NOW I Remember...

why I stopped playing Civilization II years ago.  Its addictive.  I don't eat.  I don't sleep.  I just keep playing...

A few days ago, I got my old PC working again and played Civ II all night.  I mean like 12 hours.  And 12 hours does not complete a game.  I finished the next day in 8 hours.  OK, got THAT out of my sytem, right?  NO.  Started another game last night and played from 8 pm to 10 am.  I collapsed into bed from 10 am to 3 pm, got up, cleaned house and made dinner.  Played with the cats.  Watched science and polital talk on tv.

And the new game is sitting there calling to me...  How can I leave a game unfinished?

Drugs have nothing on Civ II for demanding attention!

The good news is that I lost 3 pounds by not bothering to eat.  LOL!  But I think the cat blog is going to suffer until I get tired of this game again...

A Day In The Life

I don't often bother to contact my local elected officials.  The few times I have done so in the past got me responses that either completely ignored my issue, or got it backwards and thanked me for supporting the vote I was complaining about.

But today I got interested in obtaining genetic testing.  I had thought about it for several years, so it wasn't exactly an impulsive decision.  My delay had been the cost a few years ago ($1,000) and limited results offerred. 

But when I drilled deeply into one of the provider's websites (and found the cost of $99 and the list of results very lengthy and detailed),  I decided to purchase this genome test.  Imagine my surprise when I was informed by the website that Maryland is the ONLY State that completely prohibits such "direct-to-consumer" transactions (New York State has a partial ban).

I decided to complain.  From what little I could find out about the original regulation, it was aimed at preventing people from being suckered by fly-by-night scammers and those who might sell your genetic information to insurance companies and employers.  But the professional companies doing this now seem to protect you from that. 

And even if that wasn't true, it doesn't matter to me anymore.  I'm retired and my federal health insurance has worked like ObamaCare for 30 years and it is WONDERFUL!  I can switch insurance companies every year (I don't) and pre-existing conditions don't matter.

But back to genome (genetic) testing...  Alone, Maryland will not allow me to just send a spit sample to a genome testing company and get results.  So I looked up all my elected representatives.  I emailed them all demanding they allow me the RIGHT to get my genetic results directly from a qualified lab the same way my fellow-citizens in OTHER States can.

I bet all the responses from the politicians are vague and promise agreement even when they say they support the law I am complaining about. 

But I'm still glad I spent a few hours contacting them.  Sure made ME feel better.

Blast From The Past

I got my old PC up and running in order to play Civilization 2 (aka Civ II), which I haven't played for about 10 years.  I knew I would be rusty at it, so I started he game at the lowest level. 

For those who are not familiar with the game, you and several players (human if online, computer bots if not) each start with  their own single barely historic settler and decide where on a random map to create a first city.  You slowly work up to modern times by learning weapons, governments, and knowledge advancements.  There are politics involved.  The goal is to be the one who launches a spaceship reaching Alpha Centuri.  It is wicked tricky and complicated.

I reached a point in my first new game where I was getting to build a spaceship.  And when I say "build" I mean you really had to construct your spaceship from parts you built/bought/stole in your own constructed cities or your opponents.  You needed some various precise combinations of "structural components", "propulsion units",  "habitation units",  "fuel",  and "energy".  Different combinations had different consequences.  Some made the spaceship fail.  Some caused the inhabitants to die.  Other combinations affected the likelihood that the ship would arrive, and others affected the years of the flight.

It is an AWESOME game!

I recalled that I had once worked out many of the best combinations of the spaceship parts, so I googled "civilization II spaceship formulas", figuring someone had posted them.

You won't BELIEVE what I got at the top of the list...

MY OWN LIST.  Still considered part of the Civ II bible after all these years...

In a site for info for Civ II players  by various categories (like how to defend a new city, when to use a spy, and when to break an alliance).  And THERE, in a page of its OWN, was a page titled "Optimum Spaceship Configurations"  by Cavebear.

I blushed...

But yup, that's me, Cavebear.  I even recognize my usual typos and unmatched parentheses.

I'm stunned. 

You don't expect to see anything you did a decade ago still meaningful, especially in a game.  It brought tears to my eyes...

I can't quite get a screenshot, but it is HERE. 

And I sure hope I get to use that decade-old info on the winning spaceship tonight.

Camera Troubles Fixed!

 On Sept 21st, I used a program called MacKeeper.  It cleans, defrags, and checks for viruses, but the main feature I was interested in was finding duplicate files, foreign language options, and leftover bits of deleted programs.  It found quite a lot of them.  Of course, it doesn't just go and delete them.  You have to check of a box for each file.  I examined the first dozen or so carefully and it seemed accurate, so I just started checking all the boxes of files it offerred and clicking submit.

Apparently, it moved seamlessly in my applications folder, and none of the names I saw at first seemed relevant to me (seeming like leftover bits of deleted programs) and I continued checking boxes and deleting them.  On one page, after I hit delete but before the screen cleared, I saw one was iPhoto (an Apple program for processing camera pictures).  I realized it was deleting programs and stopped.

Well, I went to my backup program, Time Machine, but I couldn't restore the program.  Actually, I couldn't get it to work at all on even small test files.  After messing around with that for a couple of days, I reread the instructions an discovered I was doing part of it exactly backwards.

So I restored iPhoto.  It was back in my applications folder, but I still couldn't upload pictures from the camera.  It worked for looking at old pictures and other functions, just wouldn't upload new ones, saying "camera not found".  I tried everything for another couple of days, until I noticed it was an old version of iPhoto.

So I went to the Apple store online to upgrade it.  Can't do that.  The old version was TOO old.  OK, I bought the new version.  That didn't work either!  I tried restoring the camera software.  That didn't solve the problem.  I went to the Canon site and downloaded the camera drivers and software.  That didn't solve the problem either.

I was (correctly) positive it wasn't the cameras.  Too unlikely both would good bad at the same time, and I had used a new cable AND tried different ports in the computer.

I gave up and got on live chat with Apple.  After 2 hours, the problem remained.  The technician said there were some more complicated things to try but I would have to call the Apple store in the morning because there were some things he could not access (it was late night).  So, I scheduled a call from Apple for 1 PM Thursday.  At 2 PM Thursday with no call, I went grocery shopping.  Naturally, I discovered they had called 5 minutes after I left.  They sent me an email saying I could reschedule online or just call a number.

I called the number Saturday and had a tech on the phone in 2 minutes.  We spent a merry 30 minutes searching various screens and programs until one said "camera device present", whereupon he said "Aha, you've lost a piece of your operating system"!  Somewhere apparently (a partition on the hard drive I surmise) hidden and protected, is a copy of the operating system.  It took a few minutes to navigate there, and then it said 50 minutes to restore, so the tech gave me a direct number to him in case it didn't work, and I hung up.

It worked!

I'll be a LOT more careful with MacKeeper in the future.  And I'm going to have to study Time Machine preferences/options because for some reason, the only application program it backed up since Jan 2012 was iTunes!

I Hate To Break The Bad News

Bad news, kitties...

Just think "cans of stinky goodness" and "thumbs"...

A Cautionary Tale of Sad Computer News

A long post, and I won't blame you for not reading it to the end.  But there are some lessons that may be worth reading...

No, I haven't gotten a diagnostic call from the computer repair shop I mentioned in the last post.  Instead, I messed up my own working Mac Mini computer.

Over the past few years, I have tried out several anti-virus/disk management programs for the Mac, and not been really happy with them.  Viruses aren't really a problem for Macs, but they are good about detecting viruses that could go on to infect PCs that I communicate with, so I want to keep the anti-virus protection up to date.  Mostly, I want the programs for hard drive management and they are S-L-O-W.   Several hours to read all the files looking for viruses, and a lot of one-at-a-time decisions about most programs.

I like Macs, but it seems there are a couple of weaknesses.  They don't "hold" your name/passwords to some websites as well as PCs do.  So when I actually have to shut down the computer, I have to sign in again.  A minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things, but it does get tedious when you have several program updates the same night and have to restart the computer after each one.

That wouldn't be too bad, except that I play computer games that use adobe flash a lot.  For some reason, Macs accumulate some files than clog the system.  Even THAT's not too bad; on my older PC, I would simply crash in mid-game.  One the Mac, things afterwards slow down and it locks up while searching something on Firefox or writing a letter and I have to restart the computer (meaning all those sign-ins again afterwards).

So I found a program called MacKeeper that promised to do all that better and great hacking protection (and had good reviews).  And since I had just run into a person who I thought intended to do me ill (old story, I won't go into that now except to say never blow up at a former friend whose past malicious behavior shows they know a LOT about computers).

I used the program and it seemed to work well.  Fast scanning of all files, etc.  No problems with hack attempts.  A couple of nights ago, I noticed some additional features.  The were sub-routines to identify and delete unused apps, find and delete "leftovers" (orphaned files related to deleted programs),  etc.  It wouldn't just do it automatically, I had to check each file to be deleted.

After tediously checking boxes carefully for an hour, I got a bit casual and just started taking its advice.  You can guess that was a BAD move...  It was in the applications part of my directory, and just after I clicked OK for the latest batch, I saw Firefox was on the list.  It was too late to stop it!

