Category: FYI

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Benign Neglect Gardening

Well, not really. More of a “lazy-faire” *heh* approach to lawn care.

For some few years now, I’ve let about 1/3 of the back yard go more or less natural. Oh, a large section gets string trimmed to whack down any grass and weeds sticking above the “yard vine” I’ve been trying to encourage to spread (it’s working! :-)), and the “possum grape” vines sometimes threaten to choke things out (not a bad thing, since I almost always have some to pull down, cut back and use to make some fine charcoal out of the woody remains :-)), but one particular joy has been “The Boys’ corder.”

Before The Boys (Son&Heir’s dogs) ran off to dog heaven (RIP, guys!), I really encouraged the grape vine to grow over the fencing in the SW corner of the yard. Yeh, it provided a visual shield from the view of a neighbor’s large storage shed, but it also provided some great shade for The Boys in the dog days of summer. After they were gone, I just continued weed whacking that corner to cut down grass and weeds but took moderate care to NOT cut down anything that looked interesting like. . .

hollyhock
Not our back yard. A pic of our hollyhock may come soon.

Been keeping an eye on our volunteer hollyhock for a couple of years now. It finally bloomed just recently.

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And Not a Hint of Trouble During the “Bank Fails” of a Couple of Years Ago

One really nice thing about banking locally (no, REALLY locally) is the VERY personal service. Fraud alert call on a debit card? (Happened today.) Couple of minutes on the phone, fraudulent charges handled and card redlined. That’s pretty normal. In person: immediate service, two signatures. Now, fraudulent charges not only handled but new card and all, in almost no time. It really does help to know and be known face to face (and it doesn’t hurt to have the head teller as a next door neighbor :-)).

We deliberately took a percent and three quarters hit on our mortgage a couple of decades ago, because it meant going with our local bank. Got cookies and such from folks there when we paid it off early. Yeh, yeh, not a big deal, but it was a nice personal touch, and over the short time we carried a loan with the folks there, we had many times to be glad we had a direct line to the folks who “owned” our home with us.

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We Are All “Ham Sandwiches”

You’re familiar with the old saw that a prosecutor (persecutor, more like nowadays) can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if he wants. Yeh, law enfarcement really is about that bad.

More than a few years ago, a client (who shortly thereafter moved with his family to an undisclosed rural, off-the-grid location–really) warned me to be careful what I said in phone calls, because the feds were listening in. I didn’t dispute his warning, because it didn’t matter. No matter how innocent one’s actions or speech may be, there are so many laws and regulations on the books now, that we are all “ham sandwiches”–open to be indicted for “crimes” thought up by our overlords any time they wish to have our blood.

Yeh, the “feddle gummint” has you by the short and curlies any time it wants to hang you. So? All one can do is live as best one can, as morally and ethically as possible, and let the chips fall where they may. *meh* Oh death, where is thy sting and all that.

Hell awaits law enFARCEment and bureaucraps who abuse their power. I wish them the joy of their final destination.

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Lil (Very Minor) Techie Pleasure

There are a (very) few TV shows I really enjoy that are sometimes just not all that easy to fit into a viewing schedule. Fewer still are shows that fit that category AND are enjoyed equally by my Wonder Woman. Sure, we could have purchased (or “rented” *gag* from our cable provider) some sort of DVR or found some other sort of specialty device to serve as a means of schedule-shifting, but why, since spare computers abound here at TWC Central?

So, yeh, the Windows Media Center box I’ve mentioned here before several times.

But still, it’s a source of pleasure to use the thing, connected to a nice enough external sound system (thanks, Josh!) and our TV to view what we want, when we want.

Right now? One of our mutual favs: Sherlock, via Amazon Prime Instant Videos. The series is a really good adaptation, The irritations experienced in plot changes in stories cited aside ;-), of Conan Doyle’s tales. Sometimes, the little surprises (like musical choices) are sweet additions, too.

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Friday Night Movies: No and Yes

Wht can I say? Amazon Prime Instant Video. Browser loaded on Windows Media Center computer. Two movies. One released last year, the other in 2010.

Last year’s Hollyweird attempt to make a Stephanie Plum movie, “One for the Money,” from the Janet Evanovich book of the same name, was. . . not good. The scriptwriters, producers and director worked very hard to get just about everything wrong. The book was (sometimes annoyingly) charming and enjoyable fluff with bits of spiciness strewn throughout. The movie was just mostly annoying and a bit dull. *sigh* Debbie Reynolds cast as Grandma Mazur is a prime example of the kinds of poor choices made in producing the thing.

So, both thumbs down.

Then, the 2010 French film (yeh, yeh, subtitled for those who really need it–and I did myself when the sound was really bad), “La fée” (The Fairy). It was surprisingly good. Actually, it was pretty darned wonderful. Exceedingly strange, but still very, very entertaining. The sparse dialog and spare acting from the leads was very effective given the plot. The dance sequences? Just about perfect for the absurd story. The rooftop choreography? Sooo good. Loved it. Three thumbs up. And SPOILER: Continue reading “Friday Night Movies: No and Yes”

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Kindle Fire Usability Fun

I’ve made no secret of the fact that my first gen Kindle Fire is just fine and dandy for the uses I have for it. One thing that did stand out, though, as a usability PITA from the beginning was the onscreen keyboard. For typing, not much fun. So, one of the first things I did was to locate some conductive foam in my stash of junk, urm, parts and equipment and make some styli. They worked and were a help, making “typing” on the Fire almost Good Enough, and easily OK for typing brief notes in books.

