Friday Morning, post-Thanksgiving

Well, I have worked or slept off my Thanksgiving torpor.

Thanksgiving was a most pleasant day, even though we were small in numbers - Liz and James (and, of course, Sammy) stopped in for a bit and helped us dispose of some food, and visited. I played with Sammy, and generally did not much else useful - but it was a most pleasant day.

We heard from Jamie, who is/was in Auckland, New Zealand when he called to give us his over-there phone number, and informed us that he had started his visit by jumping off a building that was over 200 meters tall. You'd have to know Jamie.... He told that to me, I told it to Phyllis, who promptly got pale and then realized if we were talking about it that it was either a very small building (like a doghouse) or it was some sort of adventure supported by cables or parachutes or some mechanism to assure that he did not impact the ground with a velocity greater than healthy.

He has a rental car, and is meeting a high school friend (and his family) in a place that is several hundred miles from Auckland in a few days to reclaim some stuff he left there when he left the last time he was in New Zealand. After a suitable visit and rest, he'll be headed to Australia - because it's there, I suppose, to look around, wander around, and take pictures until money runs low, then he'll work somewhere at something until he doesn't need to for a while. Maybe he'll be like my cousin John and get lassoed by some Australian lady - we shall see.  Having met Tracy (John's lovely wife) I for one wouldn't mind that at all. Meanwhile, he promises to keep his PICASA site updated with photos each few few weeks. Anyone curious can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/ijam357 and check it out. Right now, it has only a bunch of stuff from his trip across country, since flights to Australia leave from LA or somewhere out there and he was living here. He drove out, sold his car the day before he left, to someone who passed him on a freeway, stopped him and paid cash for it. Such luck we should all have - but that seems to be the story of his life.

I'm doing a little work this morning for a small credit union that I have served sporadically throughout the years - and this afternoon will be open, so I'll probably do some computer cleanup at home, or go over to church and install the ZIP drives I got for their newest computers. Phyllis and I have to decide what we're going to use the newly vacated space downstairs for, but we'll find something....

Otherwise, it is nice to be off until Monday.

Computers can be a PITA - I just got my Toshiaba Tablet working, and it decided it needed to put on some updates - which promptly broke Microsoft Explorer enough that I can't get a desktop up on it. Damn Bill Gates anyhow. So I guess I'll have to regress it as soon as I figure out how to regress a tablet (They are different....) I also discovered that when it is in tablet mode that the digitizer (the thing that makes the cursor follow the pointer on the stylus) has a quiet band on it - probably a loose cable connection which gets stretched when the display is rotated into tablet mode - so I will have to figure out how to get the display apart far enough to see how the cables are, and then figure out what to take off the bottom to see how the cable connections there look. At least, the tougbbook is working OK, although I still do not have the tiny toughbook working again. I fear I may have toasted its motherboard, so it may not come back for a while.

Computers are a curse. But I shouldn't schimpf at them because they pay my salary, too, and without at lest one that works, I'd have to talk to myself instead of scribbling for random visitors.

I just got the first ZIP drive in a chrurch and discovered a motherboard so new it doesn't know how to do IDE interfaces, so it is off to eBay to buy a couple of SATA motherboard to PATA device adapters to make these things functional.  Every time I think I'm almost there, someone moves there to elsewhere.  Keeps life interesting, not to mention occasioually infuriating.

Happy Day-after-Thanksgiving, everyone.

Jamie is in the wind for Thanksgiving

Our oldest child, son James (Jamie to everyone who knows him) left LA this morning for New Zealand for a couple of weeks and then Australia for an indeterminate period.

He drove to the west coast, sold his car there yesterday, and I guess all is well. He kept his PICASA page well loaded with photos as he traveled cross-country, including some from Chicago, where he'd never been before.  If you are curious, his cross-country travel pix can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/ijam357 and some are really outstanding.  He got involved with digital photography, bought some good expensive Nikon gear and learned to use it - and these are some of the results.  He says he'll keep the pictures coming as he arrives various places, and we are hoping he remembers.  I have some from his previous trip that I'll make available as soon as I get a round tuit.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and for us it will be the smallest gathering in years.  I don't know of anyone outside the immediate family that will join us, and usually we have someone from outside the family to supply a  little balance.  There'll be plenty of food - I just talked to Phyllis, who was out picking up the bird.  She thought she was lots, but is just unfamiliar with the principle that states that the trip up always seems either much longer or much shorter than the trip back - even if you just reverse course.  But she got home, now all that needs done is about a day and a half of cooking various things.  I'm glad to have taken Friday off....

There's plenty for which we are thankful this year.  Our kids are all well and healthy and still with us, likewise our grandkids.  For too many people, this is not so.  Phyllis's and my parents have died, but at least not in great distress - so we're orphans, I guess, but there is still other family scattered around the nation.  I can still work, and still want to work, so that's a Good Thing, and Phyllis continues to direct choirs and teach, and shows few signs of wishing to hang it up.  We don't have a whole lot of time, but we do live.  We have our health, mostly, and have no truly crippling physical stuff with which to contend.

Hmm.  I guess I have to get to work on the Christmas Letter - maybe we'll actually get it sent this year.  I could stand to lose more weight - it's a constant batle for me, and some months I do better than others - but right now it doesn't pose the threat to my well-being that it did before I had the surgery.  Another thing for which to be thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving to all out there, whether you read this or not.  We've been blest.

Guns, Gun Laws, Fools & Knaves

Anyone that seriously believes that the militia mentioned in the Second Amendment is a reference to the National Guard might as well stop reading right here - they're wrong and mostly don't want to know what the actual reference means.

That having been said, I read a letter to the editor this morning that set my hair on edge.  Someone somewhere wr0te, apparently totally seriously, that in order to protect the youth of Baltimore we need some more laws to make guns unavailable - since our youth are spending a lot of time shooting at one another.

I don't know where this person lives, but apprently the concept of criminal behavior having as a characteristic the refusal to adhere to laws is foreign to this person - she apparently thinks (or thinks she thinks) that laws result in instant compliance by all who live and breathe.  This is demonstrably false, but never let reality interfere with lofty ideals.

The problem, dear readers, is not that guns exist, it is that people find it somehow useful to misuse them, or to use them in ways contrary to existing laws.  Why should anyone believe for a moment that a felon in possession of a gun (which is against any number of laws) will pay any attention to another law that makes his intended activity illegal?  Criminals do not necessarily choose laws to disobey - they simply disobey whtever laws contradict whatever it is that they plan to do.  

Indeed, all that added laws do is make life harder on the legitimate gun owner who tries to obey a large number of occasionally contradictory laws.  This is particularly true right here in Maryland where, for reasons known only to lawyers, it has become an onerous task to gain permission to carry a gun.  Permits are expensive to get, expensive to renew, and do nothing more than give the police a known subgroup of citizens to bother when someone does something with a gun that contravenes existing laws.  

There is no requirement that criminals have permits - indeed, the Constitution guarantees exemption form any such requirements for criminals because to spread knowledge of their illegal activities contravenes the right to avoid self-incrimination.  That's right, folks - if you are a criminal, you don't have to pay any attention at all to any law requiring permits to own or carry guns - because to record this would require that you supply incriminating evidence on yourself.

I own guns.  I grew up around guns - took safety instruction as a child, shot targes (and rats) practically from the time I could hold  gun.  Even though several different girls dumped me in high school, I did not shoot any of them - I already knew it was a misuse of the firearm, and could get me talked about in unfavorable terms and was generally supremely uncool.  

I know people who never saw a gun until entry into the military - that's OK, because the military generally does a pretty good job of teaching gun safety, and you can really end up in deep poo if you use your issued weapon for anything not specifially ordered - like shooting a superior, or just shooting up the barracks.   

I believe that adults should be permitted to own pistols and rifles if it pleases them and they are not convicted felons - as many in whatever variety as pleases them. I believe it's none of anyone's business what I own or what I keep in my home unless and until I make a prohibited use of whatever the item is.  None of my guns has ever unlocked the safe, loaded itself and bounced down the street looking for someone to shoot. Judhing from the rhetoric I see in the news organs, they must be defective, because a person is never shown to be the problem, the news always lays the problem on the gun, which is inanimate and lacks the capability to self-direct.

At this point, Vermont is the only state that has it right.  Vermont permits any non-felon to carry, either concealed or open.  Do something inappropriate with the weapon and they'll toast you, but as long as there is no inappropriate use, you don't need Mommy's permission.  

The news also loves to write about semi-automatic weapons, which as everyone knows makes it nastier and more dangerous.  I hate to be the one to burst a bubble, but today's double action revolvers work semiautomatically - pull the trigger and it shoots - no cocking, one shot per trigger pull (until all ammunition is used.)  Many folks reading this are confused and think that it means you hold down the trigger and it just sprays all the ammunition it has - this is wrong, but the news will take up that extra space because the writers know that there are folks who don't know this important fact.

