

Two things. The first is that as of the end of my shift Friday, I am laid 0ff. Woot! I plan to spend a month or two not doin' nuthin'. I have plenty of money in my savings account, so I don't have to worry too much about when (if ever) I'll be called back. I expect I will be, and sooner rather than later, but you never know.

I plan to look into a company called Clipper Wind, an outfit out of Cedar Rapids that makes and erects wind turbines. Their main facility is in Cedar Rapids, but they have a branch in Britt, as well as offices in Mexico, Brazil, and Europe (Denmark, I think). Apparently they're hiring like mad, and have a lot of positions that I'd be well qualified for. It might mean moving, but that might not be such a bad thing. We'll see.

On another note, I was flipping channels today and saw a bit on addicted celebrities, specifically Alice Cooper. He's an alcoholic, but he was far worse off than I was before he got help. He talked about getting up every morning and puking up blood, then getting a drink to 'cure' his shakes. He was also losing weight because he wasn't eating. Doug, my one-on-one councellor at Praire Ridge, has mentioned a couple of times that malnutrition is another sign of late term alcoholism. I wonder nowadays how and why I never figured out that taking another drink could have 'cured' my withdrawal symptoms, which I had experienced many times over the last couple of years, though never as severe as they were the night I went to the hospital. I'm gald I never made the connection. If I had I'd probably (certainly) be far worse off.

Fluorescent Light Bulb Blues...

2009-10-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

Virtually every lightbulb in my house is fluorescent these days. That is a good thing in many ways, as they last longer and use less energy than incandescent bulbs. The main drawbacks to fluorescent bulbs is thatn they dim over time, and contain mercury. A less well know drawback is that they can catch fire.

Yesterday well I got home from work I smelled smoke, and it smelled electrical. A quick check showed no obvious source of the smell: computer room didn't smell of smoke, and there was no smoke visible in the air. Once satisfied that there was no fire, I shrugged the smell off as having come from outside my house, and went to bed.

Today, after my class and the running of a few errands, I smelled the smoke again when I got home. This time I found the source. The light fixture above my dinning room table was out, and wouldn't turn on. I've had fluorescent bulbs go out before, but two at once was a new experience for me. On taking down the glass diffuser, however, I saw what had really happened. One of the bulbs had dark rings around where the tubes entered the base. Clearly the ballast had failed, and in doing so had gotten so hot that it gave off smoke. It also wrecked the other bulb somehow.

I'm not saying that fluorescent bulbs are a serious fire hazzard, but it's something to keep in mind.

Things that irk me...

2009-10-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

I find the following to be irksome:

True believers. It doesn't matter what they Truely Believe in; when they start to preach (as they inevitably do) I tune them out. Case in point: Doug, the co-facilitator of my group at Praire Ridge is about to reach a year of soberity (Sunday the 1st will be day 365). We had a little celebration today, an occasion that was, in my opinion, ruined by two other counsellors who stopped by. No doubt they want to congradulate Doug (as did we all) but to turn his achievement into a teaching moment...seemed to take away from what he's done. Better I think to merely hold him up as an example that, yes, it can be done. It didn't help that the lady counsellor actually sounded like she was preaching. She had that whole 'giving a lecture' tone of voice that makes my skin crawl.

I suppose it's just me and my cantakerous nature, but even Jenny, the lady Doug assists, is sometimes too 'in to it' for my liking.

Important Safety Tip

2009-10-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

Don't ever eat an entire pack of beef (I presume it was beef) sticks. I guess at 42 I'm too old to do stuff like that any more. I have such an upset stomach. I haven't hurled (yet) but I certainly feel like it. Ugh.

Halloween candy and rice casserole

2009-10-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

I bought my Halloween candy today. Or at least, I bought some of it. This'll be the first Halloween in a good long while where I'll be awake and/or sober enough to answer the door. I picked up four bags of candy at Hy-Vee, and was surprised by how small they seemed. I seem to remember them being bigger when I was a kid, and even when I started passing out candy instead of collecting it. I'm sure the packages have shrunk a bit over the years, along with most other things.

While I was at Hy-Vee I noticed an odd pricing arrangement. Three packs of Hy-Vee brand microwave popcorn were on sale for $0.99, while six packs of the same brand were on sale for $2.79. I think somebody wasn't paying as much attention as they should have been.

Chicken and rice casserole is an old favorite of mine, but today I made it with a slight (and by slight I mean major) twist. Instead of chicken, I bought and cut up a sirloin steak, which I pan seared in olive oil before putting in the casserole dish, along with carmelized mushrooms, onions, and garlic. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Fluffy white stuff...

2009-10-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

It was snowing this morning when I woke up. Yay, snow! It isn't sticking yet, and will probably change to rain later today, if the forecast is to be believed, but it's still the first snow of the season. We may have a white Halloween yet.

As a bonus, check out this weiner dog I found on my couch.

Computer blues...

2009-10-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

My computer's main cooling fan has been noisy of late. Sometimes tapping the case, or the grill over the fan itself, will stop the noise, but it always comes back. I thought maybe the fan was unbalanced from dust build-up, so today I cleaned my computer. There was more dust than I expected, and it was everywhere. Not only was the main fan dirty, the CPU and video card fans were also nice and dusty. In addition there were dust-webs hanging from the cables and every other surface. However, with the help of my smaller vaccuum cleaner and a can of Dust-Off from Best Buy, I got things nice and shiny again. I also bought and installed a battery back-up system to keep my computer running if the power goes off. It's been awhile since I've had a long lasting outage, but brief interupts are fairly common, and this should take care of them. Also, the new system will automatically shut my computer off if the power is out more than five minutes. Not bad for $75.00.

Winterization

2009-10-10T12:23:00.001-07:00

It's getting to be that time of year. I spent a couple of hours getting the house and yard ready for when the snow flies: closed up the crawlspace, picked up sticks and burned them (I know, carbon footprint and all, but burning sticks is still legal, and the ashes make good fertilizer, so it evens out), and vaccuumed up such leaves as there were in the course of mowing the grass.

I also began to subvert the neighbor's dog. He's a big one, a rottweiller I believe, and he was barking at me while I was mowing the back yard. So I went inside, grabbed a few Milk Bones, and tossed one to him each time I went past him. By the end he was barking at me for not giving him a treat.

Ads within ads

2009-09-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

What is the world coming to, I wonder? The Schwan's guy stopped by on Monday. In addition to selling me some chocolate marshmallow ice cream and a box of chicken cordon bleu, he left a catalog. I happened to glance at it this morning and noticed that the back cover is an ad for Geico Insurance. Paging through the catalog I found ads for Ziploc, Sears, and some sort of home security company. I suppose that Schwan's wants to maximize their revenue stream, or something like that, but sheesh.

Some football statistics

2009-09-08T06:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not a huge football fan. Sure, I enjoy watching the game on TV, but I'm not one of those people who know everything there is to know about their favorite teams and players. I will admit though that the situation with the Minnesota Vikings and Brett Favre has increased my interest slightly for the upcoming season. I guess I'm just a fan of novel and unusual happenings.

Anyway, I was looking at the Viking's final roster, which provides, amongst other things, the number of years each player has been in the NFL. While looking at it, I noticed something interesting. Of the fifty-five players, only five have more than ten years of experience, with a grand total of sixty-seven years between them.

