Ultramaroon rises again

Day 2

2009-11-17T23:38:00.002-07:00

Since Morgan was released, on parole, from prison. One might argue that it's early days and I ought not to expect overmuch; certainly such would be Sonya's argument if we were prepared to discuss the issue. So far we don't seem prepared.

Nonetheless, on the evidence of two days I have to say not much has changed. I was treated to the dancing hippopatami during my afternoon nap (which I always take after I get home from the office and before dinner). I heard Sonya try to shush her and heard the response 'I didn't know he was home'. Which response was accepted by Sonya. When I arose I was more pointed 'of course you didn't know I was home. To know that would have required looking at a clock or out the front door at my car!'.

I'm advised that when one goes to prison one surrenders ones street clothes and, here at least, dons an orange jump suit. Sonya wasn't really open to my suggestion that we buy a pair and wear em when she returned. *shrug* She was even less responsive to a suggestion that we schedule a night of films, featuring such titles as Women in Chains[^] or Caged[^]. Well, *I* thought it was a good idea!

Now if you think about it, it's pretty obvious that one enters into custody at a place other than the prison itself. It also seem obvious that, once in custody, one must be 'marked' in some way if only to make it easy for the transport guards to know who's who and who isn't. Thus, Morgan, having been sentenced and taken down, had to change out of her street clothes into the orange jump suit aforementioned. I'd have imagined the street clothes would follow her but not a bit of it. To reclaim those she has to go down to the Fourth Avenue gaol.

Thinking this through a bit further and knowing the propensity of the state to hang onto what it owns I asked the next question; if her street clothes are at the Fourth Avenue gaol but she's at Perryville *and* she has to return the orange jump suit what does she wear out of prison? I mean literally, what does she wear as she walks through the gate and back into our world? The answer, it seems, is that if no one arrives with clothes, either nothing or whatever they can scavenge out of a charity bin of clothing.

Since the nothing option would probably lead to swift arrest and return to prison it seems the released felons are very much subject to charity. Interesting catch 22.

Now you understand that this is what I've gleaned from my wife. I'd sooner die than ask Morgan about it. Indeed, on Sunday Sonya was waxing enthusiastic on getting the 'lowdown' on prison life from Morgan. I stared at her aghast. 'Are you insane? The very last thing you should do is lend the faintest odour of glamour to her last month!'

The little princess was to be released sometime between 8 and 10 AM. Sonya, of course, planned to be there at 8. I counselled an arrival no earlier than 10. As I put it, whichever way it goes one of you will have to cool your heels waiting on the other. Why should it be you? I'll let you guess what time Sonya got there.

On a totally unrelated note, today marks my seven year anniversary of living in the USA. As I said to Sonya, 'I've done my time - atoned for that mirror I broke. Can I go home now?'. Permission not granted!

Demonstrating ones intelligence.

2009-11-11T00:25:00.002-07:00

My wife continues, in the face of all the evidence, to insist that Morgan is highly intelligent. Perhaps she is but she certainly doesn't seem to want to *use* that intelligence. What use being intelligent if you're not prepared to exercise it at least some of the time?

I mentioned in my last post that the little princess is currently in prison. I have to admit that I don't fully grasp the differences between being in gaol (jail) and being in prison here in the US. Nor have I found anyone who could explain the subtleties to me; somehow or other gaol is 'less' than prison. And when I express surprise that someone has been to either place I'm always left with the feeling of being incredibly naive; as though having spent a night in gaol, in particular, is a rite of passage rather than something to be avoided if humanly possible.

Or perhaps that's just me; the idea of being behind bars for even a day is something I'd really rather avoid!

So here we are, in what is the last week (according to the Arizona Department of Corrections website) of peace and quiet. I mentioned in the last post that the inmates contact list has to be vetted before communication is permitted; it seems that at least her two home addresses (ours and her fathers) have been approved, for small pieces of card of the sort once used in library catalogues have arrived, with incredibly small print in pencil!

The first arrived a week or so ago; Sonya drew my attention to it with the forlorn hope that I might care to read it. I didn't.

I gathered, from hints dropped over the next few days, that the pencilled epistles were full of regret for a life gone wrong garnished with many promises to do better upon release.

I've heard it all before, and so has Sonya. Not being the miscreant's father I can wallow in the luxury of disbelief; not so my wife. Oh, I'll be civil enough when she returns; I might even, if I had a good day at the office and a better drive home, greet her with something approaching cordiality. If we shake hands I'll be sure to count my fingers afterward!

Over dinner tonight Sonya related some details of the latest epistle directed toward her father. It seems that smoking is forbidden in prison. Hmm, so much for all those British movies where 'snout' is traded! Ok, I couldn't resist the temptation to use the word 'snout'. So much for all those Hollywood movies where the defiant prisoner rolls a smoke in the exercise yard. Anyway, the princess was suffering nicotine withdrawal until she was advised by fellow inmates that there was a particular place in the yard just out of sight of the guards where one could snatch a smoke!

I can sympathise with this. I am, as you well know, a devout smoker and, apart from long flights over oceans, I don't go more than a sleep without a smoke. Another reason, methinks, to stay out of prison, if you can't smoke inside em!

But what struck me as comical was the naivety with which this information was imparted, on a small piece of stiff card, written in pencil. Does she not think her written communications are vetted?

Intelligence has to be demonstrated!

Inmate 123456789*

2009-11-09T00:19:00.002-07:00

I'd be lying if I denied enjoying the last three weeks. Such a pleasure not having the dancing hippopotami in the room above. Such a pleasure not having to negotiate the lounge room floor with the kind of care one usually reserves for tiptoeing gently across a minefield*!

In short, Morgan is in prison!

It was a long time coming. I'm not going to rehash all the details; I only know some of them. I took my stance on Morgan some years ago and methinks my wife prefers not to fuel the fire by aquainting me with the full depths of depravity. This is probably a wise decision!

Suffice it to say the offences involved the possession and disposal of stolen goods. I think I've mentioned it before but ones suspicions have to be roused when an expensive laptop or palm computer (both) sudddenly appear and are explained away as a gift from a friend who no longer wants them. Must be friends not invited to this house because, based on ocular evidence, those who *are* invited here certainly couldn't afford such luxuries!

The months leading up to incarceration were punctuated with desperate attempts to avoid the legal consequences. The DA offered her a deal and, as far as I can tell, she spent the next month trying to find a lawyer who'd advise her that it was *not* the cheapest way out! Failing that she eventually agreed to the deal and appeared in court for sentencing.

Now I wouldn't mind that if it was being paid on someone elses wages but I have my suspicions. Dangerous subject; Sonya and I have had hot argument over the drain down which I believe my earnings are being poured. I pretend, these days, to believe otherwise but the evidence is against it.

You understand that it has never entered her head to actually get a job to earn the money to pay lawyers fees!

Indeed, I remember asking Sonya a few weeks ago if she believed Morgan was guilty as charged. The answer being in the affirmative I then asked the most futile question in the universe 'if that's so then why are you helping her wriggle out of it?'.

I know I'll never understand this; no one has sprung from my loins! I suppose, being 'in loco parentis' to Morgan, I should be more concerned than I am; certainly I ought not to be having feelings of Schadenfreude, but I do and there's an end of it. She's legally an adult; has theoretically been educated in the responsibilities as well as the freedoms of adulthood. How long does one make excuses?

Alas, all proceeding according to the schedule laid out on the Arizona Department of Corrections website, she's out of prison a week from now. Far too short I fear, not just for my enjoyment of peace. Far too short for her to have learned anything from the experience. I'll admit it here if I'm wrong but methinks she'll have been in just long enough to pick up some new slang and to establish 'street cred'.

I was selfish enough over it all; the news that she was going to accept the plea deal broke a couple of weeks before my most recent visit to Australia. My only comment was that I hoped she wouldn't go to prison until *after* I returned - I wanted the entire month of peace!

In the meantime I've learned a lot about how the prison system works here. I never realised that the incarcaree (is that a word) is incommunicado while their contact list is being vetted. Nor did I know that after release on parole the parolee has to pay the costs of their supervision. (Want to guess who I think is going to be stuck with *that* bill?) Other things were more obvious; the new inmate goes into maximum security while their status is assessed.

*this is a reference to the fact that Morgan does not agree that it is her responsibility to tidy up after her offspring if they are too young or careless to clean up after themselves. I've lost count of the number of times I've kicked toys out of the way, long after their *owner* has departed. And no, I won't pick up after her or her children!

*I know the real inmate number but I made up one for this title. It's always been my policy never to reveal enough information about anyone other than myself that one could follow a trail on the 'net or in the real world.

My contribution to Halloween

2009-11-02T00:24:00.001-07:00

It probably wouldn't surprise you overmuch to hear that I'm not impressed with Halloween. As I said to my wife the other day, 'so what it boils down to is that a bunch of ankle biters come to your door, demand lollies (candy) and have license to abuse you if you refuse! It all smacks of legalised extortion!'.

She shook her head sadly and we changed the subject.

I go for a walk most evenings through the back streets not far from here. Usually just after sunset for no more sinister a reason than that it's just after dinner and I enjoy walking at that hour. Last night, for the first time in the seven years that I've been here, I went walking on Halloween evening. Other years I've avoided it precisely because I don't want to have to put up with the ankle biters aforesaid. On the other hand, why should I allow them to cramp my enjoyment?

Normally one couldn't tell, by ocular evidence alone, that anyone occupied the houses lining those back streets. To be sure, the lights are on but it certainly looks like no one's at home. I could count on the thumbs of one foot the number of actual real people I encounter most nights. However, much like the graves that are supposed to yield up their dead, those houses yielded up many a reveler and the streets were awash with ankle biters and parents.

It would seem that the sight of a solitary middle aged bloke walking at a smart pace (I walk very fast by most peoples standards) was so far outside their experience that it could only portend evil. How else explain the number of ankle biters starting to cross the road such that they would intersect my path who were reined in by anxious parents eyeing me as I strolled past. Once I was safely past, however, the children were permitted to cross. *shrug*

I think, in future years, I'll eschew the walk on Halloween.

Now here's a puzzle

2009-11-01T01:12:00.002-07:00

As you probably don't remember I'm a big fan of British Comedy, especially comedy from an earlier, more genteel period, the 1960's.

My wife is long inured to the sight of me, headphones clapped on my head, laughing heartily at the latest (40 year old) tomfoolery on Round the Horne[^], especially when Kenneth Williams[^] chuckles from the sidelines. Good stuff!

And so with other shows, such as The Goon Show, Hancock's Half Hour, Much Binding in the Marsh and many others that have run on BBC7 over the past year and a half since I discovered em. Indeed, if you have a very good memory you might even remember that I posted on that very subject on April 1 last year!

Back then I expressed some surprise that I was able to get the show over the internet given that I'm not in Britain, have never been in Britain and have never paid a cent in licensing fees. Well, apparently the restriction applies to TV over the 'net. I run into the same problem with Australian TV - I can listen to 3LO Melbourne no problems, but when I try and watch ABC TV I'm sternly told I'm not within their coverage area.

The mystery deepened today, when I noticed that the program I was listening to was listed as having been broadcast at 3:00 AM. Understand that I'm using their 'Listen Again' service, which makes all broadcasts available over the internet for the following seven days.

The program was Saturdays Comedy Controller, which first goes out at 10:00 AM London time, coincidentally 3:00 AM Phoenix time. A further check and I discover that they're listing all program times in the Real Player with a first broadcast time corrected for the Phoenix time zone.

Now I can understand that BBC management might want to know the geographical spread of their internet service, hence looking up my IP address. What I don't understand is why anyone thought it worth the coding, testing and deployment costs to convert original broadcast time from London time to the listeners local time!

Back in the USA

2009-10-05T01:40:00.004-07:00

My sister complained, most vociferously, that I hadn't updated my blog since August 1. When I responded with the suggestion that *she* take it upon herself to write 1,110 posts, some of them vaguely interesting, and then see how she felt about writing the 1,111th it failed to have the signal effect I'd hoped. Well, I didn't really hope - until you've done this stuff you don't know what it's like.

I'm back in Phoenix after another two weeks spent in Australia. I may, if I can work up the enthusiasm for posts 1,112 etc (you get the idea) write about it. Sufficient for the nonce that two weeks was way too short.

You have, no doubt, observed a tendency toward gustatory enthusiasm on my part. There's no denying it, I *do* enjoy my food, when edible. Fortunate, no doubt, that it's mostly not edible, hence my youthful figure at my age. I can picture Gary and Heino chuckling over that line. Youthful at my age???

I don't mind admitting the shock when I tested the scales in the lunchroom at work a few weeks ago and they reported I was 11 stone 4 (158 pounds). How could I be that heavy methought? The next day they reported a more svelte 10 stone 8 (148 pounds). Now I'll admit my wife's cooking is nothing to write home about but 10 pounds in one day? Obvious conclusion? Those scales were liars! So it proved to be over the next few days, reporting varying weights from 134 to 172 pounds.

Arrived at Melbourne 16 days ago we did what I always want to do when arriving in Melbourne after the ritual 'maaattte' and smoke. Over to Williamstown to the fish shop! Here's a photo (honesty impels me to add that this photo was actually taken on my last full day there this trip).

Don't I look cool (not!).

Here are the comestibles themselves!

That elongated brown thing lower middle is a cornjack (corn dog in the US). The brown thing in the middle is a fish cake. All the rest are chips and potato cakes. The fish itself (actually it's shark) was wrapped separately and it was magnificent! So were the chips!

While our order cooked we joked around and it was suggested that I pose before the order board inside the fish shop itself. But no, that wouldn't do for the proprietors. I used to be a regular there before I made the move and by now they know that when my ugly mug appears, every year or two years, they have a visitor from afar in their midst. Thus an invitation to an experience very few fish shop afficionados have - an invitation to stand on the *other* side of the counter for a photo. Here it is.

Gotta say, it's bloody hot that side of the counter!

I'm not sure how much longer I can go on getting away with stuff like this

2009-08-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went out for dinner tonight. I had the shrimp linguini with lobster and she had clams with linguini.

Part way through the meal she noted that the clams were rather small. And I, as quick as a flash, asked 'why don't you complain to the small clams tribunal?'

Boom boom!

Having a ball

2009-06-30T00:36:00.001-07:00

I don't know that you'll remember, or want to remember, but I'm writing a new soundtrack to our movie[^]. As much as I'd love to write something as pretentiously over the top as a 'Lord of the Rings' style soundtrack I very much doubt I have the talent or the time, and certainly not the experience.

I've opted for something mainly electronic - lots of wierd synthy sounds, but with plans to use an orchestra where I think it'll be appropriate. There's an amazing amount of good free stuff out there if you know the terms to use and how to make Google sit up and sing.

When we did the first version of the movie soundtrack, 19 years ago, it was all quite different. There probably were computers out there capable of rendering a soundtrack but methinks they were way out of our price range. We did it the hard way, sifting through hundreds of commercial movie soundtrack libraries (there is, or at least was, an entire industry in writing 30 second and shorter tunes in particular styles), listening to each piece and deciding if it might fit whatever part of the movie we were editing on the day. We'd argue, the three of us, over this piece versus that, and we'd speed it up or slow it down a little to try and make the music fit the cues.

I think we did a pretty good job. Heino thinks we edited the video to fit the sound but that doesn't agree with my memory of the process. As I recall it, we did video first and then found music to fit. On the other hand, we *did* edit video to a rhythm to help it fit with the music we hadn't yet found.

Nearly twenty years later I'm glad it was cut that way; it makes it somewhat easier to fit a completely new soundtrack to the old video. The bank robbery at the opening is still giving me hell; I wrote the first half minute or so (for a 2 and a half minute scene without dialogue) using an insistent beat and heavily overdriven bass guitars and sent it off to Heino and Gary to have a listen. They liked what they heard. My problem is that one can only do 'duh duh duh duh duh duh' accompanied by 'whaaaaaaaaangggg' for so long - two and a half minutes is about twice too long! How to maintain both the tension and the listeners interest?

But we'll get there. I'm having a ball. This is almost completely new to me - apart from Mike Oldfield and Pet Shop Boys I haven't listened to electronic music in over thirty years.

I understand that Heino was somewhat nervous when he sat down to listen to that first thirty seconds of music; was it going to be Bruckner? I suspect he was surprised!

Seniors Menu

2009-06-22T00:05:00.001-07:00

Uh huh - I'm now old enough to order from the cheap section at the back of the menu in the cheaper eateries around here.

I honestly don't remember Australian restaurants offering a lower priced seniors section on their menus but then again, I wasn't, in those days, eating at the kind of place that *would* offer it. Even here I go to such places under protest or when Andrew and his girlfriend are expecting us to pick up the tab; call me a mean bastard but I ain't shelling out 30 bucks a head for those two.

A few weeks ago we were in just such an eatery and I, still blissfully under the age of 55 (but only just) pointed out to my wife that I'd soon be able to order from the same section of the menu she's been able to order from for years. The waiter, cheeky young bastard, piped up and told me he'd turn a blind eye if I wanted to order from there.

I fear my wife took a great deal of pleasure laughing at me on that occasion.

Whatcha doing, Andrew?

2009-06-15T00:37:00.001-07:00

I'm telling you, this being in loco parentis stuff ain't easy.

You'll recall that a few months ago Andrew started showing off a girlfriend. A big moment in any lads life methinks, the first girlfriend. I still remember, vividly, that time of overcharged hormones and proprietary pride. Not PC these days? Nope. But a real feeling at the time nonetheless.

And you'll also recall that I, remembering that time of overcharged hormones, vividly as aforesaid, took certain steps[^] with a view to averting an unexpected step-grandchild from that particular quarter.

So fast forward to June and the long long (incredibly long to my way of thinking) summer holidays. It might have made sense, in the frontier days, to release kids from school for 3 months so they could work on the farm but I doubt video games and TV are half as productive.

Andrew and his girlfriend use the time, so they say, to watch movies up in his room. I confess to having trepidations about this, especially when the lights go out up there. You might be wondering, how do I know the lights go out if the door is closed? And there we have the second source of concern.

Thus to my wife and I, at random times throughout the evening, yelling up the stairs 'Andrew, what are you doing?'. I vary the formula sometimes by yelling 'Andrew, front and centre NOW!' followed by an ominous sounding 'tick, tick, tick'.

He emerges, sheepishly, and we dismiss him.

A few weeks ago he expressed annoyance at this rigamarole. I gave him various choices.

No girlfriend.
Don't bring her here.
Don't take her upstairs.
Don't close the door.
Put up with random inspection.

He puts up with random inspections.

No surprise there, eh?

Other proof I'm getting old

2009-05-31T03:31:00.001-07:00

Do You Have Cotton in Your Ears?

You probably thought you had better hearing?? You were wrong!

The highest frequency you can hear is: 12khz

Try the Teen Buzz and see how well you can hear

The outcome

2009-05-31T01:59:00.002-07:00

Well, at least for now.

You'll remember that I posted, a week ago, about Morgans troubles and travails.

In the event, I didn't attend the conference with Child Protection Services. I couldn't see a lot of point to attending; nothing I could contribute would be of any value to the process.

She lost custody of her children. That's passed to the father and his family. I doubt it would have passed there if it had been just the father alone though; I suspect his parents had some influence on the outcome. I don't mean unwarranted influence though, merely that they seem to have been supportive.

The loss is, for the nonce, temporary, with the carrot of the return of parental rights contingent upon successfully completing a drug rehabilitation regimen. One might expect, then, that immediate efforts would be expended upon finding such a regimen within her means (or more bloody likely, ours). Perhaps it's early days but so far I've seen or heard of no such efforts.

I imagine I come over as extremely negative about Morgan and let me tell you, if that's the impression you're getting you're absolutely right. I've watched her go to the dogs for six and a half years, ignoring every piece of good advice on the way down, refusing to take any responsibility for herself.

Well, six and a half years is long enough to be given free rein. If, after that length of time and a few nights spent in the cells the message hasn't gotten through then I reckon we're talking a case of wilful deafness to good sense that I just can't be bothered with.

So let her rot!

Time for a good whinge

2009-05-24T01:31:00.001-07:00

I haven't had a good one in ages!

Morgans second was delivered this week - Thursday morning to be precise. I actually didn't know the second little bastard had entered the world until Friday morning; my wife didn't think I'd be all that fussed to know. And let me tell you, she was correct.

What I did know was that on Wednesday my wife and Morgan had rushed off to the hospital on what turned out to be a false alarm; and that Morgan had been denying possible reality by saying 'it can't be born today'. When the kid's my age I'd posit that a day here or there will make no difference and indeed, to the kid today it probably also makes no difference. But it seems that the extra day *did* make a big difference to Morgan.

Everything had been scheduled to happen on Friday. I have to confess, not being a father, that I was a trifle puzzled at this 'scheduling' thing. Surely, I reasoned, a pregnancy came to a conclusion in its own time? Even if one were able to pinpoint to the second the moment of conception there is *still* some uncertainty, no?