Another interestsing fact is that there are many fully automatic weapons out there - and many are legally owned!  ANYONE can own a machine gun if they are permitted to own any other gun - you pay the Federal Government a tax for the privilege (and of course absorb the incredible cost of ammunition.)  There are limits on which may be owned, but it is a fact that ownership is not a blanket illegality.  Interestingly enough,  only one legally-owned machine gun has been used in a crime - and it was one belonging to a police department, used by a police officer.  The rest of those that are owned whose owners have paid for the privilege have never been used in a crime.  Your daily newspaper would never tell you that.

What is it about guns that fascinates me so?  It isn't the noise - it is the fact that they are all mechanical, depend on lighting a fire in an enclosed place to cause anything to happen, and are reliable and predictable.  The engineering, the motion of the parts, how safety parts work, all the mechanical aspects fascinate me.  An hour on the firing range will help you focus - after a bit, your mind does not wander - its sole concern is holding the gun, squeezing the trigger and not moving in a way to make the shot have a poor result.  All extaneous BS goes away, and you emerge from your hour or two refreshed and relaxed - because you haven't had all that nonessential crap eating away at your mind, taking away from the time you have to do important things.  It's even good therapy.  It's a lot safer than having road rage on the way home from work, or being so distracted that driving becomes a secondary task.

If you find guns scary, it is probably because you have no experience with them, but that's OK - I would never require that someone own something that induces fear. Do, however, take the time to learn about something before you dismiss it as intrinsically dangerous.  And please don't be fooled by the "More Laws" folks - lots of them are lawyers and have a vested interest in keeping the legal system riddled with rules that no mere person can understand.  

And please bear in mind - a gun does not a criminal make, nor does a gun law discourage a criminal from pursuing his chosen profession.  We all have choices - demonizing an inanimate objec will however derail us from going after the real problem.

/Rant Off

Monday Evening

I thougnt I learned years ago never to change anything in the last hour of the workday - but I was doing so well at bringing some stuff together and making it work better.

That is, I was doing so well until I broke it.

I didn't want to stay late, and here it is already an hour past leaving time - and only the first two spawns do what they should, then the damned thing just goes to end and doesn't tell me why - and I have code in there that ought to force it to tell me why.

I hate it when I outsmart myself.  

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!  How many times have I told everyone else that, you ask?  Many times, and here I just spatzed myself. Luckily, I can just shut this down and let it wait until tomorrow, so I don't have to stay much later and I can get outta here.

But it sure is irritating that I did it yet again. I'm looking at the code that fails first and the code that works and they look the same. Probably I've just discovered some unwritten rule about programming in Clarion that makes what I am doing legal if you do it twice, but not if you do it three times. At this point, I dunno - but I'm gonna close up shop and go home - WinAmp radio has even quit working - which is something I want to talk about another time.

It'll be interesting to see just how long it takes to find it tomorrow morning.  For tonight, I give up!

Monday Afternoon

Through some mischance I got to work early today, something I usually try not to do.  When I had an office, it didn't much matter because I could close the door - but now that I'm out here in a semicube right by the entry door, it seems that folks are obligated to stop in, chat, watch me code, ask me things, and generlaly make sure that concentration cannot occur.

As a person with ADD, living amongst the noise, conversations and interruptions is not real easy, especially if I am supposed to Get Things Done along with the occupying of space.  I persevere, but I'm not nearly as productive as I would be if I were screened off from this noise.  Also, out here I cannot play my music unless I use a headset - and I can't use a headset unless I don't mind getting bitched at for not paying attention to someone who came up to my area and started to talk without regard to the fact that I was not hearing anything but the music.  Information Technology is just overrun with bright people, but along with bright seems to come an extra load of pathology.

My middle child went on a date this past weekend.  This is something new, and her son did not appreciate it.  By the time she returned, neither her mother nor I appreciated it.  We are no longer young, and by the time midnight rolls around we aren't all that interested in being awake - indeed, I have already gone to sleep three or four times in my chair in the living room.  Sometimes Phyllis lets me sleep when she goes to bed, and I wake up beween 2:00 and 4:00 wondering just what that noise was (I have yet to figure it out - maybe it's my computer falling on the floor or something like that) and then get up and go to bed, put on my CPAP mask, turn the machine on, and go to sleep.  Fortunately getting to sleep is not hard, even if I've had coffee just before I go to sleep.  I think I've reached the age where my sleeping ability has reached its peak - and I sure hope that that lasts a while - it's a new thing for me, at least within recent years, and I like it that way.  

Here at the office I'm occupied with making some stuff I did better.  Or at least making it different - better is something best judged by me, and some days it's not better, just a little different.  I'm trying to modify the major systems that go elsewhere to get data and then load it up into our Oracle to make it easy for someone other than myself to troubleshoot.  If is kinda hard, because it very seldom fails, and when it does it is usually some outside influence (like a power failure in the server room) that causes it, and there's no way to script that recovery process, since servers as a generic class of device hate having their plugs pulled, and will do all kinds of miserable things to keep from restarting clean.

One small victory tody, however - there's a bit of mainframe stuff that has been "taught" to write directly to network storage instead of needing to write to itself so an operator can download the data onto the network for processing.  Part of this involves some chatting back and forth between a server that manages virtual tapes (that is, tapes that really are not tapes but the mainframe thinks that they are tapes)  in order for the server to tell the mainframe which tape drive that does not exist "owns" the tape that does not exist but is to be used anyhow. There was a bit of a problem with adata area not being cleaned out before sending a message to the mainframe console that I grabbed off and parsed to answer a different mainframe question so a human would not have to do this.  The fact that the area was not being cleared occasionally caused the piece of the answer I needed to put elsewhere not to be where I thought it would be - but today I finally found that there was a way to find it always with about four more lines of program code, so that made me happy, at least for a while.  I love automating things, particularly when some bozo tells me that it can't be automated - which is part of the backstory about this virtual tape server that we are using.

The only thing I have ever found that I could not do (aside from not using my hands to put things in my mouth to accumulate calories in quantity that I could not burn if I lived to be 352) is be unemotional in trying times, although I prefer to present the facade of being so.  Then, when nobody is looking I go downstairs into my workshop and throw hammers in a corner.  I used to shoot targets down there as well, but now that my grandson lives with us I have to keep the guns locked up.  Probably just as well, I guess - my .357 was getting hard on the concrete wall when I missed the phone book backstops....

When I dropped my grandson at school this morning, it looked like snow.  I just looked out the window, and it still looks like snow.  I'd like for it not to snow, but if it is going to snow, I don't think it will ask me.  I'm hoping for a couple more motorcycle days before the cruelty of winter sets in and sits on us - but I dunno; it is looking less and less likely.

My wife schimpfed at me the other day about the fact that there are two motorcycles parked in the carport and I haven't ridden one in some time, and asked me what I planned to do with it - and I told her I thought I'd put a sidecar on it.  Now, a sidecar has only one thing going for it - it won't fall over on your knees - but I've heard it can me a real hoot to drive, and my grandson is forever bugging me to go along - so maybe it will come to fruition.  The other motorcycle is an old Honda CB900 Custom hat has a two-speed transfer case before the 5 speed gearbox - and the lower range of the transfer case would be ideal for hauling the extra weight of a sidecar. 

At least, that's the theory, and what I told Phyllis.  Maybe after the new year a sidecar will come my way and I can get going on that little project.  I've been told that a sidecar rig embodies all of the vices of automobile and motorcycle, and none of the virtues of either, but I think it might be kinda neat - and I'm getting too old to enjoy picking up motorcycles, especially when they're mine.

Well, I guess I have to get back to coding.  I'd recommend folks visit http://dooce.com - it is an interesting blog, Heather is a real hoot to read, open, honest and funny, and some days she makes me feel really good.

Happy Monday, everyone.  

Sunday Afternoon

I thought I would get to dog it today , but it is not to be - choir this morning went well, but I forgot about an organ committee meeting this afternoon, which will keep me from computer stuff I need to do on the church's network.  Maybe next weekend.

I saw several motorcyclists today, and can only conclude that they have better circulation than I do, that they're dead, or that they don't feel the cold like us older folks do.  I thought about starting one motorcycle this morning and then changed my mind and took the old Volvo to church. Probably one of my more clever moves this weekend - I sure didn't have any on Saturday....

Phyllis and I had lunch at a place we like for the first time in many weeks, and it was nice to have an hour undisturbed and uninterrupted by some reality of life.  We don't have enough of these times any more - one of the things I am suposed to work on is somehow finding or creating more of them.  For some reason I thought that when I reached this age there would be leisure aplently, and that it would not be hard to schedule relaxed time since that's all there would be.  I sure did get that one wrong. 

