I'm finally famous!

I'm not one to watch TV much.  So it came as a bit of a surprise when I learned today that an item I made was presented (on-camera) as a wedding gift on a recent episode of TLC's "Little People, Big World."  Too bad the item is ugly as sin, but that's what the customer insisted on.

Anyway, you can now say in all honesty that you have commenting privileges on a Big Time Hollywood Props Guy's personal blog.  Which, with about $4.50, will get you a small Starbucks.

Harmonic Convergence of Awesome

You will need:

1.  Vacant lot that's practically a Superfund site
2.  Wal-Mart
3.   Ridiculously restrictive municipal zoning rules.

Mix these ingredients thoroughly.  Stir until vacuous hippie (Hey, BTW hippie, HEMP is NOT a Food Group!) Subaru-driving morons begin to boil.  Stand a safe distance away and enjoy the show.

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So far, I'm guessing you have no idea what this is about.  Lemme tell you:  It is about pure, uncut awesome straight from the bottle.  There's a vacant lot adjacent to a auto parts store I worked at back in the early '90s.  That lot has remained vacant for decades because the ground is so polluted.  Seems that back in the day, the power company used to creosote their utility poles on that site.  This was back when it was OK to make dirt flammable, so they were generous and sloppy with their creosote.  Then they moved away.  The land went to waste and people even dumped garbage on it.  It became one of the most ugly eyesores in all of Corvallis.

Here's how it looked a while back when the Google SpyCar drove by.

For a retailer, this location would be a very attractive place to put a store.  It is on the busiest street in town.  The lot is large enough to place a good-sized store on and yet have plenty of room for parking.  Many potential tenants/builders have looked at it and said "How in the world is this land still undeveloped?!?" only to notice that they've spontaneously grown webbed feet and fangs from exposure to the dirt. 

OK, that's part of the story.  Another part is that Corvallis flat-out won't allow a retail building larger than 55000ft².  For years, that rule has kept out every big-box type retailer that has tried to enter this market.  After years of wrangling, Home Depot was finally allowed to build one of their stores on industrial land, after successfully arguing that they sell industrial products.  Nobody else has ever been successful.  Walmart, for example, has wanted to put a store here for years.  But there's no buildable land.  And every time they sought a zoning change or variance on other pieces of land, the people would freak out.

And the alliance of "hippies + downtown mom'n'pop stores" liked it that way.  Mustn't allow any Evil Corporations into our blessed little town, nosirree!  Doesn't matter if most people WANT those kinds of stores and are willing to drive their SUVs (which run on 92 octane Gaia Blood) to neighboring towns just to save $1.88 on diapers.  No Big Box was the rule, and it looked like it would be that way forever.

Enter Walmart...

They said "Hey, you know that polluted patch of dirt that makes buried pets come back to zombie-life?  Yeah, we'll clean that up and put a store on it.  And it'll just be groceries and only 36k ft² to get past your stupid zoning laws.  How do you like me now?"

The soy-latte crowd is freaked out.  "There's gonna be a Walmart in our town!  Oh no!"  The city says Walmart has followed all the rules and they can't discriminate against anybody, no matter how loathed.  So the leftards are fighting amongst themselves in the Letters to the Editor section of the paper.  Some are "we can't discriminate because, we're like, against discrimination and stuff" while others are "It isn't discrimination if we're talking about Corporate Evil Incarnate. I don't care if they followed our own dumb rules!  They must be stopped!"

It is a joy to behold.  Personally, I'm looking forward to the news reports like "Commie McGreeniepants made a martyr of himself when he tried to burn down the Walmart and the very dirt beneath his feet erupted in flames and consumed him.  In lieu of flowers, please smoke a bowl in his memory"

we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.

But we can put a Walmart on it!  Whooo!

Resistance is futile?

I am Granddaughter 4 of 4.  Resistance is futile.  Your life, as it has been, is over.
For the next 17 years or so you will service me.

The person who dives on the grenade doesn't really want to dive on the grenade, but knows that not doing so would be even worse.  A couple days ago, I dove on the grenade and joined the (unwilling, but duty-bound) ranks of Grandparents Raising Grandkids.  Their mom is in rehab, their dad is in jail, and their grandpa ain't copin' so well with it so far...  Hopefully the parents can get their **** together and things can go back to "normal" someday. 

Anyway, I expect that time/opportunity/desire to post here will be much curtailed.  Adjust your clicks accordingly.

Good News/Bad News

Good News!

Wait..

What?

