Slow Motion Nooooooooo!

Well, that’s just great.

There I was, about to post an article on the stuff I got done over Memorial Day weekend and instead I figured it would be better to baptize my netbook with Merlot.

The hard drive seems fine, but the $250 machine is not gonna make it, I’m afraid. Meh. I am on an older machine for now, which is fine, except it took 4 hours of “life support” to get it ready to write even this little post.

More after I get my files back.

What, You're Some Kind of Bored Goth, Now?

Angel but not devil

Monster but not hero

Empty but not void

Nothing but not zero

Fifth but not fourth

Sixth but not seventh

Ninth but not tenth

Twelfth but not eleventh

Angst but not faith

Zigzag but not straight

Comment but not question

Angry but not sedate

Liquid but not solid

Vacuum but not air

Problem but not solution

Anxious but not scared

What am I ?

The New Phone Book's Here! The New Phone Book's Here!

Well, not really.  But I am told that's what I sounded like today when I found out my four and twenty Mighty Taco Beef and Cheese burritos showed up a day early!

Since I caught the ARRIVED message early, I was able to race home (with a quick pit stop at the grocery store for some sour cream) and found, unlike the last delivery, that there was enough dry ice left over to play with:

So far I have had three (shut up) and the wife has had one.  Jimmydunes will get a couple as well.

Random Bullets

Here are eight random things to throw out there. Enjoy floating in my stream of consciousness.

• Went to circus last month. The wide-eyed, breathless, rapturous expression on the face of a high-wire performer after he completes his routine with life and limb intact makes the joyous countenance a mother has when she holds her newborn for the first time seem utterly bitter and resentful by comparison.
• Considering there appear to be only two permanent female residents in the entirety of Hazzard county (Daisy Duke and Lulu Hogg), I am beginning to wonder what kind of bar the “Boar's Head” actually is... Well, whatever goes on there it's still profitable for the Dukes to “secretly” run moonshine twelve mason jars at a time once a month or so, so good for them.
• I am tired of Eddie Mekka being typecast as a mob guy. It's unfair, dammit. Still, as far as “neighbors who suddenly burst into your apartment” go I would rather live next to Kramer. Mainly because I could borrow clothes from him.
• Went to an amusement park a few days ago. My kid was excited to ride his first roller coaster, and, afterward, was ten times more excited to express his desire to never, ever go near one again. In order for you or me to be as scared as he appeared after the 45-second ride, we would have to see a ghost viciously murder another ghost.
• I am eagerly awaiting my next shipment of burritos from Mighty Taco. They are due here Thursday. It will be 92 degrees that day. I hope they pack more dry ice in the box this time.
• Huge hailstorm last night. Huge tree-snapping microburst today. Looks like the weather here is back to normal (partially oppressive with a 40% chance of terror).
• Deep-fried liverwurst may sound delicious but it's probably not.
• I am mortified to think that fights with my son ten or fifteen years from now may contain the words “Shut up, old man! You don't know jack! Didn't your generation think the world was gonna end every other Tuesday or something? Look behind you! It's the Mayan Halley's Comet Y2K Flying Spaghetti Monster! Yeah... that's what I thought.”

More cogent stuff later.

Five Wordles

You know those word cloud thingies you see on certain websites that lets you know what's there (I have a simple one in the sidebar on the right)? Well, there is a free and awesome tool you can use to make your own. It's called Wordle and it can be found here. Just drop any text at all and it instantly cranks out a cloud based on the most common words in the document. It's pretty neat and pretty customizable.

Here are five that I made tonight. Let's see if you can figure out where the text came from based on what you see in the pics below. Leave a comment if you know the answer to one or more – if they aren't all guessed by the time this post scrolls off the bottom of the page I will post the answers then.

Good luck. Or good Googling. It's up to you really. Enjoy!

Cloud 1:

Cloud 2:

Cloud 3:

Cloud 4:

Cloud 5:

Oooh! Pick Me! Pick Me!

 May 19, 2011

Dear Faithful,

I regret to inform you that the near-collapse of the worldwide economy has hit our organization especially hard. Tithes are down to a fraction of what they once were, and frankly, we can no longer justify the expense of suddenly having 200 million guests arrive all at once.