Out baby Elizabeth sang in early church and I didn't get there, but Phyllis assures me that she did beautifully.  Liz's baby Sam was bellyaching when I arrived but stopped within a couple of minutes (no thanks to me) and I was reminded how not ready I am for my baby to be a Mom.  I guess maybe I never will be completely ready for her to be a totally independant person, but she's doing it so well, and has scheduled her life much better than I had at her age.  She was 26 today, has her master's degree, a couple years of teaching experience, a husband and a baby - and they're all well, healthy and happy.  I wish I could take some credit for all of this but I can't - she's her own person, and that person has grown into a really great adult, seemingly while I wasn't looking.  How does this happen?

Well, I have to go get some coffee and get back to church for the organ committee meeting, after which I just might get to work on the network for a little bit - if I can remember to take this ToughBook with me.  One thing I am learning is to have Vista, which is what was on the last two computers we bohght for church.  Granted, it does a lot that I used to have to do for myself, but I am not convinced that it does it better, and I know damn well that it takes away many options, not to mention sucking down resources like they were infinite.

Of course, I am still convinced that OS/2 should have won over WinDoze 3.1....

Be well, y'all - I gotta go.

Computers, redux

Well, I spent most of the day with my Toshiba 3500 tablet PC trying to make it make sense to me.

After getting frustrated all morning, I took it, my CD's, and my USB drives down to our PC repair shop to inquire if they had a USB CD drive that I could borrow since mine seemed to be not OK. There was one, but meanwhile I learned that one of the folks that lives in there has one of these little pups, and even has the right CD drive for it. We are trading the use of his drive for the use of my official disks. When I get back on Monday, it will come right up - it says here....

Meanwhile, I'll take the drive home and see if I can get the mini-Toughbook to come back to life. That would be a real coup!

I've just rediscovered internet radio - WinAmp comes with a set of directories to find almost anything you might want to hear - and some of it is pretty good. One of our local radio stations changed format a while back, and made me mad so I quit listening to them and supporting them - and on the internet I found a source of the sort of things that they had me hooked on.

The Internet is like a huge library - without a card catalog. Google helps, but if the search is broad enough not to miss something it can take years to examine everything that gets returned. I've learned to get clever sometimes with searches - but sometimes I get too clever and get frustrated.

Some SOB in our building finally turned the heat on - and has it up really high to make up for the month that had everyone complaining about freezing. Not cool (and no that wasn't an intenional pun, but if it works for you....)

Choir rehearsal was good last night - it seems to be getting better, or else I'm getting more mellow. But when it was done, I was ready to go home and read the latest from Greywolf at the Roswellfanatics site, which is one of the largest and most active Fan Fiction sites based around the Roswell TeeVee show. I should never admit to this, lest folks think I'm getting soft in the head, but I really liked that show - it resonated with me - and there are some damn clever writers writing to the show's character set and backstories. Some of what is written is crap, but much of it isn't - and as much as I'd like to think most of the writers were twenty-somethings, I have found a couple up around my age - and some of them are truly outstanding. In fact, I wish I could write like some of them.

Anyhow, now you know my secret vice. Please don't tell anyone, OK?

Actually, there's another secret vice - one of my compuers here at work has Linux on it - and Linux has mcuh better games than Windows, even their Solitaire is better. There's a Mah Jongg that will make you crazy, and a pretty good Othello, too. Since I use one monityr and one keyboard and a KVM switch to switch between computers, if I am paying atention, nobody notices when I'm playing, and since it usually happens only when I'm waiting for something to happen so I can continue something, there's no harm and no foul, although he bosslady has asked on occasion what I'm doing. When she asks, I tell her I'm goofing off, and she walks away, apparently the truth boggles...

I gotta get ready to get outta here. It's Thursday, tomorrow I am off, but that doesn't mean rest - Phyllis and i have a Joe visit, then I have to get ththoroughly swaddled and insulated and get my motorcycle up to Jack so he can put in the new steering column lock, then get home before frostbite sets in. At least it isn't supposed to snow before Saturday.

Happy Thursday to all of you out there.

Computers

I work with computers. As a result, I have a couple that my office did not issue to me. Being the cheap SOB that I am, I never buy anything new - most of the desktop computers around our house are things I have assembled from parts (including the media server in my basement that is currently waiting on parts) at one time or another, many of which have been upgraded to the point that I no longer know just what I originally built into them.

I have a (work-supplied) Compaq NX-9600 laptop/kneecooker. Nice machine, a bit out of date, big screen, weighs a little more than a case of beer. It also runs hot (apparently early P4's were like that) but it has been reliable and does most of the development duty at work, since it is stronger than any desktop that they've seen fit to issue to me thus far.

My lovely wife is a bit of a Luddite, and will touch no keyboard that looks like anything other than a piano, so she doesn't do computer things. I had hoped to get a Midi setup hooked to the keyboard that she has learned to love, but it hasn't happened yet, and the things she would need to use it for involve a really long learning curve. In order to try to get her interested (and to learn something myself) I picked up a Toshiba tablet PC, thinking it might appeal to her, with its ability to accept handwriting and such. It still might, but meanwhile I used it for a GPS machine in my car, and apparently it took a thumping that was more than the drive would like, and it quit booting one day. It tries, but gets nowhere.

Meanwhile, I picked up a Panasonic CF-T2 Toughbook that worked well - nice and fast, weighs next to nothing, good battery life. I had various USB CD drives and floppy drives laying around the house, so I wasn't concerned that it did not have either, for that ws part of how it got so light. Well, I fell asleep in front of the TeeVee one night with it on my lap, and apparently it spent too much time in contact with me - the fanless design demands air space underneath, and there had been none for a while, so it no longer boots quite up to XP - instead it ges so far, says "CRAP!" and starts the boot again. Of course, I did not get it with recover disks.

Then I got another Toughbook, this one really hardened - heavy, but nice and fast and it even came with a good battery (unheard-of!) so it now sits where the HP 6100 I had from work had sat, and that 6100 is going to be returned.

I got recovery disks for the tablet Toshiba, and spent about half a day discovering that even though it would 'see' a USB CD drive, it would not boot from one. So I googled a few things, and found that there is a utility to write a boot image (and probably all the recovery CD's) onto an SD chip, which I do have - but I can't find the utility anywhere, dammit, and the workarounds all involve a boot floppy, so I know where part of the weekend will be spent.

Meanwhile, the tiny wonder languishes, and I read somewhere hat it can be reloaded from an XP master set, then have the special drivers added back for the touch screen - so I have to get a pristine XP build, and then find all the drivers. More of the weekend gone, I guess - but with any luck at all I'll have them all back to functional next week.

I'm trying to get to the point that I can leave the big Compaq at work, and use one of the smaller machines as a Remote Desktop gateway to it, and then carry only the smaller machines. First I have to get them all healthy again.

I remember when computers would simplify our lives, or so they said. Then again, I'm old enough to have worked on computers that had tubes (and not the CRT variety) in them. We sure have come a long way, I guess - but life isn't all that much simpler, and as for paperless, which dates back to the halcyon days of the mainframe - well, I have yet to see anything computerized produce less paper than before.

I ought to retire and go to work selling the Police Department paper, I suppose.

I guess the point of all this is that life just gets more complex, and computers will be hated by even folks like myself that love them. If I were to bury in the back yard all the hardware I have accumulated over the years of working on and with computers, I'd run out of back yard long before I ran out of stuff to bury there. If I didn't know better, I'd say it reproduced by parthenogenesis (the thought of computers having sex has far too high a squick factor for even this old reprobate.)

I'd be inclined to get rid of them, but I still enjoy writing some software now and then, and when I can';t sleep or the TeeVee bores me, sometimes I get my best code just sitting there in my chair with the laptop on my knees. I am also addicted to the variety of music and video available through binary newsgroups, and am building a couple of collections just for me, of things I like to see and hear. Whether I'll ever get the chance to listen and watch what I collect is anyone's guess, but I've heard the best part of any journey is the getting there, so this collecting is fun - and at least big drives are cheap and fit inside the case - it the music were on LP's and the videos on tape, I'd've needed a bigger house just to warehouse the recordings.

Well, lunch time is over and the boss wants something from me, so I have to go pretend to work so they can pretend to pay me. Odd how that works....

Tonight is Choir Rehearsal, one of my favorite days of the week. Y'all have a good day, y'hear?

Weekend Thoughts

It was a nice weekend. Except for the rain, that is.

I had a lot of stuff I was going to get done this weekend. I don't remember what most of it was - and the stuff I do remember didn't get done. But weekends come around pretty regularly.

