Faire 2008-10-26

Work was nuts Friday. Isn't it nuts every day? I'm not sure. I block it out when I go home and recall it when I get back to work. I find that things go more smoothly doing this. I took off early Friday afternoon. I had worked some extra and no one was really waiting on more for things. All my test boxes had been stolen by people. The one thing I was working on had hours of work left on it before I got to a good place. So, I took off.

Nat and I showed up Friday evening to a new and disproved camp site. Only the large was there and a bunch of land pimples. We ended up in Diz's tent. We need a new tent I think. Several pieces to it are missing. The large was not in it's normal place. We were just to the East. It threw off the entire weekend. Fair started implementing an old rule that requires people to show their tickets before being aloud to camp. It was a bit annoying,  but worth it. It keeps some of the carloads of people looking for drugs and to steel shit out of the campsites. Well, or the most part.

Friday Evening

We set up. I walked around the grounds once. We ate a bite from somewhere. The rest of the evening is a blur. People came in and out of the tent. We had some great talks of thing that have happened and some things that need to happen. Plans for next season, next week, next day. All blurred together. It was great.

Saturday

I ended up not warring garb. I still had a ball. I'm tired of warring the same outfit every time. I need to get some more cloths. nothing outlandish. Just some variety.

Went in Took a million pictures. Ken, Johny and Breanne were messing with people big time. Johny and Ken would round around and kidnap women from their group and ransom them off to th\e crowd. It was all in fun. Most every one took it in stride with a smile. Couple of serious concerned faces. Goodness it was fun.

Monica, Nat's mom, caught me and said hi for part of the two hours she gets to enjoy all of Faire. She works and only gets some time off while the haunted house retools for the more adult oriented show on the latter half of Halloween weekend. I feel quite important.

Saturday evening Was Friday evening all over again. The drum play outside the large attracted some jerks, but they were dealt with. More great conversations. My blog came up in conversation. Love that. We laughed at the pictures we all took.

Sunday

Fell out of bed. Declared that I was not going in, nor was I going to hurry taring down camp. I sat around, ate breakfast, got the car packed, was ready to snooze the afternoon away, and a bunch of friends of mine showed up at Faire and wanted to go play. So, I went in waring regular cloths for the second day in a row. There is a reason I do not go in on Sundays. I get tired quickly and basically waste a ticket. That happened again today except I did have fun with some work buddies. No pictures. Remember, I had packed the car already.

We went back to camp and entertained the neighboring group while tarring down the Large. We had more fun today than we have ever had before in my experience taking down a tent. We laughed and made references to cartoons and music. We told stories of past adventures among the group.

Pictures

Link to the whole batch

Off to bed. Showered and clean. Now we pass out and deal with the means of paying for Faire.

Shopping Carts

I always wondered how the shopping carts got so messed up. I mean, they are tubular framed cages for god's sake.

Very Local News

• Web 2.0 is dead. Long live Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the whole blog, or user content driven area of the internet. It is dead because most every place you go on the net has incorporated some sort of user interaction because it works for getting people to turn back up.
  
• Russia, Iran and some other asshole countries are joining to gather in an OPEC-esk company full of assholes. We need to declare ware on OPEC and frigging take the oil. Ware for oil!!! War for oil!!!
• It has been seven years since the first iPod came out.
• One of the commenters said something I like on one of the podcasts today. If a company is too big to fail then it is too big to exist. it needs to be broken up. If we bail them out and let them merge, they will just get bigger and even harder to let fail. I like it.
• Parking garage Map. This one is the first floor map with all the entrances and exits.
  
  
• Parking garage Map. This one is the rest of the floors. Taken from the sixth floor. There must be laws that require thes things.
  
  
• South side map
  
  
• North side map
  
  
• Natalie (from work) brought her little one up to work for a little show and tell. Cute little guy.
  
  
• Broken revolving door. The baring was going out and the door was getting harder and harder to push.
  
  
• Swamp next to work. Every time it rains this thing fills up and stinks. It is a mosqueto trap as well.
  
  
• There is no map for the seventh floor of the parking garage. The elevator only goes up to six.
  

Shoot! SHOOT!!!

These have got to be contractors. The radio chatter just doesn't sound military enough. The names at the end are a bit hinky as well.

I remember some 100% civilian member of congress giving some person who represented Halliburton a trainload of shit about abandoning a truck that had a flat tire. Well, here is why you just might want to abandon a vehicle with a flat tire in a combat zone.

Very Local News

• The new kind of contact fluid works wonders. Too bad it is so frigging expensive.  I mean, it is like warring a new pare of contacts every day.
• OPEC is about to close the spigot a notch or two to prop up the price of oil. These people are not our friends. They are our competitors and we need to start treating them like revels. We can call allies, but every one knows we are all at each other's throats.
• The stock market plummets, gloom and doom. The stock market jumps, cushions optimism. The surprise will be a flat day.
• The powers that be are finally take more than the cost of food in to the poverty level. They will take in to account pharmaceuticals, school, transportation, rent and goodness knows what else.  The feds may not play along. Cities and states are getting in to the act. Who knows what will come of it.
• I have a buddy who is a prison guard here in Texas. Due to a recent incident where an unscrupulous guard obtained a cell phone for a prisoner who then threatened a state representative, there is a move on to make prison guards pat each other down on their way to work. ... I can just see my friend (Chris) having to perform this task. He will perform it professionally and with every consideration for security and privacy possible. I will giggle and point.
• Zero tolerance for contraband ... in prison ... on death row. I guess it depends on your definition of 'zero'. It is a bit vague. If I draw a zero on something will it be tolerated?
• Legacy Media is worried that Obama will not have enough time to spend all the money he has collected.
• Timothy Leery died of prostate cancer and had his ashes shot in to orbit.
• There is a to-do about McCain using come copy write protected material to prove a point.  YouTube took the video down,  but it is fair use. The story is about any threat of lawsuit causes material to be taken down. I can't blame ISPs to be honest. The story they gave was of a guy who had his own self created music on his own site having to fight an ISP to let him show it on the internet because he didn't have a lawyer to prove he owned the rights. Innocent until proven guilty does not apply to intellectual property.
• Winter is on the way. Tonight some rain storms will come through and bring with them some cooler air. Maybe very cold air for Faire. need to get my jacket ready.
• I am beyond sick of the election crap. Ads all over TV and the radio. Then you watch the news and they sit there and bitch about the ads and play them again. I'm sick of it. it is up to me to decide. I will make the decision five seconds before dropping the paper or clicking save or what ever the mechanism is when I get there.
• Got Windows XP running on my work Linux box using VMware. it works pretty well. It works so well that I'm having the exact same network issues on the virtual machine that I have on my real Windows box under my desk. Way to be accurate VMware. don't worry, all this is above board. Some of our customers use VMware. We need to know how it works with our stuff before they start asking heavy questions.
• Science Friday had a whole show illustrating how to convince skeptics that global warming really exists and that humans are at the root of it. The intro was all about "Why do people believe celebrities over scientists."  Things change. The Romans grew olive trees in England. Hey, it is almost a break from election stuff. It sounds a bit like they deliberately said "No references to the U. S. election."
• Streptomycin, the primary drug used against Tuberculosis, was discovered like many other antibiotics in dirt.
• Just thought I would snap this on the way through McDonalds drive through.
  