All of which shows how out of touch I am with 'reality' today, for, as almost all of you are thinking, they had scheduled an induced birth. Such a pity for Morgan then, that nature had taken things into her own hands.

For, on the Thursday, the news came that Morgan had failed a drug test. Now you'd reckon that after some run-ins with the police, a few nights spent in gaol and the might of the State of Arizona in the shape of Child Protection Services focussed on her, that she might realise that partaking of her favourite, illegal, recreational drug a few days before giving birth to child number two might not be a good idea.

Hence her panic when nature took its course. Of course, I'm sure she calibrated her indulgence, calculated to a nicety breakdown and excretion rates, allowed for margins of error in the testing process and knew with absolute certainty that on Friday all the evidence would be gone. I'm equally sure that pigs can fly!

Well, the might of the State of Arizona swung into action and on Friday the family interview took place. I wasn't present of course; the first I knew about it was Friday afternoon when I found the family copy of the paperwork sitting on the kitchen table.

All kinds of restrictions; Morgan is not allowed, on pain of imprisonment, to take her children off the premises without an 'approved monitor' accompanying her. Want to guess who the approved monitor is?

As I said to my wife over dinner that evening, it's effectively house arrest for us! Oh sure, I can go out anytime I like. I can even hop on a plane to Australia (and I will, 117 days from now, not that I'm counting). So can my wife, if Morgan is still at the hospital. But she comes back here tomorrow and that's when the house arrest starts, for Morgan cannot be trusted and therefore my wife must be constantly here to monitor the situation.

In the light of that it almost felt churlish to object when I discovered that they are running a background check on me! I understand their logic but it doesn't sit well with the presumption of innocence. Fortunately they'll find me one of the easier investigations; I've been through it before for other purposes and haven't changed address since then. Always assuming an FBI background check is 'good enough'.

There's another family interview taking place this Wednesday and I'm still debating whether to attend. I'm not sure there's anything I could constructively add. I'd be much more likely to make things worse by objecting to the aforementioned presumption of guilt without evidence. Probably best left alone.

I'm sure that attitude is how anti-semitism managed to grow in post Weimar Germany.

Ednas Radio

2009-04-21T11:51:00.001-07:00

Shamelessly stolen from CodeProject (and probably the poster over there stole it from elsewhere).

Dear Thorsby School.

God bless you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent senior citizens luncheon. I am 84 years old and live at the Sunnybrook Assisted Home for the Aged. My family have all passed away and I am alone so thank you for your kindness to a forgotten old lady. My roommate is 95 and has always had her own radio, but she would never let me listen to hers, even when she was napping.

The other day her radio fell off the nightstand and broke into a lot of pieces. It was awful and she was in tears.

She asked if she could listen to mine but I told her to feck off.

Thank you for that opportunity.

Sincerely,

Edna.

7 minutes of fame

2009-04-20T00:14:00.004-07:00

if that much!

You might remember this post[^] a couple of weeks ago.

The journalist concerned contacted me and we had a bit of a talk on the phone about my misguided attempts to locate Adams Ribs. I note that he seemed to know a lot about me before we even started! I have, it seems, left a fairly easy trail to follow on the internet. Good thing I have no known enemies in the USA.

Given that he seemed to know a lot about me before we even spoke I took the precaution of searching the internet for info about him! Turned up bugger all but then again, it was only a half hearted attempt at best. Life is, after all, too short to spend ferreting out the home address of someone you've never heard of.

Thus to the phone call aforementioned. I'd taken the precaution of rolling a couple of smokes before returning the call and smoked em as I walked back and forth chatting on the phone. As an aside, I've never mastered the art of staying put when on a mobile phone. Possibly because I hate being tethered to a land line.

A week or so later a sub editor from the Chicago Sun Times called; doubtless to reassure himself that I wasn't an invention of the journalist. My story (and his) confirmed, they went to press. You can find it here[^]. Umm, for the record, I don't recall saying that 'I took it as gospel that the restaurant really existed' but who knows; perhaps I did. *shrug*

By amazing coincidence that episode of M*A*S*H ran on cable at midnight on the day of publication; I've recorded it for old times sake. I might even DVDify it!

I have no pointy objects

2009-04-18T01:51:00.004-07:00

I had occasion today to visit the local Social Security Administration. Call it an exercise in making sure that, when I retire, a decade or so hence, my entire 2008 income is factored into their calculations. Should make for an extra 3 bucks a month!

This was my third visit to the SSA. The first was the day after I arrived in the US, to show them the immigrant stamp in my passport and get my social security number and card, with the all important *lack* of an endorsement, the one that says 'not valid for work authorisation'.

The second visit was to show them my newly minted citizenship certificate and get moved off the non-citizens list.

I have to say that, as government departments go, they're not bad. Reasonably efficient for a walk in and the waiting times aren't astronomical. They compare very well with any of the motor vehicle departments I've had to deal with, here or in Australia.

I don't think I've spent more than half an hour on any occasion with them.

As one walks in through the door one runs the gauntlet of the ubiquitous uniformed fat guy who fulfills the role of security. Pretty friendly so far as it goes, one explains the purpose of ones visit and he touches a few areas on a computer screen and out pops a ticket. Then you go sit and read whilst waiting for them to call your number.

Except that first he asks a few other questions. You understand that there's no metal detector; no rectangular frame to walk through. Nope, just the questions. 'Do you have a cellphone?'. The answer is affirmative. 'Does it have a camera?'. The answer is negative. The guy in front answered yes to both and was told to turn it off. Since mine doesn't have a camera I was permitted to leave it switched on. I imagine they don't want you photographing the staff.

And then they ask 'do you have any sharp objects?'. Now I want any NSA or FBI or CIA wonks finding this via google to understand that this is said in the spirit of sarcasm, as an illustration of a point! I have every intention of sticking this blade in my pocket into the neck of the person behind the counter, but, being asked that question, I realise the futility of my plan and run away! 'No'. 'Ok', he says, 'take a seat and wait till they call your number'.

So just what is the point of even asking the question, if you're not going to verify the answer *before* allowing the suspect into the waiting room? A legal out? 'Yes, your honour, we did ask the fiend if he had a sharp object'.

*shrug*

I need to learn to speak English!

2009-04-10T00:23:00.005-07:00

at least according to one deli worker.

This happened a few weeks ago and I didn't feel much like writing about it at the time, but on further reflection I think it's worth relating, if only so I can come off as a complete bastard!

I've related, a few times, the things that can happen when trying to communicate here. I speak, fairly obviously, with a strong Australian accent and, given that I was 48 when I moved to the US, I think it unlikely my accent is going to change. Partly that's stubbornness. I speak the way I speak because that's part of who and what I am, US citizenship notwithstanding.

I avoid certain words that are 'dangerous' due the possibility of misconstruction; I don't say can't for example, always using the full form of cannot, even if it's grammatically awkward.

I'll even, when necessary, pronounce the last letter of the alphabet as zee instead of zed.

So a few weeks ago it was time for the Sunday afternoon purchase of deli products for the forthcoming weeks lunch. I fronted up at the counter, grabbed the ticket[^] and awaited my turn. When it came I asked for 'a pound of Boars Head roast beef, sliced thick'. Got the usual non-comprehension. So I tried again. same non-comprehension. So far, par for the course. I don't really blame em either; I certainly wouldn't want to be standing for 8 hours dealing with the people who buy stuff at the deli counter, dickering over the thickness of beef and cheese. It's not as if the conversation we hold as part of the purchase is scintillating stuff.

I usually have to repeat myself thrice. *shrug*.

At the end of the third repeat, faced with the same non-comprehension, I'm wondering what I can do to make this easier? I have considered printing up the request and handing it over on a piece of paper, feigning muteness.

At the end of the fourth repeat the person behind the counter suggested that I 'should learn to speak english'.

Now I probably should have just ignored it. Nonetheless, this was rudeness beyond the acceptable. I've spoken English all my life and know no other natural language.

I asked for, and spoke with, the manager. He did a much better job of coping with my accent and offered to waive payment for my purchases. Nope, that's not the point and not the reason I'm complaining. This is America, the country so proud of it's melting pot immigration background. I completely understand that pride; we Australians are also proud of our immigration mix.

I insisted on paying for my lunch material. I fear he thought I was planning on suing but not a bit of it. Sue the company because of one ignorant person?

I've been back there once or twice and strangely, never seen that person behind the deli counter again. If they lost their job then I'm sorry about it, but I'm not going to apologise (much) for being offended.

Meanwhile, I've learned to appreciate it when the black girl, or the hispanic guy at the deli serves me; they actually listen and I never have to repeat myself more than once!

Supporting the rubber industry

2009-03-31T00:30:00.003-07:00

There comes a time in the life of every conscientious parent (or one who stands in loco parentis) when action must be taken. Thus to last night when Andrew seemed unusually pleased with himself, after an evening spent with his girlfriend. I swear he exuded self satisfaction. As I said to Sonya later that evening, he had every appearance of someone who'd gotten lucky!

Perhaps it's too late; perhaps the horse has already bolted, but it seemed to me that perhaps it was time for concrete action. Thus to the supermarket this afternoon, to purchase the kind of thing that was once almost impossible to purchase without a marriage certificate.

Indeed, I remember once swaggering into the local chemist (pharmacy) to purchase a pack of the unmentionables. A young lady (this was about 1975 so she's most likely a grandmother by now) assisted me in my purchase. As I left the cash register the male chemist, a dour looking man in his late fifties, took me aside and requested that I make any further such purchases through him and not embarass the young lady.

I don't recall her being all that embarassed; certainly rather less than I was.

Now it's one thing to purchase em for ones own use; quite another to purchase them on behalf of ones underage stepson. Especially when it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that some moral simpleton may take both exception and action. It's no acccident that I'm very careful about certain things in this household.

On the other hand, we always have Morgan as the example, par excellence, of what can go wrong when one buries ones head in the sand. I discussed the issue with Sonya (he's her son after all) and she was in complete agreement with my proposed course of action.

So I took him aside after dinner, outside and just the two of us, and gave him a present accompanied by a very short speech. I wasn't particularly embarassed but I well remember being 17 years old. Indeed, I had the experience, as I've related before, of my mother taking me aside at not much older than Andrew now is, and her handing me a pack of the same items we're not talking about, with much the same speech. 'We're not encouraging you, Andrew, but we're realists. Take care.'

I give him credit; he wasn't much embarassed either and he had the grace to say 'thank you'.

I think he'll turn out just fine!

Boring

2009-03-29T01:14:00.001-07:00

Back in 1995, our movie safely finished (4 years previously), and 'Scarless: The Unseen Bits' (the inevitable making of movie) finally finished and shown, Gary, Heino and myself found ourselves lacking an excuse to get together every Sunday.

As I'm the only drinker of the three that meant beer was out and, so far as I can tell, Heino's the only one of us interested in sport, so that was out as well. We certainly never went bowling!

So we invented other excuses. I remember one Sunday morning they arrived at my house, computers at the ready and we networked them and played Hearts. You have to remember that this was before the Internet was easily available and when the idea of networking a couple of home computers was quite the novelty. Indeed, Heino was asking me just the other week if I remembered why they kept bringing their computers over; he recalls going to the extent of making a crate with styrofoam cutouts for it but can't remember just what we did once they were at my place. Alas, I can't remember either. Surely we didn't play Hearts every weekend?

We *did* drive down to Williamstown frequently, to get fish and chips and wander down along the beach, even in winter. Since much of our movie had been shot in Williamstown there was much reminiscence which led to the idea of us hosting our own late night TV talk show, to be called 'Boring'. The premise was simple; there'd be a large couch or two, the show would run for three hours and there'd be a studio audience to hang on our every word!

As for those words? It would be unscripted and we'd just talk the same rubbish we talked every Sunday afternoon together!

Such hubris.

Needless to say it didn't happen. Just an idea to kick around of a Sunday afternoon.

You'll remember I mentioned a week or so ago[^] that I was planning to be in Australia in September 2010 for the 20th anniversary revival of our movie? (It'll actually be just short of the 19th anniversary but round numbers are so much better).

Heino and Gary have been, it seems, spending an inordinate amount of time on the project. Methinks Heino is much more the driving force; when we were making the 'making of' movie alluded to at the start of this entry Heino moved away briefly, to Sydney, for a job, leaving Gary and I to continue in his absence. Upon his return a quarter of a year or so later he was disgusted to learn that nothing had been done. I still have the 'Highly Commended Award for Sustained Inactivity' he presented Gary and I with hanging on my wall.

I foresee much chivvying about the soundtrack over the next 18 months. Indeed, Heino asked me just a week or so ago whether I'd started writing it. I had to answer no; I'm writing a Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra right now. But I'll make a start soon, I promise!

I hope to have most of it in at least rough sketch by September 2009 when I'm next to be in Australia, so we can argue about it.

Meanwhile, there are plans for the inevitable DVD release of the movie! Back in 1991, when we premiered it to an audience consisting entirely of cast, crew, friends and family, we ran off VHS copies (and a few Beta copies for luddites like myself). Those copies contained only the movie.

Not the DVD! Nope, this is to contain the movie aforesaid, also the 'making of' aforesaid, a gallery of stills we shot during production, a copy of the script and a directors commentary. Now in reality Heino was the director; Gary and I get a credit each and Gary's is probably deserved, mine really isn't.

When I heard these plans I couldn't resist commenting that it sounded rather like the directors commentary was going to be our only chance at making 'Boring'.

Mando

2009-03-24T00:14:00.002-07:00

When I lived in Melbourne I had personalised number plates (car tags). MANDO. It's one habit we Australians seem to have, when abbreviating someones name, to stick an O on the end. Thus, when abbreviating my name from Manderson it becomes Mando and was for quite some years. Of course, when I was a short trousered urchin, my friends of the time would tee hee as they abbreviated it to Mandy and I endured that particular cognomen for a number of years. Little bastards. We'll pass over any similarly juvenile 'humour' in which I might have participated!

Now I wouldn't want you to think *I* went out and got those number plates! Nope, they were my 40th birthday present from my second wife. I was, however, inordinately pleased at receiving them and would say, to any who cared to listen, that I 'used to think people with personalised plates were wankers and now I are one'. You can tell that my standards of humour haven't improved appreciably over the last half century!

A couple of years later I awoke one Saturday morning and went out to the car, to find someone had left a note under the wiper. Uh huh. Did this mean some neighbour objected to the way I parked? Nope, it was from one Campbell Manderson offering to buy my plates, at a premium, as he'd always wanted MANDO as his rego.

A pity then that he had left no phone number, no address and I had never heard of him! Might have been able to turn a tidy profit, especially as my second wife and I had parted ways by then.

I notice that the tradition continues; someone left a note on my previous post, Three dags[^] wanting to get a quote or two from yours truly about a post I wrote way back in 2006 about Adams Ribs[^], for possible inclusion in an article to be published in the Chicago Sun Times.

Such a pity then that the journalist posted as Anonymous and I have no way to reply save through these pages.

I'd love to be quoted. Contact me at rob (dot) manderson (at) gmail (dot) com.

Three dags

2009-03-18T00:52:00.002-07:00

Photobucket (the site I use to host images) was down when I wrote the last post. Here's a shot of three dags.

Left to right, Gary, Moi and Heino. Can you tell we get more sunlight where I live?

A new countdown

2009-03-18T00:22:00.002-07:00

started last night. Uh huh, counting down until the *next* trip to Australia, which is happening a year earlier than I anticipated.

It all began the last time I was there, half a year ago. Heino and I tracked Gary down; found the bastard two days before I had to return to Phoenix! Gary, if you've forgotten (or haven't poked around in the archives under 'our movie' over there --->) was the third member of the triumvirate involved in the making of the movie aforesaid.

Heino and I were the other two.

We spent a wonderful evening, the three of us, watching our movie and reminiscing. As the senior member I wussed out around 3 AM - I was falling asleep. I understand the two of them kept at it for another two hours! On the Sunday Gary met us at the airport as I was leaving and we got a shot of the three of us.

Well, just because I was condemned to a long flight back home to the US did not mean that Heino and Gary were. They, it seems, repaired to Garys house and continued the reminiscence.

Now you have to understand that Heino, in particular, just can't let sleeping dogs lie. I reckon he'd see one in proximity to a stick and just have to use the latter to poke the former. Hence the latest project - the digital remaster, in widescreen dolby thundervision, of our movie. I've been roped in to write the soundtrack. I'm not sure I *can* write 47 minutes of music of interest to a general audience but I'll sure try.

Hence the planning of a trip back to Australia in September 2010 - we reckon we might have finished the remastering by then! Besides, it's always good, on projects such as this, to have a deadline.

Things have proceeded to the point where they've already selected the venue, the Sun Theatre[^] in Yarraville. They couldn't have chosen a better venue! It is, after all, one the cinemas I used to frequent with my mates back in the early 60's when they still did Saturday afternoon matinees. If you can be bothered clicking on the link you'll see that it's moved on a bit since those days; what was once one large cinema is now 6, each named after cinemas of the area from the 30's on, most of them now closed and most of them once enjoying my patronage as a small urchin!

It seemed to me, a couple of weeks ago, that it might be fun for Sonya to come with me to Australia this time (September 2010). Thus to some planning. Minor details such as how much it will cost!

Now you can't actually book a flight that far ahead so we thought we could at least get some indicative pricing by looking at pricing for September 2009. It didn't come as much of a surprise; approx $1800 each, return via United, a little less on Air New Zealand, a bit more on Qantas and a staggering $3400 each on Singapore Airlines. Chalk that up to Australian Federal Government policy over the last quarter century; there were only two airlines permitted to fly direct from the US to Australia (Qantas and United). Air New Zealand get around that by going through New Zealand, which is, at least, in the right direction. Singapore? That's a bit out of the way but they're Star Alliance so frequent flyer points accrue.

Last week Delta Airlines announced their fares for US to Australia, commencing in July. Uh huh, that 25 year old (at least) policy is relaxing a tad and by the end of the year there should be 4 airlines doing US to Australia direct. The opening fare was very tempting, $A777 return. Translated into US currency somewhat cheaper again. I started thinking, wouldn't it be great to go, alone, a year earlier *and* go again in 2010 with Sonya?

Of course there's a fly in the ointment. Ain't that always the way? This particular winged insect in the unguent is that the quoted price is Los Angeles to Sydney. Heck, all I want is an extra hours flight at each end, Phoenix to Los Angeles and Sydney to Melbourne.

Deltas offering is ridiculous. To fly from Phoenix to Sydney on Delta I'd have to do the following - Phoenix to Atlanta, Atlanta to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Sydney and then I'm on my own as far as Delta are concerned. Same on the way back. Total travel time not counting the Sydney Melbourne leg? 33 hours each way! Delta don't even list *my* Melbourne as a destination; they only have the one in Florida.

Thus, last night, I found myself juggling itineraries on three airlines, one to get from Phoenix to Los Angeles, Delta itself to Sydney and then the parlous choices in Australia to get to Melbourne. Considerable scheduling difficulties (do I really want to try and catch a 5AM flight out of Phoenix?) and the ticket price was starting to add up.

On a whim I checked the United pricing again. And bugger me drunk if the fare hadn't dropped a thousand dollars in one week. Amazing what a new entrant to the market can do! On top of that, it's the familiar route, on the one airline, from Phoenix to Melbourne and back. Drop off my baggage in Phoenix and worry about it again in Melbourne!

Some quick emails back and forth to Heino (I *do* impose on the poor bastard) and it was settled. I clicked the booking button and went to bed with visions of fish and chips, dim sims and the whole rigamarole dancing in my head.

Oh, the countdown? 184 days at the time of writing. Not that I'm counting!

A misunderstanding

2009-03-15T00:52:00.002-07:00

Andrew had been rather secretive a couple of months ago, something I put down to being 17 years of age. It turns out that I wasn't far off the mark - there's a girlfriend in the picture!

This fact emerged slowly, at least from what I could observe. You understand that I, being a curmudgeon, have certain ideas regarding how far one should go in accomodating ones step kids, and that does not include ferrying the little bastards half a mile when they could perfectly well walk it.

Thus Sonya had met the young lady in question well before I did. Suspecting that perhaps Andrew was concerned that I might embarass him I promised that I would do no such thing; even if she came to dinner on Sunday night[^]!

And so to this week; when I arrived home from the office on Tuesday evening it was to find Andrews computer strangely neglected and nary a sign of World of Warcraft. This is so unusual an occurrence that I asked Sonya if he was feeling well. Nope, it turned out that he was up in his room with a girl! Ah ha!

A few minutes later they emerged.

She's cute. As an aside, I always like to lie about the meaning of that word. I'll describe myself as being cute and when the listener, understandably, demurs, I say 'well, if you'd read the dictionary you'd know it really means 'ugly but interesting''. How cute that no one has ever called me on it!

As another aside I couldn't help but notice that Sonya would call out to Andrew every so often as he lurked upstairs with her. I understand that Sonya even barged in on them once without knocking. Apparently the imminent arrival of a second grandchild courtesy of Morgan has taught her something!