As I recall it, Saturday was to have been a motorcycle day - or at least enough of one that I'd get the Kwacker up to Jack for the installation of its new column lock. That didn't happen - I don't care for riding in the rain in the summer - and it was only 47 out yesterday. I think most of Saturday went to catching up on FanFic reading (about which more in another diatribe) and working on making this new laptop into what I think I want it to be. It seems to me I did some other stuff, but not much. I tend to nap a lot on weekends - I don't know if it is age-related, depression-related, or blood sugar related - but it doesn't bother me enough to want to find out.

I also did some work on unloading the DVR by watching some stuff I had recorded.

EVERYONE needs a DVR - if you have one, you can watch any show in just over 2/3 of the time it would normally take because you can quick-skip the commercials. That means I can watch three episodes of Eureka in the time it took to record two. Unfortunately, HD TV takes a LOT of space, and the DVR storage just is not enough to this point. There are drives big enough to do it, but the vendors won't let us into the box to replace its 100 gig drive with one of 1000 gig or so.

Sunday I made music in the morning, and visited with my youngest daughter and youngest grandson for a while in the afternoon, making myself useful by building a fire in her living room (in a wood stove, of course.) I also amused Sammy for a while, played with the cat a while, touched not one book, TeeVee or computer all that time.

Then we went home, and as I recall it I watched the drag racing at Pomona and slept intermittently, even through CSI:Miami, which usually doesn't put me to sleep. Before I knew it, it was Monday Morning, time to get myself up, get the other grandson up, make coffee, read the paper, take Ronnie to school and myself to work. Traffic sucked bigtime this morning - what takes me 25 minutes at night takes just over an hour in the morning sometimes. I'm not going off on a rant about Verkehrsarschloecher (Griesheimer for Anal Sphincters of Traffic) but I will let you fill in your own, because I suspect that everyone who doesn't work at home and has to drive to the office has their share of rants.

The first thing I learned after my arrival was that some work that had taken me a couple of weeks a year back was going into the dumper because someone decided we didn't need to be quite so nice to our client base, and we could get by making them use other processes that are more arcane and less intuitive to get the data I was spoonfeeding them. I guess I don't care - I get paid to do this stuff, but I kinda like it when it gets used.

The rant about outside data is postponed - right this minute it is entirely too profane to be posted here. Laer, when it gets less profane and more germane i'll get into the Uses and Misuses of Data ias it relates to people who save data without knowing that somewhere that has to be a unique identifier.... It's like a mailing list for all your friends filed under "Friends" without any distinction between the various names - like they were interchangeable parts. I guess there are probably folks that operate that way, but it gives me a headache and makes my eyes bleed.

I gotta go back to work. Have a good balance of the day, all of you.

Life at 66

Someone asked me yesterday why I still work. Of course, I had a semi-smartass answer - "But for certain unfortunate addictions, like food and housing, I'd've quit by now." Now, there is a certain amount of truth in that - I do have debts, and I like being able to spend money. A simple subsistance lifestyle would probably bore me to tears, or drive me into self-destructive behavior.

It cannot be said that we live high - both of us work, and our lives don't intersect often enough. Choir directors never have a weekend off (or hardly ever, anyhow) and spouses of choir directors either join in the musical activity or spend weekends alone. As a choirboy, I choose to sing - I still enjoy it, and like to think that I still have enough talent to make the choir better, not worse.

I have tried imagining being retired - and failed miserably. I truly don't know what I would do. I'd use up a month of blog material the first day, and then have 29 days to wonder whatthehell I ought to be doing. We're headed into winter, and while I do love motorcycling, I'm not stupid nor do I have a love for pain - so motorcycling on snow and in rain and snow is not for me (At least not as long as I have a solo bike without a sidecar!) and while there is a certain amount of fun available throwing my old Volvo around in the snow, somehow it just isn't the same.

And there is a certain amount of satisfaction in doing what I do for money - because much of what I do creatively is useful for people around me. I'm too lazy to do it just for myself, and without the work environment to improve with things I create, there isn't feedback of any sort - this no incentive to extend myself.

Living on just my social security is a little scary, too - with my salary, it's a nice addition, but without my salary it just isn't all that much, and it would make a big hole in spending for computer parts & software, as well as weekends away. We'd have the time again, but the money? I dunno....

I used to tell people that I wanted to return to Germany, but when I had the time, I didn't have the money - and when I had the money I didn't have the time, and then I got married and had neither money nor time. Frankly, it is more comfortable having neither than thinking about having lots of time and no money.

I like what I do, although it occasionally bugs me that I have to work a certain amount, and have little or no flex built in. But once I am involved in what I do best, time flies, and I can put on a headset (now that I no longer have an office with a door) and ignore what's outside what I'm doing.

It would be better if I were more active, but my life has been spent (since leaving field engineering in 1972) in front of a monitor on a desk, not out killing things to eat, so my exercise is minimal, which means that interruptions are minimal, and as a person afflicted by ADD the minimization of interruptions keeps me on track.

But my knees hate me. They've carried too much weight for too many years to suffer in slence, so now I suffer in silence while they make life and motion hard for me. Picking motorcycles up doesn't help, bit I do not have to do that very often, and frankly do not miss that activity at all. I know so many riders who claim never to have had to pick one up from laying on its side, but I am convinced that they all lie, too embarrassed to admit to being so clumsy.

Anyhow, I think I'll keep on working for a few years yet. As long as they'll pay me, I might as well, at least until my lovely wife decides she's had enough and wants to retire.

Ideally, we'll sell our house and buy into a retirement community - an hour up the road is the one that my parents were in until their deaths, and we both find much in it to like - so that is a possibility. I seriously do not think we'll move to Australia with grandkids here, so we'll be staying close. I don't think the rest of the kids are going anywhere any time soon, so there'll at least be that small island of stability.

If we're very lucky, we'll be able to maintain enough health that we can do pretty much what we want - that's the ideal case. We'll see how it all shakes out.

Meanwhile, being 66 feels a lit like 55, which felt a lot like 44, which wasn't far from 33 - but I no longer remember 22 at all - it was lost in a beer-fueled haze in Germany somewhere. If I'm as old as I feel, on good days I'm around 12 (according to my wife and some coworkers) - and on the bad days I'm probably 99 - which averages to 55, so I'm ahead!

But the sum and substance of this ramble is for my contemporaries - don't let your age distress you and don't pay attention to the numbers. You'll live until you die and there's no point at all in anticipating and preparing for that event, because if you guess the time wrong, you'll die slowly waiting for it, and that's probably no fun at all!

Be well, y'all.

Jamie left

Our kids are our kids - we just have to love them. Our oldest, James (Jamie since he could talk) just left yesterday for the west coast, then New Zealand, then Australia and after that who knows.

We knew he was going sometime this week, but didn't know he had gone until we got home from work yesterday. He's driving, plans to sell his car on the west coast, and leaves on the 26th on a big airplane.

A couple of years back, he spent a year in New Zealand, and liked it a lot. Phyllis and I have a feeling that if we are to see him again, we'll have to go there, but one is never certain. I'd like to think I had wisdom to impart before he left, and he missed out on it, but really, he's 35 now, so anything I might have said would not have made a big change in his plans or his life.

I had rather hoped some woman would throw a rope around him and tie him down, but he's skinny and flexible, so nobody managed to do that. It's going to be quiet around here without him, but it was quiet before and he came back. He would have been gone some time ago except that his baby sister got married and threatened mayhem if he left before he could be in the wedding, and I guess he just got too comfortable and stayed around for a lot longer than planned.

I might be a little envious - I had wanted to go back to Germany and never did it, but may yet - he's still unencumbered by responsibilities like wife & kids - but he's pretty much on his own as all of his pals have taken up the conventional life and have wives, kids, mortgages and such - although one of them moved to New Zealand to live his life.

There's something subtly seductive about that part of the world - we have family members that had gone there once on vacation and never returned, having found mate and life there. I guess there's still hope for Jamie, but I rather fear he'll end up old and alone for being too picky or something. Of course, I may just be being morose - it is, after all, Friday....

Anyhow, he's off again, and I miss him already. Wonder when we'll see him again....

SPAM

The email variety, of course.

I hate it.

I don't know where some of these folks are finding me.

Some, I know, are filtering newsgroups looking for anything they can turn into an email address.

Some have no doubt phished address books from friends and family.

Some have even got the phone book from local government Exchange servers - I know this just because of the header info in some of what I get - some emails are copied to folks at a totally different government agency.

I finally had to tell my own mail server not to accept anything from Brazil. Even using blacklists and exclusion lists nd several RBL excluders, I still get a ton of crap every day.

