The Rains Arrive

June 1st is the official start of the wet/hurricane season here in central Florida. It blew in with a vengeance today. The sky started clouding up around five in the afternoon and by 6:30pm, it was full-on monsooning and kept at it for over five hours. At least I won't need to worry about watering plants for a while.

Meanwhile, I've been making steady if slow progress on the Florida room. The front two-thirds is nearly ready for the final layer of plywood/insulation prior to hanging drywall. All that's left to do is the final caulking and taping to seal everything up:

The rest of the Florida room will involve cutting fewer pieces of foam, but they will all be much more of a pain to install. I'm figuring another week to get that ready for its final layer. After that, we will be returning our focus to the outside of the trailer. We have to get the wooden parts of the porch cleaned and treated, and we need to get "the guys" back out here to hang siding on everything. After that, we'll likely take a break from the big projects and get back into building planting beds.

We had a visitor while we were eating lunch on the porch around the middle of the week:

The picture sucks mostly due to being taken with the zoom at 400 mm, hand-held, then cropped down to around 600K pixels. He was hiding himself and his mate from a hawk, possibly a red-shouldered hawk or Coopers hawk. We didn't get a good look at it, but we've seen both hanging around in the woods next to our place, taking out other birds. That's one of the primary reasons I haven't bothered with a bird feeder; it would end up being a hawk feeder.

Well, off to bed.

Towel Day

I meant to do this first, then the other of today's posts second so it would be on top for a while. Maybe Blogger will let me do that. Probably not, but you never know. If this is on top, then be sure to scroll down a bit.

Anyway, today is Towel Day!! So wherever you're going today, don't forget to take your towel.

Other miscellaneous news items:

It's near the end of May, so that means it's time for the annual Worst Hurricane Season Evaaaaaar! full-blown, global-warming, we're-all-gonna-die panicky news story. Depending on how you define "worst", there are numerous contenders for the worst hurricane to hit the United States. If you measure them by cost, then the most current hurricanes are indeed the worst in our nation's history. Five seconds of thought will tell you why that has nothing to do with global warming. If you are looking at wind speed at landfall (something which would be linked to global warming), then all the worst storms are in the past, with the most recent Cat 5 being Andrew back in 1992. But nothing sells like panic, and so panic is what we get.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the United States continues to deteriorate with yet-another bridge collapse. Engineers may still be trying to determine the cause for the collapse, but anyone who routinely drives on the freeway already has a pretty good idea. But never fear; the bunny inspectors are safe. See John Michael Greer for details.

Last but not least, another writer comes out and says what is becoming painfully obvious: College is yet-another scam to separate the middle-class from whatever wealth they may have left. I know mine has been a monumental waste of money, but at least I enjoyed the process. I see people every single day hating every minute, racking up massive debt, and all for a degree that will at best get them a part-time job at Starbucks that won't even make the student loan payment.

And on that cheerful note, I need to scrape off a few layers of dried sweat and get ready for dinner with Debbie and a second cousin twice removed. Or maybe a third cousin once removed. First cousin thrice removed? Dunno. A relative. Leave it at that.

In Memoriam

Tony Boris: February 9, 1944 to May 20, 1992

Leo Boris: April 11, 1938 to May 25, 1992

It's hard to believe it has been over 20 years; it still seems like yesterday. The pictures of Dad and Uncle Leo are of them doing what they always loved to do more than anything else: Dancing with all the pretty girls.

First Fruits

Not technically the very first, but Debbie grabbed and ate the first one before I had a chance to get the camera:

Fresh from the garden and still warm from the sun.

Turns out that tomatoes are difficult to photograph. At least with our camera. The stupid thing refused to focus for some reason. Out of a dozen shots, this was the best of the lot. It worked fine the last time we had it out, so I likely need to take an hour or so and check every button, knob, switch and menu setting to see what the deal is. In any case, we have our first-ever home-grown tomato for Debbie to munch on.

When I'm not pouring gallons of water on our tomato plant in an attempt to keep it alive, I've been working on the insulation in the Florida room. I had to pull out the old, moldy, insect-infested open cell foam, clean up the black mold, seal up the hundred-and-one places I could just look outside through the wall, and remove most of the electrical wiring. But it's all in and already making a big different. I'll be putting in some wood so I have something to hang drywall from, then adding another inch-and-a-half of polyisocyanurate in the wall cavities. That will give me R-14 walls. Then some plywood in key spots to increase the odds that the place won't fall over in a wind storm, level up the rest of the wall with still more polyiso, then the fun stuff: Drywall. Ugh. Might hire that done....

Here is what it looks like so far:

The worst part was working around the hot water heater. I told the installers to leave me some room, but they were a bunch of skinny kids. I should have specified that I needed old, fat guy room. It took a lot of gruntin', sweatin' and cussin' to get that foam back there.

Oh, and if you wonder what happened, I've already deleted my Facebook account. It took about a week for me to remember all the reasons why I got off the worthless thing in the first place. The kicker was when it wouldn't let me log on until I retracted friend requests that had been out there "too long". I know this may come as a shock to a monomaniacal douche-nozzle like Mark Zuckerberg, but not everyone lives on Facebook 24/7. It could take two or even (gasp!) three days for someone to acknowledge a friend request.