Is good news even possible?  Kinda.  But it has to be paired with bad news.  You know, Laws of Physics - "equal and opposite reaction" kind of stuff.
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Pic found here.  This is not the noisy kidlet mentioned below, but close enough.

First, the good news:  Stepdaughter-in-law and her two noisy kidlets are out of my house.   Stress levels have dropped from "ultra-critical" to merely "elevated." Regularly scheduled irregular blogging set to resume within short order.
Now, the bad news:  My "screw blogging, I have too WAYYYYY too much BS to deal with" hiatus, combined with zero vocals submitted so far, means I'ma prolly gonna punt on that song project.  Connoisseurs of Fine Music and those that value their sense of hearing may not regard this news as "bad."
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The good news:  My wife is beautiful and sexy and clever and kinda sneaky.  She could probably have a lucrative career as some kind of female James Bond kind of character.
The bad news:  The above will NEVER happen, because she can't keep a secret.  At all.  Ever.
The good news:  Because she can't keep a secret, I found out this weekend that she bought me a gun for our 10th anniversary.
The bad news:  Our anniversary is in late July.  Our FFL friend already has the gun.  But I can't have it 'til the anniversary!!  Neither wife nor FFL friend will even tell me what kind it is.  GRAAAH!  Why didn't I marry her in May??!!?!?!!!  I can't stannnnnd it!!!  She won't even tell me what she paid for it, other than that it is in the range of $X to $(X+200), and within that range are only found Nice Guns.  Makes me even more anxious!


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The good news:  Financial position has improved enough that I have given notice at my early AM gruntjob.  Only question left is whether, on my last day, to leave graciously or to yank the lever on the fire suppression system and run out the door cackling maniacally.
The bad news:  Financial position has improved mainly because Mother-in-Law and Brother-in-Law will likely be living with us for the indefinite future.  That really isn't as bad as may sound, especially with SDiL and grandkids out.   MiL and BiL are helping a lot with household expenses.  Basically, I'm trading "early AM horrific toilet splatter and 2nd-degree deep fryer burns" for "letting the in-laws move in for a while."  The jury has not yet rendered a verdict, but I think this will turn out to be a favorable trade.
The good news:  Max, next time you're coming home from the coast and your dog is in the backseat of the car whining and doing the "hurry up and let me out!" crappy dance, plunk your pooch down right in the middle of the grassy patch in front of the restaurant.  I won't care.

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Good news:  The pocketknife I wanted went on clearance at Big 5, for barely a third of the cost that it was six months ago.
Bad news:  I needed a new pocketknife 'cuz my old one went AWOL about a month ago.  I *NEVER* misplace my keys, wallet, wristwatch, or wedding ring.  But knives seem to elude me.  Drives me nuts.  Walking around without a knife sucks.  I use 'em all the time.  But if I were to replace it immediately, the old one would turn up the next day.  So I've waited about a month.  Means the other one is probably gone forever.  Which is OK, 'cuz if I were to find it, I'd want to carry both.  Then I'd be tempted to do a dramatic two-handed quickdraw thing, but my left hand is too uncoordinated and I'd end up in the ER.  So, sometimes bad news is really good news in disguise.

Grueling weekend

Saturday.  Early AM.  Still dark.  Doing gruntwork restaurant job.  Noticing some cars in parking lot have snow on 'em.  Pondering having to drive a U-Haul through the Columbia River Gorge to pick up my brother-in-law and his stuff.  Ugh.

Yep, immediately after work I had to dash up to The Dalles and rent the truck and then head down US197 to the middle of B.F.E. to get BiL and his stuff.  The Gorge can be an amazingly scenic drive when the conditions are good.  But the canyon acts like a funnel.  Storms coming in from the coast get channeled into it and drastically amplified.  Turns out that the snowy cars were an omen and Saturday was a Storm Day.  Ugh.

Experienced the joy of driving a U-Haul in snow, rain, dust storm w/ about 50' of visibility, and STUPID winds.  After going down 197 and coming back to The Dalles we stopped for lunch.  Even the locals were griping about the wind, and they're supposedly used to it.  Driving the dang truck was like flying a kite.  Along about Cascade Locks there's a narrow, twisty bit on the interstate.  As we rounded the corner, there was a Dodge Dakota with a crunched front end, stalled sideways in the middle of the freeway.  He must've got crossed-up and hit the guardrail or something.  I *just* barely managed to get whoa'd up without center-punching the Dakota as its passengers scrambled out and hurried to the road shoulder.  Then the little voice in my head said "You're sitting dead still in the middle of a tight turn on the interstate during a wind and rainstorm.  This is going to be bad."  Thankfully we got around the truck and were able to help them push it out of the roadway.  Nobody was hurt, but we could have been one Inattentive Moron away from being in a dozen-car pileup.  Phew!