I know it's short notice and a surprisingly large number of you have already stopped paying your bills and quit your jobs and skipped out of jury duty but we are going to have to postpone the Rapture scheduled for this Saturday. We are as disappointed as you are, trust Me. After running the numbers, though, having three percent of the world's population show up at the front door all at once just isn't doable.

You may have read that we are extremely short-staffed at the moment. I mean we only have one door guy and even if St. Peter were to take only one tenth of a second to check that you were on the list, give you your golden harp, stamp your hand, and show you in it would still take nearly eight months for the last of you to enter. Even if you guys did get head-of-the-line privileges we are gonna need one hell of a lot of Port-a-Potties because you guys aren't pooping in my front lawn. This is an upscale, gated community after all.

Oh, I know what you are thinking (obviously). I thought angels didn't need to poop. You are right, but, technically, you aren't in yet, see. About 155,000 souls per day other than you guys need to be processed, you know, and we can't just let all of you in all at once. That would be chaos.

Outside the Gate there is a limited amount of magic to go around, you understand. After the Flood we were shocked and not a little disgusted to see you guys bounce back so well and now you number roughly seven billion! In the old days we could afford a plague here, a parting of a sea there. Now though, there is so darn many of you that aside from the occasional face-in-the-tortilla gag to keep you all interested, most of the good stuff is kept inside the walls for the Grand Finale.

Anyhow, it costs about $150 per week to rent a toilet. Let's say 100 of you guys share each one (gross), that still comes out to over five billion dollars in fees alone, even if I took care of delivery Myself. And who is going to clean them, I ask you?

Some of you think that planning a church potluck for eighty is a royal pain. Thanks to my Son, food is less of a problem, but even He has His limits. Let's say he hasn't lost his touch after 2,000 years and he can still crank out loaves and fishes at the rate he could back in the day, that still means that we need to have 816,000 loaves and 340,000 fish every day for Him to have enough raw materials to start assuming you don't want leftovers. Long story short, getting every other one of you to carry a loaf of bread with you and every fifth one of you to be holding a fish at the exact moment I beam you up going to be nearly impossible. And super expensive. And make you look crazy in the meantime.

You can't have a party without music, right? Remember the golden harps I mentioned? Yeah, well, since humans have been hoarding gold recently for some reason driving the cost to nearly $1500 an ounce – thanks a lot Glenn Beck - well, you see where I am going with this. Many of you already own instruments so that will help a lot but even I am not looking forward to a multi-million member all-banjo-and-whiskey-jug orchestra cranking out “Amazing Grace” non-stop until the old Earth passes away, I tell you.

In any case, I am sure things will pick up and we will be able to accommodate you sometime next year. Let's make plans for a few days before my Son's birthday. How does December 21, 2012 work for you?

Oh... really?

Damn it.

Sincerely,

God

Jane Eyre: Done

Finished Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. A good read. Things I have learned:

1) If you show even the slightest bit of happiness in anything, anything at all, you risk having the universe suddenly take notice and delivering you a beating like you have never felt before, reminding you strongly of how good you had it during your previous beating.

2) Ninety percent of the time the weather is cold and cloudy. The other ten percent of the time the weather is actively trying to kill you.

3) As learned as someone in the 1800's was, no matter how many languages they spoke, no matter how well they could play the piano, paint, sing, or how well versed they were in philosophy, Scripture recital, or identifying interesting flowers at 1,000 paces the one gap they had in their knowledge is “extremely local map reading” forcing them to lose their bearings or any ability to follow a road so they end up wandering the countryside for days the instant they set foot off their property.

4) On a related note, although they excelled at knowing by heart fifty years of worth of gossipy minutia regarding anyone within fifty miles of them, it is apparently possible to harbor a cunning, loud, and extremely homicidal maniac in a spare bedroom for years at a time without anyone in the house being any the wiser.

5) If your personal code of honor demands that you venture out on your own and wander the countryside for four days, the clothes on your back, a crust of bread, and a handful of spoiled porridge is all you really need. When a stranger finally takes kindness on you (Danger! See Number 1 above!) all they will say is that “you look a little pale” I can only imagine this is some sort of code for “Holy God, you smell like a three-day-dead Viking”.

