A busy week

It's been a busy week in the jungle.

• We bought a shed and are in the process of erecting it. However, we must first clear a spot for it by hacking out the jungle behind our house, and then we must level the sand. We're using 20-inch concrete patio pavers as the foundation, each one weighs 55 pounds, and we require 30 of them. My darling wife smoothed and leveled the sand so we could lay half of the pavers (I had to make 2 trips in the truck to get them) and the other half are waiting for us to regain enough strength to tackle them.
• We cut down several trees and chopped them up into bundles for the garbage men to take.
• I copied the rest of my CDs and found six perfectly-sized plastic Sterilite containers to store them in, instead of the collapsing cardboard boxes they're in now.
• We got a reverse-osmosis water purification system installed under our sink. No more bottled water!
• Our phones got messed up when one of our daughters forgot to hang up the phone after she called us, which locked our phone line open so that we could not make or receive calls. The phone company said to unplug all the phones in the house from the walls, and to unplug any power cords to any phones or cordless phones. That did the trick. Surprisingly, the DSL filter plugs also had to be unplugged from the walls.
• A series of wall outlets died all at once, but no breakers were tripped. We called for an electrician, but true to "service" companies in the jungle, we never got a call back saying when he'd be here. Meanwhile, our plumber (who was installing our osmosis system) said the same thing had happened to his parents, and it turned out to be a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI). GFCIs are those outlets similar to what you find in hotels, which have Test and Reset buttons. My darling wife found the culprit, which was buried behind a mountain of boxes in the garage. I pushed the Reset button, and we (and our Christmas lights in front of the house) were back in business. I don't know what I'd do without my wife. Only she has the patience to sort through mountains of junk to find what she wants. I certainly don't.
• My wife is continuing to clean up the dirty linoleum floor, mainly by scrubbing it with Simple Green on a scouring pad. It's the only thing that she's found that will touch the dirt. A steam cleaner won't touch it. Even an expensive floor stripper solution from Lowe's didn't touch it.
• We are SO glad we don't live in Colorado any more. Watching them get assaulted by snowstorm after snowstorm, we appreciate our jungle home even more!

Christmas Lights

It's weird to celebrate Christmas in the jungle. There is no snow, only lights. And rain.




I really love palm trees. It's a state law that you have to have your palm trees lit up at night.


No, not really. Actually, a lot of people leave their lights on their palm trees all night. But trees need darkness to respirate (burn the starches/sugars that they made during the day via photosynthesis, creating carbon dioxide and water) and so if you leave your lights on all night, you're starving your tree. If you care about your tree, you put your lights on a timer so they go off before midnight, so your tree can "eat" the rest of the night.

Today I'm thankful for a wonderful wife who loves me and takes wonderful care of me; friends who love me and call me even when I forget to call them; two loving adopted daughters; and a job that I like doing for a boss who appreciates me.

Merry Christmas, all!

Cuddly penguins

I'm not sure who decided penguins are cute. They seem to lack expression, to me. But we saw "Happy Feet" yesterday, and they made the penguins cute.

It helps to have seen "March of the Penguins" first, since it's a direct takeoff of that movie. But it mainly is a revue of famous songs all the way from World War 2 to now, with the majority being from the early 1970s, so it's primarily aimed at Baby Boomers. We laughed ourselves silly, especially at the Spanish rendition of The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." It's a very enjoyable movie.

The only downside is that the movie was written by a committee of four producers, so the messages are a bit muddled. There's the "conformity isn't necessarily a good thing" message, there's the "do what you love" message, but there's also the gay-pride "don't ask me to change, because I can't" message, plus the "conserve the ocean's resources" message. They all get a bit jumbled.

But, it's an excellent movie.

The decline of freedom of expression

It's interesting to watch how "freedom of speech" and "freedom of expression" are declining. They have been usurped by those people who are perpetually offended by something, and who use their freedoms to tell others that they do NOT have those freedoms. Witness "political correctness." People speak loudly, asserting that others do NOT have the right to say something, because it is not "politically correct." Or witness the current state of "journalism." According to polls conducted among their own, journalists are primarily a small cadre of far-left-wing advocates, who have various axes to grind, and who suppress some information and spin other information to suit their own ends. Anyone who has watched television news in the United States and compared it to television news from other parts in the world will notice very sharp, distinct filters in action, ranging from merely ignoring events in other parts of the world, to reporting events completely differently. Each news organization reports things somewhat differently, depending on the country where it is based, and the goals that it wishes to accomplish.