In any case, I'm done with it. Again. Movin' on.

And those of us that are considered outcasts in our park have formed ourselves a little club. This should be fun. Most of what will be at that site will only make sense to the half-dozen year-rounders that live in the Evil Corner, but feel free to take a look.

We made a quick trip over to Epcot today to trade in our old-school paper-with-mag-strip annual passes for the ultra-modern, high-tech plastic-with-proximity-chip cards. Now we can get in line with the cool kids. It was about 90° when we got to the park, so after a couple trips through the single-rider line on Test Track: Tronitized Version, we decided we were done and headed for home. Now its nap time.

...and the Drama Continues

I think I started something. It needed to be started. The kerfuffle now involves about a dozen of us back here in the Sweetwater Evil Corner (SEC). Dale continues to pile lie on top of lie trying to cover his ass. The SEC Club had a meeting this morning going through e-mails and such to much hilarity. Good times.

We had our own bit of adventure yesterday trying to get building materials from Home Depot to our house. When we pulled into to parking lot, the rental truck was there. Being a Sunday, there was a pretty good chance that it wouldn't be, so we did a little happy dance, ran into the store and proceeded to buy $550 of building materials, none of which would fit in my stupid soccer-mom "SUV". When I went to rent the truck, I was informed that the truck was broke down. Crap. I asked about the van, which was also in the lot when we got there. Someone had just rented it and wasn't going to be back for at least 4 hours. Double crap. We had some other running to do, so we took what we could with us and left the rest at the store as a will-call. After we were done with our other running, we swung back by on the off-chance that the van had been returned early. Not only was the van not back, but the "broken-down" truck had been rented out. WTF?!?!?

So we got back here to the trailer and called up a fellow member of the SEC Club to see if he had time to run me up there in his truck so I could get my stuff home before Home Depot closed. He did, so we did, then a couple other SEC'ers came back and helped to unload everything. So it all worked out and now I have everything I need to get the Florida room ready for drywall. Today I had to take a break from inside work to mow the lawn around our place and the neighbors, but I should still be able to make some major progress over the next week.

That's it. Once I've done something visible, I'll post a couple pictures.

Tried to Meet the New Park Manager...

We've been without a park manager since the last one disposed of her replacement, then retired and left the state on vacation. Carefree found someone to take over and they showed up sometime this week. One of our neighbors went up to the office to say, "Hi," and found out that there was a meet-and-greet with free food yesterday at 4:30. The person, lets just call him "Dale" for now, who was supposed to tell us about it had failed to, which is part of a pattern. See, we live in the "evil corner" of Sweetwater RV Park, according to Dale, so we didn't think much about not being invited. As we had been invited by the park manager herself, we went anyway. Well, this is what Dale posted on the park's Facebook page this morning:

81 carefree bingo players from Zephyrhills welcome our new manager at bingo night May 9th,2013. Despite an additional 14 non players (95 total) there was still plenty of food and drink. We welcome Kate Pierce to our park.

First of all, only about five of the bingo players were from any of the three Carefree parks (notice the capitalization, Dale), of which Sweetwater is one. Everyone else comes in from all over the county just to play bingo. They pay, so that's not a problem, but why would the park manager of Sweetwater want to meet a bunch of bingo players from outside the park? And why are the "14 non players" (guess they haven't invented the hyphen yet where you're from, eh Dale?), every last one of whom was actually from Sweetwater, being treated like a gang of gate-crashers when we paid for the damn food?

Here is my response on FB. I'm sure by the time you read this, Dale will have deleted it:

Sorry we crashed your little private bingo party, Dale. We thought as it was a meet-and-greet for Sweetwater's new park manager that it would be nice if there were at least a few people that, ya know, lived in the park? That and the insignificant fact that Kate herself invited us. But if we were soooooo much of a problem for you and your little bingo clique, I guess you can take it up with Kate.

If all this sounds like middle-school drama, you're not far off. Some people seem to regress mentally and emotionally as they age. Good times.

Northern Michigan Time Lapse

Spock v. Spock

For any nerds out there:


Neither of us have felt well this week, so it's been a bit slow around here. Debbie is at the doctor today, and I'm supposed to be running electrical in the Florida room. Instead, I'm watching internet videos....

Yep

Living in Florida, you deal with this multiple times every day:

Men are generally stubborn and it only gets worse with age.

Edited to add:

Updated Pics

I haven't posted a picture of our Simon and Garfunkel herb garden (plus tomato plant) in a while:

Looks good except I planted waaaay too much parsley.

So far, everything is doing well in the Florida climate. Summer may be a different story.

And a couple pics of the inside of the Florida room, which still looks like a construction site:

Finishing up on the inside so we have something to hang drywall from.

Cutting and fitting all those little bits of wood is a real pain; it takes forever and doesn't look like you've accomplished anything. But it's finally done. I still need to sort the electrical out; it should only take a day, but I'm sure there will be surprises. Big, ugly, nasty surprises.

We'll get settled some day. Maybe.

From the if-there-is-any-doubt-the-universe-has-a-sick-sense-of-humor department: Just because I was whinging about how dry it has been here, it has been raining pretty much since I posted that. Not a bad thing for the garden, but I need to mow the lawn again after just mowing it on Sunday. I'll be happy when there are more beds and less lawn.