6) The state of the art in makeup kits in the 1800s was such that a man can disguise himself as a woman, hold conversations with his household staff, party guests, and girlfriend and have none of them guess his true identity until he wants it revealed. This might be related to Number 4 assuming people of that era enjoyed playing the parlor game “Extremely Willful Ignorance”. (Servant: “Madam, a strapping six-foot-four gypsy... ahem... “woman” who looks nothing at all like your boss has suddenly appeared in the kitchen and wants to tell your fortune in what I assure you is a perfectly natural gravelly slur...”)

7) Men have two gears that they snap into and out of nearly randomly: Gear 1: “Disgust-filled Misogynistic Tyrant”. Gear 2: “Poetry-Spewing Weirdos that think 'no' means 'yes, oh, God, yes'”.

8) Men and women either possess beauty far, far surpassing the Greek ideal, or are pockmarked and goitered half-orcs that make you want to vomit until you go mercifully blind. That is, until you fall in love with them at which time they are promoted to “plain but passable”.

My next book will be “2030” by Albert Brooks. This dystopic vision of life twenty years from now is just what I need to cheer me up after reading about a typical day in the life of a 19th century Englishwoman.

Yeah, It's Been A While (Conclusion)

My kid had four Easter egg hunts this year and ya know what I learned? I learned that having a kid with above average hunting and gathering skills is sort of like being on the fun end of a chocolate-based Ponzi scheme. You bring twelve eggs in, you come home with thirty. You go to a party, you come home with a couple dozen more. You go to a church function, and you are basically limited by the tensile strength of a wicker basket.  All I can say is that someone is really getting the short end of the stick...

Speaking of candy, the boy's first dentist's appointment happened. I took off from work for that and took a bunch of pics. He did ok. He did worse than his first haircut, but significantly better than his second haircut. It reminded me a little of the pic on the left. I don't care if you don't get it. It's not all about you, you know...

Did you know that humans have developed the technology to create a $2 kite that will remain stuck fast in a tree for more than 65 days? Awesome. Here is a pic of the Spider-Man kite that my sister-in-law expertly piloted into what is, apparently, its final resting place. It only took her two minutes. Nicely done, sis. :) (Please don't sue me or have me killed)

The boy's 1,000 day birthday passed uneventfully.

We went to the National Zoo in D.C.  They have better animals than the local zoo(they have a cow!) but not as many as the San Diego zoo, which I think had a yeti and a targ. Both the local zoo and the San Diego zoo have more giraffes.. I mean the demise of your last giraffe is sad and all but I am pretty sure even I could have acquired a new or used one on eBay or sumthin' by now. Well, maybe that's not such a good idea. The giraffes you are liable to get from eBay are most likely stolen, broken, or a cheap Chinese kirf. Upsides: it's free, has pandas, souvenirs are really inexpensive, and the people that work there are knowledgeable and friendly. So if you can get there and going to a zoo is your or your kid's idea of a good time I recommend it.

Caught up on all South Parks. Been watching Robot Chicken whenever new ones pop up on the wife's iPad. Also Harvey Birdman. Call me “Mister Culture”...

Been working on the Kahn's Cons puzzle like crazy. This might be sour grapes talking here, but I am beginning to suspect that the answer is mathematically intractable. That is, given the information I have right now it looks like there is a non-unique set of solutions to that one. My gut says, if the plaintext is encoded how I think it is, way more cryptotext is needed to nail down a solution. I have stopped trying for now and have switched over to the 4th section of the CIA's Kryptos puzzle, which, ironically, might be a lot easier. ELYOIE? Maybe. (Again, it's not all about you...)

And now I think I have caught up to real time. I should really be more diligent about posting.

Yeah, It's Been A While (Weather)

So this is it.  I'm reduced to talking about the weather again.  Could be worse, I guess.

During my two months off from writing the weather has been pretty nice.  Usually by now things are humid and hot and miserable and basically whiny-making in between unbelievably violent, hyper-local thunderstorms, but we have actually had the heat on at night lately.

A recent mild sprinkle produced this rainbow.  You can't tell in the pic, but it's a double, and everyone knows that double rainbows are made from unicorn giggles.

All nice things last forever, right? Right?!