In contrast, the thirty least experienced players (four years or less) have sixty-six years between them.

The thirty break down thusly:

Six rookies with: 0 years
Four with: 1 year
Seven with: 2 years
Four with: 3 years
Nine with: 4 years

If I were more interested I'd look at other teams to see if this distribution of experience is typical. Without looking I'll go out on a limb and say it is, since most NFL players don't have long careers.

Naltrexone

2009-09-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

When I picked my prescription up at the pharmacy the pharmacist advised me that naltrexone can cause light-headedness and sleepiness. Well, I took my first dose today with lunch. It took the stuff a while to kick in, but now I know the Dr. Houck wasn't exaggerating. I also know how the stuff keeps you from drinking: it puts you to sleep. I'm reminded of an old Bloom County comic wherein Opus is trying to lose weight. He and Milo are seated at a small table, a plate with a Ding-Dong on it between them. Opus says, "Milo, I really want to eat that Ding-Dong," whereupon Milo whacks Opus in the head with a rolling pin (or something). Opus then exclaims, "It's working, Milo! I'm losing my desire to eat! I'm losing consciousness!" Whee!

Look what a little remodelling can do.

2009-09-05T05:41:00.000-07:00

There is a house on North Rhode Island Avenue that has recently been remodelled. It is or was the home of an elderly gentleman, and was in a pretty bad state: peeling paint, bad roof, dilapidated windows, you name it. I don't know if the old gent died, moved out, or just decided it was time time to spend some money on the place. At any rate, here is a picture of the home's garage, which gives you an idea of what the house used to look like:

And here is what the house looks like now:

Quite the transformation. I just wish I had a 'before' picture of the house.

Make haste...slowly.

2009-09-03T05:01:00.000-07:00

I went to Prairie Ridge Tuesday afternoon to set up the next phase of my battle against alcoholism, only to run into a slight bureaucratic snag. The infromation given to me at the hospital said that appointments were first come, first served, and started at 12:30 p.m. The info was half right. When I got to P.R. I discovered that siad appointments didn't begin until 1:00 p.m. For a guy who had to be at work at 2:30, that was a tad stressful.

I had a nice talk with a counselor named Chuck, mostly about the nuts and bolts of getting me into a group outpatient program. Unfortunately there are no spaces available at present, and there is a waiting list. So for now Chuck is going to help on a one-on-one basis, probably once a week. I see him again on Wed. the 9th.

While I was in 5E, I was questioned by a psychatrist named Ramos (whom I later learned is from Brazil) who gave a prescription for a drug called Naltrexone, the function of which is to suppress the urge to use intoxicants. I got them Tuesday morning, and so far I haven't taken a single one. Not because I'm not willing to, but because so far I haven't had to. While I was in 5E I got used to getting up early in the morning. I got up at 4:30 a.m. Monday, got out of the hospital at 1:30 p.m., went to work at 2:30, got home at 11:45 (I stayed late to help Mike because Dave had the day off) and went to bed around 12:30 a.m. I woke up again, no longer tired, at the un-godly hour of 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, and was up until midnight. This morning I got up at 6:30 again. Anyway, Monday night I was too tired to even think of drinking, and Tuesday I felt too crummy (it may have been allergies or a very slight cold). Last night, again, I was too tired. I do take one of the pills with me to work though, to take at 2nd break (9:30) if I think I'm going to need it. I'm sure I'll take them on the weekends.

On the lighter side of the news, I made myself a fried egg and bacon sandwich for breakfast this morning (yummy!), a pot of half-caf coffee (may as well try to cut down on the other drug I use), did some laundry, and now I'm gonna mop my kitchen floor for the first time in maybe a year. Woot!

5 East

2009-09-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

5 East is a bit of an odd place. More on that in a minute.

Saturday night I ended up taking myself to the emergency room at the local hospital, suffering from the worst case of alcohol withdrawal I've ever experienced. Yeah, I'm an alcoholic. There, I said it while sober this time, and not in an emotional funk after being arrested for DUI.

Let me tell you, withdrawal is not fun. First you start to shake. You start sweating (a cold sweat), and your heart starts palpitating. It's my experience that the symptoms rise and fall in intensity, as they did saturday night. They peaked, started to fade, and I told myself that it wasn't going to be so bad this time. Then the symptoms started to rise again, getting a little worse before tapering off again.

Then they came back with a vengence. Not only did I have all of the above, but my face, shoulders and arms went numb. My legs got wobbly. That would make anybody nervous, I suppose, but hightened anxiety (or, as the description on the internet said: a feeling of impending doom) is also a symptom of withdrawal. This was when I started debating with myself if I should go to the hospital or not. Note that it wasn't an easy decision: I was still in denial about being an alcoholic. Part of me was saying that I could tough it out, so I was walking around with my keys an wallet in hand, arguing with myself. I knew that people can die from withdrawal, but I still didn't think it was that bad.

Then the symptoms got worse. I got in my car, drove to the ER, the symptoms getting worse all the while and me afraid I'd die before I got there (I couldn't feel my pulse and the numbness was spreading).

Parking in the first open space I saw (a handicapped space near the door) I staggered inside and told the lady at the desk what was wrong with me. Getting admitted seemed to take forever. The nurse doing so was taking my vital signs with a machine that measured blood pressure and heart rate while she filled out forms (I guess) on her computer. The blood pressure cuff squeezed my arm so tight that I lost my grip on my keys.

Anyway, they finally got me onto a gurney. I got a shot of something for my anxiety, as well as one of B vitamins. Some blood was drawn. Then there was a wait. Next to me was a young woman who was half out of it. She was there with her boyfriend (I assume that's who he was) and from the conversation it seems she had been at a bar, and someone slipped something into her drink. According to her boyfriend she had stopped breathing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

After a bit I was taken upstairs to 5 East, a.k.a the psychiatric ward. After exchanging my cloths for hospital garb, answering a bunch of questions and taking a pill of some sort, I was led to a room with two beds in it.

5 East has twenty-seven beds (according to the brochure) about a third of which are in what I call the high security area. In this area all the rooms have cameras. Each room has a bathroom, but the doors to them are kept locked unless the patient needs to use it, after which it is locked up again. There are two small dayrooms, each with a TV set behind glass. At mealtimes the staff take care to account for every plastic knife, spoon and fork. Odd thing is, when I asked to brush my teeth, I was given a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a piece of floss, and allowed to take them back to my room.

After a night's rest occassionally interrupted by nurses (sometimes just looking in, once to take my vitals and once for another pill), after lunch the next day they wheeled in a semi-comatose guy with a colostomy bag, put him in the other bed, and moved me to a new room in the low security area. There I had a dining/TV room with freely available snacks (milk, fruit, water, a pop machine, even bread, butter and jelly and jam. We could actually touch the TV. Across the way was a rec room with games and books. And the bathroom in my room was unlocked all the time.

This area wasn't without its oddities, though. My room and the one across the hall were between two sets of 'control doors' that could be held shut by powerful electromagnets. Also, the second set of control doors, the ones farthest from the nurses station, marked a boundary I couldn't pass, for reasons unknown. After breakfast Monday when I asked to brush and floss again, I was given a toothbrush with toothpaste on it, and a piece of floss. I had to floss at the desk and give the floss back. But I was allowed to take the toothbrush back to my room and didn't have to bring it back. So, no floss allowed, but my roommate had an i-pod. Go figure.