I have to admit the program is thorough.  When I could control the computer again, I found I had deleted Firefox.  OK, no real problem, I have TWO backup systems.  One is an external drive called FreeAgent, the other is a built-in Mac backup called Time Machine.  Both save your hard drive initially and changes to it thereafter.

Well, FreeAgent had told me last week that it was full and I should delete some older backups, and I had just done that, saving backups from Jan of the previous several years and a quarterly one for this year.  I didn't examine The Time Machine (I find it a little confusing to use).

So I examined my computer dock (graphic sidebar of active applications) and Firefox was gone.  So was the Mac word and spreadsheet suite called iWorks.  So was the MS Office Word and Excel.  I have NO word-processing or spreadsheet programs, and the only browser I had was Safari  (which seems to fight me all the time).

After spending a good part of yesterday and this morning trying to find the lost programs in the two backups, I gave up.  I downloaded Firefox (at least its free), but there were no bookmarks.  I had about 13 years of some useful and unusual bookmarks saved.  Well, at least I knew that I had seen a boormarks.html file in the backup list.

Yeah, it was from 2008!  Both backup programs had faithfully saved one old bookmark file for 5 years.  I checked both backups programs "every way from Sunday" (as my Dad used to say) for 2 hours before I gave up.  There was just that old one.  So I imported it.  The first thing I did was open every single bookmark.  Most were no longer working and I deleted them.  Some were still working but were "repurposed" and I deleted them.  Some I could not imagine why I bookmarked them and I deleted THEM!

It didn't leave me with very many bookmarks, but at least I still had the organization of the folders (blogs, reference, hobbies, garden, pets, etc).  The first additions were my blogs.  And you know, it was hard to get those.  It was easy to SEE my blog, but it took some thought to find how to get to my dashboard (my blog has "blogspot" in the url, but the dashboard has "blogger").

I slowly used Safari to get the urls of some other sites (like cat blogosphere) and bookmark them into Firefox.

I've lost a lot of bookmarks, but I had too many old unused ones anyway.  Old ones I want, I can find again easily enough and bookmark them.  And my Feedly bloglist RSS is safe because I set it up as my home page on Safari (open up Safari, and there it is).

I had the Mac iWorks and MS Office word and spreadsheet programs downloaded rather than owning the reloadable CDs, so I think I would have to buy them again.  Fortunately, I don't need the MS suite programs with their advanced features anymore.  The simpler Mac Page and Numbers apps will work fine.  And it seems they are only about $20 each.  MS Office for Mac costs $140. (and I'd rather not have any MS crossover programs on the Mac for security purposes).  And I used to make CD backups of some programs, I might find them.

But not tonight!  I'm worn out and (as calm as I may seem), very angry and frustrated.

Those backup programs (as I understood them) were SUPPOSED to allow me to completely restore my hard drive in case of failure.  I HOPE it was just my fault in not setting them up properly, but my recollection is that I was pretty darn careful about doing it right.  But I'm going to really triple-check it when I dig into them both tomorrow!

If you have a backup system, I suggest you really examine it carefully.  Make sure that what you think is a saved program isn't just the sidebar graphic or the desktop shortcut.  Look at "properties" or "info" or whatever gives you file size amounting to MBs.  You may not actually have the actual program saved.

I got fooled because my older computers had a full-sized 2nd drive and when I copied the main drive to the 2nd drive it WAS a real copy of the whole drive, applications and all.  I was used to that.

It seems to me that, not matter how careful you try to be, a train wreck will occur on your computer every few years.  And something you assumed worked, won't work the way you think it will...

Computer Happiness

I dragged the old PC to a local PC repair shop.  I mainly want to use it to play Civilization2.  Its a 90's game.  My Mac is too modern to play even the old Mac versions and my attempts at downloading Mac-to-PC crossover platforms failed utterly.  So I brought my old PC in for cleaning and rebooting.  They said they could do that, though getting a Windows 98 reboot might take some research.

Fine.

But then I casually asked them if they could clean a Mac.  Not work on it, just clean it enough so that the evil Apple Store (who considers a little cigarette smoke a "toxic violation of OSHA working conditions") would repair one.  And I'm not defending smoking here, I hate it myself.  Lets not get into that.

But OMG, OMG, OMG, they will work on Macs too.  They even have "a Mac guy"!  So after I returned home to retreive the Civ2 CD I meant to bring at the start, I brought them the old $3,500 Mac Pro that has been a doorstop for some years.

They said "sure, we can clean and fix that".

THUD!  I'm not kidding.  "THUD!!!"

I think there are the old pictures of Skeeter and LC on that hard drive.  There are old letters to Mom and Dad.  There are old family pictures.  There are old games of Civ2.  There is stuff I don't even know is on there!

And when I pick up the old PC and the original Mac, I will bring them the previous Mac Mini to clean.  I'll sell the old (working) Mac Pro (minus the hard drive) and will add the newly working Mac Mini with a wireless connection (I hope) so that I can visit our cat friends away from the desktop.

Assuming they can really fix Macs.

You have to understand that the nearest Apple Store is almost an hour drive away, AND you need an appointment you dare not miss by a minute (or you stand in a long line), AND its in the middle of a BIG CONFUSING MALL so you have to carry a 20 pound Mac Pro around for an hour, etc...

Man, if these local guys will actually clean and work on Macs, they have a customer for LIFE!!!

But we'll see...

Strange, Sad People

I play online compute games a lot.  Not arcade-style games, just calm strategic kinds like Risk and Backgammon.  Still, sometimes you meet really angry people.  Sometimes you can tell they are adults, sometimes you can tell they are teens.  I try to be really careful around teens.

I'm not talking about chat rooms.  I stay far away from them.  But just in games, you can tell sometimes when someone is REALLY angry.  I feel sorry for those people, whether they are teens or adults.  On very rare ocassions, I offer to just talk.

It doesn't usually work out.  Angry people are hard to talk to.  Just tonight, I came across a backgammon player who almost immediately accused me of using a cheat program.  Right, my rating is in the lower 20% I would guess.  If I was using a cheat program, I would have to be about the most inept cheater of all time.  You START at 1500 and my rating is 1274.  Some high level cheating going on THERE, right?

After being informed that he was reporting me for cheating (I rolled doubles once and that really upset him - and never mind that he did several times himself).  And never mind that he won 2 of 3 games.  But then he mentioned "reporting me" several more times.

Everything about this player says he is a teen (unreasonableness, anger, and lashing out), and I really don't want to ruin the slight personal validation that some teen gets by winning a game if he is alone in a basement or bedroom struggling to get some feeling of success in his life.

But still, I'm kind of pissed off about it all.  I'm thinking a game site for those only 30 and older might be a good idea.

Mark

Good Gardening Days

Some days, you just cant seem to get any useful work done.  You vacuum and it just looks the same a day later.  There are always dishes and pots to clean.

But outside, the effort of work seems to last longer.  I spent some time watering the gardens the past several days.  I have a tripod I built (my own design) that lets me just set the hose spray on and let it run for 10 minutes at a spot.  Its easy to move to a new spot to water.

It takes 5 movements of the sprayer to do the flowerbeds, 3 to do the veggie gardens, and 3 to do the hosta bed.  Plus random local watering for the odd places too small to water largely.  Which usually means 120 minutes or 2 hours.

But September has actually had virtually no rain, so I gave each spot 20 minutes of watering instead of just 10 and spent the time waiting by weeding the watered flowerbeds.  I pulled out 3 wheelbarrow-loads of weeds.  Fortunately, them being deeply soaked, they came out with the roots.  There is something very satisfying about seein a weed pulled up with the roots still on!  Even if they survive, they are annual weeds and won't have time to grow again to produce seeds.  So THEY are GONE GONE GONE!

It was a very good 2 days.

Washington DC Pro Sports

Well, actually, the only two I really bother with are baseball and football.  My apologies to fans of other sports, but basketball is too much a contact sport these days, soccer is too boring to watch (and I even played it), hockey is unfathomable to me, tennis just doesn't seem to work as a team sport, and my interest in my alma mater (Univ of MD) is pretty much gone since they are moving to an out-of-area conference where they will be cellar-dwellers for a decade until they leave in shame.

And neither of the two I have followed are looking promising.  The Nationals are setting themselves on fire at the very end of the season, but it's too little too late.  Something like a 5% chance of them getting into the playoffs.  And with Atlanta coming to town next, that should pretty much end it. 

The Washington football team (with the team name I will not use) looks like it is setting up its fans for a seriously depressing season of falling behind at first and mounting a great comeback attempt that falls short each game.

So it looks like my evenings will be free of baseball until the World Series and the next 14 Sundays will be free for shopping at "guy-stores ".  Seriously, the best possible time to shop at a home project store is during a local NFL game!

Weird Visitor Spike

Did I almost have a post go viral?

I don't often check the statcounter chart for this blog because it doesn't get very many visitors, I don't post there regularly, and the bookmark is set to open the site to the Mark's Mews chart.  So imagine my surprise when I saw THIS!