The next morning at the office I mentioned having met the damsel and commented that she was 'cute as'. Shocks all round! How dare I notice the damsels backside let alone think it cute.

After laughing uproariously I pointed out that had I meant that I'd have said 'cute arse' and *not* 'cute as'.

Really, after half a year of my accent you'd think they'd know better!

The triumph of optimism

2009-03-08T01:38:00.003-07:00

over experience.

You'll remember that I mentioned, a couple of weeks ago, that our cat Tiny had died. I wasn't kidding when I said that losing him had hit me harder than the loss of any other cat; I still can't believe he's dead. If I weren't such a hard headed realist who doesn't believe in the concept of 'fairness' in life (ain't no such thing) I'd say that it was most unfair that Tiny died. But he did and one copes as best one can.

Krylenko seems to have missed him as well. I try and avoid the worse excesses of anthropomorphism where my cats are concerned; what do I really know of what goes on inside their heads? Nonetheless, he *did* seem to be exploring the places Tiny frequented, perhaps wondering where his buddy was.

Sonya was hit as hard as I was when Tiny died. Possibly harder; she was the one who cried the tears though I have to admit I got damn close a few times. Still do if the truth must be admitted.

Eight or ten days after Tiny's death the subject was broached; should we get another youngster 'so Krylenko will have someone to play with'?

Well you know me. Cat? Good! I wasn't opposed to the idea. I was a trifle concerned at the suggestion of getting another Himalayan though. Not because Himalayans are genetically predisposed to Kidney disease or through any other prejudice against the breed; nope, this was sheer practicality. Another Himalayan would look rather more like Tiny than any other breed and it's not a long step from there to expecting the newcomer to *be* Tiny reincarnated.

When Tiny died the vet asked us if we wanted his body back. Well no, this is a condo and we don't own the land outside the walls; where would we bury him? Did we want his ashes? Apart from a certain cynicism (how would we know the dust we were handed *was* Tinys) I also wondered what we'd do with them? Make a shrine of them?

Call me hard hearted if you will but that's just not my way. I haven't had a lot of experience, yet, with the deaths of those I knew, but what little I've had suggests that it's better to remember them than to guard a vial of ashes.

I still remember my surprise, nearly twenty years ago, when walking through Melbourne Cemetery and hearing a tinny tune near a grave. Careful listening pinpointed the source; a birthday card propped up next to a marble headstone. Yes, I do remember the date and the name but I'm not going to mention either here; the date on which I found the card was a couple of days after the birthday of the person buried there; the card was for his 21st birthday. Curiousity led me back there a year later and sure enough, there was a new card.

Sometimes you have to just let go.

Much better, overall, that the newcomer *not* be subjected to disappointed expectation.

Krupskaya[^] has lived with us for 12 days. She's a Tabby about 8 months old and very comfortable with the humans who live here. She's also very playful, as befits a youngster.

Would that she were so comfortable with the other cats! Imagine how poor Krylenko felt when he trotted up to the newcomer, full of goodwill and friendliness (he's the friendliest cat I've ever known) and his reward for his pains was snarls and spitting! Quite the shock!

I can't blame her; she'd spent time at the 'animal shelter' in a cage waiting for someone to come rescue her.

But it's getting better. Tonight Krylenko ignored the newcomer and did his usual burying of the nose in my armpit with the newcomer a mere foot away on the couch. She, for her part, regarded him benevolently and didn't feel the need to snarl and spit.

I have high hopes that they'll be playing by the end of the week.

Pick the error

2009-02-28T01:30:00.001-07:00

A Tiny tragedy

2009-02-22T01:51:00.002-07:00

I've seen various bloggers over the years either castigate those who write about their cats; or apologise for, themselves, writing about their cats. To which I say bullshit! For those who castigate there is a simple solution; the next link in the web. Those who apologise? Why? Because you love a cat? Why not apologise for breathing?

On March 8th last year (quite by coincidence my mothers birthday, which possibly explains why I remember the date) Sonya brought home a very very small kitten. With the usual lack of imagination he was christened 'Tiny'. I'd have probably saddled him with a moniker such as Kerensky but I wasn't quick enough and Tiny he became. I wrote a bit about him here[^].

A most remarkably pretty Himalayan. An almost as remarkably timid cat, easily spooked by the thoughtlessly noisy. But he managed well enough despite the timidity, being careful to suss things out before sticking his nose into the new. I well recall thinking he'd probably outlive me.

When Krylenko[^] joined us I was initially dismayed (six cats is pushing it wouldn't you agree?) but the two of them got along like a house on fire and it was hard to object to the newcomer when watching the two of them chasing each other around the house and so obviously enjoying life.

As you'll have guessed, Tiny is no more. He died on February 10th, of kidney failure. It seems that Himalayans are genetically susceptible to such problems. Knowing that hasn't helped me feel any better about losing him.

It was all so fast; a mere 5 days from first realising there was a problem to his death. Three or four trips to a vet who said there wasn't a problem and a sadly painful trip from there to the emergency vet. He was conscious then, cuddled in my arms as Sonya drove.

Offers of kidney transplants, apparently not available in Arizona, but available in California. Now there's an ethical dilemma! Though there might be organ donor programs for humans based on organ harvesting after death through other causes, I have no such touching faith in the ethics of animal organ transplants. I have uncomfortable visions of cats raised for the benefit of stockholders, their organs awaiting those willing to pay, the rest of the cat, no longer viable, left to die.

Yes, I did enjoy the roast lamb I had for dinner tonight. Ethics isn't easy.

I don't think I've ever felt the loss of a cat more than I've felt the loss of Tiny. In the 11 months and 2 days he was part of our lives he established himself as a unique personality. Not a day passes that I don't think of something he'd do that I took for granted as part of lifes rich pageant. Things that I miss immensely.

Krylenko gets rather more cuddles right now than he'd otherwise expect.

Don't be late!

2009-02-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

My route to work each morning takes me Southward on Central Avenue. This time of year, that early in the day, it's still dark, so I don't see as much as perhaps I should. That'll change as we leave winter behind and soon enough I'll find myself driving in daylight.

Driving home it's still light and my route takes me North on 7th Avenue. Much the better run than Central and I'd use it on my way to work were it not that I seem to be the only Phoenix resident who actually observes the signs prohibiting left turns at that time of day. Of course it could also be that I have an aversion to using the 'suicide' lane, especially for a turn.

If you don't know what the suicide lane is, it's that lane out in the middle of the road that's for traffic in one direction in the morning and the other direction in the afternoon. We had (have) em in Melbourne too, notably Queens Road St.Kilda and I didn't like them there any more than I do here. But that's just me.

Anyway, that part of Phoenix seems to have a church on every block. Pretty up market most of em by the looks but then again the entire area is way out of my price range. There's one church though, just north of Indian School Road, that really catches my eye every evening as I drive home. I have no idea which denomination they are and don't much care but I can't help noticing the prominent sign announcing services at 10:18 on Sundays.

I'm almost curious enough to go over some Sunday and see if they really are that precise!

Snappy Dresser

2009-02-01T00:55:00.001-07:00

We're still looking at houses with an eye to buying. There aren't quite as many for sale as there were half a year ago, at least if you go by a drive around the area of a Saturday afternoon. Indeed, this very afternoon we found only one open house, a bank foreclosure complete with damage.

I have to admit I don't quite understand the logic that would lead one to vandalise a house as ones parting gesture to the bank. Even if one wanted to stick it to the man surely records exist? Or does the fact of having been repossessed outweigh the pettiness of taking a hammer to the toilet bowls? Don't these people have hopes of starting over again?

Thus the house we saw today. The pool had been let go to such an extent that I reckon careful treading might have seen one able to walk across it! Holes in the dry wall (plasterboard) where the water heater had been wrenched out. Two of three toilet bowls entirely gone and the third hammered into many pieces. Oh, and every light fitting gone.

The agent was apologetic and trying to minimise the extent of the damage. I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me when I said it was perfect for our purposes, it already looks like it's occupied by teenagers. It would save the lazy bastards the trouble of making a mess!

I honestly didn't think it was all that bad; I've lived in worse. The only urgent repair would be the porcelain appliances; everything else can happen as finances permit. So we asked the agent for his card and departed.

Back in the car I glanced at the card and had the best laugh of the day. A photo of the agent, a bunch of phone numbers and his email address, and a slogan. The slogan went...

'Joe Blow, Nice Guy, Snappy Dresser'

Isn't that exactly what you look for in an estate agent?

Dicking around

2008-12-30T23:59:00.002-07:00

As you know, I still read the Melbourne Newspapers online every day, even now, six years after moving to Phoenix.

On the front page of The Age[^], at the bottom of the page, they have a set of links from related newspapers in four other states, supposedly representing the five most viewed stories from each online newspaper.

What's been fascinating me for the past month is the remarkable persistence of the story of the bloke caught with his penis in a jar of pasta. I suppose it takes all sorts. However, as if that wasn't wierd enough, he was apparently caught near Nobbys Beach!

I can appreciate a good nob joke as much as the next bloke but I have to wonder at how long that story has persisted. The dateline is November 20th and it's *still* listed as number 1 at the time of writing. Is it really that popular a story? Or is someone fiddling the stats to keep it around?

Childish minds wonder!

[edit] Catch it while it lasts[^]. I bet the link goes stale pretty quickly. (Which is why I didn't link it in the first place but Guy *did* ask).

Teflon

2008-12-26T00:18:00.000-07:00

What year would be complete without my, having spent the entirety of December complaining about Christmas, filling you in with what the fictional fat bastard brought me? Well last year I didn't and that year certainly seemed complete without it.

As you might remember I'm rather fond of bacon and egg breakfasts on the weekend. I've finally perfected the art of poaching an egg, which is the only civilised way to eat one. I've also, as part of showing by example, perfected the art of cleaning up the frying pans used *before* I sit down to eat. With a modern teflon frying pan, a modicum of hot water and a paper towel the entire job can be done in a few seconds.

That blinding speed presumes that the teflon aforesaid hasn't been scratched and generally abused. And, you guessed it, in this household the abuse has been plentiful. We seem to go through a new set of pans about once a year!

This absolutely flabbergasts me! How is it possible that a frying pan can suffer so much abuse? Easy if, given the choice between a plastic spatula and a metal one, that the metal one is always chosen.

The other way is to cook something in em, let the remains congeal and then attack with steel wool. The latter approach seems to be Andrews preferred method. Hence the 'show by example' aforementioned.

A few weeks ago Sonya asked me if I had any desire for Christmas. Apart, of course, from the obvious one of cancelling it. That particular choice denied me I asked for a couple of teflon frying pans, one small for the eggs, one large for the bacon.

Wish granted in the shape of not one, not two but three brand spanking new teflon frying pans. As I opened them, knowing full well what lay within the wrapping, I told em all (Sonya included) that these were *my* frying pans and death be the portion of anyone unwise enough to touch! The family know I mean it!

This mornings bacon and eggs were a pleasure. And the ease of the cleanup almost as pleasant.

How sad!

It's not really my wifes fault I have white knuckles

2008-12-25T00:26:00.003-07:00

when I'm the passenger and she's the driver.

I hardly ever use my own car except to drive to and from the office. That and the odd drive over to Frys Electronics. Apart from that, almost everywhere I go is in my wifes company and we use her car. Which means that most of the time she's the driver and I'm the passenger.

Many's the white knuckle experience and, more than once she's yelled at me to stop back seat driving. This usually happens when she swings out into traffic with a gap that I'd never essay. Of course her car's more powerful than mine; I've learned, with my cars lack of acceleration, to wait for large gaps. Causes the odd fit of apoplexy in the impatient bastard sitting behind me in his F250 but I maintain that if I were to be urged out into traffic the way they'd prefer the ensuing accident would cost them more time than my native caution does.

On the other hand, the most I've ever had to pay to fill the tank was $25 and that was half a year ago at the oil peak. These days a tankful runs to about $13. I sure don't waste the petrol!

Sonya also seems to wander around in the lane rather more than I like. Somehow I seem to be able to drive my car smack dab between the lane markings; she seems to drive as though she's keeping her options open regarding lane choice.

The other day my car was playing up. In the light of earlier comment regarding the lack of power it might seem paradoxical that I noticed it was even more gutless than usual but indubitably it was so. It felt like one cylinder wasn't firing, so we took it to the local garage.

Time was when I'd have had the bonnet up and be tracking down a problem like that myself, but that was thirty or more years ago. I used to do my own car repairs back in the days when, if one were to drop a spanner at the top of the engine, there was a better than even chance it would fall all the way to the ground. Not so these days; have you looked in the average engine compartment lately?

So my wife drove me to work on Monday morning.

They found nothing wrong and it's been running fine since then. They did suggest that perhaps we should swap cars for a couple of days; she drives nowhere farther than a couple of miles during the week and she'd be able to take it back if the problem manifested itself.

So I drove my wifes car on Tuesday. And thus I discovered that her car doesn't drive anything like as straight a line as mine does. It seemed that every second I had to do a steering correction to stay within the lane markers.

Perhaps it's not her fault at all. Well, except for one thing. When I dare to mention it she's not even aware that she's weaving from left to right. At least I noticed it!

I don't often lose the will to live

2008-12-23T23:49:00.003-07:00

but it certainly happened this week!

You already know I hate Christmas with a passion; methinks I've flogged that particular horse to death and beyond.

I think I've already written about Heino and his opposite obsession with this time of the year though I couldn't find it in the scant few minutes I allotted to the search. Whatever. Heino and I are polar opposites where Christmas is concerned. Indeed, a couple of years ago, when expatiating at length with my wife on the subject of my hatred of Christmas aforesaid she suggested 'next year why don't you go spend it at Heino's'. She, of course, didn't know about Heino's obsession. He and his wife still chuckle over that suggestion.

Thus, each year around this time I confidently expect a package from Australia, containing seasonal fripperies and I was not disappointed. It arrived yesterday, containing a kangaroo decked out in a festive hat, now hanging on the tree my family *will* insist on installing inside the house. Thousands of years of human history trying to get *out* of the trees and into a house and now we have to bring the damn trees in with us?? What's up with that?

There was also a tie with that fat bastard Santa's face and LED's for eyes that light up when one squeezes the correct location on the tie. It plays a sickeningly tinny rendition of 'silent bloody night' and I'd sooner be hanged with a real rope than wear it!

Then the crowning glory. A Santa hat with 'I love Christmas' embroidered on the white band. A letter included requests a photo of me wearing it. Perhaps mate, perhaps, if I drink enough on Thursday! But I don't think there's enough alcohol in the world for that to happen.

So far so sickening but not nearly enough to sap my will to live. Nope, that had to wait until after dark and Sonya donning the Santa hat. Somehow or other she managed to trigger it and that's when she discovered that the 'I love Christmas' is picked out in tiny little LED's that twinkle. She came racing down the stairs to show me and that's when the thought of shucking off this mortal coil seemed mightily attractive.

But only momentarily. I don't think Heino'd take kindly to the thought that he'd pushed me over the edge!

Merry Christmas mate. And merry Christmas all you poor celebrants. I still say 'Bah Humbug'!

The morons were out in force today

2008-12-19T01:25:00.002-07:00

at the office that is.

I'm not quite at the four months in the new job. That anniversary happens to be on Christmas day. How apposite I don't think considering the hatred I have for that one day of the year (and for the entire rigamarole leading up to it).

Robbie the quiet for the first couple of months; one has to learn who's dangerous and who's not. Then the dropping of the guard, the inevitable misjudgement and then the lapsing into a kind of comfortable feeling with the people one shares ones working life with.

By now they're well aware of the distaste I have for Christmas. They don't understand it any more than you do but they surely know about it.

Of course, with the festive season rapidly approaching and with internet access it didn't take em long to find a website of incredibly vapidity. I honestly don't know the URl but a google search for 'Elf yourself' might find it. For myself, I would rather dip my hand in molten sulphur than search for it let alone provide the link here!

The idea is that one takes a photo or three of people one knows, uploads it and superimposes the face on an elf. Then one gets the incredible pleasure of watching these familiar faces doing a line dance or a disco dance.

Incredible pleasure it certainly seemed to be today; I thought the woman I share my office with (or who shares hers with me - I came later) was going to wet herself as she shrieked with laughter at the sight of a few of our colleagues thus superimposed on the elves aforesaid.

Another week and it's all over for another year. Roll on boxing day!

Overdoing the politeness

2008-12-19T01:05:00.003-07:00

Now I want it clearly understood that I have no problem with politeness. I've even been known to be polite myself. It's an essential lubricant to society and without it we'd see a lot more anarchy than we do. After all, if no one is polite then we see road rage, queue rage and worse.

Indeed, I've often ascribed the sometimes excessive politeness I see here in the US to fear; in the land where even I can own a gun if I wanted (I don't), and in a state that permits open carry and has concealed weapon permits, politeness is well advised; you don't know if the guy you snub might pop a cap in your arse! Oh, would that such politeness extended to driving!

Nonetheless, I can't help feeling it's taken a trifle too far.

These days one has to smoke outside of course, which means that I'm negotiating the doors into and out of the building fairly frequently. Me and all the other smokers! Obviously I'm talking at work - since I'm paying the mortgage at home I get to smoke inside if I choose. I choose.

Thus to walking back in after stubbing out. I've learned to check if there are others approaching the door and modulate my approach such that I'm at least twenty feet from the door as they pass through. Otherwise they feel obliged to wait and hold the door open for me.

Now I ask you, do I look like I can't open the door for myself?

Worse, one feels the pressure to do the same. Gut feel tells me that some clown ten feet away won't be terribly offended if I don't pause to hold that damn door open; closer and he might.

You can imagine how difficult it can be to modulate ones approach to be twenty feet behind the person who enters the building before one and more than ten feet ahead of the person behind one. I really should chuck it up, grow a beard and become the curmudgeon who doesn't give a damn. I've already achieved it all save for the beard!

The other day I saw someone who took it to extremes. Youngish bloke on his way out for a smoke. I kid you not, I saw this poor bastard make six false starts away from the door before noticing yet another person approach. At each fresh approach he'd dart back so he could hold the door open. It didn't seem to matter which side of the door they came from, he'd rush back and open it for someone leaving the building, or for someone entering the building.

I swear I almost longed for a weapon so's I could pop a cap in his sorry arse and put him out of his misery!

Competition

2008-12-17T23:59:00.001-07:00

When I was in Australia a couple of months ago I took the opportunity of buying, at the computer market, an Intel Quad core processor; the price was somewhat less than I'd have paid here for it and it was, after all, bragging rights.

Perhaps I overdid the bragging - I can certainly see how Heino, hearing me chanting 'Quad Core, Quad Core' might get a trifle tired of life. But I *do* think his antidote was both misguided and over the top. For what did he do almost as soon as I had returned to Phoenix but order a Mac Dual Quad Core Xeon machine with 16 gigs of memory. My quarrel with that decision is of course that it's a Mac.

Methinks I've raised the level of competition a trifle though. You might recall that when he was here in the US a year and a bit ago we went to Las Vegas and saw The Fab Four show. Excellent show, particularly if you're an old fart like Heino is.

Thus to a few minutes ago when Heino sent me an email including a screen shot of the Mac About box showing 8 cores and a bunch of memory. What could I do but reply that Sonya and I have decided to go to Las Vegas on New Years day, for three nights *and* we're going to catch LOVE[^].

Let's see how Heino beats that!

Stupid people

2008-12-14T02:04:00.003-07:00

I'm sure you've worked out that I have little patience for the stupid people of this world. Such a pity there are so many of them. Fortunately my wife has learned to tune out when I'm ranting about em else she'd go deaf methinks.

You know how, at the deli in the supermarket, they have this little red plastic machine that dispenses tickets? There must be just the one manufacturer in the entire world for I can testify that the machines look exactly the same in Australia, here in the US, over there in France and I even saw one in The Philippines!

Anyway, the idea is that one walks up to the deli and grabs a ticket. Then one waits patiently while the guy in front agonises over the choice of cheese and that other guy complains that the roast beef is *still* too thick even though you can see through it!

Since changing jobs I find I drink rather less and eat rather more. I'm sure the two are related; less alcohol probably means less sugar in the system. Whatever the reason I find that come 11 AM I'm ravenous. Thus to taking lunch to work each day. Which, inevitably, means that I have to face the deli at the local supermarket each week.

I gave up on the one at the closest supermarket; it didn't seem to matter what time or day I fronted up I always copped a particularly deaf woman who could not understand that when I ask for 'roast beef cut thick' that I really meant what I said. Yeah, I know, I'm sounding like that bloke mentioned before who obsesses over the thickness of his beef. But I'd have imagined that suggesting a thickness of a sixteenth of an inch might indicate that perhaps I wanted it thick! On the other hand, perhaps the thickness of my accent was the problem!

She also has a bad cold, and has had it for a couple of months now. Lots of sniffles and sneezes. Call me squeamish but I really don't want week old germs on my sangers.