So tired

Came home, ate and tried to find some stuff I'm going to need for work. I got basically nothing done. I might have mowed or done something constructive. I can't keep my eyes open.

Story at Teatime

A motorcyclist who posted footage of himself on YouTube performing "lunatic and grossly irresponsible manoeuvres" at up to 130mph was today jailed today.

Sandor Ferenci, 28, performed wheelies, skids and raced on the opposite side of the road around Banbury, Oxfordshire, and then put the footage on the video-sharing website.

Ferenci, a carer, then inadvertently spilt the beans to police ab More..out the YouTube footage after being reported by a member of the public who saw him performing wheelies and other stunts on his Yamaha R6 bike on the A422 Banbury to Brackley road on June 10 this year.

When officers called at his home after the complaint, and before they had a chance to say anything to him, Ferenci asked them: \u201cIs this about the YouTube video?\u201d Police then discovered that he had posted the video clips of himself on the internet.

The footage, which was played to the court, had been filmed by a friend from various angles including from a footbridge. It shows the bike performing wheelies, wheelspins and skids, causing the tyres to smoke, the bike undertaking other vehicles and driving at excessive speed.

Brian Payne, prosecuting, said it was impossible to attribute an exact speed at which Ferenci was driving, but police have estimated he may have reached up to 130mph.

Judge Terence Maher - disqualifying Ferenci from driving for two years at Oxford Crown Court and ordering him to take an extended driving test before he is allowed on the road again - told Ferenci that he had carried out \u201clunatic and grossly irresponsible manoeuvres at considerable speed\u201d.

Sgt Bryan Smith, of Thames Valley Police, said: "It's important to qualify that we are talking about public roads and they are there as a transport network, not a race track or show ground.

"It's incredibly dangerous. A trophy video has been used on the internet and it could incite other road users to behave in the same way."

LiveLeak

We spoke of this video today at teatime. The big boss brought it up. Hope it's the correct video. It lead to a brief mention of the blog and a long discussion of jerks who have no regard for human life.

Hole

 

This hole is on the north of Westheimer. I cross the street now to avoid the mud pit that is a construction area that will soon be a set of apartments. I tried to use my walking stick as a scale. I have no idea what is in the hole so I could have electrocuted myself in the third picture. Didn't Think of that until I saw the picture. The first picture will tell you how frigging dark it is early in the morning. The cover is next to the hole. I tried picking it up to move it, but it is either heavy or the grass is holding it in place. This thing is right next to the road, but hard to spot unless you are looking for it. Imagine if a hole like this were in the middle of the road. It would be fixed in fifteen minutes.

I am going to forget about this hole at some point and break my neck. I just know it.

Watched Hopscotch

I forgot how good a movie Hopscotch is. It was made in 1980. It was all cloak and daggers then. Now it is all bits and bites. There was something so much more romantic about the old way of spying. That is why most new movies about spying are about the good old days. That and the freedom of Information act.

It would be so nice to be this good at evading the best efforts of society to get one's aim. It would be nice to have the knowledge to get away with it. To make it look easy. To laugh a bit along the way and to get the girl. I'm a very minor cog in a machine just like every one else I know. It would be nice to be this good. I'm far too loyal to ever know. To be honest, that is the way I like it. I prefer playing games that mimic reality to reality itself. I like my games and movies interesting and my reality boring. That is just me.

Firefox sucks

Previous post

I'm at the stage of having removed everything from Firefox. The jittery videos stuff still happens after the Firefox program has been up for a long time. The conclusion is that Firefox has a problem. You must rest it every couple of hours of heavy use. It does not survive being left on over night. There is a resource allocation problem. Upping the amount of resources is only a temporary fix. Now the waiting game begins. Waiting for a better choice to come along or for Firefox to get their crap together.

Oops

Now both fire trucks are wrecked. I remember a buddy of mine who worked in a steel shop working on a fire truck. He said they got to driveit around the parking lot and blow the siran. What had happened was rust and neglect to the body. They should have painted the truck many years ago. Now they were putting in some new brackets and a bunch of flat body panels, then painting everything bright red.

I used to live somewhere that had yellow fire trucks. I don't remember where that was now.

What a dumbass

I've read about the religious laws that govern Muslims. I may comprehend why a very few young men would want to go out in a bang feeling like they had done something for a cause larger than themselves. But this guy is probably sober. He has money in a country where even modest amounts of money will get you all kinds of goodies. Then, he acts like this. This is what happens when people consider life and living beings as disposable. Use one up and get another. It is sad.

Frigging Firefox

Keywords:

Sometimes Firefox takes a little half second nap ever about ten or fifteen seconds. This is annoying on its own, but when playing videos, it is a pain in the ass.

Click on a Flash video. YouTube, LiveLeak and any number of other places use these players. I've poked around on the internet and found that I'm not the only one who has this trouble. No one is doing any forensics. Here goes.

• Removed all the extensions I do not use every day.
• Removed noscript that allows you to not run script by default. You have to allow pages to run script one at a time. Saves some trouble over the long haul.
• Removed FlashBlock. Same as noscript, but for flash.
• Restart Firefox.
• Problem solved.

Not exactly. The problem goes away when you restart Firefox for a while. This means it is some kind of resource issue. Something gets tired of holding up its end of the log and shit starts sagging.

So, how do I know it is just restarting Firefox that fixed it? Because I put FlashBlock and NoScript right back in Firefox. Restarted and the problem is still gone. Bad news. It would be nice if it had broken again. That would have told me that one of those two extensions was the culprit and it would be little effort figuring out which.

I also removed Grease Monkey extension. I have in the back of my mind that this guy just might be the bad guy. I don't think so because it is a more rare extension and too many people complain about this problem.

I have not put Grease Monkey back on the machine. It is time to wait and continue with my normal hammer of the box until the problem represents. Then, run without one of the extensions and repeat. Then run without any extensions and repeat. Then Try a different browser. My God, this may stop me from using Firefox all together. Switching is not bad. Hell, I have IE 6 working to a point under Linux. Someone else did all the leg work, but I installed it and that counts in Windows.

Nat will love this

Natalie will get a kick out of this video. It looks like they used one of the many backside projection screens with a computer or video feed played in mirror. I bet all those projectors for sale at Dell and other places have that functionality. You don't even have to modify or play with the video.

