Student: Well looks dry.
Master: Storm’s coming.
Month: March 2009
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Of Grasshoppers
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Today’s Background Process
Today I am moving/archiving 10 years of email from Outlook to Gmail. Yes, I should probably just delete it but I still look stuff up on occasion and I am curious to see how this impact’s Gmail’s searching speed. See also: How to Import from Windows Mail, Live Mail or Outlook Express in Gmail and IMAP client configurations.
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Of Grasshoppers
Student: I feel like never speaking again.
Master: Shush! -
State of Me
Walls closing in. Clock spinning out of control. Head marching to the beat of some damned drummer and no pill shuts the percussionist up. At 108 minutes and I don’t think I can push the button.
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TN Continues to Make Dumb Laws
Michael Silence notes that Sen. Jim Tracy is trying to pass legislation that would make it illegal to read or send text messages while driving. These nanny state laws treat symptoms and not problems. My comment on No Silence Here:
We don’t need a nanny state! We need better education. IF we would teach people how to use T-9 then they could text without looking at the phone! er, I mean if we taught people the importance of not texting behind the wheel. You know..give a man a fish..well if he were eating fish while driving that would probably be bad too. Maybe we need a law to ban eating fish behind the wheel. Yes! Definitely. And fishing licenses. When the police pull cars over they should check for fishing licenses because he might be planning on catching a fish to eat while driving and we need to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s important. Important enough that we need to set up road blocks and check everyone’s fishing licenses!! But then people might send text messages warning about the road blocks. No, we outlawed text messaging behind the wheel so that would never happen of course neither would the eating fish behind the wheel because we outlawed that too so why do we need the road blocks? You know, the radio stations will pick up on these quickly. We should outlaw radios in the cars. Wait a minute, wasn’t there a time when legislatures feared car radios would cause too many accidents and deaths. What happened to outlawing radios? Wait another minute. At least 2 people died in his district while text messaging behind the wheel. I wonder how many died tuning their radio?
Things we need to outlaw to keep people alive:
spiders, aids, diving, earthquakes, buildings, sports, suicide (wait, that’s already illegal), alcohol, lightning, steps, cold, heat, cancer, tall places, bees, surgery, and sharks.
http://i28.tinypic.com/5v0v1d.jpgThe problem with these types of laws is that it does nothing to prevent the happening but only punishes if and when it is caught. To educate people to pull over, have a passenger do the texting, or just plain ignore the phone is a better use to time and tax dollars than more laws:
Republican Sen. Mae Beavers of Mt. Juliet opposed the bill because of provisions in the current law.
"I really don’t see the need for the bill," she said. "I’ve said time after time, I don’t think we can legislate against stupidity."Furthermore, driving is a skill and not everyone has the same abilities. That is not a statement to justify one person texting behind the wheel while another doesn’t but to point out the people who are crossing the center line while texting may just as well be doing the same thing while reading a billboard, talking to a passenger, tuning the radio, or daydreaming. We have all done stupid things while driving. I bet everyone at one point has turned the wrong way down a one way street. I did in Memphis as a teenager. It scared me silly to see 3 lanes of lunch hour traffic barreling down on me. A law preventing me from going the wrong way on a one way street would have done nothing to prevent me from making that silly mistake..wait a minute..it is against the law to drive the wrong way on a one way street….oh.
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Tuesday Traditions
I like to cook. I prefer to cook. When I cook, I can make healthy meals at less cost…except on Tuesdays. On Tuesdays Dominos runs a Two’fer special that I cannot beat. The time it saves from cooking, the cost of supplies, and the energy saved is well worth the cost of the pizza. But better is the tradition! On Tuesdays the children know Tis The Traditional Two’fer Tasty pizza day! Got tradition?
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Voided
Drip, drip, drip, drip
Into the void it slips
A black hole sucking the darkness in
A container filling within with out
Nothingness becomes somethingness
Still less
With every sampling the void grows
Blackness stimulating
Maddening
Addicting
Hate it, Crave it
Driving force
Of … what?
No answer
Drop, drop, drop, drop -
Infants Playing in the Street
Nubbin Ridge is an old farm road turned into a two lane speedway. I recently had the pleasure of being told stories by a man who grew up in the area of baling hay on the Stooksbury farm which owned much of the land near Wallace Road (forgive me if I got the family name wrong). He spoke of the rolling land and forests that are long gone. Sprawl and shortsighted urban planning has turned Nubbin Ridge into a shortcut for locals avoiding congestion on Northshore Drive and Westland Drive. Nubbin Ridge still has those fun dips that if you want to gamble that there’s no cars or animals on the other side, and you hit the hill fast enough, it tickles your stomach like a roller coaster. Here’s the rub. It’s not a farm anymore. Most of the land has been partialed out and turned to residential neighborhoods. Children walk these roads, and ride their bikes because our urban planners have failed to connect the neighborhoods with sidewalks or greenway trails.