Finally got back to my place in Corvallis.  Spent the rest of my weekend rearranging the stuff to make room for BiL's stuff.  Remember that George Carlin bit about "Your house is just a place where you keep your stuff, while you go out and get... more stuff!"?  Yes, the inside of my house now looks like an overstuffed mini-storage unit.  But BiL is now out of a bad situation, so I guess there's that.

So...  Last night, wife and I get back from church.  There's a stack of scratch-off lotto tickets on the coffee table.  BiL says "I won a few bucks, but I saved one for you guys to scratch off."  I'm not into lotto games, but heck, if it's a gift I guess it's OK.  It was a poker kind of theme...

My wife scratched it off...  Holy Crap!!  "I just got a straight flush!  We just won $25,000!!!!"  BiL says "Are you sure!?  Check it carefully!  Read the back!"  On the reverse, the card reads "To redeem your winnings, take this ticket to any lotto retailer stupid enough to believe this is a valid lotto ticket."

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

I am now taking suggestions on how to get BiL back for that little tee-hee that wasn't really all that funny.

I hate floodwater!!

Photo from KGW

Remember when Biff said "I HATE MANURE!!!"? 

Yeah.  Edit Menu > Find "MANURE" > Replace with "FLOODWATER".  File Menu > Save As > "AnnoyingBS.docx"

It isn't Minot or anything like that, but it is irritating.  Last week we had a fair bit of snow.  Our neighbors to the north up in Washington are still getting it.  But here, it suddenly turned to warm rain.  We got over 4" and it was 51^o this morning.  Can you say "rapid snowmelt?"  Sure you can.  Parts of town are cut off.  Couple of mudslides.  Stepdaughter can't get to her house.  Water came up about 2" inside the signs-n-engraving shop.  Nothing really hurt by it.  Just messy.

Except...

The newest freakin' computer that we've only had since the end of December.  I wanted to go to Fry's and build a PC.  But boss man thought sending me to Fry's with the company Visa card might be, oh, just a bit of a risk.  So we bought one off-the-shelf from a place here in town.  We thought the water had peaked before it made it inside the shop, so no effort was made to lift the new PC from its place ON THE [BLEEP]ing FLOOR!  Came in this morning, and could tell from the ring-around-the-bathbub high water mark that water did indeed make it to the PC.  Took the cover off the side, and was saddened to find that THE MORON WHO ASSEMBLED IT PUT THE HARD DRIVE IN THE VERY LOWEST BAY.  No other components got wet.  If the HD had been in ANY of the other half-dozen or so bays, it too would have stayed dry.  BUT NO.  Since we've only had it a couple weeks, we haven't even done a FREEKIN' BACKUP.   All we have is the klunky old HD out of the old PC with QuickBooks files that are now nearly a month out-of-date.

I HATE FLOODWATER!!

Science Geeks Rule!

Linus Pauling at age 17.  Pic from the Linus Pauling Centenary at OSU

Alternate post title: "Possibly the coolest thing this engraver has ever worked on"

So a guy is cleaning out some space in a building at OSU.  He stumbles across a handwritten letter that reads:

Corvallis - Saturday 16 Jan. 1982

The old Chem. B'ld'g was unlocked.  I sat and stood for half an hour in the room on the second floor where I first saw my sweet love, 60 years ago today, less two days.  I stood at the front of the room and repeated my first words: "Will you please tell me what you know about ammonium hydroxide, Miss..." (I then looked at my class book and selected one of the 25 names at random) "...Miller?"  Ava Helen Miller made a good answer.  This chance meeting has determined the nature of my life.

Linus Pauling

Pretty cool, eh?  I'm in the middle of turning that note into a permanent plaque that'll be displayed somewhere on campus.  Pauling may have had some lefty tendencies, but none can argue his genius.  And this is a pretty slick way for a geek to break the ice with the ladies!

Oooh, they're serious now! **UPDATED**

Seen the headline on Drudge?  Barry's Organizing for America has a new website called attackwatch where the Hitler Youth people can rat out their neighbors for saying/doing attacky stuff.  I'm tempted to sign up and submit my own blog posts.  Might help boost my traffic.  Then again, there may not be enough people who give a rip about whether attacky stuff is happening to barry for me to notice.  I'd probably just get a lot of cuss-word-and-typo-laden crap comments from anonymous moonbats.