Speaking of my roommate (let's call him 'Jim') he had been there a week, and left for in-patient drug treatment the same day I was released. Actually, he was taken by a deputy sherrif, but that is beside the point. He told me that he had, before he was brought in, been doing amphetamines and morphine, and when he wanted to try and come down from those, he'd drink one or two (or more) bottles of booze.

Mostly though, the other patients (about seventeen or eighteen) seemed to be of the mental variety. Besides Jim and I, I knew of only one other substance abuser.

I'm just glad I only had to stay there two days. Maybe weekends are atypical, but that place is boring. I told a couple of people it was like being in jail. There were books, as I said, but nothing really good, and while there were TV's, they were invariably tuned to lowest common denominator shows. So I did a lot of sleeping, and a lot of walking.

The Emergency Room

2009-08-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

In my time as a lead at my place of employment, I've sent three people to the emergency room. One was a repeat offender, who suffered from shortness of breath but who wouldn't stop smoking. The other two were a man who I suspected was having a heart attack (turns out he was), and a guy who collapsed in the bathroom. That one resulted in my calling 911 for the first time ever. Why am I telling you this?

Two days ago my right shoulder started to bug me. It's always a little sore from carrying frame pieces (I'm a picker now), but that day was worse than usual. Yesterday it was worse yet, and I mentioned it to Dave, which is what you are supposed to do if you get injured (or have an existing injury aggrevated) at work. Fine, no problem.

Today my shoulder was worse yet. Of course, by 'worse' I mean 'hurt a bit more than yesterday', not 'oh my shoulder! the pain!'. I asked Dave to make me an appointment with HealthWorks, which is a branch of the local hospital that takes care of routine work related stuff. I figured, they'll get me an appointment Friday or Monday, I'll see the Doc, and he'll check me out. All I wanted was to nip what I was sure was a minor injury in the bud, before it got any worse.

Dave's response was to send me to the emergency room. Now, apparently this isn't going to cost the fortune that a trip to the ER normally does, since it'll be billed as a trip to HeathWorks, but geeze. It took two hours, including the company mandated drug test, all so the ER doc (who was really only a Physican's Assistant) could tell me that I have a slight rotator cuff injury (and inflammation thereof) and that I should: lift carefully, get a pad for my shoulder, ice it down before and after work, stretch and limber up, and take ibuprofen. If it's not better in two weeks, I'm to see my regular doctor.

Now, color me old fashioned, but I consider the ER to be for, you know, emergencies. Like the kid they brought in while I was there, strapped to a gurney with his face all bloody, like someone or something had broken his nose.

My first trip to the ER, and I felt embarrassed because I was wasting their time.

Max the Feeble

2009-08-26T21:17:00.001-07:00

Max is feeble. Of course, he is twelve years old (or thereabouts), only weighs sixteen pounds, and has short weiner-dog legs. He never was a powerhouse. But two nights in a row now, when I put him out on my getting home from work, Max has gotten his rope caught on, get this... a tuft of grass, and was unable to pull himself free.

(five minute pause while Max licks me in the face. face licks from a weiner-dog will cure whatever ails you. what germs could survive stinky weiner-dog breath?)

In the past Max has gotten his rope stuck under the tires of my car and/or truck, caught it on chunks of ice in the winter, and even (with the help of the knot he somehow manages to tie in it) the stones of my planter. This grass tuft thing is completely new, though.

I hate my new (old) alarm clock

2009-08-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, my main alarm clock (I use two) stopped working. Fortunately, I had a third clock handy, one that my brother Chris had aqquired years ago by sending in proofs of purchase for a now defunct (I believe) softdrink called 'Surge'.

Now, most if not all clock radios have two alarm settings: radio; and loud, annoying beep. Not this one. It has radio; and a digital recording of some guy screaming "Surge!" at the top of his lungs. The first time it went off I thought the clock was calling my name. Even now, after three or four days, I'm still not used to it.

I miss the beep.

But I'm too cheap to buy a new alarm clock...yet.

Free Games

2009-08-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

I found a neat website that has hundreds of free games that run in your web browser. Actually, I re-found it, since I saw and played the game the link points to quite a while ago.

To take a look you can either click the title of this post, or copy and paste the following to your web browser: http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

Called 'Crush the Castle' the game involves using a trebuchet and various types of ammunition to defeat renegade castles by killing all the defenders. Game play is a little uneven: no matter how many times you play the game, you face the same sixteen castles again and again. There is an edit function that allows you to build your own castles, but I've never built one that could even stand by itself: they all collapsed under their own weight with a shot being fired.

Moreover, the castles vary widely in strength. Some can be knocked down by a single shot, while others require every shot you have (total of five).

There are no points and no penalties. Fail to defeat a castle and you can just select 'retry'. Still, it's reasonably entertaining and not a bad way to pass some time.

The Garage Saga, Pt. 3(?)

2009-08-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Once again the sound of hammers and of lumber being thrown about awakened me this morning, though I managed to drop off again, and only woke up a couple of times over the next several hours.

My neighbor now has the roof of his new garage partly framed, about half by the look of it. He (or possibly his contractors, as I notice one or two large pickups that I haven't seen in the neighborhood before, have been parked in the street every day since this whole affair began) certainly isn't hurrying. If my neighbor is using contractors, this project must be costing him a fortune in labor. Perhaps these contractors are friends of his, or maybe he is one of them, and so is getting a discount. Or they could be working on this thing between other jobs. I don't know for sure, but I would think that once the slab and footings were in place it would only take two or three days to fully frame and sheathe a garage.

Naturally, finishing up completely, with siding and windows, shingles, electrical work, and putting in the garage door(s) might take a few more days, but at the pace these guys are working it might take a month to finish this thing.

Neighbor's Garage, con't

2009-08-17T10:56:00.001-07:00

My neighbor has resumed work on his new garage. Having framed up the walls and sheathed them, he then let his little project sit for three or four days, until this morning. Today he and his friend(s) are working on the roof, which they appear to be going to do the old fashioned way: that is, building it piece by piece, instead of using pre-fab trusses. Granted, the old fashioned way saves them the expense and trouble of renting a crane, but I think that pre-fab trusses would be faster and easier. Oh well, what do I know?

On a slightly related note, I was dreaming this morning, and one aspect of the dream I was having was of an old lady doing some fine detail carving on a piece of stone, with a small hammer and chisle. You know, tap..tap..tap..tap. I woke up, and heard the same sound coming through my bedroom windows/walls: my neighbor was hammering away, and the sound influenced my dream.

Things that suck.

2009-08-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Things that suck:

Making tater-tot casserole and realising, too late, that you don't have enough tater-tots to quite cover the whole thing.

Getting overspray on your $300.00 glasses at work.

Getting new lenses for your $300.00 glasses, plus a new pair of el-cheapo glasses with glass lenses, just for work, and having to shell out $300.00 again.

That last thing is probably a glitch, but I won't know until I get my receipt in the mail. I picked the new stuff up today before work. They were having computer problems, and the machine they use for electronic transactions locked up. I was running late for work, so the lady at the optometrist's took my card number and said she'd mail me a receipt. I can't wait to get it, so I can find out why it was so high.

Schizo Anti-virus Program...