Last month, we practiced "cowering in fear" and "not soiling ourselves" as a black oddly-shaped cloud we could see out the front window - part of that devastating April storm cluster - failed to turn into a funnel near the house and decided to touch down in town instead.  Minimal damage - a few small trees were snapped in half and some stuff was blown around.

The morning I wrote this we woke up to the smell of smoke and assumed the neighbors were burning weeds or branches or leaves or whatever.  No.  I could still smell the smoke all the way to work and saw this on my desktop:

Well, that's a new one.  The smoke is from a wildfire in North Carolina.

What's next?  The sky falling?  Oh, wait, we had that, too.  Just a couple of days ago house windows along the East Coast were shaken by what some people thought was a seismic event but actually turned out to be a sonic boom or explosion from an inbound meteor.

Any more of this and I am going to seriously consider returning my Baal and Friends Shrinky-Dink False Idol Maker to Amazon.  It's super fun to mix and match your objects of worship but I think we have garnered "Someone's" attention...

How Much Does a Mile of Tape Cost?

Here is an excerpt from my thesis “The Cost of One Mile of Tape – a Critical Comparison” that I wrote for my Master's in What the Hell Is the Matter With You. Enjoy.

All prices taken from first item listed on Amazon.com on 05/13/11.  All items are “new” to allow for a meaningful comparison between the items – apparently, "thriftier" shoppers can buy used packing tape from them:

Here's the list:

• Audio (90 min)    $5.03
• VHS (T-120)      $11.30
• Caution               $33.00
• Masking (1”)       $57.20
• Painter's (1”)       $105.97
• Duct (1.87”)        $132.88
• Crime Scene        $157.10
• Packing (1.88”)   $225.30
• Scotch                 $386.50
• Hockey (3/4”)     $501.60
• Gaffer's (1.87”)   $510.11
• Electrical (3/4”)   $525.60
• Surgical (3”)       $542.52

One alarming thing that came up during my research is the following when I did a search for “Surgical Tape”:

“Ow. Ow ow ow ow stop it stop it! Oh, this isn't helping at all! I am sooo rating this “one star” on Amazon.”

Yeah, It's Been A While (Projects)

Still playing catch-up from not writing over the past two months...

Excavated my son's play area out back and put down mulch.   Now that he is getting old enough for increased autonomy out there I needed to make eventual falls out there more survivable.  It took a while to dig down six to eight inches in the oval you see but 14 cubic yards later I was done.  I am glad to have sweated out a couple of weeks of backbreaking labor so he and his friends can have a few years of non- arm-, back-, or skull-breaking play in the future. 

Also, I got rid of the useless monkey bars and used the leftover cedar to change the rockwall slope from 70 degrees to a more manageable 45 degrees. My kid is two years old and a human, see.  If he were a 5 or 6 year old human (or a 5 or 6 month old gibbon, I suppose) I would have just left the stock items in place.  Also, the baby swing is no more.

I am going to put in another slide or a cargo net on the side that formerly held the monkey bars, I am not sure which yet or when that will be. Before I do that I need to hit the playset with some deck cleaner to freshen it up a bit. I will probably take advantage of the rain to do that today. [Editor's note: Finished. Man, that deck cleaner really does the trick.]

Speaking of projects, the garden needed to be tilled before we could plant. For one reason or another it is a total hassle to rent a tiller around here. The closest place to do so (15 minutes away) has only one and it has never been in stock when I have needed it. I am beginning to suspect it might be made of Le Brouere cheese. The next closest, Home Depot, is 50 minutes away. They have a four-hour rental rate and a 24-hour rental rate. The four-hour rental is useless, and the 24-hour rental costs $57. I would burn about one gallon tilling the area and four gallons taking the thing for a ride making the rental cost closer to $77.

They had one at Lowe's for $200 – normally $300. It was a repair return. The carburetor was faulty, the thing was still under warranty, the previous owner got a new one and they fixed this one. Or so the legend goes. Normally I steer clear of “bargains” like that because they tend to be more trouble than they are worth but I figured that if this thing runs just three times it will have paid for itself. Plus it still came with a one-year warranty.

I suppose I could have just turned the soil over by hand for free... hahhhahahaha... Oh that's rich.