Thoughts?

**UPDATE

This is ALMOST enough to make me sign up for twitter.  Almost.  I particularly like "I just saw 6 ATMs in an alley killing a job.  Looks like a hate crime."

A day of firsts

First IV...
First blood drawn...
First time I've ever used my health insurance...
First time I've ever gone to the ER for anything but stitches...

My Daughter-in-Law and grandkid are staying with us for a while.  Late last week both DiL and GK got the pukey squirt misery.  It lasted a day and a half or so, then both were fine.  Then Saturday in the middle of the night I got the pukey squirt misery.  It persisted through Sunday and I was feeling just kind of meh on Monday but I made it through the workday.  Yesterday was trending towards normal.  Ate some of the usual junk food and no dramatic aftereffects.

Awakened this morning by belly pains that felt like a bad gas bubble.  Which got worse.  And worse.  Next thing ya know, I can barely breathe - the pain would override any attempt to really inhale.  So I'm sitting there panting shallowly and I finally decide it's time to head to the ER.

Normally, I don't give a crap about pain.  That may sound like a bunch of macho hoo-haa, but it is true.  It is amazing how one's body can heal from things even without assistance from the medical profession.  I need to be in some pretty bad shape to go to the doc - in fact, today's visit was only the fifth time I've seen a doc since Reagan was president.  And two of those visits were just routine check-ups I had to have on file to maintain my CDL.  Back in the early '90s I got bucked off my mountain bike and broke *something* in my left shoulder and didn't even bother to see a doc for it.  Piss on all that, it's only pain.  That shoulder still clicks and pops and does annoying stuff, but pretty much healed.  What I'm saying is that I just don't go to the doctor if it's only pain.

But today was different.  I was convinced that something was perforated/torn/ruptured/obstructed in my gut, and that they'd have to cut on me to fix it.  Ugh.  To start things off they gave me some fluids and pain meds through the IV.  The nurse cautioned that "you make a weird taste in you mouth" and she was right - it tasted just like a brand new pack of band-aids smells.  Screwy.  After the pain had abated enough for the doc to poke and prod, he proceeded to poke and prod.  Then some X-Rays.  Then some bloodwork.  White count came back a bit high, but not alarmingly so.  X-Rays showed nuthin'.  A couple hours later I was sent home.  The gut-ache never really came back.  Still hurts a little, but it is more of a "day after the table saw kicked a piece of wood back into your stomach" pain than a "holy craparoni, this is serious!" kind of pain.

So, for my $100 co-pay I have a sore spot on my hand where they put the IV and a lingering mild tummyache...

I shouldn't have bothered...

Defeat to Victory to Defeat to Victory

Alllllrright...  The water pump in my car has been leaking for a while.  It's been leaking out of the little seephole that indicates the internal seal is failed.  That means the bearings are getting wet.  I knew the day would come...  The last few days it has been squealing like a banshee that just accidentally saw Barney Frank undressed.  So today, my weekend project was to swap out the water pump.

Water Pump.  Simple 'nuff.  Take off the belt, undo a couple bolts, no biggie, eh?  Well on a stupid frontwheel drive Japmobile it is a different story.  Had to take off the power steering pump and AC compressor just to SEE THE STUPID pump.  Then, in a bold example of revenge, the engineer who must still hold a grudge about losing WWII designed this thing decided that there should only be about an inch of clearance to the wheelwell.  Tricky but do-able, right?  OK, how about putting 3 of the 5 bolts BEHIND THE TIMING COVER!  So now the nasty plastic timing cover has to come off.  Seems simple, right?  No!  Some of the bolts that hold the timing cover on are BEHIND THE MAIN CRANK PULLEY.  There is no way in any 3-dimensional universe to get the timing cover off without ACTUALLY PULLING THE ENGINE.  Or destroying part of the plastic timing cover.  I opted for destroying part of the plastic cover with tin snips and some pliers.  I get 4 of the 5 bolts out when I realize the the fifth is BEHIND THE TIMING BELT TENSIONER.  So all of a sudden I am carless.  Plus, I dropped a socket down into an unreachable in what's left of the timing cover, so I couldn't even screw it all back together and hope it would run for a couple more days. 

My crap job is about 8 miles away.  My real job is about 3.  That's a lot of walking.