2009-08-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

I have this anti-virus program. As with most such things I had to subscribe to the service to get updates and so forth. When I created my account I set it to automatically renew on an annual basis. So does it just renew my membership and send me a receipt? No. For the last month an a bit I've had this red exclamation mark on my toolbar. When I click on it, it says I have a problem that needs immediate fixing, and sends me to the company website to renew my subscription. Once there, I'm told that 'no action is required' since I'm on auto-renew. When I leave the website, the anti-virus program warns, "Your subscription hasn't been renewed! You only have 'x' days of protection remaining!"

I'd say that somebody wasn't paying enough attention when this program was written, else this annoying quirk wouldn't have made it to the public release version.

My neighbor's garage, continued...

2009-08-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

Not only is my neighbor to the north building a new garage, he has also replaced his old driveway, merging it with that of his neighbor to the west. They have both poured additional slabs that effectively cover the entirety of their respective back yards. I hate mowing the grass as much as anybody, but that seems to be a bit of a radical (and expensive) solution.

As to the new garage, it still exists only in slab form: no framing has been started yet, which seems odd, given that the project is at least a week along. Of course, he probably wanted to get his driveway done first, and by the look of things, it only got poured today. Realistically then, it'll be Friday before construction of the new garage begins.

In other news, I'm almost certain to have to work Saturday, thanks to the people in manufacturing, who don't seem to be able to get stuff to us in a timely manner. We are now two days down, and lost a whole day yesterday. I spent the last two hours of my shift last night not doing a whole lot, as there were no lists, and none to be made, either for the runs we were supposed to be working on, or for the next runs. But I wasn't allowed to leave, because Dave doesn't believe in Lack Of Work. Hopefully the situation will have improved today, but somehow I doubt it.

He's at it again...

2009-07-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

It seems that my neighbor to the north is building a new garage. Today he is in the process of pouring a large slab. His rented earth mover was involved in breaking up and/or removing the old one. I know I heard a saw this morning, almost certainly a cement saw. Apparently he wasn't satisfied with his old one car garage, because the new slab is big enough for a two car garage. The fact that it is going to take up most of his back yard must not be a concern.

It make me wonder though. How much does a project like that cost? My garage sucks, mostly in that I can't go directly from it into the house. That and my driveway is old and in desperate need of replacement, if only to improve drainage. Maybe I should look into this.

Neighbors are up to something...

2009-07-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Two of my neighbors are up to something. They live behind me, or rather on the north side of my block, and they have some kind of joint construction project going on. They've both rented Bobcats (actually made by John Deere instead, so they aren't really Bobcats) and have the eastern neighbor's back yard totally devoid of grass. Yesterday there was some jack hammering going on, and today I see that some new concrete has been poured, though not enough for a major addition. They've even got a surveyor's transit, for what reason I can't guess. The eastern neighbor also has an enormous pile of wood stacked along his lot line. Apparently he plans to use his fireplace a lot this coming winter.

As things develope, I'll update you.

'The Burning Question'

2009-07-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

So I'm on the internets, and I see a link to an article in Wired magazine that wonders why we can't control machines with voice commands.

The answer boils down to this: the smartest machine ever built is dumber than pretty much any human being who isn't in a vegitative state. Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov at chess, but only because IBM and a huge team of engineers and programmers sank years of effort and millions of dollars into doing so. But ask Deep Blue what it thinks of the weather, and you'll get a blank stare.

"What is so special about speech that a retard can manage it but a multi-million dollar program can barely get by?" you ask?

Five million years of evolution, that's what. We humans and our Australopithicene ancestors have been communicating for a long time: so long that, even though we can do it effortlessly, we don't really understand how we do it. It's like standing upright (i.e. balancing). Humans learn (or develop the ability) to balance during infancy, but roboticists have yet to make a machine that can match us, and they've been trying for decades.

The point of this rant? If you want a machine that can take voice input (vague voice input at that) and turn it into useful output: that is, a machine that can understand what you said, and more importantly what you meant by what you said, you're gonna be waiting a long time.

Chest colds suck

2009-07-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Chest colds suck. Seriously. I picked one up over the weekend, and I'm not enjoying it at all. Not only do I have that noticable sensation of pressure in my lungs, I'm also horking up phlem, have a sore throat and a general achy run-down feeling. Sure, I know that there are others who have far worse health problems, and mine will go away soon, but I really dislike being sick.

On the upside I found a free online game called NationStates (http://www.nationstates.net/) that is kind of interesting. It is slow paced, but might be worth looking at.

Odds and Ends

2009-07-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

I got my property tax notice today. It (they?) went up $30.00, or a little over 3%. That's probably right in line with inflation, so it doesn't bother me.

It was cold today. How cold? Well it's the middle of frickin' July and I had to run my furnace a bit. Talk about odd cold snaps. Should be back in the eighties by tomorrow though.

Word at work is that twenty-five more people were laid off today. If so they kept it under tighter than normal wraps: the people who usually hear about these things and spread the word didn't know anything about it. Or so I understand. I never hear rumors. Never did even when I was a lead: people would come up to me and ask, "What do you know about this?" and I could almost always answer truthfully, "This is the first I've heard about it." But then I've never had much interest in gossip.

More painting fun

2009-07-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

Tonight was a real comedy of errors. Things started out fine. 1st was painting on the old line and 2nd stayed on that line all night. 1st had also painted enamel on the new line, but it was all done and justed needed to be taken down. All I had to do was start the conveyor when Dave gave the word.

The fun started when Dave decided he wanted to paint G-90. G-90 is a kind of steel with a special corrosion resistant coating (not sure what) and our regular paint doesn't stick to it very well. We have a special paint that does stick, but it is a pain in the butt to work with, even if you know what you're doing. When Dave and Jim (the foreman) asked if I could do it, I said, "I've watched Denny do it, once." That was my way of saying 'no'. Anyway, Dave and Jim hung the G-90 on the new line. My orders were to stop the line when the stuff reached the first booth, then call Dave. In the meantime, I started shaking the components of the special paint.

All went well until I stopped the line. I noticed that the pieces were wet. A quick check revealed that while Dave had started up the new line wash tanks, he hadn't started the dry-off oven. So I had to fire that up, reverse the line, and get the pieces dried off. That imposed quite a delay, as the line only runs at half speed when running backwards.

More fun occured when we actually mixed the paint. Three gallons of part A, check. One gallon of part B, check. Two-and-a-half quarts of methyl amyl ketone, oops. We had one quart, and found some more after a bit of frantic searching. Basically, we had every problem you could have, from speed faults to flow problems. In the end, we painted over what we managed to get on to the pieces with regular paint. I told Dave that next time, if it was only 30 or so pieces, that we should mix our paint, drop it into a hand paint pot, and hand paint the stuff in the fab shop, on account of it being quicker and easier. He seemed to think it was a good idea.

Painting

2009-07-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

Painting may pay well, but it is a dirty job, let me tell you. I got a brand new pair of safety glasses yesterday (to protect my real glasses from overspray). By the end of the shift tonight they had so much paint on them that I had to take them off to read the display on the paint controller. Not only that, but my clothes were tinted grey, as was my face except for where my safety glasses covered it. We ran both lines for a while, so I also got a nice headache from solvent and paint fumes. The paintroom, needless to say, is not nearly as well ventilated as it could be. In fact, Denny told me the other day that when my place of employment did an air quality test in the paintroom, they did it by an open door down at the far end of bake ovens (pretty much as far from the paintbooths as possible) on a day they didn't paint. Heh.