Here at work I get at least three messages a day from Russia. Now, this might be interesting, but it comes in in cyrillics, which I can 'read' but no longer possess the vocabulary to actually understand - so it is frustrating, because while I can make out parts, I can make no sense of it. Worse yet, I get it via a blind copy, and don't want to filter the whole nation just to get rid of these annoyances.

I wish I had a simple answer - there are tools (SpamAssasin to name but one) that will trim this stuff back, hide it, or make it Go Away - but there is always the risk it will deep-six something about which I care, so I tend not to use them all that much, and then to go back and verify their choices - and let the Bayesian filters "learn" some more - but it all takes time.

Now, if I was getting Spam from Germany, I'd at least be able to read it - but I haven't hit any German spam lists yet.

I guess it is time to get yet another email address, and use those that I already have for SPAM sinks. AAARRRRRRRGGGG!

BMW Drivers redux

With regard to a previously bitched-about driver of a large and expensive BMW, it looks like he's gonna skate, at least as far as the police department is concerned. IID has ruled that it is a civil matter, which means that Internal Investigations has decided it is OK for a cop to park in someone else's parking place and destroy the steering mechanism of a vehicle that is parked there blocking him - in effect that malicious destruction of another's property is only important if the destroyer happens not to be a cop driving a BMW that cost $85,000.

Maybe next time he'll do it to a cop that outranks him - but this civilian isn't interesting enough for the department to want to charge him with anything - although I can call a States' Attorney and have charges pressed - if I want to take a chance on becoming unemployed for my efforts.

Some days just plain suck!

Military Service

My kids are too old to be asking me things like "What did you do in the war?" and I was out of the Air Force before any were born, so our discussions of military service have been perhaps less intense than they ought to have been. In addition, I was in the Air Force Security Service, an intelligence organization, and a very tight lid was kept on what was done for many years. Recently it has been (mostly) declassified, and with a reunion several weeks back of Security Service members, I've had cause to reexamine my attitudes about service as well as to look harder at what was done when I was there.

When I was growing up, the draft was still in force. I'm not prepared at this juncture to address the concept of a draft, or of compulsory national service of one sort or another - that'll be topic for a rant one day when I feel like getting beat up.

Two of my kids thought about going into the service - and I encouraged them to do so. Neither did - apparently they thought I was a bit cavalier in my day giving up four years of my life. At the time, it sounded to me like a better deal than spending 18 months face down in the mud, or three years traveling the ocean by rail. Hindsight tells me that my logic at that time was probably flawed, but that the time was (mostly) well spent.

Even without the pressure of the draft, I would do it again, and would hope to make better use of some of the time than I did. I was young then, and have allowed myself to be told that, because I was under 30 the appropriate term for what I was was youngandstupid.

I went into the service in July of 1961 - at the time, Viet Nam wasn't really interesting and the rest of the world was except for cold war stuff reasonably safe and sane. I had wanted to go to Germany ever since my father returned from Berlin at the end of the Berlin Airlift. When I went into the Air Force, it was in my mind that I would go to Aircraft Control & Warning school, et some electronic training, and then go overseas, hopefully to Berlin, at least to Germany. I was pretty naive, I guess, and managed not to hear the recruiter say "We can just about guarantee that for you, but the needs of the Air Force will trump your wishes."

Basic Training in San Antonio in July is pretty awful, particularly for a guy that considered a chess game to be an active sport. Phys Ed didn't kill me, but there were days I wished it would. The heat was appalling, but we slept at night because we were just too damned tired not to. In later years I came to an understanding of just what it was that Basic Training was meant to do, and developed a grudging admiration for how well it worked in a short period of time - but at the time, I didn't like anything about it.

At the midpoint of Basic, some of us were called to the side, congratualted on great test scores, and offered language screening, which would be in air conditioning. We all wanted that, so off we went, and at the end of three days most of us had gone back to the aquadron, but some remained who, according to the Air Force had demonstrated the ability to learn and use a new language. For those that remained, there was Chinese screening. At the end of three days I was among the ones still there, and they started filling classes to go to Yale and learn Mandarin.

They finished those classes before they reached the R-names in the alphabet, the next need was Russian, so in October I found myself on an airplane headed for Syracuse University to learn Russian. The fact that I had failed seriously the previous year to learn German at Penn State convinced me that they were confused, but off I went anyhow, our aircraft landing in a snowstorm.

Not much to say about the school itself save that it was intense - 7 or 8 in a class, one or two native-born instructors - and we had to learn because for some of them English was a foreign language. It was a fair amount of work - and I ought to have applied myself better, but I was only 19 when I got there, and suddenly my parents couldn't see me any more.... More to the point, it was New York, and we could drink!

I got through the course in July of 1962, and headed for San Angelo, Texas for a more ineresting course, got stuck there (another rant) and got to Germany in April of 1963, working as a Voice Intercept Processing Specialist.

I loved the work, loved Germany, and did what I wanted except on duty. Our job was that of listening to radios, and copying what we heard for analysts to wander through and pick out any intelligence that was there to be found. At the time, what we did was a secret, and folks weren't even supposed to know what languages we had learned - ordering a beer in a saloon in something besides German or English could get your butt chewed half off! Even though we worked in a building with no windows right next to a field of antennas the size of a town larger than the one I grew up in, changed shifts every 8 hours, and walked in and out with earphones on our shoulders, what we did was a deep dark secret.

Security Service has been called a tightly knit group of loosely wrapped people, and it was not the real Air Force in many ways. But it was service to the nation, and at the time we learned many things that, without the aid of the loonies in the bunch we might've not known. We made a difference.

I see those four years as part payment for being able to live in this great nation. We had something to do and we did it, and if I may say we did it damned well. We were part of something greater than each one of us, and took pride in what we did.

I think that those years were some of the most important in my life in terms of learning about life, about history, about folks in a foreign nation, about how language impacted thought processes and many more things I cannot recall offhand.

I met many German families - many who had served in the second world war, and learned something about forgetting. I cannot begin to enumerate the many small bits of knowledge I acquired from Germans who talked to me, took me into their homes, helped me with the language, and generally treated me like family.

The Service was a really important part of my life. I am opposed to conscription, but believe that everyone ought to give some time to servinv the nation in one way or another. There was really nothing that i had to do that was more important at that time - and I grew up a lot more than I might have had I not gone into the Air Force.

I would favor service of some sort for everyone - not necessarily military. It really ticks me off to see youngsters laughing at those who make that sacrifice, labeling them as stupid or worse. The Air Force was the first experience I had to tech me what commitment was really all about - going in was the first hard decision I really had to make, and after having made that one, there were many to follow - but I knew I was committed to those four years, that there was no get-out-of-jail-free card to be had, and that I was in control of how bad it would get, or how good it could be.

These days, when I talk to young people, particularly those who are wondering what to do with their lives, I enocourage volunteering for some time in the service. For some, it can be a good career opportunity, for others not - but every peoson who signs up for a set emnlistment will emerge from that period with certain knowledge of at least 200 things that they wise never again to have to do - and this is important knowledge.

What I did was interesting, occasionally exciting, sometime sboring, but something that made a difference. The folks volunteering today will make a difference, and will find their own lives enriched for the experience if that is their expectation. On the other hand, if they figure it'll be stupid and boring, that's what they'll find.

We now have a professional military, rather smaller than before, but with members understanding the meaning oif commitment, and not having been dragged into it.

We owe them thanks and our respect, for they are about the things that have to be done, and have put themselves in harm's way for the rest of us.

Of those with whom I served, at least one is a physician today, several are in international business using their linguistic skills, many more are just folks like me. Most have exceeded expectations of their lives that they might have had before entering the service.

Please do not look down on the military, for it represents the best of us, and will make the sacrifices to which we give only lip service. I am a veteran, and proud of it. If your kids are at loose ends, help them to choose a service and spend some time there. It might turn into a career, it might turn into a couple of years in ugly places - but those kids'll emerge with a sureness of purpose and a knowledge of the world that will exceed your own - and they'll be ready to take life by the tail and swing it around their heads.

Motorcycles

I ride motorcycles.

I like motorcycles - riding them is fun, and good for you (as long as you don't fall off or something.)

I think everyone who aspires to drive anything with more than two wheels should start out on a motorcycle or a motor scooter and survive one year on that before being allowed in anything that won't fall over if you don't pay attention.

If my suggestion were followed, we'd scare off (or kill off) a large number of folks who would otherwise have got licenses to drive cars, but who are t0oo stupid or incautious to be trusted with a weapon like an automobile.

A motorcycle will teach you to pay attention. The reward for not paying attention is usually something like road rash, which is painful. Pain hurts. It gets remembered, and when it gets remembered in connection with a particular behavior, the tendency is to avoid repeating that behavior.