So.  Wife and I prayed about it.  Didn't know what to do.  Discussed going carless for the weekend and trying to fix it ourselves and/or haul it to a shop on Monday.  Discussed buying another car which we don't have the money for so that was a brief discussion.  Looked on a website for a local used car guy I've done some business with years ago.

Used Car Guy's store was going to close in 20 minutes.  We couldn't walk there fast enough.  We told him that 6 hours ago we weren't even in the market for another car and we don't have much money.  Used Car Guy dropped what he was doing and hurried over and picked us up at our house.  Used Car Guy's wife is receiving an award tonight for her work with Operation Homefront so we didn't have a lot of time.  Used Car Guy just says "Here's the keys to a 2002 Malibu.  Come back early next week and we'll try to get you in a car."  Zero dollars exchanged hands.  Just some ink on some paper and keys in my hand.

So I want to thank God for pulling me out of a major jam and thank Al Hutchinson the Used Car Guy for being so cool about this whole situation.  Nonbelievers may chalk this up to good karma or something if you prefer, but it really was a miracle.

But wait!  After we pushed the dead car a little further up the driveway, umm, "where are the keys to the new car?"  "Dunno you just had 'em a second ago."

Crud.

Oh!  Here they are, mixed in with the dead parts of the dead car!  Phew!

Cool or scary??

Yesterday was a busy day.  Evening church service was canceled because we had a bunch of cleaning and re-arranging to do before some contractors show up today for the next phase of our project.  So I was at the church helping out.  When I got home, I found a note on the front door say "Your dog was out loose and terrorizing people.  I got him back into your backyard and closed the gate."  There was a name and phone number on the note, so my wife called and thanked the helpful lady who did this for us.  The lady backpedaled a little on the "terrorizing" and said it was more like "running up to everybody passing by, acting protective of the property."  She said "I just forcefully told him to get back there and pointed at the gate, and he went right in and I closed it behind him."  Anyway, I'm thankful she took the time to do that for us.  And I don't know if Chance was really being aggressive or just curious.  He's SUPER gentle when we're around, but I don't know how he acts when we aren't around, because, well, we're not around!  Anyway, I bungee corded and twined the gate closed.  I'm not sure how he got it open to begin with, but it should be extra secure now.

So when I get to work this morning the boss says "How was the weekend?  Dog on the loose, huh?"  Evidently the local police called my boss to see if he knew how to contact me.  He was in the middle of singing "Happy Birthday" so he didn't answer the first time they called. They then called HIS DAUGHTER!  Who lives in another county about an hour away.  I only see her once or twice a month.  Heck, since she got married a year or so ago, I don't even know her last name!  Yet the police were able to find her and call her on her cell!  She had no idea how to get a hold of me, so they called the boss back a second time.  He answered and said "It's Sunday, so he's probably at church" and gave them my home #.  Dunno if they called, as there was no message.

HEADS - It is really cool that the local police went to so much effort to find me and let me know what's going on.  And (so far, at least) no citation or anything.  Had my boss not mentioned this, I'd have never known that the police were ever involved.  They just used their resources to try to solve a problem I didn't yet know I had.

TAILS - How did the police even know where I work?  And how to contact my boss and my boss' daughter?  I can see (maybe) how they could check the dog's tags and figure out who I am, then check some kind of tax record to see where I'm employed, then check some kind of record to see who owns the place where I'm employed, and then, and then...  I'm thinking of that line from the first Terminator movie: "I have detailed files."  This is spookin' me a little! 

Maybe the dog license form asks for all this kind of info.  Dunno.  My wife fills them out and sends them in.  I'll ask her when we both get home from work.  But in the meantime, I am simultaneously glad that someone was willing to make sure the pooch was OK, and also feeling like Big Brother is watching VERY closely!

I know at least two of my readers are in law enforcement.  Can either of you offer any insights?

Doubleplusbummed

UPDATE:  I fiddled with it some more last night and now it is recording again.  Device Manager still calls it an "unknown device" that has no driver, but as long as it is recording OK I don't care!  Thanks for all the help and suggestions.


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I finally had some time this weekend to do some recording.  I've planned and practiced three, yep, count 'em, 3 parody songs.  I even borrowed some gear from the church so I could get some better sound.  Now all of a sudden, my computer won't record.  The front input is just silence and the rear input yields only noise and random popping noises.

Device manager shows a yellow question mark with "unknown device on HD Audio Bus" so I tried to re-install the driver automatically.  No go.  Went to ASUS website and downloaded another copy.  It installed an audio codec successfully but barfed on the actual device driver.  So still no-go.  Output is fine, however.