Very Local News

• The U. S. Government is spending 10 billion dollars a week more than it takes in.
• Island stock market fell 77% a couple days ago. The international community worries Island will go bankrupt. The whole country.
• Today, was about to type in 'll' which is a short cut for ls -al?? in Linux. My left hand accidentally hit the control and I managed to find out that if you hit ctrl-l in Gnome Terminal, it performs a reset and clear. Funny how you learn things when you are not paying proper attention. This is a little thing. I might have found out the magic sequence that causes a black hole and swallows the Earth, but I didn't. There, I always knew I would save the earth one day. My life is complete.

Middle Class

The term middle class means you are caught in the middle when things go bad.
You are the one left holding the bag.
When things are good, you get too little to move up.
You are the one too rich to get help and to poor to wait it out.
You are the one who cannot afford the attorney to enforce your rights.
You hate taking hand outs because you know it was another middle class person who gave.
You work for your meals and the lazy winers get it for free.
Your kids want the new iPod and you worry about the water bill.
Everything costs more every year and your paycheck stays the same.
You don't have time for poetry.

Beer tax code, how tax breaks work

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.  If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:                                 The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.                The fifth would pay $1.                The sixth would pay $3.                The seventh would pay $7.                The eighth would pay $12.                The ninth would pay $18.                The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.                  So, that’s what they decided to do.                  The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.                  The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected.  They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?  The real paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.  But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.  So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.                    And so:                    The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).   The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).   The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).   The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).   The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).   The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).                Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.                  “I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man.  He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”                  “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.  ”I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten t imes m ore than I!” “That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man.  ”Why should he get $10 back when I got only two?  The wealthy get all the breaks!”                  “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison.  ”We didn’t get anything at all.  The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.                  The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him.  But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.  They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!                  And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.  The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.  Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.  In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.                                   David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.                   Professor of Economics                   University of Georgia                  For those who understand, no explanation is needed.  For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.  Bottoms up! ChanceLitton.com

I love simplified examples like this. It makes you think. It makes me even more upset about people saying "Where is my tax break?" when they don't pay any frigging taxes in the first place. Wonder why the rich flea Europe? Wonder why shakes in the middle east only visit Europe and the U. S. and don't take up residence?

I found this bit of wisdone here.

Very Local News

• Had another UPS pow-wow at about 11:30 in the Target parking lot near my work today.
  
• Frigging SCSI drivers!
• So far so good on the new contact fluid. The hydrogen peroxide stuff really does work better. It is too expensive to use every day so I'll probably use it every couple of days. Of course, the little plastic bucket is $7.xx and the travel pack with two small bottles of liquid and one bucket and holder thing is $7.xx. Go figure.
• Went to get gas, eat some Cony Island, and then mowed the front yard. Busy evening.
• Installed VMware Player at home. It seems to work. I cannot get anything to work.
  

Rain and Faire

Keywords: TRF, Texas Renaissance Festival, drugs, fight, camping, partition, drum circle

It pored rain last night. The ground was very wet on the way in. I crossed Westheimer to avoid the constructions site. The strategy seems to have worked. Though wet, boots are pretty much wearable. I wore my flashlight around my neck because it was dark. In the mornings, the West bound lanes are far more empty than the East bound lanes. I can walk in the street for much of my trip.

The rain is supposed to stop before the weekend. That is a good thing. Faire is up again this weekend. We plan on going. It will be muddy, but manageable or so it sounds right now. It requires a bit more planning. I still cannot find my pouch. I have no idea where it is. I looked this morning, but nothing so far.

Nat was on a forum discussing Fair and things that happen at Faire. People were pissed that a fight broke out at the drum circle. People were pissed at all the infants (sarcasm) looking for drugs or offering drugs all over the place. Underage drinking came up. It started in to a "I've been camping longer than you." one-up competition.

The word petition came up. I hate to say it, but the guy who owns Faire is all about the money. If camping becomes a headache, he will just say "Go camp somewhere else." and we will all be out on our asses. I suggest taking a more laid back approach and start calling the cops on people who offer you drugs. It is all a sorted web.

There are seventy acres of camping at TRF. There are usually two cops on duty. The closest emergency room is something like thirty miles away. There are a bunch of drunk East Texas red-necks walking around int kilts who have nothing to loose,. There are ravers who want the next thrill, even if that is getting the piss knocked out of them by a gang of red-necks. There are a million teenagers who are rebelling against their middle class parents. They want to get drunk, laid, not pay any consequences, boys and girls. There are predators of every variety.

It is not the cops fault. They do a great job out there. It is not a fault of Faire. They provide grounds and security. It is not the patrons. They show up and have a good time. Most people agree on the definition of showing up. It is the term 'good time' that causes conflict.

It is just people. It is dark. It is smoky. There are camp fires all over the place. Most people are in tents that are sprinkled over the grounds higgldy-piggldy. People might invite you in for a drink or a bit to eat or just to rap for a while. There are people from all over the world. Rich. Broke. Republican. Democrat. Every Religion and a couple made up on the way there. There are new people and there are old timers. There are some wonderful friends. There is an endless supply of wanderers. Up to this year there was some amazing barbecue.

If anything happens to camping, I guarantee we will cut our attendance back to one or two weekends a year. We might indeed find another place, time and reason to camp. It will not be as good or even close to the same experience.  here is hoping that the wonder does not end for a few jerks who think they are something special.

Prophecy

Something I've learned about Prophecies Is either no one remembers them, or they are self fulfilling.

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is: The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything.. Do we recognize this description??

Got this in an email today. It is one interpretation of the book of Revelations. I think the best answer is Osama bin Laden. I wonder who it would have best fit ten years ago. One hundred years ago. A thousand years ago.

Define 'everything'. Am I correct when I say that Islam did not exist when this book of the bible was written? What is the wording of the book?

Very Local News

• I don't like hating a state and everyone in it. I've said that I'm sick of New York and California to the point that I want to trade them to Europe for a more conservative state. This is a bad thing. So, I started listening to a podcast called All Before Five that comes from rural upstate New York. I find myself not hating New York the state so much as just New York the City. Now I need to do the same thing with California because I bet I'd like northern California. It is San Fransisco and L. A. that piss me off.
• I'm trying that other form of contact solution, the one I spoke of where you have to let your contacts sit for six hours minimum. It is the kind you cannot put in your eye. It is not good for you, and it hurts like fire if you do. I hope to stick to the rules and get very clean contacts out the other end.
• It rained several times today. I had to take off my boots at work and switch to regular shoes that I keep there. The boots were so bad that I didn't put them on until I got down stairs.
  
  
• Teatime. Apples with peanut butter being made, and eaten.
   
• 
  

Very Local News

• Rain today. Rainy gray Tuesday. Cool breeze. Glad to have the sun for Faire. The grass needs the rain. People run from cover to cover. Thunder cracks way off. It is a Fall rain.
  