Regardless of the news organization's home base or local political goals, however, they all share a common goal: to suppress, filter, distort, or even fabricate "news" in order to achieve "social change" or to increase "social awareness" of a pet political cause. These news organizations, particularly in the United States, use "freedom of speech" as a shield to justify their increasingly outrageous behavior, from manufacturing anxiety over the disease of the week or outrage over the atrocity of the month, to mobilizing public opinion for or against the news organization's pet political causes.

While "freedom of speech" was conceived as an individual right in the United States, it would be an interesting experiment to strip it from "news" organizations. We could experiment with such things as expanding the power of the Federal Communications Commission to regulate not just the allocation of bandwidth, to which it has restricted itself in the past few decades, but to once again police the content of those transmissions. For example, if CBS transmits a story that is demonstrably false, such as the manufactured "60 Minutes 2" scandal regarding the president's National Guard service (which was politically-motivated and timed to affect the outcome of the impending election), and CBS cannot provide documents and witnesses to prove that the story is true, the FCC would fine CBS $100,000 for each viewer of the show that was measured that night. Each news service which repeated CBS' allegations would be fined $100,000 for each viewer or reader. The severity of the punishment would be based on the number of people who heard the lie. If the Associated Press transmits a fabricated story about mosques being set afire and people being burned alive, the AP would be fined the same way.

Likewise, when a news organization presents a story that is merely relaying a person or group's "opinion," like a war protest, the news organization would be required to disclose that person or group's background and function. In a CNN story today about a Christian video game, CNN quotes "critics" who claim the game promotes "hate and violence." In the future, the FCC could require CNN to disclose that those "critics" are not just "Christians" or "parents," but are in fact "CrossWalk America," a left-wing group opposed to Christian fundamentalism. And the "critic" CNN had on-camera was in fact the co-president of "CrossWalk America." Under today's rules, CNN is not obligated to disclose those crucial facts. Under tomorrow's rules, CNN would be.

Talking-head shows on television, like Scarborough or Olbermann or O'Reilly, would be required to display an on-screen "bias meter" throughout the show, which reflects the episode's aggregate bias as measured by computer software that "reads" the scripts and measures the number of pejorative terms used, and their context. This software is a simple outgrowth of grammar-checking and spell-checking programs, and would be relatively simple to implement. The resulting "bias meter" would be a visual indicator to all viewers that the opinions being presented are biased, even if individual viewers cannot perceive that bias because they are immersed in that point of view. (You can't dissuade Olbermann viewers or O'Reilly viewers from their chosen viewpoints, but you can measure the amount of bias presented in each program.) Viewers who don't wish to be subject to such bias would see the meter and decide to turn it off. Think of it as being similar to the mandatory lung cancer warnings printed on cigarette packages. Die-hard smokers ignore them, but less-addicted consumers can be dissuaded.

News organizations still are businesses, and the best way to change their behavior is to hit them where it hurts - in the pocketbook. When so many news organizations repeat the same filtered, misleading, or false information, consumers don't know what to believe. But if news organizations are forced to back up their assertions with documentation and witnesses, to prove that what they are reporting is true, then the number of false, misleading, or politically-timed stories should drop precipitously. Instead of making things up, journalists would be forced to spend much more time checking facts and interviewing more than one person before broadcasting a "story." And that's the thing to remember, that the content that you see on television news, hear on the radio, or read online or in newspapers or magazines, are referred to (by journalists!) as "stories." The stories are sometimes just that - stories. They contain little or no truth. Instead, they are designed to make consumers believe something. More and more consumers are becoming aware that their beliefs are being manipulated, because the methods by which they are being manipulated are becoming more clumsy and transparent.