The Sept 11 post was a rather dark angry fantasy about having the 911 attackers alive today, and I can see why it might have gotten more attention than my usual home project and personal life posts.  But who would have ever found it to begin with?

If anyone spread the link around, please let me know so I can thank you for the excitement!  It really did make my day.

I can't go back and check the visitor list or other records because statcounter only displays the last 33 hours for free and I don't feel a great need to pay for 2 months of records every month, LOL!

Its also curious that I had so many on Sept 10th, when the only post of interest was the following day.  I considered that some hackers had gone into old posts to leave messages among themselves (that happened to me with a previous blog), but I've looked back at a bunch of the older posts at random and didn't find any weird messages.  I also have the blog set to require approval of any comments to posts more than 3 days old, and I didn't see any of those.

So if anyone has an ideas about the spike, I sure am curious!

That Darn Ceiling Lamp

Minor rant...

Well, I finally got in touch with a place that repairs old ceiling lamps.  I should have given up calling them every few days for 3 weeks and just emailed them to begin with.  I would have if their website actually OFFERRED an email address.  I had to find it the hard way, indirectly (through their white pages sales office).

But at least I got a rapid response assuring me they could do the work.

So I drove up there yesterday morning.  Only got lost once.  I had to stop at a paint store to ask directions.  They asked "where are you from" and I gave the name of my town, but then they said "No, where is your CAR".  (It's in your parking lot DOOFUS, why do you think I'm in HERE).  But I'm very polite when lost and said it was right by their front door.

Like good little locals they gave me directions according to local landmarks.  You may have sufferred that yourselves ("drive out past Smitty's barn and turn left where the old oak tree used to be").  I finally got "first right, 2nd left and about 2 miles" and went on my not-so-merry way.  I did finally find the street I needed and figured that if I needed more directions someplace else, at least they could only tell me to go left or right.

It took 1.5 hours to get to the lamp place (but only 30 miles). I should have FedExed it!

The front counter folks LOVED the lamp and guided me to the repair specialist.  Do I need to tell you what specialists in moderately arcane specialties are like?  First thing he did was demand to know why I hadn't answered his email question (I checked the email when I got home and it only said "what you need is a canopy kit, which consists of a canopy, a crossbar, a loop, and a threaded nipple or pipe. I have crome, black, white, and brushed brass finishes").

Then, when I didn't know what nipples, ceramics and canopies were, he became insulting.  I finally had to just beg him to "Please just do whatever an electrician requires to mount the damn lamp on the stairway ceiling".  Not satisfied with THAT victory, he further said that "any damn good electrician could get all this stuff from Home Depot".  Well, apparently, electricians these days don't have a price box to check off for "rebuilding old lamp".

He scribbled wavy lines on a list of repair items on a receipt ticket  and wrote $55 at the bottom.  I left with the ticket stub and a promise he would call in "a couple of days".

You know what "staircase wit" is right?  The killer comeback you think of as you leave the room after a dispute?  I didn't even have THAT...  I just drove all the way home pissed.

I didn't ever even WANT the damn lamp.  It was Gramma's lamp and my mother and a sister of hers fought over it for years thinking it was real Tiffany.  It isn't.  But my mother won the fight and she was so proud to hand it down to me, her eldest son...  She's dead, and while its a pretty impressive lamp, it not worth anything, but I still have to show it off for MY generation.  Click white elephant.

But I will have the lamp in a condition an electrician can install and my siblings will be able to visit and go "ooh, ahh" and be grateful they didn't receive it.

The only good parts are that I probably WILL like it once installed AND I get to choose who to inflict it on in my Will.

That's assuming I can FIND the lamp store again to pick it up.  No, I don't have a working GPS device...

9-11-13

 

I have such a hard time with this day every year.  The anger won't go away.  I try to write something thoughtful and it veers off into bitterness and hatred.  Most years I just post some picture I find to mark the date because I don't want to post the bitter angry words I write.


I choose not to post the bitter words for the benefit of you who kindly read this blog, though I am fine with those thoughts myself.  And once again, I have written and deleted a dozen angry posts about 911 this past week.

But this time, there is something I will post.

I wish...

That I could have bin Laden, his top lieutenants, and the individuals who carried out the 9-11 attack alive again today in one place.  That place would be a large office-sized metal mesh frame.  That frame would be covered in hot-burning wood with one open window.  The whole thing would be dangling from a helicopter 110 stories high.


The wood frame will be lit at the opposite side from the window.  The occupants can choose to stay inside and burn, or they can jump.  I grant them the same choice most of their victims had.

I would light the box.

And then I wish they could return to life to experience it again and again, once for every person who died in the attack (minus their own number).   Let them see they have not gone to Paradise.  Let them experience the horrible choice again and again.  And for those who simply jump each time, there will sometimes be no window. 

But let there be mercy of a sort.  Let those who truly come to understand and abjure the horror they created not return to life to suffer the same deaths again.  Let only those who do not understand, repeat the experience to the last number of victims and let them finally die too, for if they do not understand after that many personal death-experiences, they are beyond all hope.

And I tell you again, I WOULD light that box as many times as there were victims, with grim resolve...

Cavebear

The Risks of Risk

I joined an online game of Risk last night blind.  By which I mean you can investigate the conditions of the game and have someone jump in while you are doing that, or you can jump in blind yourself.  I went in blind.  The situation for my color was horrible!  

The only human player had half the board (and she outpointed me 3-1, 12million points to my paltry 4 million) and was attacking my poor few nations.  I was fortunate that she ran out of armies while I still had 2 nations.  It may seem bad that she surrounded me, but it DID mean I was isolated from the computer players for a turn.   And she SAID she would kill me on her next turn.

And she sure tried!  I got JUST enough to survive her next turn and slowly managed to control Africa and then South America.  She decided to try to take North America and the bots fought back stopping her plan.

I moved into NA and slipped from Alaska into Kamchatka (Asia) breaking her bonus for that continent.   I had JUST enough armies to stop her getting Kamchatcka back, but killing that last bot in Europe got me extra armies and I swept through Asia, pinning her in Australia.  She had no more armies that turn (takes 3 right cards to get more armies and she only had 2).   I took Australia.

I could tell she was really pissed.  You routinely tell the winner "good game" as you leave.  She didn't.

It doesn't get much better than that.  When you come from almost nothing, and win, that's special.

It Was 27 Years Today...

...that I moved into my "starter home".  I'm still here! 

I went through a long string of bad apartments and many roommates to slightly better apartments with a 2 roommates to a rented house with one roommate, to the same rented house alone.  And then FINALLY came the day when I was 36 and could get my own house.

I did a lot of research.  The Washington DC area is expensive, and the several counties surrounding it were not much better.  A co-worker pointed out that e lived just beyond the county line of the 2nd level of counties out from DC, and I learned that a house there cost only half of what the same house (on a smaller property) cost closer in.  The trade-off was a slightly longer commute.

I had to look around a lot before I found what I was looking for (large property with a decent house size).  I told the realty agent that I didn't care about schools, community activities, shopping, or restaurants.  Well, I'm a real homebody; you plant me in a decent house and yard and sometimes I don't leave it for a week (except for commuting to work before I retired).

The realty agent kept showing me tiny ranch house on tiny properties.  He was convinced that, as a single guy, all I needed out of life was basically a one-bedroom apartment with barely space for a M/V and a TV, a living room for parties, planted on the smallest possible yard (because who wants to mow a large lawn anyway).

After being driven the the umpteenth tiny house and yard I finally grabbed him by his cheap shiny garish tie and made him listen to me.  The next day, he drove me to a newly-built dead-end street just being developed.  30 lots available and I could choose any one.  Plus the developer had several varieties of houses to choose from.  I identified the best one by size and flatness and available sunlight.  It had 5 sides (comes to a point in the back because the street behind it is curved.

And I discovered "split-foyer" houses.  I grew up where basements were below ground and there was a one or 2 story house above that.  Split-foyer means that the basement is at ground level with basically a large ranch house on top of it, and the front door is halfway up so that there is a half stair leading up to the living area and a half stair going down to the basement.  So the front door is 6 steps up from ground level.  It's weird.  But I like it.

With 3 "bedrooms" there is a master bedroom, a computer/library room, and there was a guest bedroom that is now the cat playroom.  The basement has an enclosed garage and the rest is a nice woodworking shop.  The dining room is now the TV room and the living room is now the dining/cat tree/library room.

The yard is a half acre.  Half of the back yard is left relatively wild and half is flowers and garden with some small lawn.  I keep the front yard rather standard for the benefit of my neighbors.  My one gift to my neighbors is a standard routine appearance.  I live mostly inside or in the back yard, so I don't really care about the front; so let it please the neighbors.  The front yard is planted with some hostas and a few showy shrubs. 

After 27 years, I know every stone, weed, and mole tunnel.  My friends and siblings say I must be bored living in the same old place for so long.  Why should I be bored?  I LIKE this place.  The inside is perfected to my tastes (which don't change by fashion demands), and the outside is so familiar and comfortable.

For a "starter home", its pretty good.