• At work I'm dealing with MAC addresses, virtual machines, and the politics of a small company network.
• What will fix the world economic woes? Ban lawyers and economists from holding public office. Eventually, I'll get round to banning every one from public office.
• One of the podcasts mentioned that investors need the proper motivation to start investing again. I picture Uncle Sam with a bull whip about to crack it over the heads of a bunch of banker types.
• I need to write the book "Lawnmower maintenance and the art of not giving a shit."
• GM, Ford, and Chrysler are all talking merger. Not that they will end up merging. GM is in bad shape.
• My watch battery is dying. The watch is loosing like ten minutes at random intervals.I would go back to the Kinetic, but the band is about to fall apart.
• Got an email today with samples of kit cars made from Smart cars. Cool stuff. This sort of thing will get people in to gas efficient cars.
• I blew right by my 3000th post. Didn't even miss it.
• I was looking at the pictures today and realized just how Laural and Hardy this picture is. It was the last picture I took of the entire weekend. I looked at Mongo and said "Strike a pose." This is what I got.
  
• On the way home, the family stopped at Sylvia's for dinner. It was OK. It was over priced and greasy. Just like I remembered the place. Anyway, Elle got a hamburger and fries. Go figure. Nat had trouble getting the catchup out of the bottle. The guys at the next table offered some advice. One had a British accent or something like that. I was able to get catchup out of the bottle with my patented tap the bottle at a 45 degree angle from the bottom where the bottle starts to taper toward the head. Nat says I got catchup out in record time.
• Take today for no good reason.
  
• Rain (morning)
  
  
• Sun (afternoon)
  
  
• Boxes (evening)
  
• Drive through strip club. What will they think of next?
  

Cops beware

All my friends who are cops, beware. Even the innocuous civilian might turn on you, or in this case put it in the wrong gear on you.

Painful political cartoons

Painful because they are true.

TRF Pictures Weekend 1

Only a few snapshots. No cool pictures. I would have to get pictures from other folks to get the good ones. Enjoy.

Frigging cat

Goddamn cat won't leave the guy alone for a second.

Fair Weekend 1 (continued)

Contacts at Faire

Sunday morning one of the young couples was about to put in their contacts. They are one of the good couples. That is, they fit. They make a cute couple. They even use the same contact solution.

They use the hydrogen peroxide stuff that has to sit for six hours to devolve. I've heard it works well and I would use it too if I wore my contacts every day.

Both their little containers got knocked over and the fluid did not work properly. One of them put in the first contact and it burned like fire. I had some regular contact fluid, even though I cannot ware my contacts at Faire any more. The dust is just nuts. Most people can get away with it with a bit of care. Some folks put their contacts in at home before they come out and do no take them off until they go home again. That is an option for some I suppose.

So many people ware glasses of the modern variety at Faire for just this reason. For non-participants it goes pretty unnoticed. People who work there seem to find ways around it.

My feet hurt

My feet hurt to the point that it worries me. One of the early signs of diabetes is foot pain. The soles of my feet start to hurt if I stand in one place too long. My ankles start to hurt if I sit for too long. My knees start to hurt if I lay funny, or sit Indian style. Indian style sitting is for the young. My feet may go numb if my pants are too tight when I sit Indian style.

Standing around is what kills me. Walking is not so bad, but I have to go at a pretty good pace. The walk of death (from camp to the front gate and back) feels good if it is not too hot. By the time I get back to camp, I'm ready to sit down, but feel better.

Hopefully I just need some new insoles on my boots.

Splitting wood

I had no idea my newly acquired wood splitting knowledge from Ike would come in handy so soon.

I was passed out in the large after walking Faire on Saturday afternoon when I hear this thump thump thump noise coming from our camp. Accompanied by cussing. Manic "Die! die! Die!" cussing. I stumble from the air mattress and the oven of  a tent, stumble to the court yard between the pit (kitchen trailer) and the GP large.  Shawn and Tim are there pounding on a single piece of wood. The wood looks like it has put up quite a fight. They have been hitting it with an ax for twenty minutes.

I would love to say that I split that sucker in one swipe. It took me a dozen. I used the ax to make a slit on the grain. Then Used the wedge and sledge to split th wood. Their trouble was they had the log on the ground. When They hit it, it just bounced. I set it on a high dry spot and leaned it up against a large log. No one cuts logs flat enough with chainsaws to sit them up on edge so you can split them.

Nat said she was proud of me. <smiles> Thanks Dad for the instruction.

Pictures

I'm very distracted by taking pictures. I left the real camera at home this weekend. I will take the real camera to Faire this season if I can. I do so enjoy snapping pictures up there. The snaps from this past weekend are just that. Snapshots. Nothing special. I had to modify some of the pictures to get contrast. Some look a bit cartoonish. They are better now than they were before. The smoke and dust were so thick that the flash lit up the floating particulates better than the subject.

Every one else got the good pictures. I lugged the camera around and only got normal snaps. I missed Heath sleeping on the cooler for one.  Oh, well. Next weekend.

TRF added a feature. It is a climbing wall in the shape of a castle tower. That is too cool. The only trouble is, I want to go up in the tower and take some frigging pictures. Alas, it is hallow with no way to get up the middle. They could have put a spiral stair case up that thing and charged people to take pictures. BAH!!!!

13 news chopper goes down

My friend is a camera man on one of the news 13 helicopters. He told me all about it This past weekend at Faire. I just walked over and asked him to talk to me out of the blue. He told me about the vacation he and his wife are headed for this week. He told me about cool opportunities he is working on and he told me about his new job at Channel 13 flying in one of the helicopters operating the cameras. He seemed to really enjoy it. He described some of the nuances of 95% boredom and 4% exhilarating excitement and 1% terror. He didn't put numbers on it. I made those up.

Lord Phoenix was not on board the chopper that crashed Monday.

He took a bunch of our wedding pictures. He is a just plane cool guy. His wife is nuts, but he likes her just the way she is. The rest of us do too.

I get news alerts at work because I don't have internet and the radio doesn't work worth a darn. I don't have time for it anyway. I get the following email.

Channel 13 Helicopter Crashes In Woods
A Houston television station's helicopter crashes while covering breaking news

Followed by the this in short order.

Pilot, Photographer Die In News Helicopter Crash
A pilot and photographer on board a Houston television station's helicopter die
when it crashes while covering breaking news in Montgomery County.

Right after the first mail, I called a couple friends trying to get hold of Phoenix because I do not have his number. I forgot to get it at Faire. I got a call back from Johnny who said he got hold of Phoenix. Things were good. He had been at work, but on the ground taking care of things there.

Anyway, "whew!!"

Random Note

What do you get when you mix Mountain Dew and Perrier? Probably Fresca. I've never tried it.