Journalism has never been a particularly respectable occupation. During the American Civil War, the Union general William T. Sherman, who was tired of Northern journalists relaying his troop movements to the South via the pages of their newspapers, threatened to shoot any reporter that his troops encountered. If such actions today would be deemed extreme (though I think they should NOT be considered extreme), serious monetary fines are the next best method to restore some semblance of truth and better behavior among journalists.

Vacation 2

We've accomplished a lot around the house this week

• Cut back the tree overhanging the driveway, and pulled a LOT of vine down out of the tree
• Hung three curtain rods, only breaking one glass-topped bookcase cover in the process
• Chopped up two huge piles of tree and brush, borrowed five garbage cans from a neighbor, and we've put it all in bundles out for the garbageman to take
• Hung two decorative metal plates over the front and back doors
• Dug out all of my CDs and organized them, and resumed copying them to a backup hard drive so I can put them all in storage but still enjoy them whenever I want
• Picked out a reverse osmosis water purification system to install next week
• Got a hole in the wall repaired
• Fixed a sliding glass door so that it will lock
• Installed a grating over the lower half of the back lanai screen door to keep monsters out, and to keep our own little monsters in
• Finished some leftover work for my client, so now I'm as caught up as I can be, while some things still remain to be fixed in the software before I can proceed

Later today I will install some miniblinds and begin setting up the surround-sound system for the TV, which will be an arduous task given that there is no real place to mount the rear speakers in our cathedral-ceilinged great room. Luckily, Spike TV is running a "Star Trek: Voyager" marathon, so that is fun to watch while puttering around the house.

The past few days of vacation

My darling wife has a whole regiment of plants, waiting to be planted. She's been collecting them for a year. This is only a part of the group - there are more on the other side of the house, and still more in another yard which we have to dig up.

We pulled down two garbage bins' worth of hanging vine to make this little window in our backyard. This is the view from our kitchen. We like it.

This was the nasty Brazilian pepper tree in our backyard. It was 20 feet tall and 30 feet across. Now, it's this.

This pile is only one-fifth of the whole tree. We'll need to cut all of it up, and the four-fifths of the tree that remain, and pile it in bundles for the sanitation department to take away. That's the best way to do it, for "free." (Our taxes pay for our excellent sanitation service, which also takes recycling and even old appliances and computers.) The only other way to do it is to order a dumpster to be delivered, for which we have no space; or to haul it ourselves to the landfill in the pickup truck that we don't have, to be charged by the pound to dump it. Ergo, we'll take the slow and cheap alternative.

We found a plethora of baby palmetto trees underneath the canopy of the monster Brazilian pepper tree, after we slew it and chopped it into pieces.

My sharp-eyed wife spotted this gopher tortoise hunting grass in our ditch. Apparently he lives next door in some gopher tortoise burrows from which the previous residents were "relocated" by the lot's former owner. We're glad to see that someone's moved back in.

Soon after we saw him, we saw another one trying to cross the road in front of my car. Our area of the jungle is little-traveled, but what few cars there are, are driven by old blind people who would not even notice a tortoise even if it were the size of a hippo. So I stopped, carefully picked him up and carried him to the other side of the road and let him go. (You can't turn them around or herd them - they go where they want to go. Like most reptiles, they are very single-minded.)

It was a beautiful morning yesterday. And I found a TON of shark's teeth.

This sandwich tern is desperately trying to get the attention of a female. He's cawing, fluttering his wings, and dancing around her. Wherever he goes, she looks the other way.

"Notice me! Notice me! I want to mate with you!" Apparently it doesn't work for birds either. Birds seem to learn more quickly than humans, though - this one gave up and went off to harass someone else.

Here's a line of sandwich terns. I'm not sure whether they are really tasty on sandwiches or not.

Ripples of sand are piled up by wave action. Each "draw" where the water continues to ebb and flow has its own little bird, looking for food.

A nice gathering

We had a two-day meeting late last week, congregating about 30 comrades from a recent training effort. I hadn't seen most of them since July or so. It was WONDERFUL to see them... they're such nice people. It's unusual that I get to meet such nice people through work. I am blessed to know these people.