So I am celebrating this 27th anniversary here, remembering how it was the day I moved in vs how it looks today.

Birds?

I have no idea why my squirrel cage catches birds, but I found a 3rd one in the cage today.  I let it go of course. They sure fly out fast when I open the cage.

This time it was a titmouse.  I didn't even bother to go back to the house and get the camera.

Apparently, most birds love peanut butter.  So far, 2 sparrows and the recent titmouse.  And I guess they peck at it hard enough to trigger the cage doors to close. 

Some Political Analysis

I pay a lot of attention to politics (I majored in it).  I pay a lot of attention to history (I minored in it).  I pay attention to game strategy (A lifelong hobby).  So I've been following the debates about possible US reactions to the nearly certain actions that President Assad of Syria has taken regarding chemical attacks on his own people.

My thoughts on this today do not involve the debate on whether the chemical attacks happened or what should be done about them.  I play some strategic games, and most involve figuring out what your opponent will do in response to your own actions.  I got to thinking about what Assad himself might say proactively to complicate his opponents plans and protect him against attacks (and I assure you I am not trying to provide him advice*)

President Assad:  "I have become aware that chemical attacks were launched against my people.  It was most assuredly done by either rebel elements engaged in illegitimate civil war or by rogue elements within the military.  I am investigating both possibilities and will report to the United Nations following that investigation.

I can only deplore the attacks and loss of life.  The guilty parties will be identified and punished.

But I am also aware that the United States and possibly other foreign powers are contemplating attacks on the legitimate government of Syria.  I warn them not to interfere. 

Syria does have chemical weapons, as almost all modern nations do.  In response to the foreign threats, they have been dispersed in ways that cannot be effectively tracked or targeted.  

If a single missile or airborne bomb from a foreign power  diminishes the ability of the legitimate Syrian government to suppress the rebellion, those hidden and dispersed chemical weapons will be used against all rebel encampments and strongholds.

If such attacks occur, the foreign powers will be responsible for the deaths of the rebels.

Finally, I remind the United States that it had its own civil war to maintain the governance of its own central government against a regional rebellion.  Foreign powers did not intervene, though 620,000 combatants and 50,000 civilians died in the suppression of the rebellious provinces. 

We will re-establish central governmental control over our nation.  We will actively resist foreign involvement by all means necessary."

Just some worrisome thoughts...

* If by some bizarrely unlikely possibility the Syrian government happens to read this, assume this is a planted blog by the CIA designed to provoke you into an disastrous course of action leading to your downfall.

Or not.  How would you ever know?

Too Few Facts

I was watching MSNBC tonight.  It is my preferred political talk source.  They generally provide backup to their claims, with videotape with dates and locations, etc.  They are generally thoughtful and complete in their presentations.  But sometimes even they go thin on the analysis and it irks me.

Chris Hayes did a piece on rip-off hospital charges.  And while it is generally true that US medical professionals and hospitals seem to get a lot more than in other countries (so that the costs can be legitimately questioned) the example he used was abysmal. 

He was talking about IV saline solution.  He said they use Morton salt and inexpensive bottled water.  I expect that its true because MSNBC doesn't slip on basic checkable information like that.  His big point was that some hospital charged a patient $91 for 88 cents worth of salt and water.  OUTRAGEOUS!

But wait-a-minute...  Aren't there other costs in providing that saline solution?

I'm no doctor and not even related to the least grade of medical assistant, but I can immediately think of a lot of costs involved beyond the saline solution.

1.  Someone has to mix the salt and water precisely.
2.  The saline solution has to be put in (I assume) a sterile plastic bag.
3.  A sterile tube has to be attached to the bag.
4.  The saline bag has to be delivered to the patient's location.
5.  A needle has to be inserted into the patient.
6.  The saline bag has to be attached to the needle.
7.  I assume there is a drip-rate control that needs to be set.
8.  The saline drip has to be monitored at some times.
9.  The use of the saline drip has to be recorded for billing purposes.
10. The use has to be billed.
11. The billing usually has to go through several cycles (the whole bill to medicare, then the uncovered amount to the insurance company, and finally some small bill to the actual patient.
12.  Some percentage of patient bills will never be paid, so those get distributed into other hospital overhead costs.  I'm a little uncertain on this last one, as those costs may be included in the above costs.  But even then, some of those costs will be distributed into hospital services that were not involved in the provision of the saline solution, so they aren't in the cost of the saline (meaning they got added to overhead for ER, cancer ward, meals, etc).

I'm not mentioning this to complain about medical costs (though that is worthy of attention and challenge).  I'm not qualified to accurately set the cost of an appendectomy (an operation I had once) or a heart transplant (which I haven't).

But if I can easily see a dozen more costly parts of a procedure, couldn't MSNBC's fact-checkers and editors see the same? 

I have to accuse MSNBC and Chris Hayes of pulling a sleight-of-hand with the facts on this issue.  Rather FOX-like, in "convenient factlessness"...

Car Problems

There are worse problems than having a battery just not work.  Brakes could fail or a wheel fall off , for example.  Burt for minor things, turning the ignition switch with the key and hearing clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick is bad.  Especially when you have been saving up errands to match the grocery-shopping trip because you are out of fresh food.

I even had gotten up relatively early today to do the shopping and errands.

So when the batterry seemed dead, I checked for causes.  No door was slightly open, the glove compartment was closed, the headlights had not been left on; no cause I could find.  And it was a good quality battery from April 2012.  No cause for a problem.

Fortunately, I have 3 boat batteries around and they are still well-charged.  I jump-started the car with one.  It started right up.  I drove it around for 15 minutes assuming that would recharge the battery well, with the boat battery in the car in case of trouble.  It probably helped to have really good cables too.  Never scrimp on those.  Good ones will work when cheap ones don't.

To keep a long story short, I had no further trouble today.  But every time I stopped the car, I had to consider that there would be problems.  I stopped at 5 stores today and worried every time that the car wouldn't start again.  I backed into every parking space in case I needed a jump-start from someone.

I hate that kind of uncertainty!  But I guess I'll just recharge the boat battery and leave it in the car for a month until I'm confident the car battery just had "a bad day". 

I keep 4 small plastic tubs in the car.  One holds the jumping cables, one has a first-aid kit, one has a cranking flashlight and emergency equipment, one has odd tools (like a window-breaker, in case of submersion).  And the back pouches of the seats are filled with local, state, and national maps. Its good to be prepared.

Busy Day

I got the 6th Evil Squirrel today.  I thought there were 5, but I saw signs from a 6th and I caught it.

I feel sorry for the poor things.  I know they just want to eat and live.  Drowning them seems cruel (but takes only 20 seconds and they are mostly just confused)..  So I considered the options in their lives.  It's not like squirrels often die of old age:

1.  Grabbed by hawk talons for several minutes and then get ripped apart while still alive.
2.  Same with owls...
3.  Hit by cars and die of injuries slowly on the side of the road.
4.  Starve to death slowly.
5.  Freeze to death in very cold winters.
6.  Grabbed by dogs and shaken into oblivion after terrible bites.
7.  Poisoned or snap-trapped by liscenced people getting them out of attics.
8.  Pecked to death by crows.

There are probably others I can't think of but it doesn't really matter.  There is (was) this group of squirrels that destroyed most of my garden and I think I got the last one (the trap will remain set until no squirrels attack my vegetable plants).

After reducing (hopefully eliminating) the East Grove Gang who had, as a group, learned to attack gardens, I have had 12 heirloom tomatoes harvested ripe and there are 12 more getting there.  Last year, with the East Grove Gang undisturbed, I got 2 tomatoes the whole year. 

It is good to be at the top of the food chain.

On the gaming front, I had stayed away from Risk for a week.  But tonight I joined a game of 5 players, 2 outpointing me by WAY LOTS.  I won.  I was shocked because I don't generally do well in multiplayer games and especially I don't do well against VERY more experienced players.  But some games just go well.  I played carefully.  I played well.  I attacked when it was best to attack and I defended my borders well. 

And Oh my goodness, Ayla has been playin fetch with the old worn-out "softy-mouse" she loves so much.  She has brought it back to me a dozen times as I type.  Its SO old.  There is nothing of the nip in it and it is nothing but the original cloth body.  But she loves it so much.

I think I will just spend the next couple hours tossing it to her until she gets tired of it.  Ayla doesn't love many toys, mostly plastic milk rings.  But as long as she wants to grab softy-mouse, I will toss it to her.

It was a Good Day!

I Am So Lucky Sometimes

Unlucky at love and cards, I am pretty much lucky at most other things.  It balances out. 

Two weeks ago, I lost the nut that holds the sawblade on the tablesaw.   Its a special nut with reverse screw threads.  You can't buy it at the local hardware store.  I lost it somehow when taking off the stacked dado blades I used to cut slots in some boards.  I assumed the nut fell into the pile of sawdust, and I felt through it VERY carefully.  I brushed all the sawdust out of the bottom om the cabinet saw.  No nut.  So I sprinkled the sawdust out in the back yard. 

Obviously, I had set that special nut aside somewhere in the house.  I searched the basement for a week.  No luck.  I checked the pockets of all my clothes for the past week.  No luck.

