Day After Yesterday

Yesterday I drove the vehicle to work, because I had a class to go to, and just because!

I noticed the mileage was 2,018 at one point (rather near Montgomery Field, if it's any of your business!), so I thinking I must have turned over 2,000 miles on the odometer some time on Tuesday (Grocery Day) when I drove to work. Since I've had the vehicle about a year, and the starting mileage was 500 (yah, I KNOW!), that means I've driven around 1,500 miles in a year.

Since (According to my inprecise figures) I've ridden 2,098 miles on both bikes total) in 2006, that means, well, I don't know what it means.

And I've ridden 2,633 miles in the last year.

So I guess my bike mileage is sorta almost total the vehicle mileage.

My daughter says I'm ranting too much.

I saw a very pretty sunset Thursday night. And it was very pleasant outside. I do not usually go out at night, for various reason, plus, I live in a sort of a hole, so I don't see sunsets often. Sunrise, I see nearly every morning!

One of my favorite television show that never made it, was a short-lived series titled "United States", starring Beau Bridges. My favorite episode was "Sometimes".

------------------------------------------------------------ (to lazy to remember the html...)

Sometimes when I am riding the bike...

"I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jims in this town
And all the politicians making crazy sounds
And everybody putting everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds"
---Lou Reed

Ham Radio Humour

I was looking for the text of a joke I heard (Two antennas got married...), found it on the AC6V Amateur Radio Humor page.

My favorite funny line:

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history -- with the possible exceptions of tequila or a borrowed Vibroplex key." --K0HB

A fairly narrow niche in the humor field, but not as narrow as Humor For Library Employees...

The Drama Dept. is putting on The Pajama Game at work this year. I remembered hearing something on the radio this weekend about a protest in Saudia Arabia about a production of said play. I wanted to share this with the Drama Dept. Head. I spent an hour looking up Public Radio sites and stories. Turned out it was on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, on the Bluff The Listener segment, presented by Moe Rocca. And that would be one of the bluffs. So I so vividly remembered a bluff story, but not the source.

Typical!

Mail Crude

I would consider it an acceptable proof of a divine prescence if every purvayor of mail order spammer and marginal charity would drop dead at the same time. Horribly, horribly, dead.

Also, why are the SO MANY organizations dedicated to the welfare of pets? How many "Save The Felines" organizations can our society support?

Warm Enough

It was rather sunny this morning, AND I slept in till eight, so I didn't go for a bike ride. Whoops, wrong blog!

I added the QuitMeter to the top of the blog, let us see how it works there.

I pulled ivy from around the stupid palm tree this afternoon. I also water the tomato, and also the tiny compost pile. I wish a tornado would come and take the stupid palm tree away. It stopped being an amusing tree many years ago.

I have been musing on the meaning of friendship, and levels of friendship. Someday I might write about it.

Watt hertz?

For some reason thought I might enjoy watching "Men In Trees" on television. The catchy title, I guess. I almost spit up when the innkeeper said he had a 10 megaHertz radio station. So, he has a shortwave broadcasting station? Ok, I guess. Really aren't too many of those in the United States, around 27 by my cruddy interweb count. I'm thinking, NOT!

Maybe he meant the station's power? Ten megawatts? That's 10 million watts. The highest power station I could find on the internets was 2.5 million watts. A typical high power station might be 500,000 watts. KCBQ in San Diego was a high power AM broacaster, back in the day, with a daytime power of the legal limit of 50,000 watts.

So a lame misteak starts the turn off from the show, for me. I guess it's back to the computer.

And here I am!

LATER: Stupid me! I plum forgot radio station WWV is on 10 mHz, with 10,000 watts of time-station goodness! I've GOT a QSL card from them, what the heck was I thinking? There is NO WAY he would have a station on that frequency. So, it is indeed just another stupid TV writer boo-boo. And this is a rant!

Plugged In

The telephone guy came out to our work site today to see why the phone wasn't working in our tiny storage room. It used to. Eventually he figured out that the computer guy that had been out the other day had disconnected the phone in the network cabinet when he was tidying things up and replacing cables. While he was working on the phone I noticed Horizon stopped working, but I thought it was just because I had a big data thing going on. Then the internet stopped working. Then the patrons starting complaing that the internet wasn't working on the Macs. I told the phone guy, but he said he didn't do anything to the network. Well, he showed me what he did to get the phone working, then he had to go. I went over to the main office to see if they were up, and they weren't having any problems. I told the Data Tech. (Steph.) what the deal was, so she came right over. She checked the routers, checked to see if we had rebooted, then called *T*h*e* *H*e*l*p* *D*e*s*k*. They couldn't think of anything, so a Service Request was filed. I suggested I show Steph. what the phone guy had done, in case I wasn't there when the repair guy came. We looked in the cabinet, checked the power connections. Everything was plugged in (remember this point). Steph. noticed three power cords that were plugged in the outlets, but not connected to anything. I remarked those must have been from the routers that the network guy had changed out the other day, he must have forgotten to pull the plugs, as it were. It's a very messy cabinet. I noted one of the routers had no blinkies, looked in back, saw its power cable was not plugged in, and was rather short. It looked like the network guy had carefully taken up the slack with a velco wrap, but took up too much slack, so when the phone guy opened the cabinet the power plug popped out, but the phone guy didn't notice it!

Paragraph.

So then we went out to check the computers. No joy. Went back to the cabinet. Noticed that the blickie-box for the Optical cable/interchange whatever was unlit. Checked the back, yah, the power cable is unplugged and way too short. Fixed it. Now we got power, and eventually we got network.

Steph. cancels work order. I finish fixing my data screwups.

Later I got an e-mail from Vick. saying she was going to e-mail us that Horizon had gone down, but by the time she got teh e-mail written it was back up again.

Foggy

It was pretty foggy this morning. I drove the truck because I had to run errands in the afternoon, like buy cigarettes and groceries (Importance in that order...). I had my headlights on, but then I usually do when I drive to work because it (and me) is usually dim.

I want people to see me.

I don't understand those people who drive with their "parking" lights on.

In the fog.

It's like, oh yah, your're twenty feet away, I can see your lights now.

Morons.

What are they thinking? They're gonna save a penny's worth of gas not having their headlights on?

Then there are the people with NO lighting what-so-ever!

Guess what, people, if I'm on the bike I CAN'T SEE YOU in my rearview mirror in the dim predawn. If you don't want me in your lap, turn on your headlights!

Yes, yes, I do a mirror check then and then a head turn. But if it doesn't attract my attention in the mirror I'm less likely to "see" it when I turn my head. The head turn is more to see "where" a car is, and to judge our closing speed, as it were, than to see if anything is there. Sort of a double check.

In other words, my vision sucks, so turn on your headlights!

**************************

In a "lighter" mood, I noticed the moon out today. I supposed I've seen it out during the day many times in my half-century (I REALLY must look up the proper use of the hyphen!), but it struck me today as a new and wonderful thing. I pointed it out to several kids and adults, and we were amazed.

And TODAY I didn't bring the camera!

Smooking

Had a dream last night, I dreamt I had a cigarette.