So I go to a different supermarket for the deli. Not that it helped a lot; there are still stupid people who take a ticket, stand there for ten minutes while the preceding moron is served and then, when it's their turn, have no idea what they want. Hence dicking around and, in one case, a guy so clueless he waited until the question was popped, admitted he didn't know and pulled out his mobile phone to call his wife! Followed by a three or four minute wait while she ambulated ever so slowly from the other end of the supermarket to the deli counter! Idiots the pair of them!

But the ones I like the best are the ones who can't read. At least every second week I'll walk up to the ticket dispenser, take the ticket, check the number and I'm next! This despite the throng milling around waiting to be served. And when the attendant has finished with the last customer they press expectantly forward, waiting for the gaze that indicates 'you're next'. How disappointed they must be when the attendant calls out '71' and I say 'yes', hold out the ticket and get served next. More than once I've been the recipient of a glance meant to kill. I've even had people say 'I was here first', which I can't gainsay; they *were* there first.

But it's not my fault I can read and they can't. It's pretty well sign posted.

Windows L

2008-12-09T22:47:00.001-07:00

If you have an extremely good memory you might remember this post[^] about hosting a chat room or two on IRC.

It can get pretty boring watching a steady stream of lols and roflmaos and even roflmaopimps flying by and we used to take advantage of the naivety (or ignorance) of the less computer literate. Sometimes they'd be complaining about slow internet connections or drop outs (we used to call it moofing and I can't, for the life of me, remember what the acronym stood for). And so, sometimes, we'd advise the complainant to 'press the Alt F4 key'. Which, as you'll remember, closes the window! The trick worked more often than not and we'd all get a good laugh out of it.

A few weeks ago I called to Andrew. 'Hey Andrew? See the key with the Windows symbol on it?'. He peered and admitted he could. 'Well, hold it down and press the L key' I said. He's learning to be suspicious where I'm concerned so he demurred. 'Oh, go on, don't be a wuss' I responded and he entered that key combination. Which, as you all know, locks your computer and you have to enter your password to unlock it. I'd certainly picked my time, for he was in the middle of a World of Warcraft session (then again, when isn't he?) and loud were the wails as he realised he'd been 'had'.

A couple of weeks later I tried the same trick on him and it worked. He's a slow learner at times.

It didn't work the third time!

Doing a Melba

2008-12-08T00:00:00.002-07:00

Well, my older Australian readers will understand the title. For the rest of you, Dame Nellie Melba [^], the Australian Opera singer, did a lot of farewell tours. We also sometimes twist the meaning to cover someone who returns some time afterward.

Which is what I did the other day at the place where I used to work. Actually it was my second return; the first was the day after Thankgiving. You have to understand that at the place where I used to work they don't take such things as public holidays into account when committing to deliveries. I suppose they could hide behind the excuse that Thanksgiving isn't actually a committed holiday; it's proclaimed each year by The President. Of course, failure to proclaim it would be political suicide and it's now become so associated with late November that I reckon a great many Americans would be surprised to learn it was originally held in September!

Anyway, the point is that everyone here expects the last weekend of November to be Thanksgiving. You'd imagine then that planning would make allowance for it. But not at The Place Where I Used To Work (hereinafter TPWIUTW). Indeed, they scheduled an oven delivery at Thanksgiving in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 as well as this one.

Thus to a phone call from an apologetic Randy on the friday. Again, most places except retail allocate the day after Thanksgiving as a public holiday and he was pretty sure I was not at work that day. But he'd run into a problem with the Software I Used To Work On (SIUTWO - you get the idea) and hoped I'd help out. Well, I've worked with Randy for a few years and I *know* he wouldn't call if he hadn't reached the end of his knowledge in that particular area, so I was happy to help out. What little advice I could give over the phone didn't help so I drove down to Tempe. Not as magnanimous a gesture as it seems; Morgan was being more difficult than usual that afternoon. Besides, I miss the old bastard and it was good to catch up with a friendly face.

The problem was simple enough; a cable inside the PC was reversed and red faced indeed was Randy. But no matter, I enjoyed the afternoon. Great chance to catch up on the gossip.

They got that one as a freebie.

The other day they emailed me asking for some advice about multi-threaded access to the device driver. Again, I was happy enough to give some basic advice; it takes all of five minutes if it's a familiar subject to give some pointers. Alas, the pointers weren't quite enough and they agreed to my hourly rate for me to go in and look at the code. Thus to my going in again.

How depressing it was to sit at my old desk again, even if I was on four times the old hourly rate! If ever I needed confirmation I'd made the right decision to change jobs that was it.

As for whether I've fixed their multi-threading problem? Time will tell; when I left late Friday afternoon the software was in the third hour of testing without a failure and we left it to run over the weekend. I'm almost afraid to check email Monday. But only almost!

An unpleasant surprise

2008-12-07T00:05:00.003-07:00

I was on the phone today with someone who reminded me of an occurrence that took place quite some time ago. After laughing I remarked that I really must blog about it whereupon the someone said 'oh no mate, don't identify me'. So I won't identify you, mate!

Unfortunately I wasn't present when this story took place so you'll have to take the word of someone else, related many times over the past three and a half decades. On the other hand, once you've read the story, you might agree with me that it was fortunate indeed that I wasn't present.

Our anonymous actor lived, at that time, in a small house in Williamstown with his folks. Over the back fence was a small theatre occupied by a smaller amateur theatre company. I'm sure you'll remember your nonage, when such things as fences and locked doors presented no moral impediment to exploration. When one is a dozen years old who cares about such things?

So it was that our anonymous actor and his friends of similar age were wont, during the holidays, to scale the back fence and explore the old theatre. I'd have done the same had there been an old theatre nearby to explore. Alas, all I had was the old salmon canning factory, the lemonade factory, the glass works - you know, come to think of it, I wasn't all that badly off!

One afternoon they either broke into, or found unlocked, the costume room. I prefer to think someone had forgotten to lock it. And so our anonymous actor and his friends found an old fur coat. I imagine they strutted around in it for a few minutes, tried on silly hats and bandannas and generally made complete dags of themselves. And it might have been just as well had it stopped there. But no, not for our anonymous actor. He conceived the evil idea of leaving a small calling card in the pocket.

We really don't want to think of a future pillar of society dropping his trousers and taking a crap in the pocket of this coat but, alas, that is apparently what happened.

One can only imagine the feelings of the poor real actor, member of that amateur theatre company, upon trying on the costume for their next production and placing his hand in that pocket.

But if it were a comedy production his wildest dreams will have come true, for that simple act thirty five years ago has provided me, the anonymous actor and all our friends with countless hours of amusement.

And there ain't nothing wrong with a bit of innocent laughter!

Architectural Pursuits

2008-12-05T23:53:00.004-07:00

Back in 1975 Robin and I were going through an architecture phase, by which I mean that we were admiring buildings old and new and taking the opportunity, when it offered, of sneaking in and taking a gander at those parts not really open to the public.

As an aside I'll note that it *still* pisses me off when, having paid a few bucks for entrance to some grand old mansion or other, that all the interesting bits are off limits. Perhaps the example, par excellence, of this is at Chirnside House, at Werribee a few miles out of Melbourne. One can gawk all one wants at a drawing room filled with period furniture and old woodcuts but can one ascend into the tower? Of course not!

One afternoon in 1975, as aforesaid, Robin and I ventured into an old building on Queens Street. I'd guess it was built around 1920 and it had a staircase that wrapped around the lift well. This was back in the days when buildings still, occasionally, had lift attendants and this building, you guessed it, had such an employee. He was pretty old by our standards; I fancy he might have been as old as I am now. And he was adamant that we were not permitted to be in the building, given that we had no appointment with anyone and, indeed, hadn't even had the foresight to memorise a name or two on the upper floors from the building directory.

Well, just because some old bastard in a lift attendants uniform had said we should leave was not enough reason to leave. We faked a departure, waited until the lift ascended and took to the stairs.

The old bastard was ahead of us and, as we took the final turn in the staircase from the ground floor to the first, he was waiting for us. So down we went again. And down came the lift. A glare in our direction as we retreated out the front door and into the street.

Uh huh - not quite the end of it. This time we waited a couple of minutes and stuck our heads in. No sign of the lift and we made a dash for the stairs. This time we got to the third floor when suddenly the lift door opened and our adversary glared out. Thus up and down the stairs, followed by this pantomime demon and his glares. This went on for quite a quarter of an hour before we realised all he was doing was glaring and, thus emboldened, we made it to the top floor.

Which was quite disappointing. Just a row of office doors and no access to the roof so far as we could determine.

A few weeks ago Sonya and I were bored. So we went for a trip downtown. If you've ever seen Phoenix downtown you'll know we were bored indeed. Particularly when it was Sunday afternoon and I reckon you could fire a cannon down Central Ave and not a soul would notice.

We wandered over to the new convention centre, right next to Symphony Hall. To our surprise it was open (though it certainly didn't look it from the street) and we walked inside. No one around save for a few 'security' types and one young lady at the coffee shop who looked so bored that death might have seemed an attractive alternative.

The interior was much like any such conference centre anywhere in the world; acres of carpet, lots of large rooms, multiple floors and a bunch of escalators. We took one down, to what turned out to be the car park.

We came back up to the ground floor and then took another escalator up. And up. It does go up a fair way.

And on the down and ups we were followed, at a discreet yet obvious distance, by one of the 'security' types. Was she bored? Or did she really think we represented a threat?

I couldn't resist. As she followed us back down to the ground floor I stepped off the escalator at a landing and ducked into an alcove. Sure enough, a few moments later she came rushing past, frantically trying to find this middle aged terrorist obviously bent on bringing down the fabric of Phoenix society.

It was cruel of me, I know. As soon as she disappeared I took the escalator down, rejoined Sonya and we exited to the street. At least I gave the 'security' type something to while away the rest of the afternoon with; the task of finding the nonexistent intruder on the first floor!

What can I say?

The 2009 White House Christmas tree

2008-12-03T23:06:00.002-07:00

As you well know I detest Christmas[^]. Since moving to the US it's become worse of course; they *do* overdo it here. Actually, the rot sets in with Thanksgiving (which holiday I have little quarrel with) but that marks the real commencement of the insanity. It becomes well nigh impossible to enter a supermarket without being importuned for contributions to this charity or that. Indeed, one can't even enter without the incessant ding-bloody-ding of bells from Santas little helpers, strategically set up right in the supermarket entrance.

Heck, they even ding about in front of the Wal-Mart up the road from the office!

I note that nowadays they'll accept credit and debit cards. Bang goes another excuse, one that's served me well over the years, of not carrying any cash. Patently one can't be entering a supermarket without the wherewithal to pay and they consider themselves entitled to siphon off more cash. I suppose I'm just going to have to brazen it out with the truth now; I don't give to organised charity and there's an end of it.

And then we have the morons who attach a couple of fake antlers to their cars, one on either side of the front doors. Doubtless they think it looks cute. Frankly I reckon it'd look cuter if they attached a couple of dessicated dog turds but that's just me!

This evening, driving home from work and listening to the news on the radio, I heard an item that took my breath away. Apparently there's rivalry as to which state shall provide the Christmas tree that stands in the grounds of the White House. And apparently New Mexico has provided the tree twice whilst Arizona hasn't yet supplied a one. And apparently this has upset more than a few of my fellow Zonies. But fear not, for it seems that the 2009 tree will come from this state.

Phew! I'm glad they got that settled.

GreedyBastard

2008-11-30T23:47:00.002-07:00

is the name of the latest addition to our home network. He's a fat bastard too, but that name was already taken[^].

You might remember I've been planning to set up a Windows Home Server machine here to handle data backups. Those plans came to fruition a month or six weeks ago, using the old PC Sonya used to have. A couple of 500 Gig drives for data, a 160 Gig drive to boot from and that old (four years old - yikes, how time flies) computer now sits headless under the desk. Sonya seems to think it's there to put her shoes on when she's not wearing em!

Naturally the price of the server software dropped a week or so after I bought it; it's now on egghead for a hundred bucks or so after I paid $140 for it. That's life.

As for the software itself, it just works, which is how I like it. I'm still wrestling with the IIS security model, to say nothing of getting SQL Server 2008 accessible across the network! I know why they're making it more secure (slammer anyone?) but do they have to make it so damned hard to configure? It's not like Joe Blow is about to run out and purchase SQL Server 2008 (or even download the free express edition).

Windows Home Server is, by contrast, a no-brainer to install and configure. Well that fits the target market, the aforesaid Joe Blow but it's fine by me. It does help my peace of mind that we're sitting behind a router. I've chosen not to use the remote access functionality built into the product, preferring to stick with my existing arrangements of non-standard ports assigned to each remotely accessible machine, forwarded by the router to each machine and using Windows Remote Desktop. If I ever *did* need remote access to GreedyBastard I can always remote to this machine and then use the WHS console.

For the rest, well they make it very easy indeed. Bring up the server and connect to the network. Download the 5 and a half million security updates. Once that's done enable remote admin on it so it can truly go headless and then, on each client machine, navigate to the shared software folder on the new machine. Install the WHSConnector software and you're almost done. By default the entire client machine is backed up save for a few places that really don't need backup, such as the internet cache, the swapfile and so on. If you're feeling brave you can add one or more exclusions - directories you don't want backed up.

Then just let it run and overnight it backs up each client. It spends a lot of time determining what's changed since the last backup. Interestingly, it seems to be doing some kind of checksumming of files. I added yet another new machine to the network yesterday; this one's a web server/development box with Visual Studio 2008 - total disk usage about 25 gigs when you factor in a complete install with SQL Server 2008 (ah, so *that's* why I've been struggling with network database access) and a bunch of other stuff. Extra disk usage on GreedyBastard? About 3 gigs. I attribute this to the fact that the new machine is essentially a clone of this machine (same development environment) and thus the new machine's backup can consist of a bunch of links to files already backed up.

The other nice thing about WHS is the way it handles file sharing. It sets up a bunch of 'known' directories for music, photos etc. You copy your files to there and anyone in the workgroup can read em. Yeah yeah, big deal. No really, it supports folder duplication for those folder - two copies spread across your storage space (and across different spindles if you have multiple drives). Sounds like RAID but a damn sight easier to set up. You just add a new drive, reboot the machine, it notices the new drive and asks what you want to do with it. Add it to the storage pool? Yup. A couple of hours and a *lot* of hard disk activity later, and it's redistributed your files so that they'll survive a hard disk failure. Well, that's the theory though I haven't yet put it to the test.

It's intelligent about external backup. We have a 250 Gig USB drive. The first time I backed the public folders up it took about 60 Gigs (mostly my music files). The second backup took about 250 Meg (the extra music I'd added in the intervening week). Viewing the backup sets I can see 60 Gigs or so in each set but I know the second set is linking to the files that *didn't* change, in the first set.

Do you reckon I can convince either Sonya or Andrew to use the public folders? Not on your life. 'It's backing up my machine' they say 'that's all I need'. Well, yes, but those backups are *not* part of the external backup set. I reckon they are, without even realising it, playing a numbers game. The system is resilient enough if only one machine fails at a time - but if one of theirs dies *and* GreedyBastard dies at the same time they'll be out of luck. I won't be - I'll have the external backup of *my* files. Of course, the house could burn down but if it does I reckon losing a bunch of symphonies will be the least of my worries.

A bowl of chicken soup

2008-11-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

For some obscure reason (read, I don't know why) it was a tradition in my family that we, the kids, were given money to buy lunch on Mondays. The rest of the week we took jam sandwiches, or sardine sandwiches, or salami sandwiches to school, but on Mondays we trooped off, the proud possessors of two or three shillings, ready to make up our own minds about what we'd eat for lunch.

I can only imagine what a sacrifice those few shillings were. I seem to remember that money was always short (when isn't it?). I recall my mother making sacrifices to raise the half a guinea needed to make me a member of the local YMCA in 1960 so it's not much of a jump to connect 3 bob (shillings) in the same year with a major sacrifice. Yet she made it. There's a mothers love for you! I'm seeing much the same thing here in 2008 in the way my wife will make all kinds of excuses for Morgan when any dispassionate outsider (myself for example) would pronounce a sentence of 'let her stew her in her own juices'!

But I digress. Back then, in 1960, I'd take my precious three shillings up the road from school and around the corner into Barkly Street, to a pie shop, and buy a pie. The pies weren't quite as good as the ones my grandmother (with whom we lived) made, but that hardly mattered. The pleasure was in fronting up at the counter, all of 6 years old, asking for a pie and plunking down a bob or two.

For the benefit of my American readers I'm talking of a meat pie. I'm not quite sure how it is that my new homeland has missed the pleasure of the meat pie but miss it they surely have! Mystery meat and gravy locked in a savory pastry, food fit for the gods! Alas, I had far too few pies in Australia a couple of months ago, but I *did* have lots of fish and chips!

Pie in hand, hot enough to burn through the waxed paper, I'd emerge into Barkly Street and blow frantically on it to cool it enough to eat. I honestly don't remember tomato sauce involved but I'm quite sure it was. I also don't remember having to choose between a dozen varieties of pie; there was just the one. Meat!

A few years later, 1963 or thereabouts, somewhat more sophisticated, my friends and I used to patronise a small shop right next to the railway line in Yarraville. The building is still there and I walked past it a couple of months ago. These days it now looks like someone lives in what was once a low end diner. I imagine the space where we once played the posh gent, nine or ten years old and with all of three bob in our pockets, is now their lounge room. Could they even imagine the pretensiousness of it all?

I remember one lunchtime we, my friends and I, Peter, Bill, Carl and possibly Cliff, graced that restaurant with our custom. I ordered the chicken soup and it was marvellous! Soup and whatever they ordered consumed we paid our bill and exited, to have a smoke in the backlane a street or so away from school. Time had gotten away from us and the hour, which usually seemed more than adequate to wolf down a few sandwiches, exchange the odd joke and have a smoke, was up before we knew it.

We came perilously close to 'the cuts'[^] that day. Old Mr Powell (he had the same name as the street the school was in and I've always suspected his name wasn't Powell at all), wasn't all that vigorous at ringing the bell, though rather more vigorous at dropping us in it when he had the opportunity. Thus, dimly, I heard the bell ringing a street or so over, and alerted my pals. Some doubt at first; had I really heard it? This, incidentally, is how I know it was 1963; it had to be before my first wristwatch and I received that on the day that JFK was shot[^]. We ran like hell and got back to class with barely a moment to spare. That half a cigarette stubbed out in blind panic was forgotten for the nonce!

It's been a while

2008-11-23T00:56:00.003-07:00

since I've written. (Cue the standard blog apologia). The truth is that there hasn't been that much I've wanted to write about. Morgan in jail for the third time? And getting off again? Methinks you've suffered enough being expected to read about her trials and tribulations.

My hours have changed considerably. Time was when, had you suggested I'd be rising at 6 AM and arriving at the office at 7:15 AM I'd have diagnosed a bad case of rocks in the head. But alas, that's exactly what's happened. I can't believe I'm actually driving to work with my lights on. The first few times I'd get to 8 AM (and the third cup of coffee) and be unable to convince myself that I'd turned em off; nope, I had to go to the car park and check. The fact that it might have been a convenient excuse for a smoke will go unmentioned.

I have the option to start at any half hour between 7:30 and 9 but I reckon I've spent enough of my life sitting in cars waiting for traffic to move. If I hit the office by 7:15 I'm ahead of the rush both ways. How very sad.

It's the other end of the day that's the real problem though. One might imagine that if one is rising at 6 that one might be ready to retire somewhere in the 11 PM region. Not a bit of it! Come midnight and I know that I have less than 6 hours till rising and I still can't get to sleep! There's the power of 35 or so years of habit for you. Well, I can blame those years but the truth is that I also enjoy the hour or two I get to myself at the end of the day, when Sonya has gone to bed and I can listen to a symphony knowing that I won't be half way through when politeness requires a pause to listen to an interruption.

Except, of course, when the phone rings to announce that Morgan's been arrested yet again!

You wouldn't be dead for quids, would you!

That could have been worded a bit better

2008-11-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

Our ISP is Cox Communications here in Phoenix. Truth to tell, we don't have a lot of choices - it seems to be QWest or Cox or satellite. Satellite sucks for internet usage and QWest are DSL. There are probably dozens of dial up choices but who wants dial up if you can have better?

For the most part Cox have been ok as an ISP - relatively little down time and reasonably reliable though for some reason we seem to go through a cable modem a year. I could understand that if we were replacing them in mid-summer or during the lightning season but we're not. It seems to be a mid October to late November thing.

Thus to a few weeks ago when we started experiencing the usual (for this time of year) random slowdowns and outages. After three or so days we decided it was time for the annual cable modem purchase. Off to Frys, returning with yet another piece of disposable technology.

If you've ever been through this you know the drill; you can't just replace the modem and expect everything to work. Nope, you have to call em, recite a bunch of details such as modem serial number and MAC address and wait while they 'provision' the modem. Just why they call it provisioning is beyond me - I provided it, all they're doing is adding the MAC address to the 'allow' database so the system will function. Not a terribly painful process but it does take time. Presumably they deactivate the MAC address that used to be recorded against ones account so the old modem can't be used somewhere else on their network.