Proper use of horn

Before Faire

This morning was beautiful as far as the weather goes. The traffic was civil. I'm hitting the dark walk in again. During Summer I keep in the light time of the morning. As Fall comes on, I walk in the dark more and more.  It is perfectly natural. honestly, I prefer the dark because the glare is lower and people have their lights on. This makes the vehicles much easer for me to see.

This morning someone honked at me. I have to say it is the most present honk I've had in years. It was a proper use of a horn. As I approached the corner of a dark intersection, I had my head down because there is no sidewalk and the ground is rough. There is no light, so I have to concentrate. Now, I always and I mean always stop at the corner and look for people turning right before I continue across the street. I even heard a vehicle coming. I had planned to stop and look with both eyes, I just hadn't yet.

The vehicle coming up on my left  tapped their horn. I went ahead and stopped to look. It was a pickup towing a huge trailer. They were turning right and probably noticed that I was both looking down and warring earphones. They thought that if anything did happen, they would not be able maneuver their vehicle in an emergency manor and wanted to warn me of this fact.

Proper use of horn. I didn't think to shoot them a thumbs up or even smile or react in any way other than a sleep drone commute stare.  I wish I could let them know that I appreciate their effort.

Very Local News

Before Faire

• Yee-gads. They made a movie about the recount in Florida in 2000. What a nightmare. It is done by HBO. Kevin Space is in it. Please, let's kick this dead horse one more time. Maybe if his character goes nuts and started cutting bits off people, but no such luck I'm sure.
  
• The BBC came to the US and managed to find (and interview) some people who wanted to vote Republican and had good and bad things to say about both tickets. Bloody foreigners. =]
  
• I fought yesterday to get Evolution working at work. Evolution supports IMAP calendars and contacts on the server. We use web mail on the mail server. That's great. However, we do not have the calendar, tasks and contact stuff on the server. All the effort I did to finally get the software functioning was for nothing. Who the hell has time to make it work?
  
• I got an email early this morning from CNN. "Stocks fall 500 points in the first five minutes of trading." I laughed. I laughed that nerves troubled laugh one laughs when one is stressed and worried about the future.  Then I got the email from Click2Houston that said the Dow had dropped 600 points and was below 8,000. I gave exactly the same laugh. It is my canned response these days. My stomach hurts, but not from laughing.
  
• Life sucks then you die. I wonder if the afterlife needs IT people?
• I went to McDonald's for lunch and got 2 double cheese burgers and a side salad. It took thirty minutes to get my bag of food. I got half way back to the office, now a bit late, and figured out I didn't get the frigging salad. I so didn't want to dealt with the restaurant that I just blew it off. That really pisses me off.

Fair weekend 1

Friday Evening

Nat and I got in the car and headed north on the beltway to Fair on Friday evening. We pulled in. Nat had run up to the camp grounds earlier to drop off some stuff and start setting up. I really don't think she got anything done that she couldn't have done after I got off work. It worries me that she insisted on running up there and spending the gas.

We pulled in to camp, parked and unloaded. I remember schmoozing for a bit, have ing a drink or two and meeting some people who I am supposed to know, but have no clue who they are. I knew some people would not bee there and was sad, but happy for those who did make it out.

The tents go up like popcorn. I had my Friday night walk. I go around the back all the way against the back of the big camping area. There are four if memory serves. There is a new road this year that lets people cross a ditch to get to the back forty. Some folks got stuck last year. Or was it the year before? The new road almost threw me off.

I got to bed. That is, I listened to several people talk for a long time while I dropped off. That is fun in a way. People know you are there, but don't seem to care. We camped in Tony and Diz's tent. Thanks by the way.

Friday night brought hotdogs and chicken off the grill. This year, the contribute or go hungry rule is being enforced more vigorously. It is about time. Heath and Nicki Have been footing far too much of the burden.

Saturday

Got u up in a good mood. Didn't have breakfast until late. I got in a bad mood. I think it was something as simple as Nat asking me to carry her keys. That was just a little too much responsibility for me at that moment.

We went in to Faire and walked the place like four times. Nat stopped by her old employer and found that she may work again this year. We shall see. We went to Sherwood. Nat hadn't been there in a while. I had an apple turnover with ice cream. Man, that hit the spot. Nat's Mom's work is not accessible like it used to be. I wonder if that was by design. I'm sure it was. I'm glad if it was.

I ended up tuckering out early and heading back to camp for a nap in the heat. I don't remember when. I wasn't the only one. Scary how old the camp is getting.

I took a bunch of pictures Saturday evening. They all sucked. The eat if you contributed rule was enforced with a higher volume Saturday night. Nat parked on the stack of coolers in front of the pit. More people than I have ever seen showed up at the fire for a drum circle. Some girl danced in her underwear with a flaming hullo-hoop. That was a new one.

I tried to go to bed, but the group was sitting on our bed. The moment I fessed up that I wanted to go to bed they moved and let me. Again, I lay there and listened.

Sunday

This morning (Sunday), we all awoke to some prick revving his engine and racing down the road in front of all the tents. It was the only sound. The cops seem to know this guy. We got breakfast and decided  not to go in. We took nearly the entire morning packing up and shooting the shit with friends. The camp ground cleared out except for people staying until Monday morning. There were more than the normal amount of people staying to Monday because of Columbus day. What a frigging stupid holiday. We need one day for all famous people.

Now

We got home, emptied the car. ... Oh, Here we are. I'm passing on putting the pictures on the net tonight. I worked on them for a while and ran out of gas. I need to look at my Twitter and email notes that I sent myself to blog more later.

Too sunburned to blog

I'm dog tired and sunburned from Faire this weekend. Please forgive. I'll get pictures up ASAP. Unloaded the car and took a shower. More gory details to come.

Very Local News

• One of the podcast interviewees said that the regulations and lack there of over the last twenty years or so have turned Wall Street in to a casino. I have to agree. The mentality of the people in the industry strikes me as "win win win!!" instead of "invest invest invest." which I think is much more appropriate.
• Government is not a bad thing. If Wal-Mart was in charge of roads, all roads would lead to Wal-Mart. Government can do stupid things. There are hints that one of the big three auto makers will either get bailed out next year, or go belly up.
• I really think I would vote for J. W.  Bush again  before I vote for McCain. If Palin was running for president, I might vote for her. I may still right in John Robert Bolton. Ask me in the booth two minutes before I close my eyes and drop the little pencil on the page.
  
• I would love to have written something worth while. I would love to call myself an author. The Nobel Prize comity has a grudge against America and American writers. Some winners get up in front of the comity to accept their prize and all but chant "Death to America!" If I do make it, the Nobel comity can kiss my red white and blue ass.
• Mowed in  the dark. The raised mower goes much easier. I was able to mow and weed-whack front and back. I'm not in any better shape tonight than I was last time I mowed. I think one of the fence posts needs one more whack with the sledge.
  