Today I crested a hill and my heart fell into my stomach. 50 yards ahead of me I saw a dog on the double yellow line. But no! It was not a dog; the living creature was an infant, a tiny infant who looked like she’d just learned to waddle on two legs. She moved from the double yellow, dead center of the road, to smack dab in the middle of the left lane and stood still. She was not in my lane but in the lane of oncoming traffic just this side of one of those tickle hills. In the distance I saw a car approaching. I stopped the van, turned on the flashers, and walked to the child trying not to scare her. I put my arms out, she opened her arms, and jumped into mine. As I carried her toward her home, the oncoming car zingged past my van without slowing down. A car in my lane approached and without hesitating to wonder why my van blocked its lane, zipped around my stationary vehicle. After handing the child to its mother I started back to my car. Two more vehicles rapidly approached showing no sign of slowing so I just put up my hand and stepped into the road forcing them to stop (and hopefully but doubtfully think), got in the van, and made a mental note to drive much slower on Nubbin Ridge from now on.
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Getting the kids out the door is fun except…
I generally enjoy helping the children get ready for school and out the door the morning. The exception is the pre-schooler. He causes me great stress. I can never tell if he is going to joyfully get ready for school or if he will turn it into a major battle. I despise being late and with him we may or may not be on time. He often makes me start the days tired.
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Rigging the tree
I have tied a ladder to the rotting tree out front as the first step to rigging it to bring it down in pieces. But I cannot find my climbing harness. I think Cathy hid it. She’s going to hide my shovel now too. Yes, I am still considering hiring someone with a crane to bring it down professionally. -
Student driver
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli.
Replies.
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Heading to the trenches
Yesterday I inspected the trench that one day will become a French drain which keeps water out of our basement on heavy rains only to discover that a wall has partially collapsed. With rain in the forecast for Sunday night and Monday, I have to redig the trench or face having a pool of water that will slowly seep into the basement.
What prevents me from completing the trench? Higher priority projects, time, money and materials. The digging of the trench has to be completed. Long ago I concluded that renting a backhoe or paying someone to complete the excavation would be wiser than digging the rest out myself. I am going all the way down to the footers so that this repair is as long lasting as possible and adds value to the house. I need 2-3 dump truck loads of 3/4inch gravel. Tar for the wall. A thick millimeter plastic or other liner to go on top of the tarred wall. 4 inch heavy PVC with holes drilled in it OR ceramic weeping pipe as the drain. Must debate the pros and cons of wrapping the pipe in fabric as it helps keep sediment from clogging the pipe but the filtering material itself can become clogged and defeat the purpose of the pipe. May be better to have an easily accessible cleanout from the driveway. Need backfill dirt. Additionally I may take advantage of the exposed wall to run an additional waste water pipe to the property waste water main pipe so that sinks, or a washing machine could easily be installed in close proximity to the front wall of the house in the basement or garage. Estimated cost to complete the French drain project: $600-1200.
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Watchmen Review – No Spoiler
Cathy and I were privileged to go see the midnight showing of Watchmen last night. (See Official Watchmen website) First a note to myself: if you are going to act like a college student and watch a 3 hour movie starting at midnight, set an alarm for the morning. I lay in bed this morning trying to convince myself it was Saturday; then Noah’s whisper, "Dad. It’s 7:15" startles me from bed. Fortunately, everyone made it to school on time…and with lunches!My Thoughts
In short: Go see this movie! But leave the children at home.
Astounding! Lighting choices, sets, camera angles, use of slow motion and stop action made me not want to blink. They sucked me into the screen and I did not want to miss a millisecond. The vivid colors and contrasts brought enough comic book element without crossing the cheesy boundary. The sounds were crisp and took great advantage of the theater setting. This movie certainly deserves at least one viewing on a big screen. The musical soundtrack was perfect falling into the must purchase category. The story was well told. The movie ran three hours and I was glued to the screen for every second. I may even go back and watch Watchmen in the Imax theater!
Rating/Parent Warning
Watchmen is rated R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language. As you drop your children off at the theater to watch this movie based on a comic book, remember that comic books were not always written for children. This is an adult movie. Watchmen has graphic violence that may turn some heads from the screen. The sex in the movie is hot! And only outdone by the sex after the movie. [pseudo spoiler]You will see breasts, nipples, butts and penises. You will see blood.
History
Read wikipedia’s Watchmen article for a great description of how Watchmen came to exist. In short, Watchmen represented a stark change from how superheros were typically represented. Even the presentation of the comic book was different in style. In high school, I was a comic book collector and a huge D.C. fan. I visited monthly comic book conventions and had my own "pusher" who would advise me on the hot series. I was really into the miniseries. I found Crisis on Infinite Earths very exciting as the D.C. continuity problems were to finally be fixed but all the tie ins and crossover series burned me out on comic collecting. Unfortunately, I quit collecting comics in 1986 when Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns was released. My pusher insisted that was a story I shouldn’t miss and that it would instantly be valuable. He was right. I should own the first release of The Dark Knight
and I should have Watchmen. I remember Watchmen, but regretfully, I do not think I have a single issue downstairs.Cool! Last night I dug out my old comic box and discovered I have the entire 12 issue Watchmen series in bagged in mint condition! I suppose I should say near mint; nothing is every truly mint. I even have 2 copies of issue 12. The desire to take them out and flip through their pages is almost worth more than the $250 the set appears to be going for on eBay. What I do have is the Punisher series but that movie was rotten. But I digress. Quit reading this and go watch the movie! -
From the mouths of babes
Saying Grace:
Amy: "Thank you God for all this food and for the whole world you made well and Ben Franklin but you made most of he well he made some of .. ah somethings and since you made this world we should help you and thank you Amen."
Evan: "Thank you God for this food and for the bunnies helped make food and now we scare the bunnies away…and the sharks. Eeeeemen."