Fun with Microsoft

2009-07-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (or maybe the day before) the little yellow shield icon that means updates are available for my computer popped up, asking if I wanted to install them now. Figuring it could hurt to take a look, I clicked the icon. Up popped a window saying that Internet Explorer 8.0 was available for installation, and asking if I would like to upgrade. Figuring that I'd have to eventually, I said, "Sure, why not?" Silly me.

The program commenced to download itself, then ran a scan for malicious software, and a second scan for something else (don't remember what) and then installed itself. Only after all of this was done did it bother to mention that, "Oh, hey. This one add-on that you installed to IE 7 is incompatible with IE 8 and may cause it to crash." Oh great!

It did, however, offer me two options: run IE 8 with the add-on (not recommended), and run IE 8 without the add-on (less not recommended, but not by much). I picked 'run without the add-on'. IE 8 started...and promptly crashed. I wrestled with the problem until I had to go to work, and then some more after I got home, to no avail. It seems that when IE 8 was installed, so was something else called a 'data execution prevention' program designed to protect my computer from suspicious programs and other code. This was what was preventing IE 8 from running. apparently Microsoft's own programs don't recognise or trust one another. How ironic is that?

Since I'm posting this, you can tell I solved the problem. I uninstalled IE 8 and my system reverted back to IE 7. Now everything works fine. That pesky DEP program is still lurking about, but if it tries to block a program, I just tell it to allow it, and things are fine from then on. Odd thing is, no matter how many times I told DEP to allow IE 8, it wouldn't. More irony for ya.

Two to three days to go...

2009-06-30T09:26:00.001-07:00

I've been learning how to run the paint room at my place of employment. I've had three and a half days of training so far, the half day not really counting since Denny, the regular painter, didn't come in that day. It was a Saturday, and Dave the lead told Denny that since we (2nd shift) wouldn't be painting, that Denny didn't have make the thirty mile trip to work.

Yesterday (Monday) went fine. We only work four days this week, because of the 4th, and one of those days may see me at the desk instead of in the paintroom, as Dave is trying to get Thursday off, and Mike his assistant will likely need my help. That means I have two or three days of training left before I'm on my own next week. I'm a little nervous, but I think I'll do alright. After all, Dave knows a bit about painting too, certainly more than I do, and I can always fall back on him at need.

Gonna be interesting no matter what.

Still tired, but not quite so much.

2009-06-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to bed at 3 a.m., and again lay awake until 5 a.m. I believe that was a continuous stretch of wakefulness, though I may have dozed off briefly, or at least been on the threshold of sleep a few times. I recall a number of what might be called 'waking dreams' since I seemed to see my room as a background to whatever was unfolding in my head.

Around 5 a.m. I did go to sleep. I slept more or less straight through to 11 a.m. when my alarms went off. I reset them for noon, flopped back into bed, and what seemed like mere seconds later the alarms went off again. I decided to stay up, although I'm sure I could have slept for a couple more hours.

My ultimate goal is to set a consistant sleep period for myself, probably 2-10 a.m. That way no matter how late I have to work (as late as 12:30 a.m. some nights, and maybe later depending on what job I'm doing that night) I'll have an hour and a bit to take care of things at home before I sleep.

Tired. So tired.

2009-06-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

I hardly got any sleep last night. I had awakened about noon Saturday, as I had to be at work by 1 p.m. After working just three and a half hours (I had to help strip and re-plastic and paper the paint booths) I went home and puttered around. About midnight I was yawning constantlt, and probably should have gone to bed right then. Instead I stayed up 'til 4 a.m. When I did go to be, I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned until 5 a.m., and noticed that the sky was starting to get light. I seem to have dropped off sometime after that, because I remember some dreams, but I must have been awake as often as I was asleep. At 9 a.m. my neighbor to the immediate west started mowing his lawn (actually it was his wife, accoeding to Chris, who came over at 9:30 to do some laundry). At 10:15 my alarm clock went off.

After Sunday dinner at the 'rents house, I went straight home and back to bed, and actually got about three hours of decent sleep. My plan now is to stay up until 1 or 2 a.m. and try again for a good night's rest. I have a feeling I'll sleep better. Last night, I took a B-complex vitamin with my supper (around 11 p.m.) and it may have had something to do with my sleeplessness. I know B vitamins are used in various energy drinks, and the supplement I took contained between 100% and 1000% of the USRDA of five of the B vitamins (though not B-12 for some reason). Why they didn't make it 100% straight across the board I don't know. Anyway, no more taking B vitamins right before bed.

Painting

2009-06-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

Painting is interesting. It has two, and only two, extremes. It's either really boring, or really exciting. I can do it, but at first taste I don't like it much. On the other hand, I have at least six more days to learn the nuances. The biggest downside is that the paintroom is poorly ventilated. Between the fumes (methyl ethyl ketone, anyone?) and the heat (90 degrees last night), wooo....

A new opportunity...

2009-06-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow I'll have been or will be doing my old job at work. This is because Mike, the 2nd shift lead picker, took yesterday and is taking today off, while Dave, the 2nd shift paintline lead, is taking Wednesday off. But that isn't important.

What is, is that as of Thursday, I'll be learning how to run the paint system. That's a six rate job, and one I've been interested in learning for a good while. I'll have seven whole days to master it before Denny, the regular painter, goes on vacation for a week. Gonna be fun.

At least the money's good...

2009-06-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Sixteen hours of OT this week. Probably at least five next week. Gonna be a sweet payday, but OT sucks. We have a lot of OT whores at my place of employment, but I ain't one of them. We get volunteers to work extra hours, and every time I'm thinking, "What is wrong with you?" I'd volunteer to not come in, so somebody who wanted the OT could have it.

On the upside, I'll be doing my old job two days next week, as Mike is taking Monday off, and Dave is off Wednesday. Three Lead rate=sweet! Plus, it beats working. I'll be using my brain instead of my muscles, always a good thing.

Rather odd...

2009-06-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

I recieved two checks in the mail today. They are for identical amounts ($27.68), and are from the claims administration center for an FTC lawsuit against some company I've never heard of, for bogus billing of credit and debit cards for website visits that never took place. Thing is, the case was settled almost nine years ago, according to the FTC website. Maybe it has been under appeal until now. Who knows? I have no recollection of being asked to become a party to this lawsuit, or to file a claim against the defendants. I also have no idea how the FTC determined that I was one of the people who was robbed. I'm actually a little leery of cashing the checks, even though everything seems to be legitimate.

Eh, I'll probably cash them anyway.

Dryer vents...

2009-06-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

I redid the vent for my dryer last weekend. My dryer hadn't been working very well of late, so I figured the vent must have had a lot of lint in it. Also, part of the vent duct work was a length of wire reinforced flexible plastic: not really acceptable in such an application, but one that I had been too lazy to do anything about.

The job turned out to be more work than I expected, since the layout of the laundry room is such that the dryer is set against an interior wall, rather than an exterior wall. As a result, the vent pipe must make an immediate 90 degree turn. It then rises at an angle for two or three feet, passes through the wall of the house into the garage, make another 90 degree turn, and passes through the front wall of the garage into open air. On top of that whoever installed the vent originally cut their holes in the house and garage walls off center from each other, cut through a wall stud, and put the vent pipe right next to the gas line coming into the house. In fact the original holes overlapped the gas pipe by a quarter inch or so, hence the plastic duct: metal wouldn't have fit.