Because it's my blog

I always thought Kari Byron was cute. This video does not harm that cuteness one bit. She took one for the team.

Very Local News

• I need to mow. Nat picked me up from work last night and I was not emotionally prepared to do the yard so I squandered the opportunity. I need to figure out how to raise the mower a notch or two. The little adjustment brackets are frozen. I figured out how to change the oil in that thing. That at least is done. The blade needs sharpening. I don't know how to do that either. Mostly, I need to get off my ass and do it.
  
• One of the podcasts interviewed some kids of a soldier. They spoke about how difficult it is to deal with school and ignorant people during a time of war. They can't watch the news for fear of hearing about firefights.  When dad came back, he hadn't just sat down and watched TV for a while. it interfered with the existing schedule.
  
• Some religious freaks are trying to say yoga is a religion and cannot be taught in public schools.  The argument goes "Kids are told at home to fill their minds with God's word. They are told at school to empty their minds in yoga." give me a break. It's not like the teachers are trying to inform the kids on how to avoid sexually transmitted disease or something.
  
• One of the best tools in photo editing software is the color level. It allows you to take a digital photo and define what is white and what is black. It should also let you adjust the center of the color. It makes a washed out picture become vibrant and suddenly a boring gray picture will have depth and definition.
  Every photo is different, but there are times I would like to run the same adjustment on a whole folder of pictures. Most software I've used in the past allows this, but not Gimp. I like Gimp, but it is insufficient for this reason. I bet there is a way, but I cannot find it.
• Somehow my Google results count went from 50 down to 10 at home. I like the longer listing. Typically my result is either the first or the thirty first entry in the results. I really do skim a bunch of results if the first hit is not obviously what I want. I have no idea how it got reset.  I do not remember resetting it. I hope my longer list of results is not something Google wants to change. I like my longer list of results. It is an emotional need as well. I hope it is not too much to ask from Google. Hey, I could set it to 100 according to their choices. I have no idea how much overhead this causes for Google.
• In a couple years there will be two billion "computers" attached to the internet. A few years more and there will be fourteen billion devices on the internet. All of this as social networks like Facebook and MySpace will decline. Places like Second Life will decline as well. People will turn to contacting people in reality.
• q:v]  "Kelly has a bunch of long bullets today."
  
•  8^)  "Yup."
• One of the podcasts interviewed the guy who invented (supposedly) the emotecon. He would only tack his name to the smile and frown faces. He griped there was no shock face.  8-O

Too much regulation

Sometimes regulation is all kinds of bad. At some point in the early nineties, our government voted in something they thought was wort while. A bill came along that said something to the effect "banks have to lend to minorities in order to boost minority ownership of private housing." This is really bad. Not that it has anything to do with minorities. It has to do with a mandate that says banks have to lend to people who may not be able to afford to pay the money back.

The real trouble is that the rules cannot be written to say anything like "People who are a minority get a lower interest rate." or "Minorities get a discount." This is considered not politically correct. This is why the term Affirmative Action has fallen from favor. People who do not qualify for the discounts scream bloody murder. Rightly in my opinion. Politicians say something like "There needs to be a sense of balance." In other words, "We need to hide the fact that some people get a break and some don't."  Now, even the banks do not know which loans are bad.

Bankers complied. They had little choice. Instead of just handing out money to some people so the banks could turn a prophet on others, the brilliant bankers came up with plans that let people get in to a house and hope to heaven the buyers would be able to refinance the loan after the bank sold off the debt to someone else. This is where Fanny and Freddy come in. Fanny and Freddy ended up getting stuck with most of the bad and many of the good loans. Remember, we don't know which are which any more. Fanny and Freddy can't sell anything off because no one is buying.

This is not so much a case of too much regulation. This is a case of really horrible mandates for the purposes of political correctness that cause far more damage than they fix. The purpose of business is to make money. Any time you inject something that is not fit for that purpose, you are throwing a wrench in to the machine.

Some highly intelligent person figured all of this out and said we need to insure all this stuff so when it all goes bely up someone will get stuck with the bill. See earlier post.

Halloween

A friend sent this. Scary, because it is true.

Elle on Tuesday evening

My aunt Judy and uncle Ron were in town this evening. Nat, Elle and I joined my parents in having a meal at Mom's Cafe. Elle hadn't felt good all day. She was a trouper and a very good girl all evening. We ended up moving out from under a hyper ceiling fan. Not until after the sun was through shining in my eye through a mirror no less. That is the sun over my mother's right ear in the picture below.

Hey, who cares. We had fun catching up. Hadn't seen aunt and uncle since the wedding. I thought the meatloaf was good. I brought home some fried squash. Life is good.

2 quick videos

Why?

This is how you light a bonfire.

Iron man targeting

Keywords: ironman, targeting, animated gif GIMP

I made a poor attempt at building an animated GIF of Ironman targeting a bunch of bad guys behind human shields. Just for grins and giggles mind you. I used GIMP. It worked more or less. The frames are in as much order as I could get them.

Not enough regulation

Why did the insurance companies go belly up along with the investment firms? Here is an example.

Let's say you want to get full insurance on your brand new Corvette. You go to an insurance company and say "I want insurance" They get you to sign a bunch of papers and you drive away satisfied that if anything happens to your Vet, you will be fine.

On the way out of the parking lot you get t-boned by a garbage truck. The Vet is a mangled mess of worthless plastic, but you walk away miraculously, straight back in to the insurance office and fill out a claim. The insurance adjuster smiles and says "Great, all we need is to sell your Vet in order to give you your money so you can buy another Vet."

Wait a minute. They want that worthless pile of plastic out front being picked up by the truck that hit you in order to sell it before they can pay you your money. They used the Vet as an asset on the books to make it look like they had enough money to cover your Vet. That doesn't make any goddamn sense!!!

This is what happened with home mortgage assets. They called it 'Swapping' in stead of insurance because they would have had to deal with regulation. If the asset (home mortgages) had held some kind of value over this whole meltdown, the system might have worked. This insurance was designed to protect against poor management by the one company, or a problem with one company at a time. No one planned on the entire list of home mortgages to lock up and basically become worthless for the time being. No one can collect on the insurance because no one can sell the assets to make money to give to the insured. The insurance companies go belly up and the people who paid for insurance and their investors get screwed.

Very Local News

• Wall Street is run on Testosterone. It is the same thing as a rutting stag that drives how the financial system works across the world. Some say put women in charge. Then it would be blamed on PMS. The trouble is people. Of course, putting robots or computers in charge will lead to Skynet and an infestation of Terminators. That can't be good for business.
  