The weather held so I got out there ane tried it.  The tiller ran just fine. Lime and fertilizer and peat moss have been mixed into the soil real nice-like. If the weather holds a little while longer we may be able to get some plants in today.  That'd be cool.

Yeah, It's Been A While (Resolutions)

What else have I been up to over the past couple of months?  Let's talk about my 2011 New Year's Resolutions.

Running is not going well - I had to take a month off from the gym.  I overstressed my left leg  bumping the treadmill speed up to 6.7 mph for my runs.  I don't know what it was but it was a dull "if you don't stop you'll be sorry" pain that ran from just below my knee all the way up the back of my leg.  Some people said "sciatic nerve".  Some said "hamstring".  Still others said "sand somewhere anatomically impossible" then pushed me down and took my lunch money.  In any case, I rested it, and the pain is gone and I am back to the gym again burning off unnecessary and undeserved cheeseburgers or whatever.

On the plus side I played the starring role in our church's Easter cantata thingy.  Two shows, four costume changes, a lot of lines, and a couple hundred total audience members.  Personally, I think this counts as a "win" for my New Year's Resolution of "trying out for a play".  I did not technically "try out" for a play, though.  I was selected mainly for my ability to carry the cross without also dragging along a walker, an oxygen tank, and seven other dudes to help me (putting me in the minority) and my inability to come up with a decent excuse on the phone as to why I couldn't be bothered to be in the play (again, putting me in the minority).  Though I was nervous and panicky the whole time and more than once entertained the notion of running off in the middle of the thing screaming "Stop looking at me!" I am told I did well. 

What do you think?  Does it meet the intent of the resolution?  I will take your silence as a "yes".

Puzzle News - TV Puzzle

I am still playing "catch-up" with all of the stuff that have been going on over the past two months of non-blogging.

An important thing I don't want to forget is that, on March 11, 2011 Agmorion solved the TV Puzzle!

Congratulations, dude!  Good show Old Bean! 

You can find his solution and a link to the original project article in the Secret Puzzle Page link in the sidebar on the right.

Turn, Turn, Turn

I am in the process of cleaning out my garage once again.  It is really amazing how cluttered and filthy it can get and how quickly it can get that way.  There are so many non-shop related things in there now, what I really need is more space like another shed or something.  Since that is not going to happen I just need to use what little space I have more intelligently.  So be it.

A while ago I was moving my Craftsman 190-piece socket set when I dropped it (well, 188 piece, really, since two sockets were missing from the set originally... typical Craftsman lack of quality control).  Since Craftsman also made the case it was in, most of the sockets and wrenches came loose and fell in a jumbled pile in the bottom of the closed case. 

Nice.

They stayed in this jumbled pile for a long, long time.  I finally got tired of rifling through the mess for sockets I needed so I brought the "set" out onto the driveway and began the task of sorting them.

My son has learned over his 1,000 days of existence that my tools are "mucho verboten" and therefore "interesting beyond all measure".  I was about one quarter of the way through my task when he came out to play.  He saw me and the glorious pile of shiny, candy-like off-limit-ness, approached quietly with a look of hopeful trepidation on his face and asked "What are you doing, Daddy?"  I told him and then he said "Can I help, too?".

Now, this task is clearly beyond the capabilities of any two year old you care to name, but I want him to be exposed to real tools (not just Handy Manny's, for instance) in a safe, controlled manner.   So... how to say "Yes" without him undoing all the work I had done so far...

I said "OK.  Let's see if you can do this."   He plunked down in front of me with a huge smile on his face.  "I want you to take all of the wrenches and put them in a pile here".  He nodded and lined up the twenty or so what he calls "wraaaynches" (it's one of three words he speaks with an outrageous Southern accent for some reason) while I continued sorting parts. 

"All done," he said, proudly indicating the crooked arc of tools on his right side.  "Good job, buddy!  Want to do more?"  "Yes!" came the rapture-filled response.  "OK.  Let's see if you can do this."

I held up a socket and said "See this?  This is called a 'socket'.  It fits on a socket wrench."  I clicked it into place and handed the wrench to him.  I held up a couple more sockets "Now, see this one?  It has a number, a line, then another number.  That's called 'English'.  Say 'English'".

"English," he says, taking the socket and looking at it.

"Now see this one?  It only has one number and it is called 'metric'.  Say 'metric'".