Another Week Slips By

I'm not sure what we did last week. My entire to-do list is still sitting here with all the same stuff on it. I spent some of the week at work digging out from the mess of tax season. There is a ton of work to do, and I could work pretty much as many hours as I want to, but I think the boss-man doesn't want to pay me to do it. When I left Friday, he just said he would "call me and let me know." I hope he doesn't think I'm just going to be sitting here in my office clothes waiting by the phone five days a week for him to call and tell me someone wants a tax return done. (I've already had several such calls since the 15th. Sorry dude; I have a life.) He mentioned something to me about working for a percentage of the returns I do in the off-season. Sounds good as long as when I'm there, he isn't expecting me to stick around all day doing his filing and dealing with pissed-off customers. Anyway; it will probably all come to a big nothing like most other things. Everyone is very excited to have you work for them. Their enthusiasm noticeably wanes when you make it clear you expect to get paid. Which would be fine; I could use the time to keep working on the Money Pit we live in.

I did manage to get all the stud work scabbed in on Thursday. At this point, there isn't anything that needs to be done before the siding goes up. Other than hitting the Lotto so we can pay for it; that whole people-expect-to-be-paid-for-the-work-they-do thing again. So it's only financial roadblocks at this point rather than logistical roadblocks. And our bathroom carpet sporting a permanent wet spot for the last three or four days probably isn't going to help rid us of that financial roadblock. The bright spot is that I've been looking for an excuse to rip the carpet out of the bathroom since we moved here. I hate carpet in a bathroom. That has to be the most disgusting thing a person can do in a house. Understand, I lived for several years with a composting toilet; I know disgusting. That isn't even in the same ballpark as carpet on a bathroom floor. So first thing tomorrow, out goes the carpet so I can a) find where the water is coming from and b) stop getting sick to my stomach every time I walk in there.

I should probably take some photos of the planting bed out front. The herbs all seem to be doing well so far. We'll see how much Florida heat it takes to burn them down to the ground. It ain't helping that we're in the middle of a Phase III Extreme Water Shortage. So far, the "wet" season has produced a single rain storm while the temps are spiking up to 90 every day. We're only allowed to water with the hose on Friday's before 8am or after 6pm. Other days, we have to use a watering can, which takes over an hour. We added a single tomato plant last weekend to see if I can make fresh tomatoes for Debbie. It's still alive and has a half-dozen-plus green tomatoes hanging on it. We'll see if they ripen up, if animals/bugs will leave 'em alone, if they taste like something other than cardboard, etc.  If I can get some yard work done this summer, we may try tomatoes again at a somewhat larger scale in the fall.

Well, Debbie wants to go for a bike ride now that the heat's died down a bit.

Nailed It Again

Scott Meyer has been on a roll lately:

Still trying to catch up from tax season. I've been either on the road or sitting in various waiting rooms all last week. Except when I was working; I got more hours last week than I did for the last week of tax season. As of right now, our bikes are fixed, our car is fixed, I've been lab'ed and doctor'ed until I look like a pin cushion and our bank account wiped out. Today was the first time in over a week when I didn't have an alarm set for some ungodly butt-crack-of-dawn time. I celebrated by sleeping for more than twelve hours.

Today is more catch-up: planting Debbie's poor tomato plant that's still in its plastic pot, mowing the grass, trimming, raking (if it will stop raining long enough to accomplish any of those), and continuing to pick away at getting all the stud work done in the Florida room so we're ready for siding. If I can slow down my work schedule, I may actually start feeling somewhat caught up sometime next week. Assuming nothing else breaks or goes sideways either here or at work.

And I'm off to make bread.

Paolo Soleri, RIP

Paolo died on April 9th at the age of 93. He was the designer of Arcosanti, where we lived for a year after completing the workshop program. While we were there, Paolo could still be occasionally seen on the end of a shovel, but a while back, we heard that he had been ill and had stopped all involvement with the project to "focus on his writing." I assumed then that his passing couldn't be far off. I couldn't imagine Paolo hanging around for any length of time as a semi-invalid.

We had the chance to talk to Paolo several times during our stay at Arcosanti, but we can't really say that we knew him or much about him. I'm not sure anyone really did outside of a very small circle. But I can say that he was certainly a unique human being with a gift for pissing people off. I haven't met many people I would label "genius"; Paolo was certainly one of them.

I just went to Amazon to see if I could scare up a copy of his book, Arcology: The City in the Image of Man. No new copies available, but a used one in paperback is a mere $438.19. That didn't take long. I hope they do a reprint of the hardcover edition (the paperback was crap and fell apart the first time you opened the cover). I wanted to get a copy while we were at Arcosanti and never got a round tuit. It would be nice to have a copy, but not for the price of a used car.

Paolo was buried next to his wife on the Arcosanti property. I remember one of the times Debbie and I were wandering around when we were there for the workshop. We had crossed the Agua Fria River and climbed to the top of the mesa next to the one Arcosanti is built on, when we came across a small, fenced-in area with a padlocked gate. Inside was a bench and a badly-neglected garden. Everything was long dead other than native pioneer weeds that had reclaimed the spot. By then we had gotten used to stumbling across odd bits that someone had invested time and money into only to have it abandoned to the elements. We found out later that it was Paolo's wife's grave, the closest thing to a sacred site at a militantly atheist project. I assume it was spruced up a bit for Paolo's arrival. Or possibly not; he was never had much use for formalities.