I pulled the tablesaw forward and back and searched underneath.  No luck. 

That's "lucky"?  Yes it is.   Because I accumulate ""possibly useful things".  One of which is a Very Powerful Magnet.  I could possibly attach myself to the steel basement door with it.

So, as I had the tablesaw manufacturer site onscreen, I thought to make one more effort at finding the lost nut among the sprinkled sawdust.

I dragged the magnet along in the sawdust scatterred in the back yard.  And WHAT do you suppose  found on the SERIOUS magnet?  A nut!  It didn't seem to fit.  But it was a bit rusty, so I gave a good workover with a wirebrush.  My fingertips WILL heal. 

But a little oil after that and IT FIT!!!

My lost tablesaw reverse thread arbor nut!  Oh sweet baby of the tablesaw...  And oh sweet magnet of the "just TRY to pull it off the steel garage door where I keep you".  Thank you, thank you, thank you...

Can the Electrical Stuff Get Worse?

The old family fake Tiffany lamp needs support/hanging hardware only a specialist can provide. The new "brightest" kitchen fluorescent bulbs seem dim.  The newly installed "bottom of the stair" light is newly-detached  so that the upper one works properly again and there is no light at the bottom.

Now the hall circular fluorescent light has suddenly failed.  The online guidelines said to "replace the bulb".  Did that, no improvement.  Then it said "replace the starter".  Did that, and after a quarter hour struggling with getting it set into the connections, didn't help.

And seriously, after a quarter hour holding your hands up not even doing anything, see how you feel.   There is an old trick about betting someone they can't hold a feather at arm's length for 10 minutes.  The sucker thinks "feather", but the problem is the weight of the ARM, LOL!  My arms were exhausted just holding them straight up from the stepladder.

I DID finally get the damn starter installed eventually, and it had no effect.  The light lit at about 10% and flickered.

To temporarily replace the misfunctioning hallway light, I took a floorlamp and put a screw-in fluorescent bulb and set the floor lamp on a narrow table.  It's just me here, so I can live with that a week.  But I had to replace a regular bulb in the basement light from where I took the screw-in fluorescent one out.

The base of the bulb broke off.  So I had to turn off the circuit breaker to that circuit so I could use pliers to unscrew the broken base.  I couldn't read the circuit breaker labels without my glasses. So upstairs I went to find them.  Back downstairs I went.

Oh, its the #13 circuit which I now see is printed SIDEWAYS which is why I couldn't make any sense of it without my glasses.  So I go to get my pliers out of my stupid fancy tray tool cabinet.  Which is LOCKED because I had contractors in the house and my friend had to take legal action because HIS contractors stole some of the same fancy tools I have.

So where did I put the keys?  Because I don't have a regular place to put them because I almost never have to lock the stupid tool cabinet.  I stand around upstairs trying to find them and THERE they are on the hook where the pizza paddle lives.  Of course, where else would they be.  Well at least I found them.

So I look in the tool chest for the best thing to spread inside the broken bulb socket (remember that?) and discover that the best tool for the job was sitting on my workbench the whole time.  I slowly spread the tin snips out in the broken socket (after double-checking the power was off) and slowly remove the broken bulb base.

I replace the bulb with a new one.  Hurray, I'm back to where I was an hour earlier!  This is actually progress.  I've already made the several required mistakes, and fixed them!!!

The new bulb is "oh so gently" screwed in.  The circuit breaker is set back "ON", it works!  Hurray...

And I had the damn kitchen fixture to deal with.  The electrician was going to replace the ballast but asked if I had any new 4' fluorescent T-12 bulbs .  I did actually, plant-grow bulbs for my garden-seedling light stand.  They worked.  The kitchen looked HORRIBLE, but they did work.  So after the electricians left, I went to buy better tube bulbs.  I selected "daylight" because I wanted bright light in the kitchen.  I do a lot of food-prep, so I figured "daylight" was good.

They were not good.  "Daylight" bulbs are rather blaringly bluish.  The light is bright but funny inside.  SO, I went out and bought what the store chart said was right for "kitchens".  The lumens output is less, but the color is better.

My addition of a hinge to one end of the 4' light fixture is the smartest thing I've done all year.  I've had to get at the tube bulbs a half dozen times just in this month and trying to be on both sides of a 4' fixture at the same time as one person is a real struggle.  Even the electricians admired the idea.  I tried the new "warm white" bulbs and it was like I remembered the lighting had been!  I could even put the diffuser panel back in and the lighting was still as good when I tilted the fixture cover back up by the hinge and attached it at the other end.

So there are 2 working fixtures of 4 again.  As lame as that is, I feel like I had a major success today.  That's actually pretty pathetic. but sometimes 50% is good.

I'll get the other 50% done next week or the week after, after bringing the fake tiffany lmp to a repair shop 40 miles away, buying a new hallway lamp for the electricians to install, having them install the fake tiffany lamp in the top of the stairs and fishing wires through the walls and across the attic.

I dont EVEN want to imagine the problems they will discover.  But at least the last electrician specified the details of the wire fishing and attic support and wrote that the work WAS ALREADY PAID FOR BY THE QUOTE IN THE FIRST PAID BOTCHED JOB!

I may get out of this yet without the house burning down by bad electrical circuits.

25 years ago, when I moved in, I would have done this myself.  But I'm not crazy-confident-brave 36 years old anymore.  I've zapped myself too many times doing amateur electrical work.   I nearly killed myself twice, surviving only because I wasn't grounded.  I'm not touching electricity anymore.

Now I just hope I don't kill myself gardening somehow.

Electricians, Part 2

OK, an electrician (and helper) came out today at 11 am.  I demonstrated the problem (but of course, as dramatically as possible).  I have a split-foyer house, which means the front door is halfway up the house, a half set of stairs goes down the the basement and a half set of stairs goes up to the one main floor.  So it looks like a 2 story house outside but it is really a ranch house on a full basement that is mostly above ground.  I hope that makes some sense.

But that means that the light inside the front door is about 15" high and that there is a light switch at the top  in the middle at the door, and at the bottom at the basement.  I've never used the middle one because I enter the house through the garage attached to the basement and only use the top and bottom switches. 

So the first electrician decided to wire the new ceiling light to the switch at the basement end of the stairs.  I asked why not  just connect the new light directly to upper light but he said that wasn't really possible.  After he was done, it turned out that the upper switch wouldn't turn the lower light on "because of the wiring".  Grumble grumble...

After he left, I discovered that using the switches in order of descending the stairs made one light come on and the other off back and forth.  I emailed the company and said politely that this couldn't be normal or unfixable.

Enter today's electricians.  Now I will say from the start that they understood the problem immediately.  When they saw the one light turning on and the other turning off from the same flip of a switch, they cringed (it was their own company's previous work after all).  Even the electricians HELPER said that the "main switch" must be at the top of the stairs.  I mentioned that I had suggested the more direct solution was to fish a wire from the new light to the existing light up the walls and across that attic.

After opening all 3 light switches and testing the circuits head electrician said my suggestion to the previous electrician was the best way to do the job.  I didn't comment further.

But another matter was the "new" ceiling light I wanted installed at the top of the stairs.  Its a old fake tiffany lamp (Mom and her sisters fought over it thinking it was real from Gramma).  The first electrician refused to install it because it was missing support parts.  I thought I had "fixed" it well enough but the new electrician said it still wasn't to code and needed "canopy and ceiling plate" parts they don't have.  So it needed an antique lamp repair shop.  OK, I'll trust him on that and get that done.

So, because wiring the new lower stairs light to the upper light now would mean all the wiring work today and unwiring and rewiring it when the old "tiffany" lamp was repaired (at extra cost).I agreed to basiclly let them set the switch wiring bck to the previos settings (so the lower light was not connected).  That was how it was before the lower light was installed earlier this week, so it is back to normal.

When I get the "tiffany" lamp repaired for "to-code" conditions, there will be little charge since I already paid for the lower lamp installation and wiring.  Doing the wiring between the lamps will take them extra time, but they gave me a quote for that and will stick to it (and I've already paid for it).

But since they were there, I had them replace a motion-detector light way up over the front door (that the roofers messed up when they detached and re-attached it after doing their work AND they looked at my kitchen ceiling 4' fluorescent light fixture which bizzarely will not come on in the hottest part of Summer.  I've assumed attic heat is the cause.  Well, it only happens then. 

The first electrician said I needed to convert the existing T-12 ballast and tubes to T-8 because "they run cooler".  The 2nd electrician (who had recognized the first electrian's multiple failures) said "well, you probably need a new ballast, but do you have any new fluorescent tubes around?"  I did.  He replaced them and they worked.  I felt stupid. 

But its dim.  The 2nd electrician is an honest person.  He said, you know, you can buy a new one at Home Depot and have them install it for less than I can do this work.  I thanked him.

The second electrician and his helpers did good honest work, admitted where things had gone wrong before and repaired those parts at no cost (and detailed on the work order those things that should not be charged in the next visit).