Naturally, the vent was plugged with lint where it passed through the wall, and I had to resize the holes to get my new, metal ductwork to fit through. So basically, what I thought would be a fifteen minute job, took about two hours.

No more 3rd shift

2009-06-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

3rd shift paintline has been eliminated at my place of employment. The people from 3rd are being redistributed amongst 1st and 2nd shift paintlines, and some are taking jobs in manufacturing. Also, effective Monday, we're going to nine hour days on the paintline. Yay!

I can't figure it. Incoming orders are bouncing all over the place: one day it's seventy-five hundred (low), the next is ten thousand (still low, normal being around fifteen thousand), but the runs don't seem to be getting any smaller. The numero uno honcho keeps yapping about how 'complex' the incoming orders are, but he also keeps laying off skilled employees just when we're about to catch up to where we need to be. It's like he thrives on being in 'crisis management mode'. I find that annoying.

Off to 2nd shift

2009-06-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight, or rather this afternoon, I start on 2nd shift. I'm kind of looking forward to it. I do enjoy the hours, that's for sure. Last night I went to bed at 12:30 a.m., and woke up this morning at 8:30 a.m., without the need of an alarm clock. I also slept nearly straight through the night, as opposed to waking up ever hour or two for whatever reason.

As a consequence of getting up at 8:30 I was able to go to the grocery store, cook two different things (horseradish brats and jambalaya), and do the dishes afterwards. I even tidied up my computer room a bit. I may do even more cleaning this morning, since as of this writing I have over two hours until I need to get ready to go to work.

D-Day

2009-06-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama really needs to study history before he makes statements about stuff he doesn't understand. He called , or indicacated, in a speech, that the Allied victory on D-Day (6 June 1944) was century altering or some kind of miracle. Here's how it really shakes out: Germany was doomed the very day Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States, forcing Congress to answer him in kind. Same for Italy. Il Duce declared war on the U.S. after Hitler did, for the same reason: because their Axis ally, Japan, had foolishly attacked the United States on December 7th, 1941, instead of limiting themselves to British, French, and Dutch colonies.

According to Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" as quoted on Combined Fleet's economic sub page, this is how global warmaking potential added up:

% of Total Warmaking Potential
United States 41.7%
Germany 14.4%
USSR 14.0%
UK 10.2%
France 4.2%
Japan 3.5%
Italy 2.5%
Seven Powers (total)
(90.5%)

As you can no doubt see, Germany never stood the slightest chance of winning WW2 after she declared war on the U.S. D-Day wasn't a miracle, it was a statistical inevitability.

Cheap meat

2009-06-03T05:55:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, while shopping at Hy-Vee, I noticed a cooler full of steaks priced around $2.50 each. They were chuck steaks, and even though I knew they weren't the best cut around, I bought one and grilled it when I got home. That steak was one of the toughest, chewiest steaks I've ever had.

Well, today I was at Hy-Vee again, and passed the cooler again. I said to myself, "if I tenderise it enough, it might be okay." So I bought another one. Then, since I knew I didn't have a tenderiser, in addition to my cheap steak, I bought a cheap Chinese made tenderiser.

Arriving home, I proceded to pound that chuck steak until it was half its original thickness and spread out over most of my cutting board. I seasoned it, folded it in half, pinned it together with a few toothpicks, and threw that sucker on the grill.

Turns out I didn't pound on it quite enough, but it was much more tender than its predessor. Since I like steak, I may switch to chuck steaks. After all, porterhouses and filet mignon are expensive (three to five times as much as a chuck steak).

Neighbor's tree

2009-05-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

My neighbor to the west has a huge maple tree in his back yard. I should clarify that this particular neighbor is only the current one; three or four families have lived in that house since I moved into mine.

Anyway, for years this maple more resembled a giant bush than a tree. The current neighbor actually had it trimmed earlier this year, and it is much more "tree-ish" in appearance. But something is wrong with it. Earlier this week its leaves started turning black and coming off in droves. I have no idea what the problem is. Can trees die of old age? What is the normal lifespan of whatever sort of maple tree that is? Will my own maple tree catch whatever this one has got?

So many questions, so few answers.

Work

2009-05-29T15:59:00.000-07:00

Today I was told how valuable my knowledge base was to my current employer, right before they took my lead job away. That's right, my position has been eliminated. I can bump people with less seniority and lower pay rates, and my foreman has promised a list of less senior people and their jobs for me to consider. Talk about stupid managment practice and false economy. They think paying me a dollar less an hour is going to make a difference in their bottom line? How about the loss of productivity? What's that going to cost?

Ouch!

2009-05-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

I've really taken a hit (on paper) when it comes to my various investments. On 1 Apr '08, they had a combined total value of $99,915.66. Today (23 May '09) they are worth $78,248.33. Only the cash value of my life insurance policy and my active work retirement account went up in value. Oh well, at least I know this only a paper loss, and that they can and will come back (eventually). It's like I tell people at work: this is a buying opportunity.

I despise cell phones

2009-05-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

I hate cell phones. I know a lot of people swear by them, and some claim they couldn't live without one, but to me they are a pain in the ass. I say this because I just reactivated my cell phone for my forthcoming trip to northern Minnesota, specifically for when I meet Chris at the Minneapolis airport. The reactivation process involved punching a bunch of codes, five or six I think, that were all twenty or more numbers long. When that was done, the stupid phone didn't work. Every time I tried calling someone I got a collect calling service of some sort. This morning I had to log onto the TracFone website, where I learned that I had to punch in even more codes to install some kind of update. Well, the thing works now, for what it's worth. I can't help but compare it negatively to land line phones. You plug those in, and they work, period. No codes, no updates, no nothing. They even work when the power goes out.

Lita Ford

2009-05-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Lita Ford is coming out with a new album, after fifteen years.

Rock goddess forever!

Yeah, I'm a metalhead.

The Lottery/Gambling

2009-05-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to play the lottery. I almost never win, and when I do, it is invariably the smallest prize possible. And yet other people seem to win fairly regularly. Nothing huge, of course, but often a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. Oh well, I probably don't gamble near as much as they do.

Then there are casinos. It is a twenty minute drive to the nearest casino, and I've been there maybe three times since it opened. Some people go there every weekend and play the slots for hours. I can think of few things as boring as sitting in front of a slot machine, pushing the 'play' button over and over again while the machine slowly (or in my case quickly) takes all of my money.

I used to enjoy playing blackjack, and even managed to walk out of a casino with more money than I went in with, once. But at the times of day that I can go, the tables are mostly empty, and blackjack just isn't as much fun if the table isn't full. Same goes for roulette. If the table doesn't have a big crowd around it, the game becomes an even more blatant exercise in separating me from my money as efficiently as possible.

So I just don't see the appeal. I could blow a couple thousand dollars in a few hours at a casino. I took $3000.00 in cash with me to New York, and in a week I didn't manage to spend all of it, even counting my share of the hotel, theater and baseball tickets, and the fact that I bought all of the meals. If you're going to blow a big wad of cash, do it while doing something worth remembering.