"Metric," he said, and examined the other.

"Now, I want you to take all the English ones and put them in a pile here, and all the metric ones and put them in a pile over there."

"OK," he said and got to work.  Slowly at first, looking to me for nods of confirmation that he was doing this task correctly, but then he got into a groove and I just got mesmerized watching him go through the sockets while talking to himself :

"English.  English.  Metric.  English.  Metric... no... English"

My wife came out and broke the spell I was under and I asked her to go get her phone and so we could record some video for posterity.  It might just be me, but I swear in the video the look on his face when he picked up certain metric sockets was one of slight annoyance, the inkling of a nucleus of the look you or I develop over the years when we discover what we are sure is a one-half inch bolt-head is actually requires a 12-millimeter socket.

He finished up and, although the sockets still needed to be sorted by width, height, wrench size, and type, the metric and English piles were error-free. 

He had completed his first official "chore".  Awesome.  Picking up his toys does not count as a "chore", btw.  Helping me pick mine up sure does, though.

The next day the garage cleanup was still underway and once again he came out and asked if he could help.  I handed him a pile of very dusty and dirty crescent wrenches (I own an unnecessarily large number of them) and a rag and asked him to clean them up. 

He said "OK," sat on the floor and happily got to work.  He did pretty good and stayed on task until he was done then grabbed his chalk and went out in the driveway to draw with Mommy.

Again, awesome.  But it won't last forever.

The novelty of sorting drill bits, scrap wood pieces, etc. will wear off sooner than later, I know.  No matter what kind of Tom Sawyer-ish tricks I try to get him to whitewash the metaphorical fence one day the "joy of helping Daddy" is going to naturally evolve into "begrudging compliance " (at best). 

I choose, however, to embrace the happiness of "now", and forgive him ten years in advance for not whistling "Zippity-Doo-Dah" while being forced to mow the lawn before he can join his friends to play Zero-Gravity Robotic Hover Lacrosse or whatever the hell kids will be doing for fun in the year 2021.

Soon the garage will be clean and there won't be a need for my little assistant to "help" me sort scrap wood pieces and whatnot. 

Maybe he can help me build him his own mini-workbench, though...  I will even donate some of my spare "wraaynches" (did I mention that word has four syllables?) to get his toolset started.

Sounds like a project to me!

You Aren't Even Trying Anymore, Are You?

"Winemaker's Blend", Eh? This looks to me more like a recipe you would run into on your Potions final at Hogwarts than anything you are likely to sample on a vineyard tour.  It kind of reminds me of this:

Could have been worse, I guess.  At least the percentages on the bottle add up to 100% - no "unknown" shenanigans.  (The wine is surprisingly good, btw.)

Yeah, It's Been A While

It has been a very long time since I have last written.  Why?  Just didn't feel like it, I guess.  What have I been up to?  Lots of stuff.  Too much for one post, so I will just start here:

Re-read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on the Kindle.  Meh.  I thought I remembered liking it before but I guess age changed my viewpoint form "This guy is 100 types of awesome!" to "Man, it would totally suck to be around this guy", and I'm not even talking about the utter impossibility of throwing him a surprise party [What? No SNL video links out there?  Weak.].  I mean, if your neighbor came up to you and said something like "I can see from the scuff on your shoe that your wife will be making a glazed ham tonight for dinner" you probably would not say "My word, Holmes, how could you know that?" and then listen patiently for five minutes to how just stupidly unobservant you are.  You'd probably just punch him for being a creepy stalker.  Even if he was your buddy, you would probably stop hanging out with him after the fourth or fifth time he asked if you remembered to bring your service revolver before you went out someplace.  We are just going to the hardware store, Mister-I-Know-Everything-Except-If-You-Have-A-Gun-Or-Not-Apparently, so just relax and catalog some more types of cigar ash or whatever for your next “trifling monograph”.

Stopped reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine.  I'll pick it up later, I guess. 
 
But I started reading another Kindle freebie, Jane Eyre, on the recommendation of one of my sisters.  Pretty good so far.  I am about 70 percent through. I have never been exposed to the story before but I am pretty sure based on how far I've gotten it's gonna be smooooottthhh sailing for Jane from this point forward.
 
Good for her..