One of the reoccurring conversations we had as residents of Arcosanti (and something I was asked about on every site tour I gave), was if the project would survive the death of its creator. On paper at least, there should be no problem. Paolo has not had an active role in Arcosanti or the Cosanti Foundation that supports it for many years. The day-to-day operation has been run entirely by others, and there is no logical reason for there to be the slightest hiccup with Paolo's passing. And yet I can't help but wonder if interest will wane in continuing to build out the site, with what is already there becoming a Monument to a Visionary, preserved in amber like Taliesin West. I may not have known Paolo all that well, but I'm pretty sure he would have hated the very idea.

I will close with this: Our lives were certainly made richer by Paolo's little experiment out in the central highlands of Arizona. In fact, Arcosanti probably saved our marriage. Thanks, ol' man, and Godspeed.

Latest Work

The latest bits we've sunk into the money pit:

We moved the slider that was originally between the trailer and the Florida room onto the front of the Florida room. The original door didn't fit right and the screens and plastic "windows" were in pretty bad shape. In other words, the whole thing was pretty much for show and didn't keep out wind, rain, bugs, stray cats....

The Beast. The $4,500 Beast. The good news is that we'll make that back in no time with all the money we'll save having a new, more-efficient AC. The salesman said it, so it must be true.

The Florida room more or less ready for siding and some new skirting. Maybe in May or June.

Only four days left to tax season. I think I'll take a couple days after April 15th to just sleep.

Pizza!!

In my role as kitchen goddess, I made a pizza for dinner:

The crust has been pre-baked for about 20 minutes with a good slathering of butter and garlic. Then sauce, a couple pounds of various meats (pepperoni, sausage, ham and bacon), all topped off with a pound of mozzarella cheese. Heart-healthy it ain't, but ask me if I care.

Deep dish pizza without the deep dish.

Fresh from the oven. The cheese could have stood a bit more time to brown, but we were hungry.

I've been experimenting with the crust for a while; wetter or drier dough, pre-baking the crust, seasoning the crust, etc. I think this one was just about perfect. Now if I can just remember what I did....

And a bit of geekiness:

That's one of a couple dozen computers that made up the SAGE system back in the 1950's and 60's. SAGE was a computer network that linked radar installations, interceptors and missile batteries. Data was displayed on GUI workstations that even had a sort of touch screen interface. Each computer ran dual 32-bit CPU's (not in parallel; they ran the second as a redundant backup) with 256K RAM. The computer hardware weighed 300 tons and burned 3 megawatts of juice. All that to crank out 75,000 operations per second. For comparison, an iPad can do something like 1.5 billion operations per second. If you care, you can read more here.

Well, the sun is up, so I need to get my butt outside and do some work.

Nailed It

The Universe Hates Us

Yea, it's been one of those couple weeks. First it was car trouble, although I can't really complain about the Durango. Since I bought the thing used back in 2005, I've done absolutely nothing other than change the oil, tires and brakes. Not bad for a ten-year-old vehicle with over 150K miles. It was more to do with the timing, being in the middle of tax season and all. It wasn't even a major breakdown; the water pump crapped out. No big, right? A couple hours in the shop and back on the road.

Not.

See, Dodge has a special kind of water pump that doesn't just start leaking like every other water pump on every other car ever made. No, the Dodge water pump fails catastrophically and takes out everything on the front of the engine block and usually the radiator as well with flying debris. We actually got lucky and only had to replace the fan and fan clutch in addition to the water pump. Of course, we had to wait for parts, which meant bumming a ride to work for a week from my daddy like I was 15 working my first job at Burger King. The good news is that it's fixed and it didn't cost us our life savings.

That cannot be said of the second little problem. But first, I have to talk about the weather. It's been just plain weird with several days of 80 degree highs, then several days where it barely creeps up into the 60's. On one of the 80-degree days, I decided to flip on the AC just to make sure it was working after sitting unused since the end of September. As you probably have guessed, it wasn't. No big deal; we have a maintenance contract left over from the previous owners and the temps were due to swing back into the 60's. I called and scheduled a dude to come out and look at things figuring it will just be a bit of Freon and we'll be good to go. Then I get The Call at work. The system is completely empty. Just finding the leak and refilling the Freon (the old banned kind that costs several hundred dollars a gallon) will cost $1,000. If the leak is in the coil (which it most likely is), add another $2,000. And after all that, you will have a system that maybe will last another year or so.

I've been around the block once or twice, so I know where this conversation is heading. Me: "Cut to the chase, Dude. What's a new system going to cost?" Dude: "$4,500." Me: "When?" Dude: "Today." Me: "Do it." I do have to say that I was impressed at how fast these guys moved. Debbie handed Dude our credit card around 2:45PM. We had a new system installed along with a new thermostat, all new duct work, new electrical with lightning protection, and all the old stuff cleaned up and gone by 5:30PM. It was almost too fast; for $4,500 (which was our life savings) I would expect there to be enough work to keep a crew busy for at least an eight-hour day. The silver lining in all this is that now that the temperatures have cycled back into the 60's during the day and the 40's at night, we have heat. The old system was just an AC, so we've been relying on electric heaters to keep us warm on those cold, frosty Florida winter nights. Now it stays all warm and toasty by magic.

