Seriously. I’m on some strict carb restrictions here, and that Oreo looks mouth-watering goooooood!
Continue reading “I Swear: The Thing Holding My Attention is the Freakin’ Oreo!”
Late Bloomer
I’ve always been a late bloomer in nearly every aspect of my life. Just slow, I guess, or maybe I’ve just been distracted a lot of the time by the one or two areas where I “bloomed” early, I dunno.
Anywho, I do know what delayed my love affair with coffee for a while. Sophomore year in high school. Band trip into Mexico. We stayed in all kindsa places–whatever the communities would arrange for lodging. Big towns/cities: maybe commercial lodging facilities. Small towns? Notsomuch. I recall lodging accommodations in a convent–yeh, a convent. They were pretty hard up to take on a bunch of high school boys as lodgers even for a night.
Breakfast the next morning? Some questionable egg dish, tortillas and some “fresh ground” coffee. No, I mean it tasted like some ground they’d just dug up and put in the pot to boil. Overnight. Those of us who tried it wanted to take back the previous night’s concert for the town.
It was four years before I tried coffee again.
Campaign Poster for The Zero
Zero Liberty:
A Garage Sale Just Won’t Do the trick
Gettin’ serious about cleanup stuff. Most of what I imagine I’ll end up just pitching out of the garage is stuff I’ve said, “I can think of X number of uses for that,” and just put back. Quite often, such junk has proven quite useful, but a lot has become, “Yeh, I could use it, but after all this time I probably won’t” stuff.
But sometimes, as I’ve been sorting, I come across lil gems that just hit the sweet spot of, “Huh. I can use that right now.” Take the box(es) of lil odds ‘n’ ends from a car I sold for scrap. It’d just gotten to the point where it was fixable, but not worth fixing, and since it was a model I knew my “guy” was just going to take to the crusher and sell for scrap metal pricing, I pulled a lot of lil stuff off it before giving him a call. Like those gas struts for the tailgate and hood. Good stuff, Maynard. But the first piece I put to immediate use was… some barely worn disc brake pads.
*huh?* Yep. Found a nice, level piece of concrete and cleaned one of ’em off (a few spiraling “sanding” motions did the trick). Pulled out a pocket knife I’d noticed needed a fresh edge and… it was a really nice whet stone. Put the edge back in shape very quickly.
Rabbit trail: OK, yes, before you ask, of course it was a non-asbestos brake pad. I did say it was barely worn, implying it was fairly new, didn’t I? But, to be frank, even if it had been an asbestos brake pad, I’d not have cared. The asbestos used in brake pads was of a different kind than that which has been clinically and epidemiologically shown to be linked to some cancers and lung diseases. In fact, of the six or more different kinds of minerals called asbestos, only one has been linked to those kinds of health issues. But even if it had been of the “bad” type, it still wouldn’t have mattered, since the use I was making of it would have posed a vanishingly small health risk.
Now, I need to get back to my sorting: keep (‘cos I KNOW I’ll use it… relatively soon), yard sale, give away, toss. (When I get the furniture I have stored in the garage out and down to the local food bank/thrift store, that’ll make a HUGE dent.)
Hmmm, probably CraigsList as well for some of the more obviously usable things, and even some of the “This junk just CAN’T go to the landfill!” stuff…
One Thing About eBooks…
…and particularly Kindle books, is the ease of taking notes within the books–and searching notes. This is especially useful for those books that have error reporting enabled. One of my fav notes to submit in an error report is, “Consult Inigo Montoya. (No, not that quote; the other one.)” I generally slug that comment in wherever a word is misused. And, oh, am I finding a slew of those! The quality of proof readingand copy editing has really, really declined in recent years, and in self-published books it is frequently non-existent… or of a “quality” that can only–charitably–be described as comparable to toxic sewer sludge.
Oh, well, at least I have the joy of making LOADS of snarky notes, and even–happy-happy-joy-joy–submitting a few as “error reports”.
Gottalovethat.
Not Exactly Divina Commedia, Perhaps
More like, Commedia Nera… maybe.
Hey, my folks are approaching 90. They have doctors’ appointments just about every day of the week (and this last week definitely every day), and their lives seem to revolve around medical tests, consultants with specialists, surgeries, therapy and who knows what else.
At least with the weight I’ve lost, I’ll not have to buy a new suit for any funerals.
See Sydney Carton for the relevant viewpoint on death and dying:
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
I would miss ’em, but really, “…it is a far, far better rest…” Still, glad they’re having fun with their busy medical schedule, since I really don’t want to start missing them. Selfish of me, I know, but there it is. As long as they’re having fun, let ’em rack up the med hours. They’ve certainly earned it.
Timeless Wisdom
I don’t know who first said it (and am not even sure where I last saw it *heh*), but this ranks up there with, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,”* as timeless wisdom:
“A human without at least one sharp pointy thing and the ability to start a fire is just whining hairless ape in most survival situations.”
Yeh, I feel naked without at least two or three “sharp pointy things” on my person at all times, and since I can start a fire with my burning gaze of scorn… *heh*
Raspberry for the Common Man
Please, don’t get me wrong; I have all due respect for the common man. He (shaddup, feminazis: I’ll use the CORRECT generic “he” to represent she/he anytime I want to, and “common man” to refer to “common woman” as well. Lump it if you don’t like it) struggles against great odds to survive in a harsh world.
But still…
You know, it used to be said, “Man: the tool-making, tool using animal,” but now that we know that parrots, monkeys, apes, raccoons and who knows how many other animals “make” (OK, improvise ore than fashion) and use tools, even the few who can recall that once-popular meme no longer use it. (The common man, of course, has no idea it was once even a meme.)
Now, it might be said, “Man: the internet user,” in the same way one can say of parrots that they use found objects as tools. Common man uses the internet, even when he has trouble turning on the device he uses to access it. (Do your own search on “computer support jokes”; they’re almost all based on real events, real users doing exceptionally stupid things.)
May I once again point the reader to (a translation of) Ortega’s insightful, even prophetic work, Revolt of the Masses? There are downloadable versions available via the web, but I’ll not point to those pirated copies. You can buy one for under $10 at Amazon.
On a cheerier note, let me echo this blog’s header here:
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”
Now, doesn’t that make you grateful for the common man?
Titanic Party, Anyone?
Not interested in throwing a “Titanic Party” to celebrate/commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the April 12, 1912 sinking of the Titanic, but if one were to throw such a shindig, wouldn’t it be appropriate to do it today, you know, Friday the 13th?
Just askin’.
Compgeeky ISP Stuff
So, after serial rocky times with my ISP, it’s been fairly solid of late. Checked the download speed on my nominal 12mbps connection using Speedtest recently and was getting 16-18mbps downloads pretty regularly.
Not bad, thought I… and then I ran across Softonic’s Namebench, a DNS test software. DL-ed it, scanned it, installed it and let it run. Looked at its recommendations and selected the top two to replace my primary and secondary DNS on my router (left the tertiary alone).
Here’s the result:
Much faster (almost double) DL speeds and just slightly slower upload “speeds”. Interesting. I’ll test things out this way for a while and see just how solid the new DNS addresses are over time, but this is promising.