• Heard someone in one of the podcasts use the word 'apocalypse' to describe the current liquidity/cash/debt crisis.
• Linux needs to figure out a way to put some kind of progress bar on console commends. I'm thinking of copy (cp) and move (mv) in particular. RPM and YUM kind of fake it. That would be sufficient.
  
• 6000 houses (residences) are foreclosed on per day at the moment.
• I used to think people in the media had it easy. They crank out a couple of paragraphs and call it a day at 10. Well, not that bad. Anyway. Writing this blog has taught me that coming up with something to say every day is not easy. It is a pain in the ass. I still have no respect for media types. "screw them." to coin a liberal phrase. I picture corpses dangling from a bridge above a pile of Blackberries and  spilled fancy coffee.
  
• I expect to witness the headline "Africa declares bankruptcy." I hope to God it is from The Onion.
• I left a comment on a blog once where, the blog was talking about how much Briton is like the 51st stat of the U. S. I left a comment that as a Texan I would vote to trade Europe New York for the UK straight across. Trouble is, It is New York that is so attractive to Londoners. Europeans like New York and bits of California - the liberal parts.

A couple modified snapshots

Phone

Straight off camera

Modified

Filtered

Straight off camera

Modified

Sunday

Ken came over with Shawn (Nicholas) and we worked on the fence. We shored it up with 2x4 and a sledge hammer. Oh, I now own a sledge hammer. We spent like $70 at Home depot. Ken, the man with one eye, was the only one who could consistently hit the target with the sledge. The fence is more stable now than it was when Nat and I bought the house.

Heath loaned Nicholas, an air compressor, and a nail gun. You are the man Heath. Thanks.

Thanks Ken. You are a hell of a guy and a good friend. I really hope you get some sleep.

Nicholas, you did great in my book today. You anticipated needs and acted on them better than I did. I've been getting in the way of more handy folks for decades.

NGUNG!! NUNG!!

I'm not sure how to spell the sound the I probably would have made were I in the driver seat of this vehicle. I have a bunch of good friend's who are coops. They worry me to death.

Slow motion shotgun

Pretty cool stuff. Not sure how they panned the camera fast enough to capture the pellets in action. I had no idea the wadding stayed with the pellets for so long.

Racers

The racers are out again this evening. It is Saturday evening after all. I've heard several cars blow by like they are at Nascar. I've heard several low slow rumbles like people are cruising. There have only been a couple of boom-boom cars. Wouldn't it be grand if that fad fell off the map? I've also heard at least one siren that sounded like a police car roar by.

someone is tipping off the racers that the cops are coming . a dozen loud cars all start up their engines at the same time and peal out of the parking lot. We are surrounded. People congregate in parking lots on both sides of our house and in the private lot behind the strip mall next door. They also piss on the side of the wall right in front of our house, and our fence outside Elle's window. How wonderful is that.

Sometimes it gets quiet for a while. The cops have run them off for a bit. The hoards go somewhere else and set up shop. The only thing good about higher gas prices is the lower end racers have fallen off the scale. The looky-loos and faint of heart have fallen off the bottom. The racers will be back here when the next municipality runs them off. Nat has found the racers a couple blocks down at Kroger and over off highway 6 some nights. Saturday and Wednesday evenings they end up here.

I wonder if it will be quiet the rest of the night. I wonder if it will stay quiet for a couple of days. When will the racers come back? Why must they haunt us?

Just watch it

It's all fun and gains, until someone looses an eye. Enjoy.

News You don't hear on the News

I'm starting to like some of the online stations. They tell it like it is and don't just poke fun at the people they don't like.

Osprey gets some teeth

This system is headed for the Osprey. It will drop out of the belly during flight not unlike the Millennium Falcon. Sounds like it is similar to some other devices used in cargo planes. I'm thinking of the C-130 gunship that we all know and love.

Darkening the skies of our enemies soon. Link

Bills

I had a fun time doing the bills this time round. Not that we have tones of money left over, but we will have a few bucks for Faire. We paid down on the credit card. We paid (the minimum) on the bills.

I used a spreadsheet to track all the bills. It is in Google Docs. I shared it with Nat. She can add things as she goes and watch the numbers multiply. I'm going to have a couple more expenses tomorrow to fix the fence. Hopefully that is it for a while.

Elle better appreciate those frigging dance lessons. Nat says she will look for a job at faire and possibly one after in the open sector. We shall see.

Bills get me down. I've gotten myself to a point where I'm floating. When Nat buys lunch or a new tote or something It pisses me off because I didn't get to buy something. Most of the things I want are expensive. I want a smart phone or a laptop or some fancy pistol that I'll never use (hopefully).  I have to spend money on the house for Ike repairs. I have to spend money on the kid for school and stuff. She is so worth it. It is still money. sometimes I feel like Nat doesn't get it. She does. She just doesn't let it bring her down.

Nat is over palying the knighthood game on Facebook.That game is free privided you have a way of getting on Facebook. What a great way to kill a Saturdya afternoon.

Warped Wood

Keywords: Ike hurricane damage

I came home early Tuesday evening. Maybe it was Wednesday. I asked Nat to come to work and get me we could run home and figure out what was wrong with the back door. Then, I wanted to run to Home Depot for supplies and attempt to fix the back door. Nat threw a fit and I had to stop by Home depot blind (so to speak). I had to promise her pumpkin pie to get that. Amazing how a pie can cost $60 at the store when a few other things find their way into the basket.

I got sealer and some of that foam stuff. Nat has this cute way of trying to help where she follows behind me and shouts that I'm going the wrong way, or that I missed what I'm looking for. So, I feel like an idiot. No, a blind idiot. I can't just quietly wonder the store for a bit. Look around like I'm just browsing, but I'm really intently looking for something specific. Then I zero in and sneak out the magnifying glass to read the details when no one is paying attention. It takes a long time, but it works for me.

Well, I get home and the boards we put up as flashing around the door are so warped that they are nearly twisted off the side of the house. I would have loved to gotten some proper siding boards while at Home depot, but you can't choose your rides it seems.

So, I spent two hours foaming and squeezing sealer out of the tube to the point I could barely make a fist. I did the bedroom window as well. I ended up covered in the stuff. The boards we used around both of those items are the wrong kind of stuff. You are supposed to use this siding stuff that is some kind of concrete.  It is brittle, but will not warp in the h4eat and moisture.

 I am now covered in the stuff. I'm not referring to the night I did it. I mean right now, two days later as I type. This stuff is amazing. It is worse that super glue. It is stuck to my fingernails and skin. It looks like the beginning of leprosy. It is on my boots. I'm sure I have some kind of silicone poisoning.

This fix is not going to last. I am just fucking flat busted right now. Dance lessons for Elle. Ike repairs. $2100 for $5500 or more of repairs.  I mean, the fence has depreciated over the last couple years. That doesn't make it any cheaper for me to replace the goddamn thing. they don't cover blown rain damage. Blow me!! They only cover licensed work so you have to pay top fucking dollar to get anything repaired. Why do I pay for insurance again?