Motorcycles will, for the most part, accelerate faster than cars, and stop faster than cars. That combination will keep a rider out of trouble when not used without caution. Like anything else, excess combined with lack of forethought will lead to pain - but it will be an instructive pain.

With today's automobiles, it is quite possible to roll a number of them up into a ball and learn nothing from the experience because of the protection afforded by belts, air bags and crush zones. Sliding down 150 yards of asphalt, on the other hand, will abrade even the strongest pair of jeans and heat one's arse and ever remove a few layers of perfectly good skin. If it has ever happened to you, you will remember it.

Motorcycles are cheap to feed - some to the point of the ridiculous. A small but highway-worthy motorcycle can deliver 60-70 miles per gallon, although it won't deliver the acceleration of a larger motorcycle. Speaking of which, there are some motorcycles that are truly obscenely fast - but like the television or the automobile, there are controls that the user/driver can employ. these insanely fast motorcycles respond quite well to small throttle increments instead of large throttle increments and even deliver good gas mileage in the process.

Contrary to popular belief, properly designed and maintained motorcycles are quite stable at speed because of the gyroscopic action afforded by the wheels. You may remember this phenomenon from your bicycling days. It takes work to make a moving motorcycle fall over - the faster it is moving the harder it is to make fall. Over the years I have fallen many times - but never at speed; always while walking it around a parking lot.

When you ride, you get to relax because it seems as if there is so much more time for everything to take place - and so much more to see, to hear, and to smell. Instead of bting in a glass cage, you're right out there with all the live stuff. Leaves are brighter, birds are more noticeable, and the road is much more interesting in its curves and corners - they intrigue you and you want to pay attention, instead of becoming anesthetized, as is wont to happen in a cage.

Oddly enough, even a heavy motorcycle can be picked up by almost anyone if you know how. If you don't know how, a 350 pound motorcycle is damn near impossible to get up off its side (particularly if the gas tank is laying on one of your knees) - but if you know how, a 66-year-old fat guy with bad knees can pick up a bike weighing nearly 800 pounds. I know that, because mine weighs near 800 pounds, and I resemble that 66-year-old fat guy in two ways - my age and my weight.

Anybody that thinks a motorcycle might be a giggle is urged to find a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course and take it. It won't cost that much, you won't need a motorcycle (they are supplied as part of the course experience) and you won't learn any of my bad habits. The instructors are uniformly excellent, and you'll either enjoy it so much you'll head right out for a motorcycle store (if wifey doesn't veto it - and if she does, send her through the course....) or you'll know you don't want to do that - and you won't be stuck with a motorcycle you really don't want any more and have to sell.

Motorcycling does not discriminate against ages - I know motorcyclists pushing 90 that are still riding. Granted, some have gone to trikes or sidecars because they are concerned about the weight - but they still put themselves out in the air among the birds, leaves, bugs and other critters and grin all the way to wherever they are going.

Motorcycles are safe when properly ridden, cheap to feed, and cause smiles. What more could one ask?

Sunday, Part Two

It's really time to go to sleep, but Phyllis and I are up watching the PBR finals for the year.

For those of you who don't know what the PBR is, it's the Professional Bull Riders. We've been watching this spectacle or several years and even went to the Baltimore Arena to watch in person when they came to Baltimore.

Frankly, I was surprised that my wife got hooked on this sport - it's dangerous, occasionally bloody, but some of the bull riders are really interesting people - and overall they seem to be good folks. It's an international sport; some of the riders are from Brazil (in fact, Adreano Moraes, the only three-time world champion is from Brazil) and some from as far away as Australia.

But it is world final time, so we will spend tomorrow sleep-deprived.

I did make a leaf run this afternoon of around 70 miles, and saw some colors so brigh that they hurt my eyes. Beautiful day, if a little chilly - time to get the hippo hands out and the crash bar covers to block off the worst of the wind. I have ridden all year round, but as I get older, I need more help to ignore the chill in the winter.

I think I am about to try and buy a sidecar for my Honda. I've never had a sidecar before, but riding in the winter would definitely be easier with the outrigger to keep me vertical....

The new world champ of the PBR is another Brazilian, and tonight the bulls won more than the riders did - but it was fun to watch.

BTW - the winner of the world championship had a one megabuck payday. All he had to do was stay on more bulls than his competitors for 8 seconds a piece. Sounds easy, no?

NO!

Have a good night - Monday is a work day.

Sunday, part one

Well, I started out to do a leaf run, which consists mostly of riding a motorcycle where the leaves are colorful and looking at the leaves, interspersed with stopping somewhere for lunch, a drink or something by way of a snack.

Before leaving, I opened up this laptop to look at the mail, and turned on the TeeVee - and discovered that there is a HD channel that devotes Sundays to concerts - and that the one coming next was The Moody Blues at the Greek Theater, one which I had not seen - so the leaf run got delayed in favor of watching a concert by a couple of guys with more grey hair than I have, assisted by several other musicians, playing & singing nostalgia-inducing music from a while back. Some of the memories are sweet, some are poignant - but Justin Hayward and John Lodge still have it.

Of course, if you hate The Moody Blues (or don't know who they are/were) then I guess this will induce a little nausea - but it was worth the detour to watch old pros doing what they do so well.

By way of introduction....

I probably should have written this on the first day but, as often happens, something got me all misdirected and I failed to get it written - so I'll write it today instead.

I was born in 1942, near Baltimore, Maryland. My father worked for Glenn L. Martin, building B-26 aircraft and preparing himself for a life dealing with airborne electronic devices. My mother stayed at home with me and, later on, my two brothers as well. Life was, I guess, good - we lived in a community inhabited largely by folks who worked at Martins, so we all had a lot in common.

When I was 7, my father decided to leave Martin's and went to work for Philco, in the Tech Rep division as (what else) a Tech Rep, working on airborne aircraft radio and radar, and the supporting ground station equipment. One of the parts of being a Tech Rep was overseas work on military bases - and my father ended up being sent to Berlin for the Airlift. He was one of the many who served anonymously, making sure the aircraft flew safely, and the Berliners got fed.

It was no picnic for my mother, at home with a 7-year-old, a 4 year-old and a 2-year-old. Granted, we lived in a very kid-oriented community, and had great neighbors, but I think my mother never quite forgave him for pursuing the bucks in those days. Because of conditions at that time, he was kept busy, and communication was not too regular. However, pictures and stories of Berlin cemented in me a desire to go to Germany some day, which desire I was to fulfill, although perhaps not in the way I might've wished.

When Dad returned, he continued to work at Philco, commuting on weekends home from Philadelphia, an arrangement that suited nobody, so we eventually bought a house in Hatboro, Pennsyvania, where we lived from until the mid 60's (I left in 1961 for the Air Force) by which time everyone was grown and the kids had all left, although it is said that one of my brothers was more pushed than the rest of us. I and my brothers were interesting kids - today we'd've been called ADD or ADHD - back then we were space cadets.

My parents were depression kids, from trades and mercantile families - not a degree anywhere in my ancestry that I can find. I went to college because I was trying to do what lots of people (father, girlfriend) thought I should do - and I was plenty bright, by desparately undirected, undisciplined and unmotivated resulting in Penn State and I parting company after the second semester. I would soon learn that Penn State slept with the draft board, and my leaving signalled a call to that august body the substance of which was "This guy has nothing to do - go get him!" Since I knew that they were coming, I resolved to do something for myself, and started checking the services for deals and promises - and the Air Force had the best offering, although it was four years long. But I had nothing better to do at the time, said girl friend having been smarter than I and dissolved the relationship - and I was sure that four years in the Air Force would be a lot more pleasant than a year and a half face-down in the mud - so in July of 1961, I joined the Air Force. It was the beginning of many very interesting years.

The first thing I learned was that although I had signed up for a technical fied, I had tested too well - so at some point we spent three days doing language screening, an interesting process deserving of an entry of its own. After three days I had not washed out, so I was sent off for Chinese screening, which I survived. I would have gone to Yale to learn Mandarin, but they filled the class before reaching the letter R, so I was schedued to go off to Syracuse University to learn Russian. I had my doubts, but I managed this one, too (possibly because the price of failure was a career change to Air Policeman or Cook), and after an extended delay in San Angelo, Texas, I ended up heading for Darmstadt, Germany in 1963.

In the main, my life from that point consisted mainly of working rotating shifts (4 days, one day off, 4 swings, one day off, four Mids, four days off and then do it some more) and when not at work or asleep, visitin various salo0ns in Darmstadt, learning German and making friends with many of the locals, all the while failing abysmally at my self-set task of draining the place of beer.

Even lousy German beer is so good that you can take a bottle to the swimming pool, open it and drink some, and forget about it for the next two days, then find it, open it and drink the rest and it still tastes good! I know this is hard to believe but I was there.