Which, of course, leaves a bit of a quandary when troubleshooting ones network. Once one has concluded that the problem lies either with the modem or the infrastructure at the other end of the cable one has to get them involved. Can't simply swap out the new modem and try the old one again. Worse, the people one has to deal with have 'scripts' to follow.

Obviously the cable modem replacement, this time around, didn't resolve the issue. Our connection can be great one moment and maddeningly slow the next. When investigating this I usually disconnect the modem from the router and run it direct to just one computer. If everything springs into life on that one computer I know it's us; if not it's them. If them then comes a long drawn out process of doing what they ask, no matter how inane. Little use to protest that I've already cycled power on the modem and rebooted the PC.

This time the problem looks for all the world like someone else on our cable segment has a DHCP server running on the WAN side; sometimes we cop a 192.168.x.x address when renewing the IP lease. My guess is someone has recently added a second computer and a router to their home network and they've plugged the cable modem into one of the downlink ports on the router instead of the uplink port. That would certainly explain why our lease renewals sometimes get a private network address. I'm pretty sure we can't solve this one without Cox assistance.

Today Sonya was getting toward the end of her tether with the internet connection. We'd already been on the phone with Cox yet again; this time I must have sounded knowledgeable because they forwarded us to their operations centre and they agreed that my theory sounded sound. They 'provisioned' the modem yet again and told us to call back if the problem continued. Which it did.

Sonya, fed up with slow connections, asked, 'How about Vern and Guy' (friends). 'Do they both have Cox?'

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Andrew slyly smiling, wondering if I was going to go for it. Was I? Does the pope wear a funny hat and expect not to be laughed at?

'Of course they do, my dear' I replied. 'That's why they're called blokes!'

Maybe you had to be there.

Voting for change

2008-11-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

Today was my first Presidential election and my fourth since moving to the US. It would have been my fifth had I registered as a Democrat or a Republican but I didn't so I didn't get to vote in the primaries.

Going by the blather emanating from both sides in the long drawn out campaign you might be forgiven for wondering, given the title of this post, whether I voted for the winner or the loser. Both held themselves out as agents of change though I fear my home-state Senators claim seemed more wishful thinking than anything else. I couldn't help but think of a McCain victory as Bush's third term. Given that my one regret was that George Bush was constitutionally unable to run again so I could have the pleasure of voting against him I think you can probably take a reasonable stab at my choice.

Methinks most of my readers had already pegged me on that side of the fence!

Today was quite the contrast to the previous three elections I've attended. Instead of providing a welcome relief from ennui for the volunteers by being the first voter they'd seen in an hour, I had the pleasure of standing in line for nearly two! Fortunaly Sonya and I went together; this meant we could take it in turns to step away for a smoke and not lose our place.

Of course it was badly organised. For whatever reason two voting districts were assigned the same polling place. But did they think to put up a sign or two indicating that fact? Well, they did an hour after the vote opened. Problem was we'd been in line forty minutes by that time and, as luck had it, we chose the wrong line. Not that there was anything to indicate which line to choose. We get to the end of the line, whip out our ID and discover that we're in Clearview sub division, not Desert Springs sub division. Naturally the line we stood in was the Desert Springs line.

And of course the Clearview line is a hundred feet long, occupied by people who are not going to let us convince them we've already been there an hour or so. Back to the end of the line. Being honest though, had the positions been reversed would I have believed? I think not.

So we end up in line next to a talkative woman who left me convinced that there really needs to be an intelligence test to determine fitness for the vote.

Of course I proudly wore my I voted today[^] sticker at the office. Bummer that no one noticed.

Ancient History

2008-10-15T23:11:00.001-07:00

Whilst flipping through the fortnights movie lineup on TCM the other night I couldn't help noticing they're running Help![^] (and have a few times recently). Not really my cup of tea; it was made before the Beatles became an interesting group. Nonetheless, toying with the idea of recording it if only so I could say I gave it a try, I checked the 'Guide' synopsis. Quite a shock! For it read thusly 'John, Paul, George and Ringo (The Beatles)...' and so on.

I suppose it's true there's at least one generation for whom the recitation of those four names does not instantly conjure up the word 'Beatles'. Possibly two.

A couple of years ago Sonya and I were on our way to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving weekend. We happened to catch up with Morgan and Andrew, with their father, at a MacDonalds on the way. Yes, I hang my head in shame, I ordered Maccas. I do about once a year; it serves to remind me how bad food substitutes can really be. Anyway, a Beatles song was being piped into the 'restaurant' and I asked Andrew if he knew it. 'Sure' he replied, 'it's that song from Ferris Buellers day off.'.

Uh huh. I really am getting old!

Light Internet usage

2008-10-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I caught up with one of my sisters. After the inevitable exchange of news one of the hazards of being a computer nerd raised it's ugly head; would I look at her computer and maybe fix whatever it was that prevented her connecting to the internet?

So we proceeded to the study and waited while it booted. Given the age of the machine it booted surprisingly fast - no more than maybe 5 minutes! Then she clicked on the DUN (Dial Up Networking) icon and I listened for the familiar modem sounds. Not a sausage. Aha, thought I, either she hasn't turned the modem on or it's dead. But she swore black and blue she has no modem. I very much doubt my sister has perfected the art of using DUN without a modem and I was about to start tracing cables when we saw some messages logged in the progress window; it had connected and was validating. Ok, so the modem has no speaker or it's turned off; either way it's not worth the argument whether she has a modem or not. Sufficient unto the day that I know she has and she doesn't need to care.

Lo and behold, mystery solved, the validation failed with the usual message about user name or password not valid.

'I can't fix this; you need to contact your ISP and find out what's going on' said I.

She whipped out a piece of paper containing her username and password; the original paperwork from the ISP when she set the account up. She retyped the username and password and tried again. Nope, same error message and, from me, the same response.

Then I spied some interesting details on the sheet. At the time of writing it's just past midnight, Australian Eastern Standard Time, on October 2 2008. This receipt was dated November 1, 2003. And next to the date was the purchased number of hours; 200 hours. No, she hadn't bought any more hours. Indeed she was adamant that she couldn't have used up anywhere near 200 hours in the all but five years since initial purchase.

Now that's what I call light Internet usage!

Mullum Mullum

2008-09-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

I'll admit I've been slack about writing now that I'm here in Melbourne. It's not that nothing's been happening, more that I've become a temporarily lazy bastard.

I arrived at Tullamarine at the usual time after a flight twice delayed by missing passengers. The first delay was at San Francisco, where they boarded us and then discovered that there was a no-show. Thus to the inevitable delay while they fished the baggage out of the hold. Of course, considering how long it takes to board a 747 and settle everyone down, there was no way they were going to let us off the plane during the delay. Fortunately, there's ample opportunity to make up lost time on the flight and we arrived at Sydney only 20 minutes later than scheduled.

I sadly report that there is no longer a smoking lounge[^] at Sydney Airport. I had a sneaking suspicion the anti-smoking nazis would have made it so but nonetheless it was a bitter disappointment to be denied that pleasure with three hours to go until arrival at Melbourne.

The second delay was on the ground at Melbourne, waiting for the gate to be available. You guessed it, the flight occupying the gate which was supposed to have departed was delayed while they removed luggage belonging to a no show. It beats me how someone can check their bags in and so completely disappear. Why else did they check in if not to take the damn flight?

From Tullamarine at my request straight to the fish shop in Williamstown. After three years without fish and chips I didn't want to wait any longer than necessary. We did, however, stop off at the Coles supermarket to buy a bottle of Rosella Tomato Sauce to go with the chips. Pure unadulterated bloody heaven!

Then Heino and I dagged around Williamstown for a while, reliving scenes from the distant past (well, thirty years ago which is near enough). But eventually it was time to take the trek across Melbourne to Heino's house which is not terribly close to Williamstown. In fact, he lives right by the northern end of the newly opened Eastlink Tollway. Which meant that, having taken the Eastern Freeway through Doncaster, we ended up at the Mullum Mullum Tunnel.

They've been planning to build that tunnel for almost as long as I can remember; it opened this year. Heino assures me it's a Melbourne tradition to chant Mullum Mullum as one drives through it. So I obliged him, feeling a trifle silly as I did so. 'No mate' he assured me, 'just watch the other drivers. They're chanting it too'. I looked and, sure enough, it looked just like they were.

The following morning we headed back the other way through the tunnels to pick up my hire car. I learn fast so I was ready to chant Mullum Mullum as we went through the tunnel. I even pointed out that it was pretty obvious one had to chant it backwards as we were going in the opposite direction. I was warming up as we approached the tunnel when Heino broke the sad news to me; the northbound tunnel is called the Melba tunnel and one does not chant at all.

So much for inspired guesswork!

The Greek Philosophers

2008-09-08T23:40:00.001-07:00

There's a story I'm rather fond of about Greek Philosophers. It goes thus:

Three Greek Philosophers are dining at a roadside inn and arguing about how many teeth a horse has. The first one opines that it's 32, the second 34 and the third 36. They argue and argue as the wine is consumed, each coming forth with mathematical proof of why his and only his answer is the correct one.

Eventually, tiring of the argument, they beckon to an Arab sitting at the next table and ask that he hear each argument in turn and judge who is correct. The Arab listens patiently to each argument then says 'wait a moment gentlemen' and disappears. He returns a few minutes later and points to the third greek. 'You, sir, are correct'.

Although satisfied that the argument is finally over they want to know what abstruse reasoning the Arab used to determine the correct argument.

'Simple, sirs' he replies. 'I went out to the stables and counted them'.

You probably don't remember that I wondered what MET CUST WOM[^] meant, in the context of UPS parcel deliveries. Today I finally remembered to apply the Arabs method as I found myself sharing the lift at the office with a UPS guy who had nothing better to do as we descended 8 floors. So I asked him.

It turns out that, just as 'Anonymous' responded on the earlier post linked above, it means it was delivered to a woman at the target address.

How disappointing that it's such a prosaic meaning!

Infectious snobbery

2008-09-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

My new job involves VB.Net code and some ASP.Net. It's going to involve a lot more ASP.Net in the future so it behooves me to learn it.

Uh huh, that's right, I was hired for the position without having the exact skills required. It's an exercise in optimism from my new employer, who is working on the idea that if I already have the necessary breadth of software development experience in Windows and c++ it shouldn't be too difficult to learn a new environment.

I have to say that's a very refreshing change from the usual attitude and one that I certainly appreciate.

Indeed, at the interview I wasn't even asked all that many technical questions. I can understand that; I always hate having to try and gauge a candidates real knowledge and experience in a mere hour.

My resume had included a link to my articles over on Codeproject[^] and my new boss remembered reading an article I'd written about using lex and yacc[^] (actually he mainly remembered it because I mention being a Kentucky Colonel[^] in my bio at the bottom of the page) so they had some real code I'd written available to read. I always knew those articles would pay off someday and they have; so far this job is great.

But back to VB.Net and ASP.Net. As hinted above, I don't have a lot of experience with either. Indeed, I wrote my first ever ASP.Net/VB.Net app last week, in half a day. Not much of an app but it fills a need and it's deployed for the one person in the world who needs it (not me). As for the VB.Net stuff, well, it's pretty easy to pick up. Some wierdness in the way one connects events and event handlers but for the most part it's a programming language. *shrug*

Last weekend I brought home a thick volume from the office library, something about business objects in VB.Net. I can't remember the full title but if it's about business objects you already know it's pretty dry stuff.

Sonya took one look at the VB.Net part of the title and said, in a tone of incredulity, 'VB????'

All those years of being a c++ snob have come back to haunt me. And it's not even entirely true; when one wants a quick proof of concept or, even better example, a COM testing host, it's hard to go past VB.

As for the future? We're going to be making a start on rev 2 of the app once I get back from Australia. I'm going to have to try very hard not to let years of c++ get in the way. After all, the ad I answered when applying for the job did express a preference for people who knew that languages other than those with .Net in the name existed.

I think the bottom line is that performance matters but so too do development cycles and maintainability/extensibility. Now there's a motherhood and apple pie statement for you!

This is getting ridiculous

2008-09-03T22:56:00.002-07:00

As an exercise in further trying your patience, long suffering readers, I draw your attention to the large change that United Airlines[^] made to my forthcoming itinerary a month or six weeks ago. After emailing me to advise of a two minute change they made rather larger changes and didn't notify me.

Today not one but two pieces of real honest-to-goodness paper mail arrived, in United Airlines envelopes and marked 'Urgent'.

Uh huh. Anxious moments as I tore the envelopes apart. Had the fuel increases caught up with me? Were these demands for more money? (The total cash outlay for the return ticket is a paltry $85 - frequent flyer points covered the rest). Not a bit of it. The first letter contained page 1 of my revised itinerary, the one I noticed back in July. The second letter contained page 2 of my...

Isn't this the same airline that's nickel and diming everyone with first bag charges?

Of course it's obvious how they can afford double postage. I can't remember the last time I saw a business communication printed on a dot-matrix printer with a worn ribbon and a bent pin or two...

Targetted

2008-08-31T09:07:00.002-07:00

So I'm reading the Melbourne newspapers online and this ad appears. Finally, evidence that ads really are targetted via ones IP address.

His'n'hers

2008-08-31T00:29:00.003-07:00

I mentioned the other night that I was suffering from a violation of the golden rule[^].

I haven't entirely fallen though; we went out today and bought ourselves a pair of 22 inch widescreen LCD monitors. One for me and one for Sonya. It was always going to be an easier sell on buying a decent new monitor if Sonya also got one.

It feels like there's an acre of screen sitting in front of me now but I'm loving it. Sonya's having more difficulty getting used to it; she surfs the web more than I do and she notices just how much of the screen is wasted by most websites. I hadn't realised, until we got the new laptop, also widescreen, just how many websites don't take account of the target resolution. That's why I've changed the look of my blog, so it'll resize to account for your screen.

I swear that never again will I fail to test my own apps on odd screen resolutions. I used to limit the testing to 800 * 600 and assume it'd look ok on anything larger but I now know better.

I told Sonya that if she really didn't like the new screen she was welcome to choose another and I'd take the first one off her hands. I fear she's not falling for that one! But you have to try don't you.

Andrew's showing signs of envy; his CRT monitor looks distinctly old fashioned now. It probably didn't help when I said 'wow Andrew, look how small it is!'. But I'll end up paying for that sly dig; already Sonya's talking about giving him a new monitor for his birthday, which just happens to be 19 days away. Coincidentally, that's the same day that I fly to Australia. Not that I'm counting.

I can't see the computer

2008-08-28T23:52:00.002-07:00

I mentioned the other night[^] that Sonya has a new computer and that her old one will eventually become our home server. She was convinced, at the time, that she'd copied or archived everything she could possible want from it; I was equally convinced that she hadn't. Hence my caution about reformatting it.

It should not surprise you that I was right in this instance; I'm sure we've all made that mistake before. Thus I set the machine up with remote desktop enabled and all the drives fileshared. We're behind a NAT router so that's probably pretty safe (but remember, I'm not a system administrator[^]).

A couple of days later I took the machine down and moved it to the other side of the room while we worked out a better location for it. It's getting difficult to fit all the computers in! If we ever manage to move from this damn apartment to a real house I have a use for some of the extra closet space.

When I got home from the office that evening Sonya mentioned that she 'couldn't see' the old machine. Apparently another set of forgotten files needing copying.

'Strange' I said, 'I can see it perfectly well'. She looked puzzled, because I wasn't sitting at my computer. I pointed. She looked.

'Do you see any cables?'

Sheepish look.

'Oh'.

Now I know where Andrew inherited *his* sheepish looks from.

The Golden Rule

2008-08-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

I've had a fair amount of success at sticking to the software developers golden rule; *never* ever have a better computer at the office than at home. I've even been known to knock back the offer of a faster machine at work because I didn't want to have to deal with having a lesser home system.

Of course, and I knew this beforehand, the new job has upped the ante. The computer hardware itself is nothing special; just a bog standard dual core with a couple of gigs of memory. Three of my four computers here have 4 gigs each; the fourth, Fatbastard, has a mere gig because he doesn't need more than that, all he does is record and playback TV.

Nope, the ante is that at the new job we all have dual monitors. Even the receptionist has dual monitors. I've never had that before and I fear some expenditure lies ahead. How fortunate that the prices of high resolution flat panel monitors have dropped as much as they have.

Bastards, bastards, everywhere

2008-08-25T00:21:00.004-07:00

If you thought we'd gone overboard with six[^] cats you don't know the excesses we can rise to when it comes to computers.

When I left the last job (was it a mere two days ago?) I had to surrender the laptop. Not much of a loss; it was about four years old and weighed a lot more than I want to lug around airports. But we've become accustomed to having internet access when in hotels and it wasn't a hard sell to buy ourselves one. Indeed, my wife had to expend almost no effort at all to get me to agree!

So we're now the proud owners of a low end 17 inch widescreen laptop with dual core Athlon mobile and a bunch of memory and hard disk. Plus the inevitable DVD burner we'll never use as a burner. It weighs half what the old one did and I no longer find myself swearing sotto voce as I switch from notepad to web browser, waiting for the damn thing to catch up. Who knows, I might even start liking Vista! Even with Vista it feels plenty fast. Gotta admit, DVDs look damn good on it too!

Well one thing led to another over at Frys Electronics and we decided that as Sonya had not had a single upgrade on her main computer in four and a half years that maybe it was time to bring her into the modern world. Another dual core Athlon plus motherboard for the princely sum of $89 (plus tax) total. For a low end upgrade it certainly moves fast and the sad thing is her computer is now faster than my primary computer. My audio workstation is considerably faster though.

Now of course we're not going to scrap the old machine (we had a spare case and power supply sitting around so Sonya effectively has an entire new machine) so it's going to become our WHS (Windows Home Server) machine in a few weeks, once she's sure she's copied everything off that she could conceivably want.

So lemme see, counting the laptop we now have eight computers. Given that there are only three of us living here that seems a trifle excessive even to me.

Oh, the title of this post? I admit I may have gotten carried away with a wholesale renaming of my computers. We now have Fatbastard, the HTPC, Bigbastard, my audio workstation, Littlebastard my VS2008 development box, Robbastard, this machine and Bastardtogo. I'll let you guess which one that is.

Restless

2008-08-24T01:24:00.003-07:00

I think we all know what it's like to be restless. You know it, you can't sit still, you just have to be up and doing something even if it's as simple as taking a walk to the mailbox or around the block.

My grandmother would have characterised it as 'ants in the pants', which description struck me as irresistibly funny the first time I heard it. I may be getting toward old but it still happens that I get restless and just have to go for a wander around the neighbourhood.

When I'm watching a movie Andrew has the misfortune to be in my field of view, which is one reason I know just how much time he spends on World of Warcraft. The other night I noticed that his avatar (is that what they call em in WoW?), mounted on a horse, was galloping round and around the same scene time after time. He was also mumbling in the fashion teenagers do. We've stopped worrying that he's talking to himself because he's usually wearing a headset and chatting away with various other WoW players. I refrain here and in real life from comment on the content of the mumbling; it seems harmless enough.

So there he is mumbling away and galloping around and around in circles. And ten minutes later he's still galloping around and around in circles and mumbling. And yet again, ten minutes later. You get the idea.

I had to ask. 'Andrew, what on earth are you doing? I've watched you racing around...' etc.

'Oh', he explained, 'I'm talking to (name forgotten) and I'm restless. I can't stay in one place'.

Uh huh. 'Andrew, they're just pixels.' Sheepish grin, the grin he always indulges in when he knows he's been caught out.

Now I've seen everything. Virtual restlessness!

I'm pretty sure some of the things I do would be equally incomprehensible to my long dead grandmother.

The Final Day

2008-08-23T00:25:00.001-07:00

So that's my first US job behind me. Today I had the mixed pleasure of leaving my job. I start the new job on Monday. Ordinarily I'd have wanted a few days or perhaps a weeks gap before donning the new harness but in this case I made an exception given that I'm taking time off 28 days hence (not that I'm counting) to go to Australia for a fortnight.

A mixed pleasure because whilst, on the one hand, it was good to leave a woefully underpaid job that had become unchallenging, I'll miss most of the people I worked with. Especially my smoking buddies.

I'll also miss the customer people I had to deal with; we were able to forge a good working relationship. I won't miss the weekly conference call Tuesday evening to the Philippines though.

I spent most of the final day doing one final software release. And burning CD's containing copies of the source code. And burning CD's containing installation instructions for a number of products I've written over the past 4 years. And burning CD's containing... well you get the idea.

Not that any of this stuff needed to be burned to CD; it's just that when ones former boss hasn't the dook of an idea about source code control it's difficult to convince him that everything is safely preserved in Subversion (along with a scheduled task run once a week that dumps the entire repository into a zip file and copies it to multiple locations on different servers).