I value that.  I found the company on Angie's List and selected them among 3 companies all rated "A" in all categories. OK, they had that first guy do badly, but they returned so quickly with a better person that I bet that first guy is already gone).  I found the roofer there and the replacement siding company too.  I have had nothing but great service from "A" rated house work companies on Angie's list.  Dentist and doctor too, BTW.  

I'm not here to promote Angie's List in any way other than my own personal satisfaction with the service, but it sure has been working for me.  Its possible the top ratings are not very different at "A" or "B" level, but I think it really weeds out the bad ones and that's good enough for me to stay subscribed.

And I still have other work to have done.  The asphalt driveway is 26 years old and falling apart.  I want a cement one.  Back to Angie's List...

Electricians

First, evil skwerl #5 passed this earthly life 2 days ago...  I THINK (and hope) it is the last.

Seeond, what on earth passes for an "electrician" these days?  I had a person from an A rated Angie's List service here today and it was like watching someone butcher a chicken with a machete. 

OK. it was a LITTLE complicated and I knew that going in.    So I contacted a top-rated company .  And to hell with the cost.  I like jobs done right. The stairway has a ceiling light way up at the top.  I wanted to replace it with a fake tiffany lamp I am sorry (but of course honored) to have inherited..  The stairs ceiling is the only place to put it so that relatives will see it but not bang their heads on it.  So basically, this fake Tiffany lamp is a matter of family pride I must endure.  I am not allowed to tell my older relatives it's fake.

Plus I decided it would be a good idea to add an old ceiling light at the bottom of the "damn it dark down there" stairs for safety and have it come on when the upper light was lit.  Two stairs, two lights, existing switches.  Logical.

The electrician who came out yesterday failed utterly.  I've done some electrical work in the basement, so I understand circuits in general.  I even know how light switches are connected to lights.  So when the electrician explained what he was going to do, I had my doubts , but he IS the professional from a top-rated company, right?

I told him I thought he needed to snake a wire through the walls to directly connect the upper light and the new light at the bottom.  I got one of those "who is the professional here" looks.  So, OK, do whatever works and I'll just stay out of the way.

I was right, he wasn't.  It's hell understanding how things work sometimes.  There are parts of the job I understand VERY well, but parts I don't.  There was NO WAY I was going to rebuild the wiring and support for the heavy lamp, and there was NO WAY I was going to snake wires through the walls.

But when he failed the 3 switch connections, I was resigned to the idea that I had to manage the switches carefully.  Until after he left and I discovered that one switch turned on only the upper light and then the other two would turn one OFF and the other ON!

What would YOU do?  I emailed the company and told them what was wrong.  I emailed because I wanted things in writing...  They are sending a more experienced electrician and a helper (to hold the damn lamp up in place while it s being properly wired, I assume) Friday.

Complaining works.  But I will wait and see the results.  If it all works, I may take pictures to show.

But damn, I'm aggravated...  And I haven't been in bed yet since 11 am Tuesday.  "Seriously annoyed" keeps me awake.

Evil Squirrels

I caught the 4th of maybe 5 squirrels who had learned to steal from the garden.  If there is a 5th, I'll get it in a week.  My tomatoes are just ripening.  I hope there is only 4.  I don't ENJOY this.

The Angelique Story

Angelique (what a name) begins as the child of an impoverished rural Baron.  She runs wild through the countryside, becoming quite confidant and independent.  Overhearing a poison plot against the young Louis the 14th, she steals a casket that will cause her trouble for a decade. 

She is married off to a scarred lame older man Jeffrey de Peyrac) who turns out to be brave, scientific, poetic, and loving.  Perhaps a last Renaissance man...  He mines gold, breeds mules, organizes intellectual parties, etc.  And he is based on a real person.

Shortly, his wealth threatens the young King, who arranges a fake trial and has his burned as a sorcerer. Angelique falls into poverty and discovers a local Parisian underworld leader is a former childhood friend (far under her former station, of course).  She sinks into the underworld of Paris, but of course rises up again after her childhood friend's gang is wiped out.

It sounds stupid, but it does go along well with the history of the times.

Angelique narrowly escapes death a few times.  Being around Angelique is almost as certain a death sentence as being a red shirt security guy on the original Star Trek.

When she escapes the underworld live, she does a grill-restaraunt makeover and recovers her fortune.  Alas, nothing in Angeliques life is ever settled.  Noblemen crash the place and burn it to the ground, killing her manager and a child.  But not until she recognizes most of them from her days at court.  She plans revenge!

That's when The Poet appears.  He lives in the underground too and writes the most scurrilous poems attacking Bad Guys!  Out of love for Angelique, he writes condemnatory poems of each of the noblemen, to be ended with the one (The King's Brother who actually killed the child), on the last day. 

He is of course, caught and hanged before that and Angelique is forced to turn over the last days accusatory poem in exchange for her life and some kingly business favors. 

Being around Angelique is usually fatal...  And If I had been around her I would have gotten the hell out of Paris fast!

But there is no escaping Angelique!  If you ever knew her, you are doomed.  Every person she meets dies.  Every friend, co-worker, and servant...  Basically, you might as well just throw your self into the Seine. 

I make light of it but death DOES hang around her neck like an albatross.

And that's just the first 3 books of 13!  The person around her that lives (and whom I admire) is a detective with a talented dog who actually just stays "a friend". 

Spoiler alert for the rest of the series as I know it (those darn 3 books not published in English)!!!  If you want to read the books, don't read further.

OK, Angelique marries her cousin a nobleman Field Marshall.  He gets killed in a battle.  From her new title though, she gets access to the Court.  There, she gambles at cards with a sad old Prince.  The wager becomes if Angelique wins the hand she gets his castle and if she loses, she will become his mistress (she wins of course).

This brings her to attention of Louis 14th.  After some danger, she ends up in his personal chambers.  He knows who she really is.  He remembers her from Jeffrey de Peyrac's court, from her days as the Red Mask Tavern that was the site of the child murder, and as Field Marshall-General du Plessis's wife.

In a wonderful scene, the King talks about his younger days trying to fight for his Kingshipe.  Many long years of living as a paesent stoking fires to stay warm at night.  As he stokes the fire in his private room's fireplace.  He explains that he had to put down noblemen with greater riches and influence than he had.  He explains that he needs a queen to match his boundless ambition for France to rise again.  He needs Angelique.

Quite frankly, in a moment of both hope, tenderness, and utter stupidity, he gives Angelique the official reports of Jeffrey de Peyrac's "death".  Jeffrey slipped over the side of the boat bringing him to burning site.  The  report says the death was certain.  Angelique says to the King "He Lives".  She leaves the King  to search for Jeffrey.

OK, after that, she foments rebellion in Southern France loses, gets raped and with child, ends up a captive of an Arab Sultan, escapes with the help of an Englishman, hides among Parisian Houganots and helps them escape onto a pirate ship.

Guess who's the captain of the pirate ship?

Jeffrey.  He survived the escape into the Seine, made his way to Arabia through his science contacts, and he has been wreaking vengence on French ships while his spies tracked Angelique!

She doesn't recognize him at first because the Arab doctors has rebroken then repaired his crippled leg, gebnerally fixed his lifelong facial scars (yeah right), but he wears a mask anyway, and even partially repaired the damaged vocal chords.

Bad things happen on ship.  The Hugonauts mutiny just as a terrible storm makes them help the ship's crew to brace the mast.  All seems good.  No, nothing is ever calm in Angeliques life.  Just as she is loving Jeffrey again, she learns that he had kidnapped her sons (remember them?) and not told her. 

It was a test he said, to see if she cared what happened to them.  Never mind that she went nuts and did crazy things saving them many times.  She hadn't asked HIM about them fast enough after she learned who he was.  I think she faints from shock.

Anyway, they eventually make up and go to Canada.  It gets weirder after that.  They are happy, then that Englishman who carried her out of Arabia shows up, and some Jesuit and some Demon woman sent to destroy her. 

But all turns out OK.  Every man in Angeliques life eventually succumbs to Jeffrey's leadership and admirable skills. 

But there are Indians AND the King of France who has never forgiven Angelique for rejecting him (or forgotten Jeffrey as being a threat).  And who wants control of Canada.

Two bad books made fast, the Englishman, the leader of the Hugonauts, and an Indian leader make up to Jeffrey and Angelique, and Jeffrey kills a mysigonist (but sturdy) Canadian Frenchman in a snowy swordfight.

All is wonderful again, but there is still an angry King of France and I won't bother you with the rest of it because the last couple books got really stupid.  It happens in series.  I'll just say that at the end of one of the last books, one of Angeliques son's leads his pet wolverine into the forest after the demon woman and he returns shining in Arthurian brightness.

In spite of all that, it's worth reading the series.  I've been a bit sarcastic because historical fiction/romance novels are not my usual fare.  But I liked this one.

I mentioned all of this because there is FINALLY (after 45 years) an English-dubbed version of a 1960s French movie series about Angelique available.  I am enjoying it thoroughly.

You should give it a try.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013XZ6MU/ref=pe_385040_30332190_pe_175190_21431760_M3T1_ST1_dp_1

I get nothing from this recommendation...