There were other alcohol-fueled adventures involving wine, strawberry wine,and various fests around the nation. For the most part I motorcycled while in Germany, and saw a good deal of the nation, playing tourist on 4 day breaks - taking in Formula 1 races at the Nurburging, visiting neighborhood places in small towns, and generally bumming around. I picked up local dialect German quickly, and passed for the someone from some small town over the hill, rather than a GI, so my of-duty time was most pleasant. It was so pleasant, as a matter of fact, that I took an overseas discharge and stayed an extra year there. I don't recall exactly why, but it is not unlikely that some German girl had something to do with it. Eventually, however, it was time to come home, dry out, get my life in order and Do Something - so I returned to the US to find that my parents had returned to Baltimore and, needing somewhere to be, I went there with them.

Always a choirboy, I joined the choir at my parents' church, which was where I was to meet Phyllis, who eventually became my wife. When I started back to work, I BS'ed my way into a field engineering job, learned fast, and moved into software in the early 70's never to return to hardware. I've been in IT ever since, and it sure has been interesting.

Along the way, Phyllis and I acquired AA degrees, adopted a couple of kids and then much to everyone's surprise, had one more by the more normal method. She, meanwhile, directs choirs and teaches piano and voice, and I continue to work, moorcycle, and sing in the choir.

Probably enough for now - another time I'll deal with what I actually did those four years in the Air Force for the Air Force itself, and not my own amusement. This has been an overview. If you're still reading, it is time to stop, and thank you for not having been too bored to get to the end

Thursday, all day long

My motorcycle mas been returned! I went up to the shop that has had it and picked it up today, after paying a reasonable ransom for all the work that needed done. Of course, nothing is ever easy around here.

My son took me up - but the slave cylinder for the clutch in his car went to hell yesterday, so we drove my old Volvo up, and he agreed to bring it back, so I left him with my keys, and went in to pay for the motorcycle, then start it up and ride it home. Someone who does not ride cannot imagine just how good it feels to be back up on two wheels again after being confined to a 4-wheeled cage for more than a week. Today was warm, and although rain was threatened it did not arrive, at least not while I was out & about. Riding home was great until I got home and realized that my house keys are colocated with my car keys - and my car keys were in my car. My car was where my son was - and at that point in time I had no clue where he was, but I did beat him home. I folowed a hunch and looked at several of his friends' homes, but did not find him.

This presented a problem, as I had reason to want to get into the house, so I tried to call him and realized that I did not have his new cell number. But fortunately, my wife was at work, so I rode the motorcycle over there and borrowed her house keys - and by the time I got home my son had arrived and I no longer needed the keys. But Phyllis told me not to bring the keys back to her - she'd get them when she returned, so I now have my keys and her house keys and I am inside the house so I don't need either set.

Just as I was relaxing I got a call from the office followed by an email describing something arcane that is happening, so I got out the laptop, logged in and VPN'ed to the office - and could not find anything, so it looks like I'll be stuck observing for some hours yet tonight.

The person for whom I work is one of those folks that likes to write down what we did when something happened so we can do it again. I prefer to try and figure out what the problem really is - sometimes it isn't what it appears to be.

My favorite reason for this is appendicitis.

Consider - you have a bellyache in a certain place, you go to the doctor, and he takes out your appendix. Problem solved.

A year later, you have what feels like the same pain in the same place. Does he re-remove your appendix?

Folks who think like this can be astonishing hard to educate.

With luck, tomorrow will be a great day. Maybe I'll get to ride tomorrow. Meanwhile I get to sit here with two laptops waiting for the phone to ring or for an email to come to give me some more information so I can chase the problem and fix it.

Well, at least I have this nice big HD TeeVee to help keep me bored.

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Choir Rehearsal

It's Wednesday night again - that means choir rehearsal. To say I look forward to it would not always be true, but I'm always glad I went - something about singing is liberating, and reading new music is mental exercise that is enough different from a workday task that it is a pleasure, and a pleasure to rest afterward.

Of course, youngest daughter will be there with my newest grandson, so I'll get a few face minutes with Sammy. The weather has got warm again, so it looks like Indian Summer is in full swing.

Tomorrow morning my son will run me up to Jack's up the road where I'll collect my motorcycle, now completely repaired after a vicious act of destruction that rendered it unusable late last week. I think I'll call Frank and see if he wants to make a leaf run on Friday.

Frank is a musician (I almost said another, but I'm nowhere near in the same class with him) whose music room includes somewhere around 20 guitars and many other instruments. He was my wife's first guitar teacher a good 40 years back, and is in my opinion one of the best guitarists around this area, although he teaches now and no longer plays clubs and such. He also has a nice touch on a keyboard, and is a genious with his midi gear - I have a CD that he made called "Frank's Back Room" that is mostly a bit on the jazz side, and includes full band arrangements, all played by Frank, a track at a time using Cakewalk, his computer, a couple of guitars and a couple of keyboards. Pretty neat stuff - I am so damn envious I could spit!

There is something about music - I have it going all the time, using a headset at work so I don't have to hear crap from everyone now that I no longer have my own office (grumble & bitch here....) Right now it's T-Bone Walker playing "One for the Lonely", live in Paris - and it is all I can do to keep my feet still.

I think we're doing a little free association here tonight.

So I'll shut up, shut down these computers, get the laptop ready to travel and head for home.

Be well, y'all and keep a song in yr heart of hearts.

Politics, redux

I have just watched President-elect Barack Obama's victory speech.

I was impressed. Even if he was not my candidate, he will be my president, and there's a lot to the man. His speech was temperate, measured, and had something for everyone present.

The next four years will be interesting. It will be a learning experience for all of us - including the president-elect, and I am confident that he retains the ability to learn.

More history has been made today, yet there is much more to be made.

The system does work, and it is still the best system in the world.

I have to go to sleep - tomorrow is a workday - and sleep I shall.

Political Speeches

One of the best, if not the best I have ever heard is that delivered this evening by John McCain.

Of the important points, one he made that I'll bet gets ignored in the general hooha is that it's time now to get together and work together - and that's how the game should work.

Frankly there was no candidate that would have suited me 100%, the reasons for which statement are not important at this point. We have our work cut out for us, all of us.

I have faith in the nation, faith that the Founding Fathers new what they were about, and while I have my concerns, the election has been conceded, and we all have our work cut out for us - and while I don't expect necessarily to like all that happens in the ensuing four years, there's no point in my trying to make life hard for the folks coming in.

The nation is a lot like a train -You don't steer a train, the most you can do is try to figure out which way it is wants to go and either help all you can, or get off.

For me, to get off the train means leaving the nation and finding another more to my liking ( and having lived in Germany there was a lot there to like) - but this is still the best place in the world, in my opinion - so I am required to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Of course, having voted, I retain my bitching rights.

It's done, folks - let's get on with our lives.

Election Day

It is the day when we, the people, get to choose a group of folks who'll choose a new leader for us.

I hope y'all went to your polling places and voted. If you didn't, you really must stay just as silent over the next four years, because by failing to exercise your right you've forfeited bitching rights.

I really don't much care how you voted (as long as it was legally) because all the crap that has flowed the last few weeks about candidates who've allegedly done this'n'that really won't mean much in the coming four years. We'll all get some surprises, some more pleasant than others, and nobody will be more surprised than whoever it is ends up being called President - because that person will discover that nothing works as planned, that absolute power doesn't exist in our little corner of the world, and that maybe he'd've been better off losing.

Many of those of us who did vote will come to realize over the next four years the wisdom of the old Chinese philosopher's saying "Be careful what you wish for, lest it be granted..."

In another four years, we get to do it again - meanwhile, we live with the results of our wisdom because, as much as it irritated everyone who heard it, Dick Cheney had it right - we choose, then we live with the result until we get to choose again, for if we have any faith at all in our own judgment, we'll leave our chosen leaders alone to do what we elected them to do - and if they do it poorly, well, we only have to put up with it for four years, and if they do it well, we can get them to do it again for a while.

The Founding Fathers had more faith in leaders than we today seem to have - they built a system in which leaders are chosen, then left alone to lead for a set period of time. If we have faith in our leaders, we'll answer questions when they ask, and otherwise will trust them to do what is right, knowing that they have more and better resources than we do, believing that we have chosen well, and understanding that there will be times we will not like much of what it is that they do in our name(s) but knowing that they have knowledge that we do not and that it is we who have placed them in positions of power and authority. If they displease enough of us we'll fire them in four years and get someone else who we believe will be better at representing our desires and our best interests.

So if you haven't voted yet, get out there and exercise that right.

But if the result doesn't please you, there's no need to eat your liver over it, because in another four years we get to do it again and maybe in the intervening four years we'll learn a thing or two and make better choices. There's also a chance that the folks we're throwing out at that time have learned a thing or two.