Found a camera, found a camera, found a camera just now

My darling wife found the digital camera in a box with other unrelated thrown-in-a-box-at-the-last-minute things. So I can inflict further photographs on you. Just so you know.

Follow-up to a boating accident

Our friend Pat, who was hit and seriously injured by a boat a few months ago, is still in the hospital, but is out of the Intensive Care Unit. She's speaking, interacting, and she's coming to terms with the loss of her left eye and her disfigured face. Her boat is in the front yard, missing the top and a chunk of the left side, with a sign on it saying "Make Offer." It's sad. But Pat's making progress, and we hope she comes home soon.

A strange goal for a young woman

I was listening to the young cashier at the car dealership the other day, talking to a co-worker. She was slim, wearing one of those body-hugging t-shirts and the hip-hugging bell-bottom pants. She mentioned that it was her 21st birthday. Somehow the subject of kids came up, and she said she would like to have kids. But afterward, she said, she wanted to be a MILF. Her co-worker asked what a MILF was. She said, "Mom I'd Love to F*ck."

I thought that was an odd goal for a young woman, to still be attractive to men after she has kids. I'm sure she has no idea how her priorities will change after she has kids, and right now, being young and attractive is all-important. But I just found it odd that a woman of any age would want to be a sex object. I thought women, as a group, had moved (or been dragged by militant feminists) beyond that point. It was interesting to hear that it wasn't the case, at least not for her.

New parts

Last week I took the Honda into the dealership for an oil change. That night, the Check Engine light came on and it began shifting badly. I took it in the next day, and they figured out that it was the throttle body, the thing that controls fuel flow when you step on the accelerator. So they replaced it under warranty. It's odd that such a thing would fail on a nearly new Honda. But I think the problem is more widespread than Honda would like to admit - I got the last throttle body part they had in stock, and there was at least one other Honda of the same model year in their shop that had the exact same problem. That poor guy had to wait for parts, since I got the last one. I suppose it's a problem that's listed in a Honda Technical Service Advisory (TSA, not to be confused with the Thousands Standing Around that you see at the airport). There's a website that you can subscribe to, that will supply all TSAs for your car (since usually only mechanics see TSAs). But I bought a Honda precisely because it's not supposed to break. Ergo, I shouldn't need TSAs. ;-)

A photograph-free zone

We misplaced the digital camera in the packing process, meaning that the camera is buried somewhere in a mountain of boxes, most likely in the garage. Future generations of archaeologists will no doubt discover it, slung carelessly in a box along with some coffee mugs, my new shoes that I needed for work, and a credit card bill for December. Until those future archaeologists discover said camera, this log will unfortunately be untainted by photographs.

A vegetable menace

We began cleaning up the underbrush and choking vines that infest our backyard. As we dug deeper into the viny jungle, we discovered a mature Brazilian pepper tree, 20 feet high and 30 feet across. Brazilian peppers are an invasive exotic species, and, like radical Islam, should be exterminated wherever it exists. There once was a crazy old man in our area who actually sold Brazilian pepper plants on the roadside, calling it the local variety of holly (because it yields berries). Thankfully he is dead, because otherwise he would deserve to be hunted down and killed - Brazilian pepper is now the kudzu of our area, an infestation that needs to be wiped out with extreme prejudice, using flamethrowers, or salty brine and bleach sprayed at high pressure. So. We discovered a LARGE Brazilian pepper tree, which had formed a nearly perfect dome of canopy foilage over a nearly impenetrable labyrinth of crisscrossing branches, some up to 5 inches thick. Wisely, we chose to walk away and pretend we hadn't seen it.