Work continues on the Florida room. Last weekend, my dad and I tore the front off and installed the sliding glass door that had been between the Florida room and the trailer. I have everything more or less sealed up at this point. This weekend, we'll be working on more of the detail work like insulating around the new windows, getting the stud work done so we can get the siding up on the outside and insulate the walls and hang drywall on the inside, and going nuts with the caulking gun to try to seal up all the places where you can look outside that you shouldn't be able to look outside. We're not sure where the money for the siding is going to come from now that our entire life savings went to a new central air unit, but at this point, we need to get that done, probably shortly after tax season is over.

And that's our life. And it's 57 days until Towel Day. Don't panic.

Quicky

Just to let people know that I'm still kicking, I thought I'd post some photos:

I finished up the back corner connecting the two new planting beds. I may do more with this in the future, but for now, I'm calling it done.

We started final prep for new siding by replacing half of the plastic windows with dual pane glass windows and eliminating the other half.

I had some unexpected work when I realized that I couldn't take out the window I wanted to get rid of without taking out the small one on the porch. That was supposed to be a later project, but now it's done. The rest of the wall will be replaced with a sliding glass door.

Sorry for the short updates, but I need to head off and get ready for work.

Happy Anniversary, Baby

With apologies to the Little River Band. And a few days late. My first post here was actually March 3rd, 2004, but tax season keeps getting in the way of... well... everything.

I have managed to get a few things done in spite of all the tax season chaos:

We did the same trick to the window in our new back door that we used at Arcosanti to block out the sun and nosy neighbors.

The back of the trailer was just weeds and dirt. The walk will eventually be widened all the way across to the trailer behind us, eliminating a major maintenance nightmare I had to deal with all last summer.

New bed along the side of the trailer. The maintenance guys last year did us a "favor" and sprayed Roundup all along the trailer so I wouldn't have to trim it. More bare dirt, dust and a few weeks after it was sprayed, weeds that I had to trim anyway. Thanks, guys!

We finally got a solar-powered clothes dryer (old people call it a "clothesline") so we can stop making the coin laundry people rich.

It was close to sunset, so the lighting is bad, but this is supposed to show that the walk in front of the shed has been straightened up and expanded slightly. We will eventually expand it out under the clothesli... er... solar-powered clothes dryer.

That's all I have time for this morning.

Sleepless in Zephyrhills

We both had yesterday off work, so we slept late, then fell asleep last night around 9pm. (We live such adventuresome lives....) So here it is 3:30 in the morning and I'm wide awake. This ought to make for an interesting day at work. At least I have the weekend off.

Anyway, not much going on for either of us other than work, work, work. Things seem to be slowing a bit at Debbie's job, but tax season is still going strong for me. We're not getting the walk-in's like we were the first few weeks; now it's the returning clients with rental properties, schedule C businesses, sub-S corporations, etc. The great thing about tax season is that for better or worse, it's mostly over on April 15th. Then you have nine months for forget how much tax season sucks so you'll be stupid enough to do it again the next year.

Because we've both been working like crazy, we haven't really done much. But as I mentioned, we both managed to finagle a day off together yesterday to go see a bunch of people from the church I grew up in. It was fun catching up with everyone. I managed to figure out who most of the people were in the four hours or so that we were there. All in all, a better way to pass a day than getting bitched at on the phone by people desperate for their tax refunds because they've managed to wreck their lives in some way.

That's pretty much all I have. Between work and trying to plow through Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (1,800 extremely dense pages), I've barely even been on the computer for over a week. I have no idea if the world ended or the stock market crashed or what new country we've decided to go to war against. And don't really care. I have a to-be-read pile that is out-growing the space I have set aside for my to-be-read pile, so I'll likely be updating this place even less frequently than I am now.

We have managed to make some progress on the outside of this place, so I may snap a few pictures to post here when I get a minute this weekend. Other than that, don't expect much.

Checking In

I'm still slogging away at tax season. The crazy rush seems to be mostly over; now it's dealing with the aftermath. Being typical Americans, our clients only have one demand: I want it NOW!!! Meaning their refunds, of course. Because of all the problems the IRS is dealing with, we've been telling everyone to not expect their refund for three weeks. Two days after they file, they start calling every half hour asking if they have their money yet because some friend-of-a-friend got their refund already. I only filed one tax return today; the rest of the day was on the phone answering the same damn question over and over and over again. The worst of that should be over by the end of the week. Then the rest of the tax season will be the longer, more complex returns for somewhat rational people.

I never got to use one as they were a little before my time, but someone dug up a photo of one of the first hard disk arrays. The platters were over three feet in diameter and held a whopping 8 megabytes each. Sweet.

Gotta love that Laura Petrie in geek glasses look-alike.

One of the big debates among renewable energy geeks is if solar panels are really all that "green". Usually, the talk is about net energy, or the number of years a panel has to sit in the sun generating electricity before it "pays back" the energy (mostly fossil fuel) used to mine and refine the raw materials and then use those to build the thing. I've seen paybacks ranging from 7 to 20 years with the larger numbers being more credible from what I can see. But something I've not heard discussed is the toxic waste generated in the manufacturing process. Combine that with the net energy issue and solar looks more and more like an expensive way to generate electricity that is as bad or worse than burning coal. There is certainly a case to be made for solar electric in certain circumstances, but they are not the solution to all our problems.

