I’m getting old — I forgot to mention that it snowed last night. Our first snow of the year per my wife (considering all the snow we had January through April, I’d say she is getting old too), or the first snow of the season per me. In my book that means we’ve passed straight through fall and are now in winter. It’s a good thing I’ve got almost a week’s worth of firewood and only 21 more days until this season’s wood gets delivered. I really should be more on top of this stuff, huh?
Oliphant Parts
Reframing Reality
Archives: October 2006
Catching Up (a third time?)
The economy’s rosy . . . so why does America’s accountant (I really should remember the links when posting this crap, shouldn’t I?) have to do a nationwide tour explaining that we are fucked, economically speaking? Hmmm, maybe sending all our money to Halliburton, et. al to screw the war on terrorism was not such a wise idea after all. Speaking of bad ideas, Dickhead Cheney will be in CDA to speak soon. The public is invited. Guess who is not getting a ticket? Pricks. The GOP is willing to sell my childrens’ future, but won’t give me a chance to call the Vice President an asshole in person?
Yes, I am in a foul mood. I got back from beautiful San Carlos (great views of U.S. 101 and CalTrain, if nothing else) and immediately headed down to Moscow for a swim meet. I need my weekend, dammit!
On The Road Again
Yay! I get to travel again tomorrow! Yay! Does my smile look real still, or is it obvious I’m grinding my teeth an getting a wee bit tired of spending the week in San Francisco and the outlying areas?
God-Like Privates
I got back from yet another business trip this Friday and spent Saturday watching soccer, prepping the yard for winter, stacking firewood and finally putting the new front brake on my scooter. It wasn’t that difficult, but I did have to disassemble the entire front end to get the damned thing in there. That done, I slapped all of the panels back on, put on the left mirror, started to put on the right mirror and discovered that either the threads were stripped in the new brake cylinder/mirror mount (brilliant idea, combining those two items. Dammit, where’s my sarcasm tag?), or the manufacturer had made the brilliant move of switching thread counts for the hole. Son . . . of . . . a . . . um, scooter? A quick search of my toolbox showed that I’ve misplaced most of my tap and die stuff over the years (most likely somewhere in the yard, used by the boy-child to practice his golf swings). So, off to Sears to pick up some new tools. Once I tapped out the hole, the mirror mounted perfectly and I finally got to take my first real ride on my scooter. Which ended abruptly when I decided to test out the anti-lock brakes on some wet grass. The brakes locked, I took a dive, and now I have no windscreen. Oh well. I am following Jennie’s lead and switching to a motorcycle next year — too much plastic and too low a center of gravity for me to feel comfortable on this thing.
I noticed that Idaho made the news again last week. My town, even. Seems we’ve got a fellow up here running a landscaping business who misses the good ol’ days. The good ol’ pre-Civil War days, that is. His rebel flag flies high, and his big sign out front (which seriously needs some editing) is a beacon of ignorance and intolerance. Oh how I love the common folk (yes, you Blazing Saddles fans can continue on with the line).
His sign: Peds, fags and queers your in Idaho now
I guess that is in case anybody crossing the state line missed the big “Welcome To Idaho” sign. I could be wrong about my earlier intolerance conclusion; maybe he really likes pedestrians, small burning sticks and odd people and thought he’d give them all a shout out. Um, yeah.
So, the title. Where did it come from? Well, I spent one night this week comforting the ill: Holding her hair back while she puked, bringing her water to drink, turning off the light, putting her into bed and trying to correctly decipher her statements. The ill asked me if I’d turn on the shower if she climbed in the toilet. I agreed. She then climbed in the tub. So confusing for me. Later, after I rolled her into bed, she fell into a fitful sleep, punctuated by frequent odd outbursts. My favorite was the following, made in a rather upset voice: “Oh no, Jesus has no penis!” Which begs the question: What was she doing with naked Jesus?
And let us now end this thing on an uplifting note from Donald Rumsfeld regarding the Iraq war:
“The enemy has brains and knows how to use them.”
Well gee. I thought we had brains as well. Perhaps it is time we start using our brains.
It’s Early, My Back Hurts
Wow! What an incredible news week: Woman beats boyfriend with baby (baby lived, although hopefully mom will be convinced to be sterilized), Joseph Duncan offers to plead guilty to all charges if death penalty taken off the table for state case (still on the table for Federal case, pretty much guaranteeing he’ll receive a death sentence), prosecutor decides not to accept plea deal (must not like the idea of saving us millions of dollars and a certain conviction if it is going to interfere with his political grandstanding), and a bunch of people died. Fortunately, most of them were in other countries, so they don’t really count as people in our NeoCon world. Cut and run: Not the solution for Iraq, but the perfect solution for taxes and social responsibility?
Anything else? I’ve been having a blast cruising on Jennie’s motorcycle, although I could use some warmer weather. Fall fell a week or so ago, and now it’s just a bit too nipply for early-morning rides.
Going to bed
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t getting fired what happens when you don’t do your job well? Or do a completely different set of rules apply if you are in the U.S. armed services? I shouldn’t have been so surprised when I read this; after all, we are dealing with the same military that decided General Shinseki had to go when he suggested adequate troop levels for the Iraqi invasion. Loyalty to the President’s beliefs trumps loyalty to country and doing your best.
[Update 10OCT2006: Maybe I should include a link, eh? http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/15710000.htm ]
Home Is Where The Hat Is
I’ve been home all week. After the past six weeks or so, this doesn’t feel natural. Nice, but not natural. Today was the first day I’ve woken feeling happy in a while. Being puppet-boy for a disorganized and understaffed proserv team (yes, I am an Army of One here) has been incredibly stressful. I am catching up on the backlog of unfinished business, though, so things are looking up. My new manager tried to offer me a significant pay cut as incentive to join his team, which just pissed me off, but hopefully that is getting resolved. Either that or he’ll have an embolism and be dead within a week. Either way, I will be happy.
Don’t get me wrong: As a person, he is fine; as a manager, he has yet to impress me. I may have too high of standards though: My last manager rarely contacted me, and when he did so, it was by email. At the moment, I equate effective management with leaving me the heck alone.
Besides spending entirely too much time in exciting towns like Milpitas and Burbank during the week, I have had some exciting weekends. Jennie bought a cute little Honda Shadow 600, which for now only I ride. She also ran over her motorcycle safety training instructor, so I may be the only rider for quite some time. Oh, happy days. I haven’t strangled anyone yet; surely that must count for something. The kids are still doing kidly things (yes, I made up that word. What of it?). Highly stressful things have been happening lately, but since I won’t discuss them with myself yet, what makes you think I am going to discuss them with you? 
I may be happy today, but I really do not like being away from my family for extended periods of time. I think it may be time for a new job if they’re going to keep bouncing me around like this.
(I can’t remember whether I should capitalize the first word after a colon . . . I really need to dig out my Strunk and White’s. Or just accept that my standards for writing are as low as those of everyone else out here.)
Doing dumb things again
There are days when I really do not like Linux at all. Yesterday, after upgrading Firefox and a few other packages, was one of those days. My flash plugin, which I had managed to get working with sound a few weeks ago, was once again hosed after upgrading. Sure, I can see the video, but there is no sound again. Crap. Okay, how do I fix this again? Stupid Linux.
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