But actually buying a stylus? Fuggedaboutit. All of ’em I found on the web were too much money, once I’d made some from castoff junk, urm, parts and equipment for essentially nothing.

Page forward to today when I was standing at the checkout at our local “fell off the back of a truck” store and saw mini-styli (with handy lil 2.5mm/3.5mm plugin tethers) for a buck apiece. Since my home made styli have long since become well-worn, I picked up a couple. They work quite well, but “mini-styli” means using something about the size of a pencil nub, so. . .

At the same “fell off the back of a truck” I buy a particular ball point pen that has a Parker-compatible refill. A buck apiece. Cheap and useful, since I have more than a few Parker (and Parker compatible) ballpoint pens. While the barrels of these cheapies are fairly nice bamboo tubes, I junk the barrels and keep the refills handy. (Where “junk the barrels” means “put ’em in my stash of someday useful stuff” *heh*).

Do you see a convergence coming up here? Right. I just mated one of the mini-styli to one of those spare bamboo tubes (with a handy pocket clip already installed!) and have a pen-sized stylus that works a charm and even clips nicely to the leather case my Fire regularly occupies.

The smaller surface contact area of a stylus really makes a difference when using the onscreen keyboard, and the more normal pen size of the bamboo barreled (with the conductive part protruding for index finger contact) stylus is just right.

Rabbit trail: it’s also a wee tad easier using TeamViewer on the Fire with a stylus, well, for most things. Pinch-n-zoom isn’t all that improved. *heh* I do kinda enjoy accessing the Win8 Media Center compy with TeamViewer on my Fire. Comes in handy sometimes.

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*sigh* Looks Like It Has to Be This Year. . .

. . .when I get serious about finishing up electrical work here at twc central.

*profound sigh*

I do so very much dislike doing electrical work, but the only electrician I really trust here in America’s Third County retired a couple of years ago, and I really, really, really don’t want to pay someone to just screw things up, so that leaves me, my “consultant” (“Hey, X, can you tell me what to do/where to go for parts/etc., for such and so?”) and my several references on electrical work, codes, etc.

See, there are several ESSENTIAL circuits. Some I’ve already reworked, and they’re OK, but there is one seriously, majorly [messed up] circuit that serves stuff all over the house in ways that make no rhyme or reason that I’ve been putting off simply because it is the single weirdest electrical circuit I’ve ever run across. It serves parts of serveral rooms and one room entirely–the small room I have used as an office that is now pretty much simply a computer junk room and place with my most comfy chair for sitting at a computer.

(Yeh, yeh, I know, whine, whine, whine.)

Well, that circuit decided today was the day to go crazy. Dead. Live. Dead again. No, the circuit breaker doesn’t pop. It’s the live bus bar in the main box. *sigh* Yeh. Best solution is simply to replace the main service panel. *groan* I do NOT want to do that. Second best: call the manufacturer and order a new bus bar. Now, while that’s nearly the cost of a completely new circuit panel and still involves working around the live mains, I can do that. (Good insulation all over, including properly insulated tools, gloves, shoes, etc., then terminating the live mains with appropriately-sized insulators; still a PITA and still a bit scary. *shrugs* I have life insurance. :-)) But that, of course, will still leave me with rewiring to do, since circuits wired by a jackleg electrician and added to later by someone’s retarded pet monkey still need to be cleaned up (*cough* rewired completely *cough*).

Ah, well, in th meantime, I can bring in those three (or four–there is room in the box) circuits someone added to the house in a box outside about 30 years or so ago (going by the manufacture date of the circuit panel outside). . . coming straight off the mains! *sigh* I suppose I could cut off two of the rooms on this bad circuit and use one circuit apiece from the outside box for them. That’d (temporarily, in a hash-up sort of way) solve a world of ills. Another for an appliance circuit that I think is overloaded, although it’s never had any problems. I could almost do that recycling the conduit that’s outside, although I’d want to use new wiring.

Looks like my Spring task list has pretty well filled up, cos I do electrical work v e r y s l o w l y.

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First Time

Tuesday will be the first time since I began voting that I will vote a straight party ticket. No exceptions. Oh, there is one local candidate who’s a Democrat who is OK. He’s done as good a job as anyone else in living memory in the Sheriff’s position (which is somewhere between so-so and “not quite corrupt enough to catch out”–about par for the Sheriff’s job around here from time immemorial, I’m told *sigh*). But this year, quite apart from a late-blooming appreciation for the few points where the Republican presidential candidate does truly shine (and a grudging acknowledgement that he’s mostly all right on more than a few points), my only criterion for voting for any other candidates are that they NOT be Democrats.

It’s my own small way of voting a “punishment” vote on the general Dhimmicrappic agenda. I DGARA if any of the other Republican candidates are genuine Republicans or just country club wanna-be elite Repugnican’ts. I can deal with either of those (although genuine republicans aren’t genuinely conservative enough for me, for the most part), but I will not now, or ever, vote again for a Dhimmicrap, unless the party is utterly broken and remade with genuinely liberal principles the Founders (who sought to CONSERVE, in the sense of Burke’s conservatism, the more liberal traditions of expanding liberty protected by government that had become a British tradition from the Magna Carta onward) espoused.

Just call me a one-issue voter this election. That issue is, “Is the candidate or ballot proposition a Democratic one? If so, consign him/it to the eighth level of hell.”

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