Well, before I fall asleep sitting in front of the computer, I should head off to bed.

Killer Kats

There is a new study out that attempts to put some numbers on the devastation that cats have on the environment. According to the study, these natural-born killers that people insist on having in their homes, then ditching when they become inconvenient, kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 20.7 billion small mammals every year. I've never thought about this much because we've never lived somewhere with large numbers of feral cats wandering around.

Until now.

We have probably 20-30 cats wandering loose in our park, many descended from cats that have been ditched here when people leave. Six of those cats "belong" to one year-round resident who allows them to wander free. Another six belong to a snow-bird who likewise allows her cats to roam. (We will leave aside the discussion of what sort of sick, crazy cat lady lives in an RV with a half dozen cats.) This being Florida, cats can have litters any time of the year. Several people are now live-trapping cats and taking them to the local humane society. Given these are feral cats and have been for many generations, they will most likely be destroyed. Others have been setting out poison bait or antifreeze. All in a desperate attempt to reduce the number of cats spraying around their trailers and shitting on their cars. (Not sure why cats so enjoy taking a dump on the hood of a car, but every morning you can find a couple old dudes scrubbin' and cussin'.)

The fun part of living in an RV park is that your business is everybody's business. (Don't worry; we'll get back to feral cats in a bit.) Usually it's relatively innocent, like the steady parade of old people on giant tricycles who come by to look at the new porch and other changes we've made since moving here. It seems the previous resident was well-liked and that we're expected to honor his memory in some way by only making changes that meet with the approval of everyone else in the park. So far, that seems to be the case other than the bat-shit crazy lady next door who expressed her disapproval of us by pretending we didn't exist when we tried to introduce ourselves the day we bought the place. But there is a darker side to all this "closeness". A couple that lives nearby that we hang with said that they heard I was trying to scare the cats off by shooting them with a pellet gun. They quickly explained that they were all for it and had no intention of trying to rat me out. I told them that I was raised that it was OK to kill animals when necessary, but you didn't torture them. If I were shooting cats, it would be with a 44 Magnum, not wounding them with a toy gun meant for kids. They wouldn't tell us who the source was, but promised to inform said person of the reality of the situation. We're pretty sure we know the source of the rumor and who was doing the talebearing. We haven't heard any more since, but I'm sure this won't be the last attempt by bat-shit crazy lady to get us out of the park.

Back in the days of old when dinosaurs roamed the earth and credit cards were rare, it was common for retailers to charge a fee for using one. The retailer has to pay a percentage of the purchase to the bank, so it made perfect sense to put the cost on the person using the credit card rather than spreading it out over everyone. Then the Fed opened the floodgates of easy credit and within a few years, anyone capable of holding a pen and making an "X" had a credit card. At the same time, the credit card issuers made not charging a fee for credit purchases a condition for a business to accept their credit card, meaning that everyone was paying the credit price even when paying with cash. Now, thanks to a recent settlement between merchants and the credit card companies, retailers will be allowed to add a surcharge for credit card usage. All the self-appointed consumer watchdogs are outraged, of course. I can't for the life of me figure out why given these very same groups are outraged by the interest and fees credit card companies charge. I would think anything that encourages people to live within their means would be a good thing. Are we not still trying to dig ourselves out of the rubble of the collapse brought on by too much debt? Did I miss a memo?

And just in case anyone thinks The Cloud (tm) is a safe place to store your data:


Any security expert will tell you that there is no such thing as 100% secure data. Any system can be hacked. That combined with the poor habits of users, the bad-joke level of security on most "secure" websites, and the ease of tapping into the constant stream of data being blasted in all directions from smart phones, and you have the above scenario.

Oh, yea. I'm doing taxes again this year. It may lead to something more. Or not. It wasn't my first or even second or third choice for a place to land, but it will fluff up the bank account some. Of course, given the extra money of driving back and forth to work, the extra laundry, the extra eating out, etc., etc., I'll probably lose money on the deal.

Speaking of work, I need to get off the computer and get ready.

Unburdening

For the last couple of years, I've been running a bit of software called Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI). What this thing claims to do is keep a list of all the current software on your PC and alert you any time there is a newer version available. At first it worked great. According to the initial scan, I had several programs that were out of date. I updated those, turned on their auto-update option and, "Ta da!!!" A score of 100%. Things went along OK until PSI started nagging me about Open Office being out of date. When I went into Open Office, auto update was on. I told it to go check for the latest version. It tells me I have the latest version. I went to the Open Office web site. Ahhhhhh. The front page had an announcement that anyone who wanted to mess with the latest beta version could download it. I'm not sure how PSI updates version numbers in its database, but if it scrapes them from the main page of of the software vendor, I could see how PSI got confused.