Full points for knowing that it needs to be preserved; none for the plan. And of course, if he's not a developer and hasn't a developer currently on staff, what use are these CD's? I could have burned a couple of dozen novels from Project Gutenberg[^] and he wouldn't have known the difference! Believe me, I was tempted!

Then 'depersonalising' my laptop and desktop machines. Delete all IE favourites, kill history, cookies, forms data and passwords.

A final smoke with the guys; a final lesson in the finer points of Australian slang for Randy, a round of hand shakes and insincere promises to keep in touch (we all know we won't) and I left the premises for the last time.

A job ad

2008-08-20T00:43:00.001-07:00

that appeared, briefly, on craigslist today.

They were offering work to C/C++ developers on the following terms: $1600 - $2400 a month, for 200 hours work per month. Alternatively, if that didn't appeal, one could earn between $8 and $12 an hour.

Strangely enough, the ad disappeared a couple of hours later. What a surprise!

Now that I have a new job about to commence I'm not looking for another; I was checking to see if the job I'm about to leave had appeared; I'll be most interested in what they ask and what they offer!

Metal

2008-08-20T00:05:00.001-07:00

It's early days yet and it's hard to know if a new found enthusiasm for heavy metal music will last. Nonetheless, I've found myself alternating between symphonies and metal the last few days.

It all began when Christian Graus, over on Codeproject[^], mentioned 'The Glorious Burden' by Iced Earth. I can't remember, even though it was only a few days ago, what it was about his post that piqued interest but I checked and found it available on Rhapsody. Gave it a listen and it's now on my music player. Ditto for another recommendation; 'Nostradamus', by Judas Priest.

It feels like that last band has been around for nearly as long as the Stones; I certainly remember hearing the name in the very early 70's though I have no memory whatsoever of what they did at that time.

As for why I like it? I think it's the layered complexity. Certainly much of the thematic material is pretty banal but one could say that of most music; the power is in the treatment. And whilst the words might seem silly (indeed I thought so at first hearing) it's not much of a leap from there to the commonplace silliness of such lines from Bergs 'Wozzeck'[^] as 'Langsam, Wozzeck, Langsam'. Sounds very profound in a foreign language but in english it means 'Slower, Wozzeck, Slower', sung by the captain as Wozzeck gives him a shave! Now there's profound soap opera for you!

In other words, I've learned not to go to music for profundity in poesy.

Enough armchair amateur analysis! I'm enjoying it as much as I enjoy Bruckner.

I wouldn't expect it to be!

2008-08-17T00:40:00.001-07:00

I'm inordinately fond of bacon and eggs for brekky of a weekend; during the week there's never enough time between awakening and the trek to the office.

I've finally perfected the technique for poaching the eggs, and I mean proper poaching, in hot water with a dash of malt vinegar, not that cheating method in the microwave oven. In truth I have no use for a microwave oven; nothing cooked in the microwave tastes worth the savings in effort.

I've become used to the idea that one must salt ones bacon these days. Sigh.

We've been trying out various sources of bacon, mainly because I find they cut the bacon too thin here in the US. I suppose they do that because most people seem to prefer their bacon cooked to a crisp and, whilst there's nothing wrong with crispy bacon in moderation, I much prefer the bacon to bend. Yeah, I know I'm a picky bastard but after all, I'm the one eating it!

On top of that, the trend seems to be toward low fat bacon. Uh huh. Why not also offer low oxygen air or low moisture water? The whole point of bacon is the flavour and you get that from the fat! Indeed, one of my criteria for choosing which bacon to buy is the appearance of the fat. I prefer steak on the same principle; give me a nice marbling any day.

We did find one cut of bacon that I really liked but there was a downside to it. Ain't it always the way? Never in life is anything perfect. The imperfection in this case is that it's only available in a 2 pound pack and that's way more bacon than I can eat in a single weekend. Actually, it's more bacon than I can eat in two weekends and by the third weekend what's left over is looking pretty sorry for itself. The result of undersalting.

A few weeks ago the local supermarket finally branched out into selling bacon at the deli. It came as quite the surprise the first time I checked out the deli locally, almost six years ago, and discovered that they didn't sell bacon. From which you can surmise that it's a common commodity back in Melbourne supermarket delis.

An oversight they've since corrected. They have a few different cuts including one that's just perfect and on top of that one can walk up and order ten rashers if that's what one wants.

Of course, Friday night, there was no one in attendance at the deli and after pressing that damn buzzer until my ears were ringing I gave up and went to the prepackaged bacon. The two pound pack was tempting but below it was another pack with less bacon and quite a smaller price tag but the right thickness and marvellous looking fat. So I gave it a try.

Quite tasty!

Emblazoned on the pack are the words 'This is not a low calorie food'. I should bloody well hope not!

How annoying!

2008-08-15T00:51:00.001-07:00

Morgan's not living here anymore. Oh sure, she comes for a single night, makes a lot of noise and disappears again. She's been playing games, promising at the start of the week that she'll go into drug rehab at the end of the week and, of course, not going into drug rehab at the end of the week. To my amazement Mom has finally got it; she's doing her daughter no favours by putting up with this level of bullshit.

Thus to Morgan only staying sporadically, when she can't persuade some other schmuck to put her up. Yes, it's a delicate balance here; how far can one rub her face in it without pushing her over the edge. This is where my social darwinism comes in; I can't help feeling that if she does go over the edge it can only improve the gene pool. Not that I actually want her to go over the edge but I'm damned if I'll go on providing a roof if all she can do is drug herself.

However, just because Morgan is persona non grata with the family right now is no reason why Ryan, her infant, should have to pursue a nomadic lifestyle along with her. He gets to stay here. Thus to this morning. As I sipped the wake up coffee Sonya plonked him down in front of the TV and tuned to some kids program.

I looked up and said 'what the?'. For there, rendered in what sounded for all the world like a Yamaha DX7 synthesiser, was Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Not a bad rendition as it happened although totally electronic.

'It's an educational program' said my wife. Uh huh, so, in order to get the little bastards to listen, they feel they have to 'modernise' the sound? Perhaps the fees for an orchestral performance recording were too high? If so, given the number of low end recordings around, I pity the poor bastard they did hire to 'modernise' the sound. He must have been paid less than minimum wage.

Well, that's my snobbishness in regard to classical music exposed for all the world to see. Like I needed to say that! Methinks you already guessed it was there. But if you really and truly want to educate em perhaps the original orchestration might be a place to start from?

But what really annoyed me was how they'd let the music run for four seconds, approach an interesting chord transition and then just drop it. I really wanted to hear how the 'modernised' performance would treat it.

The Water Trick

2008-08-13T23:48:00.001-07:00

I watched this[^] last night. Not a particularly good movie though it did have some fascinating moments, such as the automated garage parking system shown in Reno Nevada in 1955! But then I get fascinated by such things. My equivalent of Bright Shiny Things[^] methinks.

There was one scene that made me laugh. One of the minor characters is tricked into a bet; he sits on the floor and someone pours a glass of water onto the floor between his legs. The bet is that the character who pours the water can wipe it up before the person sitting on the floor can stab him with a knife. Bet accepted, the victim sits and the water is poured. Then, on the count of three they go, one to wipe the water up, the second to stab the wiper. And, on the count of three, the wiper grabs the stabbers legs and drags him through the puddle!

Like I say, it made me laugh and as I chuckled I bethought of a victim upon whom I could play the same trick. Andrew of course. Thus at dinner I offered him a bet of two hundred bucks. Scenting a trick he demurred and admitted that he hadn't the two hundred bucks on his side. No problem I told him, if he lost the bet no money need change hands but if I lost he'd get two hundred smackeroos.

Greed took over as I demonstrated how he'd be sitting and soon he was in place on the kitchen floor. Just in case, we substituted a wooden spoon for the knife. Heh, I'm not that silly. I even let him choose how much water would go into the glass and he, being a greedy bastard, filled it to the brim.

The anti-climax is that it worked a treat and he's no richer now than he was before dinner. But I honestly thought Sonya would choke to death, she was laughing so hard.

And he took it well; methinks he's planning to try it on his friends.

We've been married how long???

2008-08-12T23:59:00.001-07:00

My wife rang me at the office today and said 'I know you'll laugh, but is your birthday the 24th or the 23rd?'

I certainly did laugh. 'Neither my dear. It's the 21st'.

'Oh', sheepishly.

We've only been married 6 years!

A new job

2008-08-11T00:59:00.001-07:00

I start a new job in two weeks. Had the interview on Friday morning and by noon they'd sent me an email offer. Then two hours waiting for the boss to return from lunch so I could give my notice.

Substantially more money, half the distance to drive each day and, icing on the cake, they do flextime; I can, if I want, arrange my hours to have every second Friday off. I want!

On top of that they didn't bat an eyelid when I told them, during the initial phone screening, that I needed time off (39 days hence) to go to Australia. They won't pay me during the two weeks I'm gone but I'd hardly expect them to given that I'll be disappearing a month into the new job. The upside of that is that I'll still have 3 weeks leave at the end of the first year.

I'm pretty chuffed at landing a new job on only the second interview. Which isn't the same as saying on only the second application. It's amazing how one can send ones resume off and hear nothing. I was pretty choosy about when I sent my resume; in the job I'm leaving I had often to go through resumes for software developers and it was amazing the mismatches. We'd be looking for a c++ developer with 2 years experience; we'd get applicants who knew unix scripting or SQL server admin but no c++. Don't get me wrong, those are both useful skills, if you're a unix shop or a heavy database user; we weren't.

Back in 1988 I was also looking for a job and listed C as my primary language skill. I recall being sent to an interview and doing well until it came time for the practical test; they sat me down in front of a Pascal compiler, a language I knew very little about. Failed of course. You'll have noticed above that I said 'sent to an interview'. Meaning it was a recruitment agency that had set the interview up. When I followed up the guy said 'well, Pascal has a C in it!'. I wish that were a joke but alas it's not.

Given that I was looking for a senior position there was no way I was going to apply for a job requiring skills I don't have. Not only does one run the risk of coming off at the interview as a clueless dill, it's a waste of my time and theirs.

So one sends off ones resume and... nothing. I talked about this with Guy[^] a few weeks ago and he was also surprised that US companies don't seem to respond with a polite 'thanks but you don't appear to be a good match at this time'. It's been a lot of years since I last applied for a job in Australia and things may have changed but I seem to recall at least the courtesy of a reply. Methinks perhaps they're afraid of lawsuits; perhaps it's easier to pretend they never saw the resumes they winnowed out. *shrug*

As for the resumes *I* winnowed out; well that's personnel's job isn't it!

So I'm looking forward to a new job, working on .Net apps in C# and VB. It's all good ain't it!

Van Goghurt

2008-08-10T02:06:00.001-07:00

Yes, you read that title right. Van Goghurt.

That's my best stab at how it's spelled. There I was the other day innocently driving to work and enduring what passes for drive time radio here when on comes an advertisement for Van Goghurt, followed by mention of Sugar Plum cookies. These are, apparently, products targetted at thoughtful parents who want their children to grow up with an appreciation of the arts. There's even mention of Tchaikovsky! Want to guess the ratio of sugar to plums in those cookies?

Doubtless an ad campaign thought up by someone who still believes that the way to a mans heart is through his stomach! And if that's true then lets feed the next generation on yoghurt artfully disguised as Van Goghurt - who knows, they might make the mental connection!

I can't help feeling that if you really really really wanted your kids to grow up with an appreciation of 'the arts' perhaps a better way might be to actually live it yourself and show by example. But that's just me.

I can see it now; one of the little bastards actually develops an interest in Van Gogh and discovers the depths of his parents ignorance of the subject; what a shock!

No, what we have here is a prime example of snobbery. 'I don't want to listen to Beethoven but you should' is what it boils down to. That's exactly what the advertisers are trying to tap into. 'Everyone knows' that 'Art is good' and if I feed my kids Van Goghurt I can subscribe to the notion without actually having to put in the effort to learn how to understand something that runs longer than three minutes.

Having said all that, have I made any effort to 'educate' Andrew or Morgan in classical music? Heck no! Enough that they know I enjoy it. They can see me spending hours, headphones on, listening, following scores, writing my own. If they want to know more they can ask.

One thing I've always stuck to; when either of them plays their own music I *never* criticise even if I find rap tedious. Their music is their music[^] whatever I might think of it.

A minor detail

2008-08-04T01:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Billion Dollar Brain[^]. Not a great movie but not a bad one either. I have to admit I'm a sucker for a Michael Caine movie, particularly his earlier work and, having noticed in 'the guide' that this movie was directed by Ken Russell that was it; decision made.

Ken Russell is well known for his musical films, starting in the 60's with biographies of composers of the Romantic and Post Romantic era, people such as Elgar, Bax and Delius. I haven't managed to catch most of those earlier works; they just don't seem to be shown any more and perhaps no longer exist. The BBC, for whom most of these earlier films were made, seemed to make a practice of destroying material in the early 70's.

Just as well, then, that Ken made his transition to 'real' film at the end of the 60's; thus his 'versions' of the life of Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Liszt; not forgetting Tommy! I'll be the first to admit that The Music Lovers[^] is probably far more fantasy than fact but I don't let that minor detail get in the way of enjoying a visual and musical feast. Such a pity it's not available on DVD and I haven't managed to see it in 20 years!

In Mahler[^] he really went all out; images of Nazis goosestepping on Gustavs coffin anyone? Brunhilde feeding Gustav pork after he slays the dragon and following it with a glass of milk! Bad taste from the decade of bad taste. I do have that one on DVD.

I may not recognise the music of some minor artist of the 1980s when it crops up but the moment they play three bars of a major composers symphony I know it! Thus to the scene in Billion Dollar Brain where Harry Palmer (Caine) is being cleaned up before being led into the concert. Masterful piece of misdirection there; the scene has all the indicators that he's about to be tortured. Come to think of it, many folk might consider being dragged into a Symphony Concert as torture!

Colonel Stok comes into view, a tear running down his cheek as the symphony crashes to a close. He imparts the information that Shostakovich wrote the symphony in Leningrad in 1941 during the siege. In other words, it's supposed to be the 7th Symphony.

Uh huh. The music we actually hear at this point is the end of the 11th Symphony, written in 1957.

Just a minor detail but one that surprised me given Ken Russell's pedigree.

Remember the Alamo

2008-08-03T01:52:00.002-07:00

Many years ago my grandmother told me that there was some family connection to The Alamo[^]. I would have been about 6 or 7 at the time and I suspect the only reason I have even the vaguest memory of her mentioning it was through having probably heard the word Alamo in the context of cowboy films.

Thirty years later my aunt retold the story. I can't remember if I asked her about it or if she volunteered the information and, given that she's been dead thirteen years, I can't go back and ask. She, as it happened, had almost nothing to add beyond there being 'some family connection'.

I have to admit I thought it unlikely unless you also consider the possibility that I'm related to the last Tsar of All the Russias! Sure, I thought, there may have been a Manderson at the battle. (howmanyofme.com[^], at the time of writing, estimate there are a thousand Mandersons in the US) but a common ancestor had to have been some centuries ago.

I fear we sometimes forget in the age of the internet how much more difficult and expensive it was to keep in contact with people on other continents. According to the AT&T history page at att.com[^] the first phone service between London and the US (they don't say where in the US but I'll lay money it was New York City) was established in 1927, capacity a single call at a time, at $75 for the first 3 minutes!

At prices like that I doubt many people were discussing family minutiae.

So this 'family connection' with the Alamo always puzzled me. I had heard of no US relatives. Of course, I'd heard of precious few English or Scottish relatives either so that didn't count for much but if you know much of Australian Colonial History and attitudes you'd realise that it was far more likely we'd know about (and have) British relatives than American ones.

A couple of weeks ago, whilst indulging in ego-surfing, I found what I suspect is the answer to the mystery.

There's a tiny town in Wyoming called Manderson. I know it's tiny because Wikipedia says it has a population of 104. I'd suspect it was small even without Wikipedia if it's in Wyoming, the US state with the smallest population of them all.

And guess what? Uh huh, you guessed it. Before it was renamed Manderson that little town was called Alamo!

Of course, I now have to figure out how my grandmother heard of Charles Manderson, former chief counsel for Burlington Railroad. We've still got the immense unlikelihood of an American Manderson (myself excluded since naturalisation) being related!

Interesting headline

2008-07-30T00:16:00.001-07:00

in todays Herald Sun[^] online newspaper.

Fire breaks out in crematorium

You don't say!

That's quite a change

2008-07-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

You'll remember I tried your patience as a loyal reader a week or so ago when I reported[^] that United Airlines had emailed me to advise of a two minute change in departure time from Phoenix on my way to Australia. 54 days and counting!

As part of the anticipation heightening process I re-checked my itinerary a few days ago and discovered that they'd moved my departure back another 45 minutes. I don't leave Phoenix until 7:33 now, assuming they're on time. That leaves me with about 80 minutes to walk the couple of hundred metres from the domestic to the international terminals, grab a quick smoke and run the gauntlet of security again.

That ought to be enough time though I note that the last time I went to Australia I had to go through a second level of vetting. One fronts up to a counter (on the sterile side of security) and hands over ones passport. They go through the pretence of checking ones passport on the computer and, if all is well, they stick a red dot on the outside of your passport.

Do I really believe they have a live line to some Australian computer system in DFAT? More importantly, given that if they do it'll be an internet link, do I really want to accept that my passport details were just sent over a public system? Sometimes it's better to be a cynical old bastard.

I'm telling you, you aint getting on that plane without the red dot! It's almost as though we (Australians) are trying to outdo the US government in the paranoia stakes. Remember Richard Reid[^], the shoe bomber? He was apprehended mid air over the Atlantic on December 22 2001. That was December 23 Australian time. On December 25 I flew to the US and had the pleasure of being on the first flight where one was required to remove ones shoes and have them checked for explosives! I reckon that had to have been *before* the first US checks!

Not only that; they've changed my return flight. I'm going out via San Francisco but I thought I was coming back through Los Angeles. Good thing I checked the flight again because now I'm returning through San Franciso. If I remember rightly, the SFO flight departs Sydney half an hour before the LAX flight and I've had LAX on the return so fixed in my head that I'm sure I'd have missed the plane if I hadn't checked.

I haven't received a peep out of United via email regarding these latest changes. Do you reckon someone there read my previous post and put a block on my email address? Nah, that'd be too paranoid even for me!

I call maledictions down upon the heads

2008-07-19T01:09:00.002-07:00

of all vile website designers who will *insist* upon having sound files automatically begin playing when one is foolish enough to navigate to their sites. When I'm listening to the music of *my* choice the last thing I want is some fools idea of what constitutes music thrust upon my unexpecting ears. Especially when it's some vilely tuneless 'popular' travesty. You'd be amazed how fast I can hit the 'back' button on such websites. A pox upon them unto the seventh generation!

Go on, tell me I'm wrong! :-)

I love the way United Airlines works.

2008-07-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

Right on schedule I received an email from United Airlines regarding my flight to Australia 65 days from now (not that I'm counting!). The email advised me that my flight time had been changed. From 6:42 PM to 6:44 PM.

I'm pretty sure they sent a similar email about a year ago to Heino to advise him that his flight time had also been shifted a miniscule amount. I certainly remember, the last time I was counting down the days to a trip back to Australia, receiving email from United with much the same advice; a two or three minute schedule change.

Hmmm. Maybe I err on the side of caution when flying, for I'm always at the airport at least an hour ahead of time, but it seems to me that if you're cutting it so fine that a two minute difference in flight time might mean the difference between catching or missing a flight then you need to readjust your expectations.

Crap!

2008-07-15T00:51:00.001-07:00

My stepfather kept pigeons from 1967 onward. I'm sure he'd have loved to keep them before then but the house in which we lived at the time, in Seddon, had hardly enough room for us let alone a pigeon coop. But once we moved to St Albans he had all the space he could desire and so the pigeon coop was born. I recall helping him build it, little knowing the misery that damn coop held in store for me.

His interest in pigeons didn't come as much of a surprise; as the youngest of a large family he had ample example in his older brothers. At least three of them, as far as I can remember, kept pigeons and we'd always end up standing beside the cages when we visited, gravely discussing the merits of that 'blue' or this pink one.

And of course they raced the pigeons. Small sums wagered each week and form gravely argued over. The locals in Yarraville and Footscray even had a 'pigeon fanciers' club house; a strange brick building down by the Maribyrnong Wharves that looked, for all the world, like a council toilet block from the twenties. It may have been exactly that at one time. (I just checked on Google Earth and it seems to have gone; I will, of course, double check in 68 days when I'm there again). But heck no, I'm not counting down the days.

It fell to my lot to clean the cages out every fortnight or so. I think he had 25 or 30 pigeons in total at any one time and you wouldn't believe how much shit they could produce in a week! A nasty smelly job at the best of times but particularly bad in summer. The thing being that it dries out fairly quickly and forms hard lumps all over the inside of the cage. We're talking a cage plenty large enough to climb into and an inch depth of dried shit. The technique was to take a plasterers trowel and hack away at the lumps. Then scrape it all up into bags. After fifteen minutes the air would be thick with dust which of course one breathed in. It got into my hair, stuck to my face; I swear it got into my underpants! And the smell was indescribable.