Ideas?  Did some component in the audio system get cooked?  I'd had good luck with ASUS stuff going back to the mid-'90s but then one motherboard's USB system cooked (literally) and then another ASUS board started acting intermittently flaky and the shop said it had a bad capacitor.  This current one is about a year old and isn't otherwise giving me trouble so I'm not yet convinced it's an actual hardware problem.  I'm much more inclined to blame it on Windows, 'cuz, well, it's Windows.  XP with all the service packs and updates, to be more specific.

Hopefully one of ya is a tech hero that can help me out, because I know you're all just dying to hear my version of Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson Ms. Napolitano!

Oregon is great except when it sucks

From oregonlive.com by way of Instapundit comes a way-too-intimate look at Oregon's "First, um, couple" at the National Governors Association meeting in DC. I don't really expect you to read the oregonlive story.  But it is kind of funny in that "makes you want to give somebody a swirly" kind of way.  It is so loaded with annoyances and absurdities that commenters there are wondering whether it is satire. 

To those not in the know, Governor Kitzhaber is shacking up with a young'un named Cylvia (who all-too-gladly includes a pic of herself in a very backless gown).  Maybe the idea of the governor living in sin is bothersome to you; maybe you don't care.  But Cylvia has been making FAT BANK on government contracts for the last several years.  When asked when/if she and the Gov would marry, she said that wasn't happening because then she wouldn't be able to bid on all those LUCRATIVE GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.  Maybe the First Lady Shack-Up-Honey getting to bid is bothersome to you; maybe you don't care.  Maybe you're just danged freaking glad you don't live in Oregon.

By the end of the article, Cylvia is even comparing herself to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.  If you don't read the article you should at least bookmark it for those occasions when you need to induce vomiting.

The Taxman

Just finished my taxes.  Hallelujah!  I don't owe!  Well, I mean, I don't owe any more than they've already jacked withheld.  I'm getting small refunds from both Oregon and the feds!  WOooOOoo!

See, three years ago my tax situation suddenly changed and I found myself owing over $3000 that I didn't expect.  That pretty much kicked my fiscal rearend.  I cranked up the withholding amounts to make sure it didn't happen again.  But it did happen again.  So I cranked up the withholding even more.  And it happened yet again last year, but "only" by about $1400.  Withholding ratcheted up even higher last year and finally - finally! - I've crossed back into refund territory. 

It's party time!  Well, actually, it would be party time if I wasn't so pooped out from working two jobs to pay the stinking taxman.  But it is progress!

PS - the recommended withholdings on the W-4 are full of crap.  Jus' sayin'.

Challenger, Go at Throttle Up

Challenger Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery

There are historic events that sear themselves into a person's conscious.  Kennedy assassination... 9/11... The Challenger explosion.  For me, the Challenger was one of those events.  I was sitting in my high school Advanced Biology class that morning.  A student in the hall stuck his head in the door and said "The Space Shuttle just blew up!" but at first nobody took him very seriously.  He said it again, more emphatically and we could tell he wasn't goofing.  My normally laid-back (and barely sober) teacher pointed at one of my classmates and barked out an instruction: "Ken.  A/V Lab, now!  Bring us back a TV!" 

He hustled back with a TV and set it up.  Then we watched the coverage in dismay.  The human cost was terrible.  Many in the classroom couldn't help but cry...

A lot has been written about the tendencies of people to be liberal in their youth and more conservative as they mature.  Not so with me.  I never had that liberal stage.  My friends and I were already fiscal and foreign policy hawks.   Rah-rah proponents of American Exceptionalism - that we had gotten our "swagger" back after bad outcomes in Vietnam and the embassy in Tehran.  We had a (foolish) belief that America under Reagan had turned a corner and could Do No Wrong.

So watching a horrid fail right there on TV was like a mulekick to the guts.  I still get both sad and pissed when I reflect on that day.  What about you?

Santa almost came early!

So here I am at my early morning gruntwork job this morning...  I'm going about my duties when a clamor arises at the front counter... I hear many voices simultaneously calling out my name with a twinge of panic in their tone...  I get to the counter and they tell me "there's a gun in the men's room!"

And I'm like "And???"

One of the regular customers says "Yeah, I just saw it in there and thought you ought to know."  My early-20s aged coworkers were fully freaked.  Like there was a rabid hyena in there or something.  Holy craparoni, people!  It's just a gun.  Without an accompanying bad-intentioned psycho to go with it, a whole lot of nothing is going to happen!