No, I'm kidding. Fearing no vegetable life forms, even though Brazilian pepper can cause poison-ivy-like rashes, we waded into the underbrush and attached the many-branched monster with clippers, pruners, and a sharp bow saw. We hacked, lopped and sawed our way into the underbelly of the beast last night, and then today we cut our way up through the canopy. We dragged about a third of it out of the jungle, in pieces, and then wearily gave up and just hacked it into pieces in situ, leaving the branches where they fell. Finally only the twisted clutter of a many-branched stump remained, six feet high. My darling wife will spray Roundup on the raw stumps of the branches, and we will let the whole infestuous mass die over the course of the coming week or two. When it dries and becomes brittle, we will break it apart and haul it out to join the huge pile of underbrush and vines that we've already piled on our driveway. I will break out the chainsaw and chop up the pieces of trunk that are too big for the bow saw. We've done all of our work so far with hand tools, since we were trying not to disturb our neighbors. My wife is a workhorse - she lopped and dragged a pile of underbrush that is now 30 feet across and 6 feet high. We will eventually have to call a dumpster and a big backhoe with a claw to come pick it up and take it away. Either that, or set it on fire, but I think it's too close to the house to do that safely. Maybe if I just stand by with a hose while we light it...

The Ninth Circle of DS-Hell

I spent the last 5 days fighting with my new Verizon DSL line. I switched from a blazing-fast (and expensive) Comcast cable modem to DSL to accomplish two things - one, save money; and two, by switching to a slower connection, it should dissuade me from wanting to play games online, thereby freeing me up to do the inevitable honey-dos around the house.

On November 30th, I got my new DSL modem via UPS. Stupidly, I read the label on the box which said "Service Active on 11/30/06" and I believed it. So I spent an hour or two trying to set it up and wondering why I couldn't get a signal, and finally called tech support (which turned out to be entirely run from Manila in the Philippine Islands, staffed with very friendly people who all shared an accent that I couldn't quite place, until I wormed it out of one of them - they said they're not supposed to say where they're located). They ran a diagnostic and then noticed that my Service Active Date wasn't actually 11/30/06, but 12/06/06. Sigh. So. I dumped all the equipment on the dresser in the bedroom by one of our two phone jacks, and left it there until 12/06/06.

On 12/06/06, I tried to set it up again, with no luck (no signal). I called tech support again, who informed me that the problem seemed to be outside of the house, and they'd need to send out a technician. The technician showed up on 12/07/06, and decided the problem wasn't at my house, but at the Verizon office. Later that night, they switched it on from their office, and nicely called me to check to see if it was running. It was - for about half an hour.

In that half hour, I set up my Verizon account. Then the signal died again. Another call to tech support determined that it was a problem on Verizon's end, and would I please try again on 12/08/06. So I did, and got it working again. For about 10 minutes, until I tried to set up my wireless router. Immediately the modem bombed, and so did the router. I went through two restart sequences on PC, router and modem, and finally called tech support again. The tech support person told me how to change some settings on the modem to make it work with my router, and he brightly assured me that everything would work. Nope. I finally got the modem (sans router) running again long enough to download a help document from the Verizon website that allegedly gave me instructions on how to set up my wireless router with my particular modem. I ran through the steps, and was unsurprised when they didn't work. I gave up for the night.

On 12/09/06, I tried again. No luck. I called tech support again, and landed Jay, who didn't know that he was in for a 2-hour call. First, we fiddled with the router, and determined that the Verizon help document had assumed that I was a PPPoE network customer, when in fact I am a DHCP customer (which basically just describes how my connection to the Verizon network is assigned). So the instructions in the document were wrong. We fixed the modem. Then we fiddled with the modem. The modem would work fine by itself, but stubbornly refused to speak to the router whenever I tried to hook them together. Finally Jay admitted that there was absolutely no reason why it shouldn't work with my Linksys router, since Linksys is the most-compatible type of router with most networks, especially Verizon's. So he very nicely called up Linksys tech support (which is in China, I think, since everyone we spoke to had a pronounced Chinese accent - though I suppose it could have been Singapore or Taiwan or even Malaysia). We got Mike, a level 2 technician at Linksys (much better than the know-nothing level 1 tech we got initially). Together Mike and Jay figured out that my router and my DSL modem, in a freak episode of chance, were both trying to use the same local IP address of 192.168.1.1, which meant that my PC was trying to talk to two separate devices which had the same name, resulting in electronic confusion for everyone. Mike had me change the local IP address on the router to 192.168.2.1, and then all was well, just as the clock struck midnight. The modem now plays nice with the router, I can use my PC anywhere in my phone jack-challenged house (we have only 2 jacks: one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, neither of which is the office - the family that built the house wisely decided, in the days before cellphones, to NOT allow the children to have their own phones in their rooms), and everything is hunky-dory.