Angelique

I grew up reading mostly science and science fiction.  I was never into fairy tales (according to my mother's memories (even as a child).  By the time I was 11 or 12, I had exhausted the local library's collection of "young adult" science fiction and was allowed to take out adult books.  In 10th grade, I was so far beyond the usual modern novels (Dickens bored me to death) being discussed, and the lame weekly vocabulary tests )it was the 60's), that I was allowed to sit in the back of the room and just read anything in the teachers bookshelf as long as I produced a book report weekly.

Forward to 20.  I was majoring in Political Science, thinking of a law degree, and thinking a political future.  New scince fiction being few at the time, I happened upon something called "Historical Fiction" set in France at the time of Louis The Sun King (and my minor degree was history).  I asked an employee about it and he explained that it was actual history told from the point of view of a minor or even "symbolic" person alive at the time.  And he said there was "Historical Romances" that combined that with history (like Gone With The Wind.  But he said this particular book was (generally) accurate history and some exciting romance.  And had read it and was impressed.

Ok, I needed something to read other than how to construct political polls and the histories of English Kings...

I fell in love with Angelique, and who wouldn't?  From being the daughter of a destitute minor Baron in rural southern France, to the heights of the King's court, to abject poverty among the knaves of Paris, to a new rise as a commercial restaranteur, to married nobility again, a new fall, and a rise again in Canada with her first love, and other challenges, I read each book time and time again.

And then it all seemed to end.  I understand there are 3 more books not translated into English.  I await those.

But a week ago, I found a DVD version of the first few books made in French and overdubbed in English.  The reviews were good, but I know the story well enough, I could probably follow it in French.

The dubbing is so good I can't even notice it.  The DVD movie version doesn't follow the books perfectly, but I know the missing parts and errors well enough that I don't mind that much.

I watched Part 1 of 3 two nights ago, Part 2 last night, and was enraptured.  Tonight I will watch Part 3 of 3.  Sadly, that will be only half of the books I've read of the series and I haven't even read the last 3 books (available in French only). 

Someone should translate the last books into English.  And someone should make 2 movies to cover the last 6 (?) books.

And someone should make decent movies of the Jean Auel series of books about Ayla, the equally wonderful heroine I discovered after the Angelique books stopped.  Aren't there enough Spiderman and X-Men movies now (of which I also admire) to suggest heroines from the past?

The Shower Leak Grows

In my house, there is a main bathroom, a showerstall bath off the main bedroom, and a "powder room" in the basement (that I installed) for convenience.  I never used the shower stall off the bedroom.  Actually, the shower stall was so useless to me that I set plastic liner in it and kept a painted turtle there for several years.  When you live alone, you can do weird stuff.

The turtle finally died (not from lack of good food) and I cleared the shower stall.  For whatever reasons, the drain leaked after that and I didn't bother with it for 15 years.   While having some general house renovations done. I had them fix the stall drain.

Several years ago, I discovered  that the shower pipes were leaking, so I put a repair on the "To DO; list.  Forward 5 years...

Having joined Angie's List to get top contractors for other reasons, I decided to have someone fix the shower stall leak.  Um, I didn't think to see if the shower stall pipes were still leaking.  Once leaking, always leaking, right?

So on the hour before the plumbers were to show up, I turned on the shower so they could see where the leak was.

No leak...

But when I flushed the toilet, water fell into the basement.  Talk about serendipidy!  It took a good 30 minutes for the 2 plumber guys and I to figure out where the water was coming from.  The water was leaking out around the air vent stack, not a water supply pipe. So:

1. There was a leak around the new roof flashing.
2.  The shower stall was leaking at the base where the tiles meet the fiberglass shower stall.
3.  There was a leak around a toilet or sink pipe.
4.  The toilet had a crack.
5.  The wax ring around the bottom of the toilet had dried and cracked.

The plumbers went for #1 because that wouldn't be their problem to fix.  And #2 for the same reason.  Now think about that.  They DIDN'T want a problem they could fix...  Don't they make money by solving problems?

So we all went into the basement to identify all the pipes.  OK, granted that I know the positions of the "equipment" upstairs, they couldn't figure out which pipes went to where.  Its understandable.  My builder's guys did some really weird stuff in the house, and I didn't know because I lived 60 miles away and only visited the construction site every 2 weeks.  And what would I know anyway?  I'd never seen a house being built.

It was #5 that was the problem.  On the VERY day before the plumbers came, the wax ring under the toilet had cracked and a gallon of water came out each time it was flushed.

It wasn't what they had been called to fix, but it was what was needed.  Sometimes, you just get lucky!  I'm not used to that kind of luck, but I'll take it when it comes...

In the next few days, I have contractors coming to look at replacing the crumbling 26 year old asphalt driveway and the 20 year old deck that I am beginning to think I will fall through.  And an electrician to hang a 17 pound fake Tiffany lamp over the stairs, add a lower stair lamp fixture, replace 2 smoke detectors, and fix a basement electric plug I can't make work. 

And THEN get someone out here to remove a ridge in the back yard that has aggravated me for 20 years (it was 5 years before I even really knew it was there because it was covered with thorny locust scrub trees that I spent 3 years killing).

So much stuff to catch up on, but this is the year I will do it.

Sort Of Missing Relative

First, just let me say there is a happy outcome; I'm not drama-dredging here. 

But I have an elderly widowed Aunt who never had children and I never heard of any family on the husband's side.  I'm not at my best on the telephone with social talk, so I send homemade cards and the occasional letter.  I never expected replies because she is quite elderly.

So when I wanted to write a new letter to her about my Dad moving to an assisted-living facility, I checked with a family member to see if she already knew about that.  No need to go into great detail about Dad if she already knew, right?

Imagine my shock to be told "Oh I called and the phone was disconnected and she didnt reply to any letters.  She seems to have disappeared a couple of years ago."

What???  I had visions of her lonely and abandoned in some awful nursing home, or even a virtual prisoner in her own home by some dominating caretaker or housemate (I have a vivid imagination, and there HAVE been horrible things in the news).  And who would want to just say "Oh everything is probably fine" and then discover it was not later.

I live hundreds of miles away, and I didn't really know any relative to call (actually, there was one relative I could have called, but I was all upset.

So I googled her address and found a detective agency in the town.  I'm NOT kidding.  They do exist and not just for getting sneaky pictures of people having affairs etc.  I explained that I just wanted to know where she was and how to contact her; no crimes or big inheritances involved, just "out of touch for 2 years and I wanted to make sure she was OK".

They assured me that "they do nice stuff too" and estimated it would take an initial 3 hours work (with a prepayment).  I agreed.  After I hung up the phone, I felt a bit like a sucker.  Sure, they would use up the 3 hours and then need another 3 hours and again and again.

I am happy to say I was wrong.  They visited her listed address, got the name of a relative, who got them to an assisted-living facility.  It turns out that my aunt stopped wearing her medical alert button, fell and broke her hip and laid on the floor for 10 hours until someone found her.

I received an email from the detective agency and a call from one of her nephews explaining the past several years and her "disappearence" (from my POV).  It was an awkward conversation.  I grew up in New England, but I could hardly understand a word he said, so I had to keep asking for repeats (and even spellings a few times).

It turns out that there are numerous family on her deceased husbands side that I never knew about (well they didn't know I existed either) and are close to her (geographically and socially).  They brought her to various assisted-living facilities until she liked one and she is there, healthy and happy (for her age). 

So I am relieved.  I did "The Right Thing" by checking on her.

The nephew says OUR aunt probably doesn't know about my Dad going into assisted living, and MIGHT not even know her sister (my Mom) died in 2010.  So I will write about all that.  And writing to her about Dad was what started all of this.

Now lets see about how I am related to the nephew who called me.  I'm terrible at that stuff.  Beyond immediate cousins, I give up.  My aunt is a sister of my mother.  My aunt was married.  The nephew of my aunt is the son of the sister of my aunt's deceased husband.  So from me, it goes to my mother, to her sister, to HER husband to HIS sister to HER son.  So is that like second cousins, first cousins twice removed, or what?

I am curious but confused.

The important thing is that my aunt is "OK" and getting good care and attention.  And while it wasn't necessary to my aunt's health and well-being I DID something to make sure about it.

I will sleep better tonight

Stream Of Semi-Conciousness

You shouldn't have to take a shower at 7:30 AM after being up all night when you are retired.

It started with playing Risk online all night.  Then, at dawn, I decided I was tired of having people drop by to see if I was selling the boat or the trailer, so I decided to move them both into the backyard (inside the fence) out of sight.

Easier said than done!  Its really hard for one person to get the car's trailer hitch and the boat or hauling trailer hitch lined up.  Both are TOO DAMN HEAVY to lift and move around.

So I spent a good (bad?) quarter hour getting the boat attached to the car.  Then drove it into the backyard.  THEN spent another quarter hour trying to get it backed into the spot I had in mind.  Then the trailer support pipe was too low to put a cinder block under so I had to find scrap wood wide enough to support the weight on the ground.  THEN unhitched the boat trailer from the car (breathing fumes from the car because I didn't want to keep turning it on and off).