What I wouldn't give to go back and have to do it all over again!

Our two youngest cats, not kittens anymore yet not fully grown, haven't entirely outgrown the catbox. I don't know what Tiny's eating but when he leaves his calling card the odour is quite pungent. Unfortunately, due to space limitations, the catbox is close to where I sit when watching movies. Not much farther from there to where Andrew sits playing World of Warcraft. Strangely enough my smokers nostrils, 37 years older than his, seem much more sensitive.

I took it upon myself, much to Sonyas amusement, to teach Andrew the finer points of cleaning up a catbox. It seems only fair that he should make *some* contribution to the household but he doesn't see it quite that way.

Now there's the wasteful approach and there's the thrifty approach. I use the thrifty one; that's the approach where one doesn't toss out the entire contents of the catbox every day. It's perfectly possible to reuse most of the cat litter at least once by judicious removal of the lumps.

And if one is taking that approach there's the hard way and the easy way. The hard way is to pick em out with the bare hand. But I've been doing this for years and I'm an observant bastard. Taking a leaf out of the anti-doggie poo brigades book I use plastic bags. We haven't yet got the point of supermarkets imposing a surcharge on the bags so there are always too many of em around the joint. Would you believe it's next to impossible to get the checkout person to NOT put a gallon of milk in it's own plastic bag???

So you take a plastic bag in each hand, one open to receive the nuggets, the other around the nugget removing hand. It takes less than a minute to snag em all out of the kitty litter and at the end of the process one has a nice tidy bag of cat crap ready to be disposed of and a relatively odour free catbox. Sprinkle some fresh litter on top and the cats will be milling around waiting for you to get out of the damn way so they can have a crap!

The other night, on our return from dining out, we stopped by the supermarket to pick up a fresh bag of litter. Then followed the argument with Andrew about just *why* he should be the one to do it. I've given up with the persuasion; I tell him straight out that it's because he's the youngest and I don't care that it's not fair. Calling him Morgan also works!

Arrived home he rushed in through the door and made straight for the computer, doubtless in hopes that we'd have forgotten, in the space of three minutes, all about such unpleasant subjects. No such hope.

Reminded of the task that lay ahead he grabbed a bag and started picking out the nuggets aforesaid. I couldn't help laughing. 'Ok, what are you going to do now?' I asked, as he realised he had only the one bag and that wrapped around the busy hand.

Poor bastard had the grace to look sheepish.

A small mystery

2008-07-13T00:49:00.001-07:00

You'll remember that a few weeks ago I had to attend court as prospective juror. I made fun of the fact that they provide transport[^] to cover the two blocks from the free parking to the courthouse!

Not only do they provide the shuttle bus aforesaid, they also provide a free pass, sent in the mail along with the juror summons, good for a days travel anywhere in the Valley on any Metro Bus or Rail Route. I'm not sure which rail route they're talking about - I certainly haven't seen any trams running on the light rail[^] and there's no suburban rail system.

In addition, they also pay mileage on the assumption that one has driven in; the amount paid is so many cents per mile (I can't remember the number) based on ones zipcode. It's certainly an assumption; the cheque arrived in the mail a few weeks ago without my having to turn in the free bus pass and without my having to do anything to claim the money apart from appearing as summoned.

Methinks they know we don't use the buses. Indeed, I've been here more than five and a half years and haven't been on a bus yet. I don't even know how one pays the fare; is it cash or does one purchase a card somewhere? If paid in cash what is the price? Do they provide change?

The free bus pass has been sitting on the desk above my keyboard and below my monitor ever since receiving it. Today, for some reason, I moved it and found the following inscribed on my desk.

Andrew swears he didn't write it and I'm inclined to believe him; I'm not sure he knows how to spell the word. Somehow I can't see my wife writing it. That leaves one obvious suspect but I think not. If it were Morgan I'd expect the word to be carved into my heart rather than texta'd onto the desk.

So who?

Really?

2008-07-11T23:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterdays East Valley Tribune[^] ran the headline 'Monsoon expected to bring rain and lower temperatures'.

Gee, ya reckon???

Joking aside, we had our first monsoon event of the year yesterday as well and boy did it rain! Not only that, the temperature dropped amazingly, to a mere 73 at midnight. I fear we won't see the magic hundred at midnight this year (as we seem not to have seen it last year). Quite the disappointment when we peaked at 115 only two days ago.

It just doesn't feel like summer if it's not a hundred at midnight!

She's a good shot

2008-07-06T03:10:00.002-07:00

Anyone who points out that my occasional (meaning every weekend) need for an afternoon nap is really a sign of advancing years is welcome to go read another blog! Nonetheless it's true that I do enjoy the odd Saturday afternoon nap. I also enjoy the odd recline between arriving home from the office and dinner.

Such a pity, then, that we still have Morgan here, in the room directly above ours. Now I'll admit that it was a strategic error, borne of insufficient experience with the young lady aforesaid, when, five years ago, I suggested we remove the carpets and lay down hardwood floors. How was I to know, then, that Morgan is capable of making more noise, for less reason, than a fully laden 747 on it's take off run?

Well, maybe I exaggerate, but not by much.

Thus, over the last nine months or so since we were 'blessed' with her return, I find myself sometimes unable to nap. I don't know what she's dropping on the floor but I refer to it as 'someone dropped their testicles again'. More than once I've vaulted up the stairs to shout at her. Such are the vicissitudes of sharing a house with the thoughtless. Every time I make protest she tries the 'butter wouldn't melt in her mouth' pose of innocent surprise. 'I didn't know you were trying to sleep'.

Hmmm. I could go on with the justifications for my position on the matter but methinks you get the drift.

Today Ryan, her infant, was somewhat cranky. I don't mind his noise half as much as I mind Morgans. She interprets that as 'I can't do anything right as far as Rob is concerned' and she may be right. Just the other night Sonya asked me, apropos of a conversation she'd had with her daughter, 'why do you live?'. Without even thinking about it I replied 'I live to thwart Morgan at every turn'. Sonya laughed but I fear there is more than a grain of truth in my reply. The original question was prompted by Morgan musing on the paradox of working for a living. As she apparently expressed it (she never says these things in front of me - I get them secondhand) 'I can live at Dads and be broke, or I can get a job and have my own place and be broke. So why work?'.

Words fail me. I could have wasted my breath retailing all the standard reasons for working and being independent and standing on your own feet and all that. Given that my audience was Sonya it would have been preaching to the converted.

I've digressed somewhat but no matter; Ryan makes noise because he doesn't know any better. He's only 25 months old. Morgan at 245 months should know better.

This afternoon the little princess was trying to get an afternoon nap and Ryan wasn't having any of it. She came downstairs complaining that it was 'impossible' to get any sleep in this house.

I fear that I was less than charitable. Indeed, it struck me as quite the funniest thing I'd heard in ages. Morgan didn't much appreciate my laughing quite as uproariously as I did; she whizzed a cushion at me.

How unfortunate that I'd just made myself a coffee. Uh huh, the entire cup (barely sipped at) went flying, all over my three computers. Fortunately they had the covers on (the geeks among you will understand that) and there was no damage.

I couldn't see her face so I don't know what she expected. I can guess the expectation was of a confrontation, which would probably have been exactly what she wanted. Instead, I picked up the cup and said 'damn, now I have to make another coffee'.

Sometimes you just have to mess with their minds. But damn, she's a good shot. I suppose I ought to be glad there wasn't a knife handy!

The car rental business

2008-06-29T01:42:00.001-07:00

There's been an ad running on radio recently where Budget are offering a single class upgrade, for free, for every car rental. They bill this with various superlatives such as 'rent with genius' and they seem to be trying to appeal to those of us, such as myself, who've had to travel a lot as part of the job and yet aren't high enough on the totem pole to warrant a luxury car.

Never mind the fact that I don't care much about what I drive; its sole purpose is to get me from point A to point B. But you, knowing that I drive, by choice, a Kia Rio, already knew that!

Call me a cynical old bastard if you will but I'm deeply suspicious of the entire ad. It seems to me that Budget have found themselves with a pile of larger so-called luxury vehicles that no one, in these days of higher petrol prices, wants to rent. I'd guess they have far more bookings for economy vehicles than they have economy vehicles. How to avoid pissing off the customer who made the economy booking only to be disappointed? Aha, genius! Let's offer *everyone* a single level 'free' upgrade!

Hmmm, that sounds a lot like reclassifying a compact as an economy, or a midsize as a compact. And if I, booking a compact, am going to be lumbered with a midsize, whether I want it or not, how is that an 'upgrade'?

It's been a common enough trick in my experience; book off a website, front up and 'oh we're sorry sir, we don't have that model. I can let you have this for only $12 a day more'. How very generous.

As for me? If I book an economy that's what I expect. If they* want to foist something larger off on me I'll have no qualms about submitting a bill for the extra petrol it used. Whether they'll pay it is another question entirely but at least it'll annoy em! Who knows, they might even start rethinking their business strategy.

There you go, cynicism and naïveté in the same post!

*they, in this context, means any car rental company, not just Budget.

A little excitement

2008-06-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a fire. When I say we I mean in the condo block - not our building. Nor, to be honest, was it much of a fire.

When I arrived home and was locking my car one of the neighbours approached in a somewhat agitated frame of mind, asking if I could smell smoke. As it happened I couldn't but I pointed out that there was (still is at the time of writing) a bushfire burning to the south west of the Greater Phoenix area. That's some distance away but prevailing winds, such as they are, blow the smoke toward us. Indeed, half an hour earlier, as I drove past Sky HarboUr Airport I was greatly tempted to pull over in the emergency lane and take a quick shot of the sun through thick smoke; it was blood red and the entire scene bathed in a soft golden light quite unlike that normally seen here this time of year.

She was somewhat doubtful (perhaps it was my accent) but went away so I did too.

A couple of minutes later we became aware of shouting and screaming outside and poked our heads out. The same woman was running back and forth, yelling for buckets of water and we could see a few wisps of smoke curling around the balcony on the next building over.

Before we could do anything else the fire trucks arrived. Most definitely in the plural; within about five minutes there were six full sized appliances plus a couple of smaller trucks, a police car, the local power company and CBS 5 News. Oh, and the news helicopter hovering overhead!

I have to say the firefighters seemed to enjoy their job! Out came the pick axes and the buzz saw; they kicked in the door of the condo seeming most affected and proceeded to chop holes in various walls to isolate the source of the smoke.

I should probably be somewhat circumspect about what the hysterical neighbour was saying; she was insistent that the fire was the result of a bunch of younger renters throwing their cigarettes over the balcony. This doesn't quite jibe with what the firefighters were saying; they reckon it was electrical wiring and I'm more inclined to believe them than a hysterical layman.

I suppose it was tactless to roll and light up a cigarette while she was trying to convince me!

Once it was clear the place wasn't going up in flames the atmosphere became almost festive. Naturally everyone living there (I'm guessing there are a hundred or so apartments) was out rubbernecking. Everyone except the poor bastards occupying the source of the smoke; they seem to be out of town. Someone had the forethougt to post a note on the door so when they do return they won't assume burglary.

I've lived here five and a half years and I didn't recognise most of the folk there! Sonya's lived here eight years and she knew almost no one either. We met the woman who lives four doors up; she's lived here since 1984! I honestly don't think I'd clapped eyes on her before yesterday. Sad commentary on modern community life methinks!

The CBS 5 news report was interesting. Uh huh, I've finally watched network news on TV here! According to them there were flames shooting everywhere and one neighbour was credited with saving the life of a resident. Can't say I saw that!

I said before that everyone living here was out rubbernecking. I lied a little; Andrew totally ignored it and continued playing World of Warcraft. I'm starting to get worried about that boy!

Every picture tells a story

2008-06-24T00:25:00.002-07:00

or so they say. I felt this sign, seen yesterday on our way to lunch at Jerome, told its story very well indeed.

I love the direct way it jumps into the story and then heightens the tension. Seen as I saw it, hurtling along the road at 60 MPH, that bold 'All loads must be' followed by the imperative need to get closer so I could read the denoument.

Narrative brilliance!

BigBoy is dead. Behold, FatBastard!

2008-06-22T01:47:00.001-07:00

Late last night BigBoy, our HTPC (Home Theatre PC) died. Can't say I blame him, not after two and a half years of sitting in the dark beside the TV and never being switched off.

The first symptom was the loss of network connectivity; no guide updates. That's important when you have a couple of hundred channels available, even though I only ever check about a dozen or so on anything like a regular basis.

So I did what any self respecting geek would do, I rebooted him. At which point he stubbornly refused to restart. Ok, I can take a hint, especially since we're having a heatwave and hitting temperatures in the 115 range. Took him apart and blew out the dust and accumulated cat hair. Plugged him back in and nothing.

Long story short I concluded, correctly, that a new motherboard was probably in order. The CPU itself seemed ok so I took a chance and a drive over to Frys for the cheapest MB they had. I'm stingy like that. 60 bucks and an hour later and the new motherboard was installed. Still no reboot but that was expected; you can't change to a different motherboard and expect everything to still work.

Re-install of XP MCE 2005. Sounds simple. 7 hours later it was finally working. Perhaps I should have bitten the bullet and reformatted the boot drive but that's also a backup location for the rest of our PCs so I did an install over the top of the old one. In retrospect it would have been quicker to pop the system drive out, stick it in another PC and copy the backups but that's the benefit of hindsight. If I'd known in 1970 what I now know about what was going to happen to property values in Carlton (Melbourne) I'd be a millionaire today!

The XP MCE 2005 installation itself went smoothly enough, straight off the CD. Even the 'critical' updates (all 99 of them) went well enough. Where it went pear shaped was when it was time to install XP Media Center Update Rollup 2. Unfortunately we needed that for XBox support so's Sonya can watch 'So you think you can dance' whilst I indulge in some obscure Japanese movie. Unfortunately the rollup needed .NET 1.1 plus .NET 1.1 SP1.

And it stubbornly refused to install! At about the 1 hour point I was convinced there was a problem. Ever tried to cancel a .NET 1.1 install? It sits there for a VERY long time pretending to be cancelling but not doing a damn thing. 0% CPU and no disk activity. For as long as you're prepared to wait.

Two or three hours later I finally stumbled on the .NET cleanup tool. Ran it, then ran the .NET 1.1 installer again and finally it consented to finish.

I couldn't resist the idea of renaming the computer to FatBastard. *shrug* After all, he does have a terabyte of hard disks sitting in there! But he's going to be just as neglected as BigBoy was. I follow a simple rule; it's a HTPC and nothing else; it's role in life is to timeshift those obscure Japanese movies that the networks will insist on running at 4AM so I can watch em at a more civlised hour.

I could have thought of better ways of spending my birthday, but on the other hand birthdays are becoming something I'm less and less inclined to celebrate. Another twenty years or so and I'll start being proud of making it past 70 but right now it feels like just another milepost a trifle closer to the end than I'm happy with.

Missing the point

2008-06-17T00:52:00.001-07:00

After a slow start the hot weather has finally arrived again. I don't know what the max temperature was today (somewhere around 109?). I can report that it was 96 at midnight so we're possibly not far away from the 100 at midnight that I rave on about at length.

I can't remember if I've specifically written about it but the heat of Phoenix carries a human toll; every year some dozens of people die of heat exhaustion and/or thirst (and that's not including the count, rather higher, of those who die crossing the border and perish in the desert).

You might expect more of a hue and cry until you realise that those who die are, for the most part, 'street' people. I vividly remember seeing a 'street' person fall over in Williams Street Melbourne, about thirty years ago. Everyone walked past, careful not to notice this old, unshaven, dirty (and probably smelly) guy gasping for breath on the pavement. I wasn't much better myself though I did call for an ambulance. My excuse? I didn't know what else to do. Poor enough excuse methinks.

I don't know if he died that day or not.

Today, as I drove to the office listening to KTAR[^] (I really must find an alternative to the obnoxious Ankarlo - alas Charles Goyette is gone) they ran a 'public announcement' to the effect that, now that it was the height of summer, there were drinking water and air-conditioned refuges available to those who needed them. So far so good, they do this every year. But what took my breath away was the continued advice to 'log on' to their website to find the locations!

The land of opportunity

2008-06-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

The other day, as I wandered at lunchtime into the lunch room at the office, PP (Personnel Person) was finishing a sentence. '...my aunts basement was flooded.'

I couldn't resist. 'That's the great thing about this country' I said. 'In America even the ants have basements!'

If it's warm weather then it's time for

2008-06-12T23:57:00.003-07:00

my annual 'How American are you' test. Three years ago[^] I scored 23%. Two years ago[^] I scored 27%.

Last year I managed 32%[^] so I fear I'm slipping.

You Are 31% American

America: You don't love it or want to leave it.

But you wouldn't mind giving it an extreme make over.

On the 4th of July, you'll fly a freak flag instead...

And give Uncle Sam a sucker punch!

How American Are You?

Bright shiny things

2008-06-12T23:31:00.001-07:00

Andrew was as happy as a dog with two dicks this evening. 'Look at this' he cried, pointing at his computer screen. Needless to say the screen was displaying World of Warcraft. I peered and beheld something resembling a sceptre. 'That's mine. See how shiny it is?' he said.

Uh huh. 'Andrew' I said, 'I'm not sure how to tell you this but it's just a bunch of pixels on the screen.'

Well he wasn't going to let *me* rain on his parade; no sirree. He launched into a description of the heroic battle he'd fought against thousands of basement dwellers all over the world to win his spoils. I could feel my eyes glazing over!

Description over and the will to live slowly returning I went into the kitchen, grabbed some tinfoil and a handy pen, wrapped the latter in the former and returned to Andrew.

'Hey Andrew' I said. 'See this? Mmmmm, nice and shiny!' as I handed it over.

At least Sonya had the grace to laugh!

Woodmen

2008-06-12T00:20:00.001-07:00

Sonya was bored on Sunday so we went to visit a cemetery. Isn't that what everyone does when bored? As it happened I wasn't averse to the idea; I enjoy a good cemetery. We're gradually 'doing' all the Phoenix cemeteries.

I have to admit that I don't enjoy them here as much as I should, due entirely to the climate. There's not much chance of them becoming overgrown and 'romantic'. Instead they're either carefully manicured grass or hard scrabble; mostly the latter.

One of the more interesting ones is down on (I think) Fifteenth Avenue, having, as it does, many monuments dating from when this was the Arizona Territory and one or two more from before the annexation. Interestingly the Mexican flag flies as prominently as does the US flag, only fitting for the graves of those buried when this was Mexico!

Just as interesting is the fact that you can't get into it! There's a little sign on the gate directing one to an address three or four miles east. It's been five and a half years since I last went there (it was the day after my arrival in the US) and I had, at that time, not much idea of the street names. When one goes to the address they hand over the key in return for a deposit. I suppose there must be a market for stolen cemetery keys!

The cemetery we visited this weekend is at Twenty Third Avenue and Van Buren and was, apparently, once four cemeteries in close proximity, since combined into the one. I can see the Jewish cemetery being separate at some time in the past but I couldn't see much rhyme or reason to the rest of it being separated into three pieces at one time. Perhaps one could argue the case for the military section but that'd be about it.

But one feature that intrigued me was the number of tombstones in the shape of a tree stump and with the following plaque attached (image shamelessly stolen from here[^] because I didn't have my camera with me).

I'd never seen this before and at first I thought perhaps I'd stumbled upon evidence of some American secret society. The close proximity of Freemasons and I.O.O.F. markers led credence to the theory but it seemed unlikely. I was closer than I thought[^]. And also see here[^].

A bloody insurance company! Yeah, I can see myself wanting a Farmers State logo on *my* grave!

Not that I'm counting

2008-06-11T23:59:00.001-07:00

but at this moment 100 days hence I shall, with luck and continuance of life, be high above the Pacific Ocean on my way to Australia. Those fish and chips are getting closer!

He's breathing!

2008-06-11T01:05:00.003-07:00

As I think I've mentioned once or twice before, I, with my friends, was rather fond of going to movie matinees in the mid 1960's. That was a time when ones choices on TV were somewhat less than they are now. Whether choices today are better is another question entirely. There's nothing quite like having 108 channels of TV and nothing to watch! Fortunately that doesn't happen to me; TCM run a lot of old movies and IFC and Sundance aren't too bad either. You should have heard Andrew though, before he discovered World of Warcraft. 'There's nothing on!' he'd complain. 'What about The African Queen' I'd ask. 'Oh, that? That's old!'

There is no response to that!

But I digress. Back in the 60's we'd go to the Saturday Arvo matinee. A feature film after the intermission; cartoons, a newsreel and a serial before the intermission. Intermission? I still get a chuckle watching the three hour marathons made in the 60's (Spartacus, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Great Race, 2001: A space Odyssey) when the intermission placard comes up. I very much doubt todays teenagers have ever seen the word; certainly not at the movies.