Gay Marriage

2009-05-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

I'm amused by this whole 'gay marriage' thing that's going on in Iowa right now. I've long thought that gay marriage should be legalized. Not because I'm a big gay rights activist, but because I just don't care. Who consenting adults chose to love and spend their lives with is nobody's business but their own; not mine, and certainly not the State's. I can see the State having an interest in marriage, but only to the degree of dividing assets in case of divorce, and looking after the welfare of minor children.

In fact, I've long held that gay marriage should be legal, just for the extra revenue: every license sold is another $30 or more in the State's coffers. Heck, if you want more than wife or husband, go for it. Cha-ching!

Seriously though, this 'controversy' will fade eventually, and people will get used to gay marriage. White people got used to sitting at the same lunch counter with Negros, men got used to women having the right to vote, and all of America's religious sects (well, most of them, same goes for the others) got used to living in peace with people who held different beliefs. People will get used to gay marriage.

Seeing the unexpected, again!

2009-05-11T06:12:00.001-07:00

I got home from work this morning, put out the trash, and made some soup. When the soup was simmering away, I when to Hy-Vee to get a few things I'd forgotten the last time I was there (must...have...coffee!). When I got home, two crows had my garbage bad torn open and were rummaging through it. Now I've heard of dogs, cats, and raccoons getting into the trash. Heck, I've heard of bears doing it. Granted, I've seen birds picking over trash piles at landfills, but I had never seen one go after a garbage bag before.

Double Takes, or What Were They Thinking

2009-05-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today in Hy-Vee I stopped in the steak sauce section to pick up a bottle of Heinz 57 sauce. When there, I paused to peruse the other sauces, just in case I wanted to try something different. There were quite a few to choose from, including a version of H57 'spiked', if you will, with Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce. Big deal, right? Cross-branding happens all the time.

Thing is, just down the shelf a bit were bottles of Heinz worcestershire sauce. And Lea & Perrins isn't a Heinz subsidiary. So why was Heinz adding a competitor's product to their own? Isn't that like competing against themselves? Frankly, the A1 spiked with Tabasco sauce makes more sense.

On a very slightly related note, while at Hy-Vee I purchased twelve cans of food to set out for the hungry tomorrow.

That's a big dog..not!

2009-05-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

I was walikng Max this morning when we approached a house a block south of me that had a new fence around its yard. That's not unusual: people put fences up all the time, for whatever reason. This was a chain-link fence, again not unusual, except that this one is about five feet high, rather than the usual three.

As we got closer, I caught a glimpse of a fair sized critter through the links, and thought, "That's a big dog." But I was wrong. it wasn't a big dog, it was a small horse! A pony, to be exact. It was just standing in the yard, nibbling the grass. I was a bit surprised, and wondered if keeping a pony in town was legal. But it must be, else the people who own it wouldn't have spent all that money. I know keeping 'livestock' in town is illegal, but ponies probably don't fall under that catagory. I might have to look into this, as my curiousity is piqued.

Brats and Onions

2009-05-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

I like bratwurst. I also like onions. I especially like onions on my bratwurst. It turns out, however, that I don't like onions in my bratwurst. See, a few days ago I picked up some green onion brats from my local Hy-Vee. It was a kind I hadn't seen before (bacon brats, pineapple brats, jalepeneo brats) and I said, "Hey, I like green onions!"

I do like green onions. But not in bratwurst. They just taste...weird. Wrong, almost. I don't understand it, and I can't explain it, but...ew!

Did I really see that?

2009-05-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday, 3 may, 2009. It is 10:40 a.m., and I am driving west on 12th St. NE, on my way to pick Chris up for Sunday dinner at the 'rents. 12th St. NE is crossed by a viaduct carrying a long abandoned railroad. How long abandoned? Twenty or thirty years, judging by the trees growing on the right-of-way. The bridge itself is largely free of vegetation, except for grass and a few small trees. It was there that I saw a man walking south along the railroad.

That in and of itself isn't strange: I've seen a lot of people on that bridge over the years, and even been there myself. What made this weird was, the dude was carrying a canoe. Yeah, I said canoe. Not a full sized one, mind: this one looked to be about half the normal size. But the shape was unmistakable. It was a freaking canoe.

Drugs ain't cheap...

2009-04-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

They say the cost of prescription drugs is spiralling out of control, and after today I have to agree. I just bought Max nine, count 'em nine, combination flea and heartworm pills, for which I paid the low price of $104.16. That's $11.57 apiece. And I thought my allergy pills were pricy at $2.50 each.

The funny thing is, when I commented that I remembered this particular brand costing much less in the past, she claimed it had always been expensive. Maybe compared to other meds, but I'm sure that a decade ago I paid less than $50 (and possibly $40) for the same number of pills.

Perhaps I should organize a march on Washington...

Surprised?

2009-04-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

I suppose it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, but expoxy-resin doesn't keep indefinitely. I learned this today when I went to repair my recycling bin, which has a large crack in one corner that runs almost all the way from the top to the bottom. I dug a who knows how many years old epoxy-resin kit out of my junk drawer, and while one of the two components was still liquidy enough to dispense, the other was solid as could be. So I shall have to make a trip to the hardware store and get some more. If things hold true, I'll use it once before it solidifies too.

Random Observations

2009-04-20T05:28:00.001-07:00

Spring: make up your mind already, would ya? Seriously, one day it's nice, the next is cold and dreary. I've had enough of cold and dreary for the time being. Bring on the steady pleasant weather.

Dr. Pepper: Is the world ready for cherry flavored Dr. Pepper? Does the world even need cherry flavored Dr. Pepper? The people who make Dr. Pepper seem to think so, if the signs in Hy-Vee touting its roll-out are to be believed. Now, I have never been a big Dr. Pepper fan. I can't remember the last time I had so much as a sip, if ever, but my impression is that it tasted moderately aweful. I doubt adding cherry flavor will change that.

KFC: I tried their new grilled chicken, and I wasn't impressed. It wasn't bad, but it was nothing special, either. Mostly it didn't taste like the eleven herbs and spices. I know that is because there isn't nearly as much fat present to act as a flavor carrier, but you can't tell me that KFC's research kitchen couldn't have done better than this.

Takin' out the trash: I cleaned a bit on Friday, after work. This morning I lugged a contractor sized bag of junk out to the curb, along with a recycling bin heaped to overflowing. Chris came over in the afternoon and reacted thusly: "Holy @#$%, it's almost clean!" I still have a lot of work to do, but I intend to put my house in proper order this spring.

One last thing: does anyone know if it is possible to recycle a comforter made entirely of synthetic materials? Mine is falling apart, and I'd like to dispose of it properly, rather than have it take up space in the landfill.

14 April 2009

2009-04-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

My accomplishments for today include taking Pops to the airport for his flight to Arizona, and filing my income tax returns.

To be honest, Pops drove up to the airport, I just brought his car back home. It was an interesting trip up. We saw a lot of highway patrol types, especially in Minnesota. Two cars had a fancy looking luxury car pulled over, with the driver and passenger standing away from it while officers examined in. They were looking into the whell wells as we drove by. A little farther on we crested a low hill to find another highway patrol car sitting on one of those 'turn around' things that let you cross the median. He didn't have radar on, so I figured he must have been a 'blocker' in case the fancy car didn't stop when the other two started chasing it. Farther on yet, three SUV's in highway patrol livery were parked in a weigh station along the northbound lane. I found out what they were up to on my way back from the airport: sometime after we passed them headed north, they crossed over to the southbound side and opened the weight station there. There were a good many trucks lined up to be weighed, and some that had pulled around to the rear area of the station. One truck even had its hood open, for whatever reason.