Then I repeated the whole joyful process with the hauling trailer, except that I can't SEE the trailer as I back it into position unless I prop myself up on the seat and that causes cramps in my side muscles which are REALLY painful and DAMN I hate that.

And IT was too low to put a cinder block under the thing that raises and lowers the support, the name of which escapes me at the moment, so I needed MORE boards to keep that pipe from pushing into the ground.

And the whole process took 2 hours when I REALLY wanted to be in bed asleep but I sure hope my neighbors will STOP asking me if they are for sale...  Out of sight, out of mind, I hope.

And NO, I'm not "that guy" in the neighborhood with the dead car up on cinderblocks, (the cinderblocks should be painted a matching house color; just kidding, LOL)!  I'm just the guy with the organic well-mowed and landscaped yard who doesn't happen to use his boat or half-rebuilt trailer very often... So I'll rebuild the trailer in the back yard and leave it there until I use it again.  I prefer to do my work out of sight anyway.  I should have moved the boat and the trailer into the backyard months ago.

HMMPHHH!

Now it's 8 am and I'm trying to decide whether to just stay up today and get some other work done in the yard or go to bed and get up at 4 pm and blow the whole day!  If I stay up, I'll kind of collapse around 8 pm  and wake up at 4 AM, so I'm pretty much screwed up either way today.

I think I'll play with the cats for a while then clean house until lunchtime.  After that it's a roll of the dice... 

One Time too Many

Hairy Houdini Squirrel went for the lushious peanut butter bait one too many times this morning.

And this time I did not handle the cage wrong, nor did I place him into the waters in trashcan of water in a way that allowed an escape.

I searched the house yesterdy and found a large plastic container larger than the live cage.  I filled it with water last night.  Hairy Houdini Squirrel went in horizontally that didn't release the doors and he didn't make an escape.

It was quick.  5 seconds of confusion, one blurp, and gone.

I have set the cage-trap up again, because my heirloom tomatoes are ripening, but I am VERY much hoping Hairy Houdini was the last of the squirrels who had learned to raid the garden.

I am designing a total 1" chicken wire garden enclosure for next year that will keep all natural animals around the yard out.   I do not wish to kill anything again.

But I HAVE learned how to set a live cage on the top on a fence that doesn't fail.  I will post tomorrow about that for people that want to know for their own reasons.  You don't have to read it.

Some Projects Are Hell, Part 2

I mentioned explaining the obvious solution to my problem with the light fixture yesterday.  Here it is...

Had I seen the insides of the light fixture after the wooden frame was off, things would have been simpler.  I sort of casually assumed that the wooden light frame was equally fitted to the light fixture at both ends.  So I just chose the end least visible to attach the hinge.  Had I chosen the other end, things would have gone as planned. 

As it turned out, the wooden frame was attached tight to the light fixture at the other (most visible) end, meaning that when I attached the hinge to the opposite end, there was no freedom of movement.  What I unknowingly did was pull the end of the wood frame tightly against the opposite end.  When I installed the hinge and then pulled the opposite end of the frame down (with some effort), I couldn't push it back up. The wooden frame hit the metal of the light fixture from flex.  Even levering the wood frame with a screwdriver could not overcome the problem.

Had I realized at the time that loosening the screw at the hinge end would have given me 1/4" clearance, I could have saved myself an hour of frustration and adjustments that had no effect. 

Well, at least I know now!

The hard but sad rule of DIY home projects is that you could always do them better the 2nd time but seldom ever need to.  That's where professionals get the edge; they made the same mistake the first time but have learned and done the same thing right afterwards a few dozen or hundred times.

But I'm still going to DIY it when possible...  LOL!

Some Projects Are Hell!

This is a long story about what OUGHT to have been a simple project..

It seemed like such a simple idea.

I had a 4' fluorescent kitchen light installed 15 years ago.  It replaced the incandescent 2 bulb light originally installed and provides a lot more light  It has a nice wood frame and a diffuser panel.  Thoroughly attractive. 

But in the heat of July and August, it doesn't want to come on.  Multiple flippings of the light switch tend to get it on eventually at first, but on the very hottest days, it just won't.  Something about the ballast getting hot from the hot atc above it.  Adding more insulation didn't solve the problem (nor did removing it).

So, for years, I have removed the frame cover in mid July to late August and taken out the diffuser panel.  That apparently let enough cool house air to let it come on. 

2 years ago, I drilled ten 2" holes along the sides of the frame to let cool house air in (5 each on the 2 sides).  That only helped a little.  Removing the wood frame to take out the diffuser panel is a real pain. 

Being just me here, I had to unscrew one end of the wood frame from the actual lamp fixture and then stick a nail in the screw-hole to keep that end in place temporarily.  Then I had to walk across 3 chairs to the other end and remove THAT screw.  Then I had to hold the whole frame up in the center to pull out the opposite nail.  Then I could lower the wood frame down and remove the diffuser panel.  Removing the diffuser panel DOES let enough cool house air DOES allow the light to come on.  I should mention that I live in constant house air 72F year round.

But that sure makes the kitchen ungodly bright for July and August.  I could actually live with that, but it seems to annoy visitors.  So that's why I tried drilling the 2" hoes in the sides.  I was SURE that would keep it cool enough to come on (and it almost looks like a design element) but that didn't work.

Replacing the diffuser on September 1st (the usual date for attic cooling) was the hardest part.  Its one thing to hold up the wood frame in the center with one hand and pull OUT a nail and each end of the frame in July.  It's an entirely different effort to replace the screws that hold the wooden frame in place while holding the 4" frame against the ceiling.  Lets just say there are eventually Really Bad Words and eventual frustration-screaming involved.  It DOES get done, but I am emotionally and even physically exhausted.

So this year, I decided there HAD to be a better way.  I stared at the wood frame several times and decided that I needed a hinge on one end of the wood frame.  I am "sort of competent" at most projects (I always have to make surprise adjustments to my plans), but my talent is being "creative".  Eventually, things work.

The hinges I had wouldn't work.  Most hinges have large round areas at the corner and there was no space for that.  I found "piano hinges". 
 
They fit into tight corners.  So far, so good.  I marked the holes of the 12" long piano hinge I bought onto the wooden frame, drilled holes for the enclosed screws and set in the screws.  Then I marked the spots for holes into the ceiling for toggle bolts.

Toggle bolts

are weird things that have wings that fold down to go through a hole through thin material like a drywall ceiling and then open by springs.  When you tighten them, the opened wings come down flush with the drywall top.  It's as if you had a large fender washer above the drywall to tighten against.  So after I attached one part of the piano hinge  to the wood frame, I went to drill holes for the toggle bolts through the ceiling drywall.

No go!!!  The toggle bolts were 3 inches long (It takes some length to fold the toggle wings down enough to get them THROUGH the 3/4" drywall to open up above, and the hinge would not allow that angle, being attached to the wood frame.

If this is hard to follow, just trust me on the statements and continue...

So I had to remove the screws holding the piano hinge to the wood light frame.  But if I did THAT, it would fall down.  And guess what I discovered I had overlooked?  There was the screw holding the wood frame to the actual light fixture.  And the hinge covered it!  So I had to remove the entire hinge anyway.  So I had to figure a way to hold the wood frame in place while the screw was removed. 

I decided that I could take 2 boards and clamp them both so that one was set on the floor and the other was pushing the frame up and the top.  But that was requiring 3 hands and I was short one.  Then I noticed an "expander bar sitting in the corner of the basement.  Thats a small pipe inside a larger pipe and so can pull the smaller one out and fix it in place (mechansms vary).  Setting a metal can on the floor below the wood light frame, the expander bar reached the wood frame and held it in place. 

Great.  So I marked the spot on the ceiling where the toggle bolts had to go and removed the hinge and drilled the holes.  Then I put the toggle bolts through the hinge tighten them and put the screws on the other half of the hinge back into the wooden light frame.  I was DONE!

No. I wasn't...  I still had to put the other end of the wood frame back in place and get the screw in.  I thought that would be simple.  The far end was hinged, just lift the other end into place and replace the screw.  Nope.  The wood frame hit the lightfixture too short and would not go over it to the ceiling.

I should have taken pictures, but quite frankly, I was not in the mood for that.

I eventually solved the problem by putting longer screws in the hinge end and leaving them 1/4" loose (to give some sliding room) and the whole wooden cover minus the diffuser fit well enough to attach again firmly. 

But that's why I say I have the worst luck with what SHOULD be simple projects sometimes.  I should be the Murphys Law (anything that CAN go wrong Will go wrong) poster boy...  What SHOULD logically have taken 20 minutes took 3 hours!  Worse, when I could see inside the wooden light frame, I saw the solution will simple, but was not observable until the effort was finished.  I will explain about that tomorrow...

On the other hand, the light came right ON after I gave in 10 minutes to cool down with  the house air.  I turned it off and back on several times just for the pleasure of seeing my efforts work.

There are some things some people are naturally talented at.  There are  somethings some people will NEVER figure out how to do.  And then there are SOME of us who are just unnaturally persistent and accomplish things we are not talented at anyway.  LOL!