So the customer and I and a couple curious coworkers head to the men's room, where I find a .45 Ruger P-90 sitting atop the toilet paper dispenser.  Let's not freak out, people.  See all the guys getting breakfast, wearing their camo's?  It is still hunting season (for those goobers who haven't filled their tags yet, at least) and I betcha one of them came in and took a dump.  Not wanting his sidearm to plop in the toilet he set it here and absentmindedly left me a gift walked away without it.  Now normally I would have some choice words for anybody that careless with his guns, but I think the humiliation of having to walk up to the counter and say "you aren't going to believe this, but I think I left my like-new .45 in the bathroom.  Has anybody put one in the lost-n-found today?" would be punishment enough. 

Anyway, I drop the magazine and make the gun safe.  I take it back to the office where the manager chickypoo says "put it in a bag so I don't have to look at it!" which I do, with the obligatory eyeroll.  She then calls the local PD.  Seems hasty to me, but probably the smart thing to do, actually.  I think to myself "I should lock the slide open so the arriving officer can see that it is empty."  The click of me engaging the slide stop sends her into a conniption.  "You just scared the @#*(&$^* outta me!"

Wow.

So local PD officer arrives.  I told him where I found it and that I was the one who made it safe and brought it back to the office.  He took my name and contact info and asked for a copy of the surveillance footage but nobody present knew how to do that.  I imagine he'll be back later for that.  I didn't want to just leave the gun there, nor did I want to make a big production out of keeping everybody out of the bathroom 'til the police arrived.  I think I handled the situation properly...  But... Right about now I'm really starting to hope that this gun wasn't used in a crime and now has my prints all over it. 

POSTSCRIPT:  It saddens me to see young people so freaked out by the mere presence of an unattended gun.  This is Oregon.  Redneck gun land, or so I'd thought.  Looks like we have some serious educating to do if we want our guns rights to be cherished and preserved by the next generation.

POST-POSTSCRIPT:  If the blog goes silent for 25-to-life, then I'll see ya at the parole hearing!  :)

POST-POST-POSTSCRIPT:  Maybe nobody will claim it and they'll give it to me!  Wooo!

Bestest blog readers on the planet!

I am now a "professional" blogger, in that I have received compensation for my blogging.  Wooo!  You see, one of my readers has come through in a BIG WAY. I really want to thank this person by name, but I'm not sure this person would want be called out like that.  So, anyway, you know who you are and be assured that I appreciate it!  And if I get a go-ahead from this person, I'll gladly offer much more personalized thank yous!

What you see here are a couple Blazer tix this reader gave me.  Please also note where it says "COURTSIDE" as in just a couple rows behind the scorers' table!  And a parking pass! 

Don't be counting on a lot of blog content on Tuesday the 7th.  I'm gonna be kinda occupied...  But I hope to have a bunch of really good close-up pix of sniveling Suns lamenting their humiliating loss!

Jury Duty? (This is stuff you should know!)

I've received my first-ever summons to appear as a juror!  I have no idea yet whether it is for a criminal or civil matter, or whether it is a minor case or a Big Deal^TM.  I don't plan on trying to weasel out.  I think this is something to be taken seriously.  But in case the case seems totally bogus and annoying, I'll let you in on my two ways of possibly being removed from the jury pool.

1.  FIJA.  This stands for the Fully Informed Jury Association.  It is a group that wants people to know about Jury Nullification. I forget which SC Justice (may have even been way back to John Jay) said (paraphrased) "The jury sits in judgment of the case at hand AND THE LAW that is alleged to have been violated."  As an example, imagine your jurisdiction has passed a law making it illegal to chew bubblegum in public.  Say a person was caught in the act of doing so: multiple eyewitnesses, surveillance footage, maybe the cops even rolled up while that person was in the middle of blowing a bubble.  This person is clearly in violation of the law and would seem to merit a verdict of guilty, but the jury can say "STUPID LAW!  NOT GUILTY!" 

The judicial systems frowns on jurors putting this power to use.  They like to manage and cajole the jury into the decisions the system wants.  Just admitting that one is aware of FIJA/Jury Nullification will probably get you excused from the jury pool.  If they ask, I plan to play dumb about it.  Jury Nullification is a crucial check on government power.  Not that I'd have any qualms about throwing down a "GUILTY!!" on somebody who deserves it.  It's just that I completely believe that a jury that really knows what's going on will do the best job of meting out true justice.