That problem eventually resolved itself and things went back to normal for several months. Sometimes PSI would flag a problem, but I found if I just let it be, an auto update would pop up and make PSI all warm and fuzzy again. Then one bright, sunny Florida day, I get a big pop-up from PSI doing the whole, "Warning, warning Will Robinson!" thing on my screen. Suddenly, I have three things out of date: Adobe Reader, Java, and Windows XML blah blah somethin' somethin'. OK, Adobe Reader is the easy one; download and install the latest version, then go into each browser and update the Adobe Reader add-on, shut everything down, reboot, rerun the scan. No joy. Hmmm. Then I remember that Chrome has its own sort-of built-in Reader. Maybe there is a lag between Adobe release and getting a new version of Chrome with the latest version built in.

OK, ignore Adobe. On to Microsoft. I click on PSI's link to Microsoft update. I end up on some page about ten layers down inside the Microsoft.com domain going on about some update to XP. Screw that. Lets try Java. The problem there is just what am I supposed to be updating? Java SE? Java JRE? Java BunnyFuFu? Then there is the Java versioning system where monstrosities like Java BunnyFuFu version 1.6/6.2/3.7.11.34 is considered a perfectly rational way to number software versions. After wasting close to an hour, I decided to hell with it. I'd just live with three out-of-date programs. At some point, an auto update would shut PSI up.

It wasn't to be. In the last five months, I've installed at least a dozen updates to Adobe Reader, three different species of Java,  Windows, Chrome. None have made PSI any happier. Then this morning, PSI went into nuclear meltdown mode. I decided that's it, I'm either cleaning this mess up, or I dump PSI off a cliff. After a half hour of digging around, installing, rebooting, rinse-and-repeat, I was able to get all the new programs and Adobe Reader off the list. I knew there were major updates to Java thanks to some hacker figuring out a way to use it to take over people's lives. Another round of digging, installing, rebooting, rinsing-and-repeating, and, "Voila!" I was down to just one thing left...

[Insert Dramatic Chipmunk here]

This Windows XML thing. PSI swore up and down that this was a serious threat to my PC. Fine. I clicked the link to Windows Update again and this time was taken to my PC's Windows Update application. Progress of a sort. I had no important updates waiting, but there were four optional updates. None said anything about XML, but a couple were just mass updates. Maybe what I needed was buried in one of those. Installed everything, rebooted, rescanned and...

Secunia PSI now listed six different versions of Windows XML with version numbers running from 3.n to 6.n. According to PSI, 4.n was the current version.

Enough. Secunia PSI is buh-bye.

While messing about with that, I noticed that IE was opening up to some search engine I'd never heard of. I didn't write it down like I should have mostly because I was in fire-and-sword mode by this time. My default search engine was supposed to be Google, but when I went into IE's search engine management, the only ones available were Bing and this Miss Clarol or whatever it was called. Tell IE to "install" Google, make that the default, delete the other two and reboot IE. Back to the search engine from hell, and the only search engines available are Bing and Crapsearch. I go into Uninstall Programs slashing and burning everything that starts with the letter C. There were at least five programs installed that were all linked together. Then off to the registry for more mahem. Reboot the computer, start up IE and another ta da.

Now I was really in a mood. When the dust settled (think crazed massage robot on WALL-E taking out the cruise ship's entire security force and you're getting close), the list of installed programs was about half as long as when I started. Nothing like a good purge. And the PC is humming along nicely again.

A few news items that caught my eye:

A man in Sandy Hook helped a group of six kids who had just watched their teacher get shot, and a school bus driver leading them away from the school. His reward? Being constantly harassed by tinfoil-hat douche bags. He has been overwhelmed by e-mail, mail and phone calls accusing him of working for the government in a staged shooting. I have no idea what these ass clowns think they're accomplishing. If anyone is working for Obama to eliminate gun rights, they are.

The basketball coach at some fancy prep school in California has been disciplining players by making them stand for hours with their feet and hands zip-tied together and clothespins on their nipples. Barney Fife from the local PD is quick to assure us that the nipple thing was probably not sexual, just sadistic. Me thinks Barney needs to type "sado-masochism" into Google and learn the two are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, what I want to know is, did it work? Do zip-ties and nipple pinching produce superior basketball players? That is the purpose of school, after all. That whole learning thing is so Paleo. What we want from our schools is a steady stream of gladiators... er.... athletes to fill up all 74 ESPN channels with never-ending sports for our entertainment. Right? Right?!?

Then we have more nipple play over at the Manhattan Soccer Club right on the club's logo. Unfortunately, the article doesn't address whether this makes better soccer players, and instead talks about the flue and why players are no longer allowed to high five or do the handshake thing with the other team at the end of the game. Two thoughts: If the flu is so bad that a high five could result in a players death, then maybe soccer season should just be canceled. And what good does banning high-fives do when you simultaneously encourage players to manipulate each others' mammaries?

And finally we have a college hoop star involved in a bar fight. He and a teammate walk into a bar, drunk douche bag takes a swing at hoop star, teammate knocks out DDB with a single punch to the head. Then hoop star displays his amazing lack of judgement, as well as deep confusion regarding which sport he plays, by attempting to kick a field goal with now-unconscious DDB's head. In keeping with the news media's inability to get to the bottom of the story, the important question is never asked: Did hoop star's high school coach force him to wear clothespins on his nipples? Is nipple-pinching like steroids? A little can give you a real edge, but too much makes you grow a Neanderthalish beetle-brow and go on rampages? Inquiring minds want to know....