Very Local News

• I left work a bit early yesterday. I was feeling bad and had to take care of some things.  I left at 16:30, a full hour and a half before I would normally. I still got my eight hours. Got home and fell asleep. Stayed asleep until this morning. Nat had to run my snoring butt off the couch to bed.
  
• When walking in this morning I crossed the street, walking on the north side of the main road. The grass had been cut. The south side is not cut yet. Just as I got to the bus stop, I noticed the tractors readying in an open field. Looks like the south side is next.
• The EU gives a minimum of 20 weeks of paid maternity leave. That is not to say every company in the EU does this. Germany is 14 weeks. The UK is 26 weeks. As low as the birth rate is, you would think they would want more.
• PowerPoint is a very impressive way to say nothing in a confusing and time consuming manor.
• The Democratic vice presidential candidate compared the cost of rebuilding Afghanistan to the cost of the war effort in Iraq to make it sound like a huge difference. He is a politician.
  
• What are you supposed to do when you are so afraid to wish for fear it will come true? I have bad memories in my head. They torment me constantly. No one wants to hear my problems. It's why this blog only has six readers. I do so enjoy complaining. Where would we be without complaining? Noe one has to read it. I'm glad so many people exorcise their rights these days.
• Elle is at her grandmother's this weekend.
• It pisses me off when the media all but calls people racist out of one side of their mouth and then says that son-and-so needs um-teen percent of the <insert ethnic group> to win some election. Hypocrites. Identifying a group and saying they are a specific way or going to do a specific thing because of the defining group attribute is bigotry.  Forget the fact that it might be accurate.
  
• Artists like playing long shrill saxophone notes. It makes them feel alive. It hurts my ears and makes me think of the noise made when stepping on a cat's tail.
• Someone brought in a bunch of songs to work that are classic-peppy rock songs in Chinklish. They sound a bit like someone who is good at karioki. "On Top of the World" came out "top of the word".

Very Local News

Written 2008-10-02

• Mr. Clean died. The guy who first plaid the character anyway. Sad day for the buzzed. My brother in law asked if Mr Yuck had anything to do with it. funny guy.
  
• Poker is the only way to win at a casino. Every other game will beat you over time because the probabilities are designed specifically to do just this. Poker, the casinos make their money on fees to play. Casinos don't care who wins at poker.
• I made some coffee at work this morning. I still had some sealant on my fingers from working on the door and windows. I can't imagine any of it coming off with all the scrubbing, I only have half my fingerprints.
• I you nuke a country flat, can you get the oil out of the ground without it being radioactive?
• I heard an expert use the word "fence" describing the selling of all those assets the American Taxpayer just bought off the banks. I'm not sure I like that term being used.

Inspector UPDATED

Keywords: hurricane Ike damage, inspector, flooring, fence, home repair, friends, family

No money on the back wall or carpet. The water came in around the windows and back door. We will get some money for the fence minus our deductible.  The roof is fine. No blue roof for us thank God.

Need to reseal the back door and windows. My father warned me I might need to do some additional sealing because the back door would settle. I knew full well the bedroom window did not have enough sealer.

We simply have to budget some silicone for the windows and doors. I plan on using that spray expanding foam my dad used. Spray in the cracks and then cover the cracks. I plan on it taking an entire day. I hope the walls and areas behind the cracks have had plenty of time to dry. They are getting sealed up soon.

As for the carpet, We are probably just going to put in some tile or linoleum in front of the back door. Nat wants wood, but that just doesn't last. We really want to do the entire living room and dining area. That sounds good to me. Don't know how we can afford it though. May have to find a way.

We got a check for about $2000. We have at least $5500 in repairs to do. I'm not sure I can get a loan for home repairs any time soon.

Some bullets

• Some drywall needs to be replace (patched) around the back door. We need to dig in a bit and make sure mold is not growing in the wall.
  
• Boards on the bedroom windows need replacing, probably the living room windows too.
• Back door needs better sealing.
• Roof is fine.
• Fence may be repairable, but should be replaced.
• The carpet at the back door needs to be refloored. Not carpet. We want tile or linoleum.

Some friends want to come over this Sunday and help at least get the fence to a presentable state. I hope to get my dad over before that for some advice. It is good to have family and friends.

Tonight I intend to address the bottom of the back door. I want to at least find out how the water got through the door. We sealed the bottom of that door like mad. I bet the water blew around the seal of the door itself instead of around the door frame. Tomorrow I hope to look at the sheet rock or continue on the door leak. After that comes the windows. New boards and a ton of foam should do the trick. One thing at a time. One thing at a time.

UPDATE

I siliconed and foamed the shit out of the back window and door. The cheap boards are warped. I need to find some real siding boards to replace them and then, I need to paint after I silicone.

Very Local News

• There is a quiet undercurrent to hold drivers responsible for their actions. Laws that ban distractions and devices in the vehicle to help break the law are on the increase. Vehicle safety people are starting to say that drivers, not cars are now the most dangerous link in the chain. I like it.
  
• Smoking, illegal drugs, lethargy, and poor diet make up about half of the U. S. cost of health care. Maybe we should have a system where every one pays, but only those who act properly are covered.
  
• The pirates off the coast of Somalia are getting out of hand. Companies want to arm their ships for traversing the area. That sounds like a deal to me. The Russian navy is headed to the area to retrieve a ship loaded with tanks and small arms. Quite a swag for the professional pirates.
  
• Wildlife conservationists are probably responsible for the decline (mass extinction) of amphibians across the world. Frigging dogooders, messing with God's domain, have doomed us all!
• Shaving does not make hair grow back thicker. It just feels thicker because shaving causes a sharp edge at the tip of each follicle that makes the hair feel more robust. The hair is exactly the same density and quantity as before.
• We need national ID cards.
• I live paycheck to paycheck. I work with a bunch of rich people who have the attitude of "How dare you live from paycheck to paycheck?!" I can't do it any other way. Their stuck up attitude is really starting to piss me off.
• 10% of the UK GDP comes from the financial sector.
  
• No teatime this afternoon. We had birthday cake. Happy birthday Laurie.
• A rumor of a bomb blast in India caused a human stampede and several deaths.

Blue Roof

keywords: Ike, hurricane humor, blue roof, poem, country and western, blue moon

I've been trying to come up with a parody song set to the tune Blue Moon entitled Blue Roof. I'm absolutely no good at that sort of thing.

Blue roof.

You left me standing in the rain.
I'm having insurance pain.

There is no electricity.
Sitting home without AC.

In my dark living room.
Hope they hook me up soon.

At least that mean old Ike.
Left me a blue skylight.

Hmmm. Needs some work, I know. Told you I'm no good at it. There is a whole country and western song in there somewhere. Any ideas?