Happy first Tuesday after the first Monday in November!

Regarding the first post wherein ignorant people are mentioned....

Finally I found out who vandalized my motorcycle. It was the owner of that large white BMW that I had blocked in, having been instructed by Building Security to do so.

I have it on video - bless surveillance cameras.

The guy claimed he could not have hurt anything by doing what he did, then complained at me for leaning my motorcycle on his car, scratching the bumper. Apparently he expected me to offer to soothe his pain before he got stuck with my bill - probably making his high enough that it would be a wash.

I was already not happy, and his attempt to push me made me less happy. He's on medical leave and will be back eventually, at which time we'll talk about it - he thinks. What actually will happen is that my comprehensive claim, having been files, will take care of my motorcycle, and my complaint about malicious destruction of property, complete with video of the destroyer wreaking his destruction will go to Internal Affairs.

I know how his bumper got scratched - in the process of muscling my motorcycle away from his bumper, he scratched it himself. Generally it isn't my style simply to scratch something - had I wanted to make a statement I'd've parked the motorcycle on his hood.

I'm still pretty irritated about it, since right now a lot of my money is going to get things fixed, I spent a day last week just tending to this jerk's messes, and he appears to think that his ownership of an $85,000 automobile, his position as a homicide cop, and his 25 years of longevity with the department give him permission to destroy others' property out of ignorance and try to foist the responsibility off on others. I think that the IID investigation is going to do some damage to his career, but that is no longer his problem - his recalcitrance left me no option but to let the report go and have him charged with a crime.

Damn shame it came to that - but there it is.

Happy Monday - don't forget to vote.

Elections, Candidates and Voters

I'm not going to try to change anyone's mind here - if you've waited this long to make up your mind who it will be for you, well, there are probably many things you do not understand, and I would prefer not to confuse you.

The level of rhetoric I have seen in this campaign has reached a new low. I don't even care if it is true, the more negative the ads, the more I tend to think "Well, this guy must have something going on or they wouldn't be trying so damned hard to deep-six him." I of course have my reservations about all the candidates - if the world were mine to rule, I wouldn't have anyone in that office that had not at least served a tour in the military - because I don't believe that the culture of the military can be learned by listening to draft-dodging college profs and the like - and the might of the military cannot be effectively wielded by someone who doesn't understand it. Lots of people can explain how a helicopter works (myself among them) but unless you're a suicidal idiot you won't go flying with people like me - because I've never flown one. In a way, it's like sex - reading about it does nothing at all to prepare you for actually doing it.

I think we made a mistake allowing a constitutional amendment that made senators popularly elected - because the Founding Fathers had this pretty unique idea that the states as an entity needed representation within a federal system - and now there's nobody charged with that responsibility, whereas when senators were appointed by state legislatures, they at least knew who they owed. Popular election of both houses is outright silly at best - and it leads to enormous pandering contests to see who can promise to take the most from productive folks to give to someone who (they hope) will vote for them.

I also think that the current rush to kill off the electoral college is a huge mistake - unless all the folks that live anywhere but in the BosWash corridor, Pennsylvania and California are suddenly in love with the idea of letting the inhabitants of the aforementioned relatively trivial part of the USA think for them. Living where I do, I realize that a purely popular vote would assure that no matter what I thought, I'd get overrun by the folks from the Left Coast.

It is also probably prudent to note that it it does come to a purely popular vote, any sort of minority - ethnic, religious, philosophical, political, sexual or whatever should always remember that in a purely popular vote, any minority is at risk of not being heard, and potentially of becoming illegal.

Our politicians are looking to Europe for guidance as to how to do things - failing with boring regularity to note that we have been in a self-governing mode longer than those nations, and they are all bound about proving that socialism works for half of the people all of the time - and in a truly socialist society, there are no options except what the state in its beneficence allows. While we are contrasting the costs of health care in various places we ought to ask about unemployment rates in those places - some folks would have eyebrows go clean off the top of their heads.

I have libertarian leanings, I own guns and motorcycles (not to mention computers, a house and cars) and like the things that I own - and quite frankly believe that until I do something really evil and/or stupid and hurt someone besides myself with those things that I own it's none of anyone's goddamned business what I own, where I put it, who I allow to use it, how much or how many I have, and why I choose to have those things as opposed to other things (like golf clubs, tennis racquets, books or camping gear, just for example.)

I have an aversion to giving the government money that I worked to get only to have the government disperse it to someone more needy, more deserving, or less literate than I am. My church receives what I choose to give away, and the sum is not trivial. Because I am a member of the congregation, I have some (albeit limited) input into the disbursement process.

I hate pushing or saying 1 to have the robot on the phone speak to me in English, and it pisses me off that the only choices I get are English or Spanish - why not German and Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Arabic, or Farsi in addition? Or why not be more truthful and make it English officially. I would not interfere with anyone's wish to speak whatever in their own homes and gathering places - but we are where we are, the only thing approaching a standard language is English, so assimilate, dammit! I lived in Germany for a time, and learned German. Sure it was less than easy, but that was what was spoken there, and I felt it to be less than correct to assume that everyone was going to learn my language. I know it would have put large limitations on my ability to learn to know the inhabitants of Germany. I have never regretted learning German (or Russian, or the short study I undertook of Koinae Greek) and think it is important for us to learn other languages - but it is vital that we do not try to become all other places just so folks can feel at home here - if that mattered, they'd've never left where they were!

I believe that anyone who puts something in front of American with a hyphen between is telling all of us just how important being American is to that person - and the importance of being American is secondary at best. I am an American - not a German-American, just a plain garden-variety American. I owe allegiance to one nation, not to many - and should it become apparent to me that this is no longer a place I can call home, I'll go elsewhere, and assimilate into the culture and population there. Having lived other places, I know I can do it - and having lived other places, I came back here, despite giving thought to staying in Germany for one.

If the desire of the electorate is to overhaul our government, there are going to be a hell of a lot of congresscritters and senators looking for new places to do their whoring because the electorate is going to throw all their arses out and put new ones in there. Sure, the new ones will be inexperienced - but they'll find a way to do what must be done, and in they process they just might find a better way. I wouldn't mind seeing limits on consecutive terms on legislators - they might spend less time with their noses up the public's butt and more time trying to do something historically memorable so that after taking a term off someone might remember their names an think of putting them back to work for a few more terms.

All of the aforestated is my own opinion. Nobody is obligated to agree with me, or to try to convince me otherwise. If I could obligate readers to something, it would be to think about what I have written - nothing more.

I think that's enough of a rant for one day. I don't recall what I started out to do with this space today, but think I got sidetracked somewhere along the line.

Vote on Tuesday. Vote for someone, anyone - but get out there and vote and think about why you are making the choices you are making. Resolve next election to make better choices, or more informed choices.

If you don't vote, meine ansicht nach you forfeit any and all bitching rights.

Time Changes

I wonder what the justification for Daylight Savings Time is nowadays? This year in particular caused all manner of perturbations among those of us that live in a world that has 24-hour days.

I did everything I thought I needed to do before 1 AM this morning and then called Operations where I work and gave the on-duty operator instructions to go through a short process that would get all the mainframe computer clocks where they needed to be.

About an hour later the phone rang - the process did not work as I had planned, so I had to get clothes on, start my car and go downtown and put in an appearance. When I got there, I found two problems, one of which was mine, so I fixed mine and after a few false starts (three to be precise) everything came back up and I headed for home, arriving around 4 AM.

Of course I had to get up within 5 hours to get to church (married to a choir director....) so I am a bit fuzzy around the edges right now. But it would be les problematic if we could make these clock changes during the day - and even less likely to be problematic to go to DST one year and just leave it there.

Anyone out there with me - just leave it all at DST??

Thoughts on Halloween

Well, Halloween has come and gone again.

We did not get pranked or egged - for which we are thankful.

Nobody messed with my motorcycles - also good.

We went through what seems like a year's supply of chocolate of various sorts, dispensed to kids varying from barely walking through what looked like early twenties, although my kids informed me that most of those, at least the girls, were only 12-15 or so.... I guess my age is showing some, but when I was 12 or 15 they never looked that good.

There were some really freaky costumes, too - more folks are growing their own than in previous years. But there were no cowboys, no cowgirls - lots of power rangers and what I guess were characters out of some anime TV show. There was one particularly good bad biker - but that kid's dad is biker, so I guess it was proper and natural.

There were a coupe of ids that arrived with "Trick or Treat - or else" and they waited until last to get rewarded. Lots of smaller kids in the company of parents - I was glad to see that, as there have been years when some kids have come unescorted who, at least in my opinion should not have been out unescorted.

But the kids were cute, mostly polite, and there are still goodies left over for this old fat guy to nosh on . Life is good.