I can't remember much about the serials; I think they ran Flash Gordon[^] once or twice. For the most part the serials seemed to be about cowboys fighting the injuns! We'd sit there in the dark munching on Jaffas[^] and drink in this alien culture. Whenever someone would fall with an arrow in the back we'd watch the actor. And inevitably someone (usually me) would shout 'he's breathing!'. Laughter throughout the theatre.

Good times.

I was watching In the light of the moon[^] tonight (US title is Ed Gein[^]) and couldn't help noticing, in the scene where we see his brother laid out in the coffin, that the actor was breathing. Someone sure screwed up there!

I called Sonya up to see (she and I have long since accepted that we don't like the movies the other likes). Her comment? 'I don't know how you notice things like that.'

Practice :-)

Vote Schmuck!

2008-06-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

That's the proud slogan on some electoral signs that have sprung up in Tempe, way down south, where I work. At first glance it might look like an exhortation to the idle, uncommitted voter, to go and vote!

Not a bit of it. Nope, it's the name of the candidate. I'll give him his due, he knows the nature of his name, for the slogan goes on to read 'Schmuck... that's right!'. Full points for a sense of humour. Of course, I could wish he represented a different party.

Yeah, I know I shouldn't make fun of peoples names, but if he can do it I can certainly join in.

Link[^]

Another year, another birthday

2008-06-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

But not mine, not just yet.

It's June 3[^] again and I spent most of the day racking my brains trying to remember an interesting story, or even any story, to tell about Robin.

I came up blank!

The combination lock

2008-06-03T00:02:00.002-07:00

In something of a minor miracle Morgan's managed to keep a job for an entire week.

She announced on Saturday that she needed a lock for her locker, that others might not pinch her stuff while she was out on the sales floor. Yep, she's working at a local department store though which department I couldn't say.

Andrew thought a moment and announced that he had a spare combination lock. Sounded reasonable given that his most precious asset at the moment is protected by his World of Warcraft password! So up the stairs he went and down came a padlock of the sort that has four little wheels, each numbered 0 to 9.

Of course he'd forgotten the combination! So Morgan played with it for 30 seconds or so and gave up. There are, after all, only 10,000 possible combinations. She handed it to Mom and she, Mom, handed it straight on to me. Uh huh, that'd be right.

I immediately turned the wheels to 0000 and 'click' it was open! Amazed looks! 'How did you do that?' they chorused.

'Well', I replied, 'it was easy.' Dad (their dad not mine) bought it and gave it to Andrew. And they're both so lazy they wouldn't have read the instructions on how to set the combination. Therefore it had to be still set at the factory default!

Perhaps I ought to have played the role of Houdini rather than that of Sherlock Holmes; now they know how it was done they're not half as impressed. But I bet you are!

Welcome back

2008-05-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

When Andrew got home this morning (I presume it was morning though I was at the office at the time) he found the following taped to his monitor.

Welcome back Andrew!

I missed you!

Put there by yours truly of course. For, you see, last night was the first time in ages, possibly a year, that he'd been able to drag himself away from the computer, World of Warcraft and his own bed. His story is that he spent the night over at Austins. Which is probably true; the nearest thing we've seen to a girl is the bathing suit beauty draped over his computer desktop; a girl we don't get to see all that often due to the World of Warcraft aforesaid. Forty years ago that shot would have seemed racy but these days it's very tame. Which is just as well.

Apparently he laughed. I didn't have the heart to tell him I didn't think of the idea myself. Nope, my first wife came up with just such a greeting waiting on *my* computer monitor back in August of 1986 when I returned from my second trip to the US.

Sad to say I didn't get the point at the time.

No kidding

2008-05-26T02:08:00.002-07:00

Going through the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) thoughtfully provided by Microsoft here in the US for Media Centre PC's I noticed a movie precis a few days ago. No, I can't for the life of me remember just *what* the movie title was apart from having the word 'Calendar' in there, and it's been and gone. Methinks I didn't miss much.

The precis went thus; 'After Miss January and Miss February are killed a detective suspects Miss March may be next'.

You reckon???

Jury Service

2008-05-24T00:31:00.003-07:00

Yesterday was my big day on Jury service. I wasn't too displeased when, ringing them after 4:30 the previous business day, I learned that I was indeed expected to appear this time. The only down side was the uncivilised hour they wanted to start. As originally indicated in the notice from the Maricopa County Superior Court, I expected to have to front up at 8:00. How fortunate they pushed the call back to 8:45. Still earlier than I'd have liked given that this is downtown but one does what one must.

Actually I cased it out last Sunday. Getting to downtown is no problem in itself; it's once you get to the maze of one way streets and streets that don't go through that it gets worrisome. The free parking is on 5th Ave but there's a bloody great court house in the way! That's the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Court building, where I took my naturalisation oath.

So I felt it wiser to check it out at leisure Sunday afternoon. That done, I knew exactly where to turn without getting lost; so well in fact that I got there half an hour early! Plenty of time for a smoke or two.

Then inside, through the inevitable, these days, security checks. At least they let you keep your shoes on. Thus to a not so long wait, punctuated by the equally inevitable 'civic duty' speech. Complete with the homily that we're fortunate as citizens of this great land to have the unique privilege of jury service. I don't remember the exact wording but it was phrased such as to leave the impression that the USA is the *only* place on the planet with juries and such. Hmmm, that'll be news to the British! As it was to me!

A few minutes pass and they called for the first lot; 60 potential jurors. A big trial for that many I thought. They got to the sixtieth name and I relaxed back into my book. An interesting detail I noticed was that very very few indeed had brought a book with them; did they know something or do they simply not read?

A few more minutes pass and this time they're calling for 120! Wow! And, you guessed it, mine was one of the names called out. Now you'll understand that I'm not going to say anything at all about the case, even though I was excused later in the day. All I'll say is that it was a criminal trial with multiple defendants, expected to run multiple weeks!

And at about this point it all departed from what I'm used to back in Australia. The first thing is that we were numbered! For the sake of this exposition let's say I was number 141. For the rest of the day whenever anyone in an official capacity addressed me I was Mr. 141. And how did they know my number? Simple. I had a large sheet of paper with the number printed on it!

So we were herded upward to the court room, after instructions to line up in numeric order. You might remember my Naturalisation Ceremony[^]. There we also had to line up in a precise order. They sure like numbering people! Thence into the courtroom itself, in numerical order.

Suprise the second. We (potential jurors) were seated in the public gallery area, separated from the business part of the court by a waist high wooden barrier. On the other side of the barrier was the judge, the prosecution and the defense attorneys. I thought there seemed a lot of defense attorneys. It turns out that half of em were the defendants; the better dressed half! Indeed, some of the lawyers looked shiftier than their clients. There, I've got the lawyer joke out of the way!

Then the serious side of the business got under way. After a group swearing in we were given a precis of the crime, some names etc and the usual question; did any of us know anyone on the other side of the barrier? So far so familiar. But after that it all became quite different.

The judge went through the longest set of questions I've ever heard asked of a jury. She'd ask a question and if your answer was 'yes' you held your number up. When she gave you the nod you stood up and said your piece.

It took all day and at the end of it they'd whittled us down to about 60. You understand that by the end of the first day they hadn't selected a single juror, they were simply eliminating us one by one. The questions themselves seemed reasonable; what struck me as unreasonable was the lengths people would go through to avoid service. One person volunteered the information that a distant relative in law enforcement had been killed in the line of duty, in 1915! A long litany of recitations of burglaries committed against the good people of the jury in the 1970's.

One wag intimated that she couldn't easily attend court on Mondays and Tuesdays but could make the other days; would that be good enough? Uh huh. What part of being a juror did that person not understand?

Throughout it all the judge maintained a cheery good humour. In contrast, every time I've been called for jury service in Australia the judge has seemed to regard anyone trying to avoid serving as not much more than a criminal himself. Methinks this is a normal occurrence and they budget a week to whittle it down to the dozen, plus alternates.

I won't go into why I was excused.

Another election

2008-05-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

Today we had another election. Not a very big one as it happened and there wasn't anyone actually standing for office. Not even for the post of dog-catcher!

Well that was here in Phoenix; apparently there were a couple of mayors elected around the state. Nope, todays poll was to approve (or not) an extension of a 0.1% sales tax for another 30 years to pay for parks. Now there's a motherhood and apple pie kinda issue for you! Voting against that is like voting against peace! And, as it happens, I voted in favour of the extension. I like parks and open spaces as much as the next man and a lot more than Andrew does.

The subject came up over dinner and when he heard that I'd actually voted in favour of a tax he expressed incredulity. Thus to the purpose of the tax at which point I went for the kill 'well, Andrew, you wouldn't have any use for a park would you?' To which the smartarse replied; 'of course I do, amusement parks'.

Uh huh.

The polling place was as empty as it was last time[^]. You know, for folk that blather on so much about freedom and democracy my fellow citizens take an amazingly lax attitude to the process of actually bothering to line up and cast the vote they're so proud of having! Well, maybe this wasn't one of the more important votes but my point still stands.

This time I had a bit of fun with the accent; when the bloke at the left end of the table handed me the little coupon for the ballot paper and instructed me to hand it to the 'gentleman at the other end' I couldn't resist saying 'oh, you mean that bloke!'. Sure enough, that bloke handed me the ballot and I filled out my vote. It took all of 12 seconds! As I turned to put the ballot into the box the 'bloke' at the end piped up 'what took you so long?'. 'Oh, I had to think about it' was my reply. Laughter all round. Perhaps you had to be there. Personally I reckon they were bored to death waiting for something to do.

I now have three I voted today[^] stickers on my computer monitor!

When does it end???

2008-05-19T23:40:00.002-07:00

It seems like only a month[^] or so ago that I wrote about our fifth cat. And you guessed it; there's now a sixth!

I am not happy about this. I'm a big fan of cats, as you well know by now, but where does it end? This one was brought in by one of Morgans idiot* boyfriends. I happened to be on the phone with Heino at the moment he arrived and as Heino will testify, I said something along the lines of 'oh no, not another bloody one!'

Of course they know I'll relent and let him stay; I always do. Can't see why a kitten who has no say in the matter should suffer because of the stupidity of others.

I just hope the news doesn't get around amongst the feline population that they have only to enter the house to be reprieved. As much as I might like to, I can't help every stray cat in existence.

The interesting thing about this 'stray' is that he's completely house trained and obviously used to having people around. Methinks we have yet another example of the thoughtless who tire of a pet and just abandon it. Whilst not normally an advocate of capital punishment I'm thinking that mandatory strapping to a gurney might be an appropriate punishment for such people.

Of course, not wanting to be such a person, there are follow on consequences. Such as yet another two or three hundred bucks for the shots we don't know if he's had. Then the neutering. As I pointed out to the idiot boyfriend aforesaid, 'great, you get the virtuous feeling. We get the bills!'

* He must be an idiot, he's hanging around with Morgan ain't he?

'taint Lorraine, 'taint Lisa

2008-05-19T00:27:00.002-07:00

nor is it Beatrice!

I really try and avoid the role of 'system administrator' at work. It's not my field though the boss stubbornly refuses to believe it. He sees a software developer, ergo he sees a computer expert and all computer experts are expert at everything about computers, right? Uh huh.

Nonetheless, as the only 'computer expert' at work, I'm called upon to do many admin tasks. Thankfully I've managed to keep it simple though I will never understand why the guy who set our network up decided to call the fileshare 'data-drum_2003' (not the real name but syntactically indentical). Since it's the only fileshare everyone uses why not simply call it 'data'? Likewise with the single shared printer in the office. Why not call it 'printer1', thus allowing for the possibility of a second or perhaps even a third printer? But nope, he decided to call it 'KyoceraM'. From which you could guess that it's a Kyocera printer. Well and good but there's a reason Windows allows arbitrary names. And the reason isn't to be obscure!

As I say, I try to keep it simple. I could change the share name or the printer name but then I'd have to update everyones computers. And users being users I could email them about the change with complete confidence that I was wasting my time and theirs. So we live with it.

Recently, as I wrote[^] a couple of weeks ago, I had to change our source code server. That server also happened to be our FTP server. Fortunately we don't have a lot of FTP activity going on and it was, frankly, far more important to me that I get our source code and history migrated than to get FTP services going again.

Having finally got the new subversion server set up and convinced myself that all the old sourcesafe history was still, well, safe, it was time to put the new machine on the public side of the network. Fortunately it's a Windows 2003 server machine with all the latest patches applied and it seems to be pretty well secured. Now go read the second paragraph of this entry. I'm NOT a network administrator (some would say I'm not a network administrators arsehole and they'd be right) but I've done what I know. I've run port scans against the public internet address and the only ports it finds open are the ports I expect (FTP, HTTPS and Remote Desktop).

I'm sure you've heard anecdotally what happens to a new machine exposed on the internet. One of the stats I've seen (whether I believe it is another matter) is that an unpatched Windows XP SP1 machine is supposedly completely compromised within 20 minutes of first exposure. Considering that it takes at least an hour, even on broadband, to download and install all the patches, you can see the problem. Thus daily malware, trojan horse, virus and rootkit scans on my new server.

On the inside I check the logs daily (though how long I'll do that is another matter). So far the only log showing any activity is the FTP log. Fascinating stuff. There's one persistent bastard, based in Japan going by the whois results on his IP, who's been trying for about 2 days to break in. His attempts are neither regular or fast enough to indicate a software based attack; he seems to be sitting at his computer typing password after password. Poor bastard will never succeed until he realises that I've renamed the system admin account AND the FTP user name list does not include Administrator. I reckon he must have a dictionary of western girls names because that's what he's been trying.

USER Administrator
PASS Lorraine
530 Login or password incorrect!
Disconnected

USER Administrator
PASS Lisa
530 Login or password incorrect!
Disconnected

I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard. But only almost; I've turned on autoban - 10 failed attempts and the IP is ignored for an hour. We shall see if he returns.

Suspending disbelief

2008-05-14T23:51:00.001-07:00

Until recently I'd never seen any of the 'Airport' movies. You might think that was a good thing. I'm beginning to believe it was.

Actually I haven't seen Airport '75 yet; it's running this weekend and I've set the HTPC to record.

The original cropped up a few weeks back and I watched it a week or two later. That's one of the nice things about the HTPC/PVR revolution. Just set it to record and it sits there on the hard disk until you're ready. So much easier than the bad old days of grubbing around for a spare videotape, to say nothing of making sure it was loaded and programmed for the right channel/time. Then labelling the tape so one could find it again; that or go through a pile of tapes looking for the right one. Though it was a mere quarter of a century ago the old way of doing things seems so antediluvian! And there we were, happier than a dog with two dicks, because we could actually record movies off TV!

It's about this time I can imagine you dusting off a walking frame for me!

Anyway, I thoroughly agreed with the reviewer who named Airport (made in 1969) as the 'Best movie of 1944'!. A pot boiler if ever I saw one. Actually that's a trifle unfair, it was quite watchable if somewhat predictable. Now I can say I've seen it without ever feeling the need to see it again.

Thus to 'The Concorde... Airport '79'[^]. An unforgettable two hours of comedy. I understand, incidentally, that one was not supposed to refer to the real Concorde as 'The Concorde' but simply as 'Concorde'.

If the real Concorde had been able to pull off all the stunts we see in the movie it'd be one formidable plane, if somewhat uncomfortable for the passengers. I laughed out loud at the scene where the pilots put their oxygen masks on, open the cockpit window and fire a starting pistol out to distract the heat seeking missile!

If you haven't seen the movie, this is toward the start; just after they've departed from Washington DC. We, the audience, are asked to believe that after being pursued by a missile, which they handily defeat, they continue across the Atlantic to France as though nothing had happened. No obnoxious passenger loudly demanding to know what happened. More to the point, no FAA order to return to Washington and no military escort. Or perhaps I'm just seeing 1979 from a 2008 perspective? I think not. If this had happened in real life I'm sure all of the above would have happened, even in the innocent days of 1979.

So they fly across the Atlantic and are attacked by a Phantom Jet! Four missiles plus ack ack. More aerial gyrations. A supposedly nail-biting scene where they hurtle down the runway at landing and stop with the nose wheel a couple of metres short of the end of the runway.

Does the French equivalent of the FAA impound the plane, the pilots and the passengers? Does the US government get involved in an investigation into the origins of this mysterious Phantom, handily crashed into an ocean? No sir, they do not! An evening of repairs and the plane is ready to resume flight the next morning, to finish it's journey to Moscow! And every single passenger gets back on! No close ups of passengers agonising over whether to board.

Now during the repair phase one of the mechanics put some kind of booby trap on the cargo door. As they're taxiing out for the Moscow departure this mechanic, for reasons I didn't quite catch, starts running around and ends up on the runway with the Concorde bearing down on him during it's takeoff. I have to admit that by this point I was beyond caring what motivated any of the plot and I couldn't be bothered going back to try and catch up. Sufficient that he ducks and runs across just in front of the landing gear as Concorde leaves the ground!

By this time I'm just about going through the roof wondering at the total lack of curiousity shown by everyone involved (up on the screen). Let's see. On a single flight the crew and passengers have been involved in a near miss with a heat seeking missile AND almost been shot down by a Phantom. On the very next take off someone runs in front of the plane as it's taking off. And no one stops to wonder if there's something strange happening!

After that the sight of the plane making a crash landing on an Alpine slope down a ski run was quite incapable of surprising me!

Interesting movie!

Chicken Cordon Bleu

2008-05-06T23:57:00.001-07:00

Tonights dinner was Chicken Cordon Bleu. Methinks you might have guesssed that from the title.

Being Tuesday I'm already inured to the idea that I get home late from the office; those weekly phone conferences to The Philippines are *still* taking place; nearly four years of them! Thus I'm used to dinner being somewhat later than usual on Tuesday. Nonetheless, dinner seemed to be even later than expected tonight.

It turns out that Sonya, after following the instructions and cooking the Chicken Cordon Bleu aforesaid for the 30 minutes suggested on the packet, had cut into one and concluded from the red that it needed a little longer.

Ten minutes later she cut into a second one, saw some red and decided to cook it a little longer. How fortunate there were only four! By the time the fourth had revealed red she finally realised that Chicken Cordon Bleu consists of chicken wrapped around ham and cheese and rolled in bread crumbs!

I laughed heartily as I sawed through some very dry chicken! It was, somehow, partly my fault. I knew what we were having and I should have realised that some red was to be expected. But I'm so used to foods bearing familiar names not really being what I expect that the penny didn't drop.

Subversion

2008-05-05T00:15:00.001-07:00

I don't often write about programming matters. I used to, back in the early days of this blog, but even then I didn't write much about the act of programming so much as some of my thoughts about doing the job right. It's one thing to be able to write a correct for loop; it's another thing entirely to know when to!

Which isn't to say that I think I'm the be-all and end-all of software development; far from it. I still haven't embraced the .NET framework in the way that Microsoft would prefer. I still think in MFC terms though I'm trying to break out of that mould.

Until very recently we used Visual Source Safe (VSS from now on) at work. We had the necessary plumbing (written in .NET forsooth) to access it across the internet; a necessity at the time we installed it when I was shuttling back and forth between France, Dallas, The Philippines and Phoenix.

I've been using source code control in one form or another for more than 20 years, starting with RCS on Unix, PVCS on the PC and settling on VSS because it was effectively free (included with MSDN). I even wrote my own incarnation of RCS back in 1988, using a bunch of command line utilities and PKZip. It worked well if somewhat slowly. Then again, back in 1988 everything worked somewhat slowly!

Anyone who claims to be a software professional and who doesn't use *some* form of source code control is claiming above their station!

To be honest, my experience with VSS wasn't nearly as bad as most users claim. I've never lost a file; nor have I ever experienced datastore corruption. This could be because I've always worked either alone or in relatively small teams; it's entirely possible that I'd have hated VSS with a passion had I been working on a large team.

But recently we've had a few new projects crop up that, whilst based on our current codebase, are sufficiently different that it made sense to create branches. Up until then it was sufficient to label each release in the database.

VSS makes it harder than it needs to to do the branching thing. Creating a branch is easy enough, but merging the changes back into the trunk some time later is a real pain!

Cue Coding Horror[^] and an article on Subversion. I'd heard of it; maybe now it was time to suck it and see. While I thought about it our VSS server at the office died. Server is a grand title for the machine; at 9 years old it was getting more than long in the tooth and it was only a desktop machine anyway!

So I scrounged a three year old Dell Xeon server with RAID. I managed to resurrect our old server long enough to import the VSS database using a freeware tool found here[^]. This was very important to me; I wanted to have our entire history available, not just the source to the last full release we did.

The migration wasn't a smooth process; there were one or two projects that refused to migrate. How fortunate that both were so out of date that no one, including myself, knows what they were for! I haven't been here forever you know!

In the end I decided to keep a copy of the VSS database on the new machine as well, 'just in case'. I doubt I'll ever refer to it but it's only a couple of gigs.

On the client side I use TortoiseSVN[^]. Wow is all I can say.