But, my 5 days of DS-Hell were VERY annoying, to say the least. If I hadn't bought the modem outright, I would have taken a hammer to it by now.

A wearying week

So. In no particular order, events of the past week.
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DSL is still down. Verizon is unable to figure out what's wrong - the repairman who just showed up thinks that it's not switched on at the Verizon office. Hmmm. Truly, the right hand knows not what the left is doing. So I have been offline all week, because dialup is painfully slow. PAINFULLY. And my darling wife has me doing lots of chores around the house, so it's not like I can be playing online.
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We had talked last week about having dinner at the local German restaurant. The very next night, it burned down, a total loss. Coincidence? I don't know what to think, except it's very odd.
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We watched the local Christmas boat parade. 40 or 50 boats, mostly yachts and trawlers, decked out in lights. Entrant #32, a 45-foot yacht, had a carbide cannon that they would periodically fire off the stern. It was exceedingly loud. That was my favorite. Another smaller 20-foot runabout had three fake masts mounted, all lit up, and about 10 people dressed in pirate clothes, waving cutlasses. Very cool. We had a wonderful time, though we got eaten alive by no-see-ums (biting gnats), which are apparently immune to whatever insect repellent we borrowed from our friends. We both are an itchy, scratchy mess now. Next time, we will use Avon Skin-So-Soft, which is proven to be good at repelling no-see-ums.
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The box piles are slowly diminishing. The house is looking much prettier every day, thanks to my wonderful wife, who suffers from insomnia and gets up at 3 AM to putter. When I get up, the house looks better than it did the day before. My wife is wonderful.
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We did the Thursday gallery hop downtown last night. Lots of fun, all the shops were open, we stopped and said hi to people we know. The local high school Marine ROTC students were in full uniform, directing traffic. They looked very sharp.
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I took my car in for its 20K service yesterday. Last night the Check Engine light came on, and it began running and shifting badly. So I am back at the dealer today, using their wireless to post.
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It's 45 degrees out. We moved to the jungle to be warm, not to freeze to death!
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I removed a dishwasher from the new house and installed it at the old house, but managed to nick the drain hose with the drill trying to widen the hole in the cabinet that the hose passed through, to get the hose out. So when I installed it at the new house, it sprayed water everywhere. Actually, since the water supply hoses were different sizes, I called my savior Dan the plumber, and had him install it. So he got sprayed on. That's why I don't touch stuff like electrical or plumbing, because I always screw it up. I ran down to the local mom-and-pop appliance repair shop, and bought a used, dirty, and hole-free hose to replace it. That worked fine.
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We had talked about watching the shuttle launch, but we didn't feel like driving a long ways to see it in person, and we couldn't see it through the cloud cover. As it turned out, it didn't go anyway. So it's good that we didn't even try.
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I spoke with my boss about my client's rule of staying til 5 PM Thursdays, and told her about all the problems that it causes us (we can't get a nonstop home if we stay onsite until 5, and then we get delayed or cancelled as we try to change planes in another city). I explained that the requirement stems from the fact that "it looks bad" if we leave early while the client's employees are required to stay. "That's not a good enough reason," said my boss, and she said she will explain to the client that we'll be catching the last nonstop flight out from now on. What a relief. No more 2 AM drives home from the airport. My wife worries a lot that I'll have an accident driving so late at night, when I'm tired.

Oh my god

Horrible. Horrible horrible, three days of horrible lifting and moving heavy boxes. It went on and on and on. I had no idea that we had so much shit. And of course, most of it is hers. Eighty percent, or so. Horrible. We had two hired helpers on one day, and two friends on another day, and thank god we did, or we would still be at it. Horrible. I hurt all over. I am so tired I could puke. And it's still not over. It won't be over for another year, until all the boxes are unpacked, and the garage (which is completely full to the ceiling with boxes) is empty. Sigh. I am NEVER doing this again. Ever.