2.  If I want out and they're not bothered by me standing on the chair yelling "JURY NULLIFICATION!  Neener-Neener!" Then I will have to fall back on plan B...

sweaty pitstains cropped for your viewing enjoyment

I've had this shirt for about 20 years and it is a little small nowadays.  But I'd wear it as an undershirt and then say "Dang, is it ever hot in here!" and then strip-tease my way down to this old black T-shirt.  Then ask the DA "Hey, once we find this @#$& guilty, can I be the one to flick the switch?  Can I, can I???"  That ought to get me excused rather promptly.  And before one of you nitpickers gives me grief about Oregon using lethal injection rather than the chair, feel free to zip it.  When trying to get excused from jury duty, being a little screwy and out-of-touch is an asset.

I was summoned once to testify in a criminal case.  Back in '87, freshman year of college, some friends and I here hanging out in my dorm room.  From our 4th floor window, we could see a guy below us slashing bike tires.  He was methodically moving along the bike rack slashing each tire!  We called Campus Security and they arrested him.  The guy ended up getting a jury trial and his defense attorney was a real butthair.  He was asking me all these stupid non-sequitor questions and it was pissing me off.  I'd answer "Yes, but.." or "no, but..." and give some additional information to give the jury the fullest picture of what I'd seen.  But that's not what Attorney J. Vernon Pantybunch, esq wanted.   He eventually asked the judge if he could treat me as a hostile witness, which was granted.  He stared at me hard and said "OK, a simple yes or no question..." I don't even remember what the question was, but I answered "yeaaaaaaaah."  At which point he rolled his eyes and said "let the record show that the witness responded in the affirmative..."  That went on for a while before he gave up and called a different witness.  The perp ended up getting off.  The jury said he had "no motive."  Well, come to find out, he was facing expulsion for whacking an RA with a pool cue, but that wasn't allow to be entered as evidence...

I actually hope I am selected.  I've been on one side of the jury box and I kinda think it'd be cool to be on the other.  And if you turn on Fox News and they're talking about some juror in Oregon running around half-clothed and spouting FIJA slogans, well, you'll know it was a boring case...

Stupid People: An Economic Stimulus

Many of us, I expect, are familiar with the Broken Window Fallacy.  Today, I present you with a corollary called the "Dented Sign Axiom." 

First, some background...  Towards the end of summer every year, a certain university I attended and am a fan of (but shall remain nameless to protect the identities of idiots) comes to us for end zone signs.  Over the last dozen or so years, this university has gone from football laughingstock to perennial bowl-goer.  When I was a student there and the football team stunk, advertisers would refuse to have their image seen anywhere in, on, or around the football stadium.  Now that we're a decent team, advertisers want their image all over the stadium.  People come to us with crazy ideas like "see that little blank spot way up on the wall?  Can you fit another sign in there?"  Some of the most desirable locations are in the end zones, where the TV cameras often linger after a score.

Most years, there a four or five, maybe six companies that either buy end zone space or want to change the look of their existing end zone signs.  This year, everybody's tightening their belt.  We sold exactly ZERO end zone signs this year.  That's about $10k we're not going to see.  Ouch...  But wait!  There are stupid people galloping onto the scene to make my rescue!  Woohoo!

The university Lacrosse team was practicing down on the football field the other day.  One of those bright young fellows noticed that those fancy end zone signs, made of DiBond, have interesting properties when struck with a lacrosse ball.  The ball bounces back!  Golly!  So all of a sudden the lacrosse team is down there zinging those hard rubber lacrosse balls against the end zone signs and catching the rebounds with their little stickbaskets.  What they didn't notice (or didn't care about) was that each strike from the lacrosse ball was leaving a VERY OBVIOUS crater-like dent in the sign.  In short order, all the end zone signs were dimpled like the surface of a golf ball.  The advertisers were, oh, shall we say a little bit FREAKIN' P.O.'d!  Some of the dents hammer out like a ding in a fender, but some are beyond repair.  Which means suddenly we have a WHOLE BUNCH of sign work to complete before the first home game in a couple weeks.  Woooo!

The Broken Window Fallacy shows that there is no economic benefit to going around breaking windows.  But the Dented Sign Axiom proves that dented signs are very beneficial to people in the sign & engraving biz.  Plus, it's a state school so I'm sure there's a taxpayer getting screwed here somewhere.  Yay for redistribuitionism!

Inbox runneth over

Every once in a while I send an email to the Lars Larson Show.  About half the time he reads them on the air.  He did so with the one I sent today, and replied back with this little image:

Ouch! I think that's the harshest critique I've yet seen.