Once back in Iowa I saw a highway patrol car heading north as I was going south, and after I dropped off Dad's car, as I was leaving Clear Lake, a deputy sheriff had somebody stopped in the westbound lane of Highway 122. A busy day for law enforcement.

On the matter of income tax, I love filing electronically. I use an online service called TaxSlayer. Chris introduced me to it some years ago. It is easy to use, and much better than filling out a bunch of paper forms. I haven't got a response yet as to whether either the federal or state filing has been accepted, but that will likely happen tomorrow, as I only filed this afternoon. The best part from my perspective is that between the two, I owe a whopping $70.00! Woot!

I'm a poser.

2009-04-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

Who knew it, but Tex was right. I'm a fake, a fraud, a wanna-be. Just what is this all about, you ask? I'll tell you.

Some years ago, I was in Des Moines with some friends, and we went to dinner at a Japanese steak house. I ordered the shrimp and filet, that is: six or eight shrimp and a four ounce piece of filet mignon. When our chef arrived, he turned out not to be Japanese, or even asian. He was a six foot white guy who introduced himself as 'Tex'. White or not, Tex knew the drill as far as his job was concerned. He pulled of all the moves and had plenty of jokes for our amusement.

Upon his arrival, Tex went around the table, asking for the particulars of how people wanted their orders cooked. When he got to me, Tex asked, "How do you want your filet?"

I answered, "Rare," since it is a sin to overcook a steak.

Tex followed up with, "Do you want it warm or cool?"

I said, "Warm," and he sneered, "Poser." It was joke, of course, and we all laughed. But I have and do know people who like 'cool'.

I, on the other hand, purchased a few days ago a piece of filet mignon (it was on sale) and cooked it up yesterday. I gave it five minutes on one side, four on the other, and commenced to eat it. The filet was much thicker than a normal steak, and nine minutes turned out to be not quite enough. It was cool in the center, and I didn't like it one bit. It wasn't so much a matter of taste, as it was of texture. Beef that is, for want of a better word, raw, just doesn't feel the same as beef that is cooked, no matter how lightly.

I had to microwave it for a minute, to make it edible.

I'm a poser.

Temp pallets and more temp pallets...

2009-04-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

Last night while painting the current run, 2nd shift hit temps. That's what happens when our rather quirky computer allocation system thinks that there isn't enough room in the bins for all the pieces. Exactly how the computer decides that, I don't know, but when it does it starts assigning rail to, for example, Tmp A001, or Tmp C002, or Pallet 12, and so on. Normally this isn't a big problem. We have a 'temp rack' about twelve feet long that is usually more than adequate for any temps we get on a run.

Not tonight. To be fair, 1st were the ones who actually started hitting temps. They were up to around Tmp A030 by the time their shift ended. 2nd painted for eight hours. we didn't paint one stick of product. But by the time we had the line emptied (around midnight) we were up to Tmp A503! There were, by my count, at least sixty-six temp pallets on the floor, spread from one end of the paintline to the other (and beyond). That's more temp pallets than I have ever seen in all the time I've worked at my current place of employment. There must have been two thousand rails and heads on pallets.

This, of course, is a disaster. Pickers are normally expected to get around seventy pieces per hour, or about 490 in a shift. There were six of us picking (including me for four hours) and we all got about half of the normal amount. Why? Because we literally had to hunt all over for our pieces.

The kicker came when 1st shift started showing up in the morning. Jeff L., my 1st shift counterpart, was stunned when I described the extent of what had happened. We had rails and heads propped up along the Fab Shop wall, pallets blocking some of its exit openings (it has six or seven), and the area where Fab stages welded frames was full of temp pallets. Jeff S., the 1st shift Fab lead (who thinks he's some kind of God, given the way he acts) about burst a blood vessel when he saw it. And by the time he showed up the situation was much improved from the beginning of the night.

Theoretically we should finish two runs every 24 hours: the regular daily run, and the quick ship run. Well, the daily run we should have finished this morning, we'll be lucky if 2nd has it done by the time we come in again tonight. And the quick ship run that is supposed to ship by noon today? I told my foreman, after I saw all those temps, that it wasn't going to happen. I also told him there was no way in Hell we could indulge his fantasy of painting after second break.

At least he listened to me about that.

What a day.

2009-04-01T07:11:00.001-07:00

Work kinda sucked last night. It got off to a bad start when I arrived at my place of employment and discovered that I had left my thermos of coffee at home. Much worse than that was the two hundred and fifty KD's of enamel that had to be taken down off the new line. Enamel sucks becuase it has to be handled with kid gloves: each three sided frame has to be carefully wrapped in strips of foam and boxed up, so as to protect the finish. As such, it takes forever to take down. Normally, three sided frames come off the line at the rate of four every minute. With enamel you're lucky if you can go half that fast, and I wasn't lucky: I was the only person on the crew who knew what they were doing, which meant training everyone else. That took a bit, but once they settled in things sped up. After all, takedown, even when it is enamel, isn't rocket science (though some people seem to think it is).

In other news, it snowed a bit this morning. Just a dusting, and it'll be gone by noon, since the high today is supposed to be forty-five degrees. I also had the pleasure of renewing my license plate for another year. Good thing both my vehicles are old enough that I pay the minimum fee ($35.00 each).

Off to bed now.

HMAS Sydney II

2009-03-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I talked a bit about various conspiracy theories regarding the loss of the HMAS Sydney II. Today I want to talk about the real reasons for her loss. Australian naval experts have studied the video and still imagry taken of the Sydney and have concluded that she was hit at least eighty-seven times by shells equivalent to those of her own main armament, plus a single torpedo hit in the bows.

Back in the nineteen twenties and thirties, warship designers used some called 'immune zone theory' to lay out the armor scheme for any given ship. That armor had three important components: the belt, which protected the sides of the ship; the armored deck, which protected against bombs and plunging shells; and the fore and aft traverse bulkheads, which protected against raking fire. If the belt armor was thick enough to stop (nominally) level fire at eight thousand yards or more, and the deck could stop plunging fire up to sixteen thousand yards, the ship would have an 'immune zone' eight thousand yards wide, in which she was theoretically immune to incoming fire. Of course, this fire was typically assumed to be from said ship's own guns, which meant that against an enemy armed with guns of the same caliber, a given ship might have a wider, or narrower, or no immune zone at all.

The kicker is that the engagement between Sydney and Kormoran took place at fifteen hundred yards or less: point blank range. At such a short range, Sydney's armor would have been almost useless, as indeed it turned out. Of the eighty-seven known hits, only twelve were defeated by Sydney's armor.

By way of comparison, the German battlecruiser Lutzow sank on her way home from the Battle of Jutland in 1916 after taking just twenty-four hits from guns comparable to her own. Her sisters Seydlitz and Derrflinger survived similar poundings, but only just. In 1942 the Japanese battleship Kirishima sank after being hit by just nine 16" shells from the USS Washington (though admittedly, Washington was brand new, while Kirishima was twenty-seven years old).

The point, of course, is that Sydney sustained an amount of damage, from from a comparably armed vessel, that no warship could have survived.