On the home front, we continue to putter around doing repairs, cleaning and yard work, as long as it costs little or no money. The one thing we did purchase is a clothesline (no clothespins though). It's in the middle of the floor still in the box. Given the current pace of work, it should be up early spring 2017. I should probably take some pictures of the stuff we're doing, but now I'm too busy researching the history of nipple-pinching as an athletic training tool. So far, I've found references going back to the Greek marathon runners.

Hidden Mickey!!!

Breakfast of Champions

Merry New Year!

Well, it's 2013, which means every check we send out for the next several months will have the incorrect year on it. It's also time to clean out the Past Reading list. We missed our goal of collectively reading 100 books every year by a mere 3 books. Still not bad when you consider that this was not only another moving year, but a 2-month-renovation-to-the-new-digs year as well. Still, I feel like a slacker whenever we miss that goal.

Speaking of renovations, we're still plugging away at making this place more livable. We spent most of New Year's Day rearranging the shed, throwing stuff out, moving stuff from the trailer to the shed, etc. We made a bit more room for ourselves and much more room in the shed. The bikes are still outside under bike covers, but I'm not giving up on the idea of them living in the shed along with all the paraphernalia like lights, saddlebags, etc. That would clean out a full shelf in our bedroom. I'm sure it would be quickly filled up again with stuff lurking somewhere hidden, but progress is progress. And we finally unloaded the electric hot water heater that's been sitting unused in the back of the Florida room since early July, although we got less than a third what we paid for it. All I cared about was getting the thing out of my house and out of my life. We're currently short on cash thanks to our $5,000 dental bill, but I still have an entire to-do list that involves nothing but sweat to get done. Those to-do's should be kicked out over the next month or so, but a lot of that depends on....

I'm still hustling for some place to park my carcass for tax season. I'll be spending time today and tomorrow following up on the strongest lead so far. Their process is something like twenty steps long, and these are the last three steps, so I should know something by the end of the week. I have a couple other strong leads here in town, but I can almost guarantee I wouldn't be making near the money I will be if Plan A pans out.

I'm still waiting for the official word on the last-minute "fiscal cliff" deal. From what I've been able to piece together so far is that anyone making less than $50,000 will have slightly less money in their pocket, those making between $50,000 and $400,000 may or may not see a bit more of their gross earnings in 2013, and those making over $400,000 will be paying a great deal more. In theory, of course. I'm sure their tax attorneys are busy looking for tax strategies to nullify any tax increases on their clients. Meanwhile, the real questions, like how one-third of the country working for shrinking wages are supposed to support the other two-thirds in the manner to which they have become accustomed, got another kick down the road.

The New Year is supposed to be a time for predictions and resolutions. I'll start with the easiest: resolutions. We don't have any other than surviving another year without ending up living in a dumpster behind Denny's or murdering the Bitch Who Lives Next Door. (That last one is still up in the air depending on if we can figure out a way to not get caught.)

As far as predictions, I expect America's slow, downward spiral to continue. The Fed will continue to shovel $80 billion a month into the to-big-to-fail (TBTF) banks, barely offsetting the currency that is disappearing from debt deflation. Jon Corzine will continue wandering around free, as will all the rest of the TBTF banksters that in a country with any respect for the rule of law would be cellmates of Bernie Madoff. We will continue to lie about becoming energy independent even as the production of shale oil goes into decline due to rapid depletion and the bursting of the investment bubble around it. Natural gas prices will continue to tick up towards the $8-per-unit needed to pay for production as current shale gas wells continue to go into decline and the burned investors make raising more capital for new ones difficult. The increase in natural gas prices will also cause electricity to become more expensive. (56% of electricity in Florida is generated with natural gas, more than double what is generated with coal and five times what is generated with nuclear.) Our "leaders" in government and finance will continue to insist that what they've been doing for the last five years will solve all our problems if we keep on doing what hasn't worked while we screw our eyes shut, click our heels three times while saying "There's no place like home!"

Merry 2013.

Year-End Interregnum

I'm still pursuing job leads, with one that looks a bit promising. I don't want to go all blabby and jinx the thing, but it's probably the strongest lead I've had since we moved to Zephyrhills. The problem is that the multiple steps necessary mean I'm stuck hanging around the house waiting for phone calls and/or e-mails. Not that the weather has made me really want to run outside. Since Thursday, we've had nothing but heavy overcast, rain, and temps in the 60's (brrrrrr!).

So while I can't leave the house, I'm cleaning a month's worth of photos off the camera, catching up on our bookkeeping, scraping off the foot of dust on everything, blah, blah, blah.

Speaking of cleaning off the camera:

Inaugural Cruise on Celebrity's Reflection:

Debbie in the Big Chair

Ricky in the Big Chair

Reflection at Night

Celebrity's Big X

Sunset at Sea

Migraine Clock

We have several neighbors who get into Christmas lights:

Penguin!

Fence Decorations

Tree Decorations

Santa and Snoop Dawg.

And photos from Thursday's trip over to Animal Kingdom. Note to self: Never go anywhere near Disneyworld  the week between Christmas and New Years. We're used to the other parks being crowded, but Animal Kingdom is usually much less so. Not Thursday. We had to park further from the gate than we ever have before, and simply attempting to walk down the streets in the park was nearly impossible. But we did get a glimpse of Jabali:

Peek!

Mom

New Kids on the Block

Bald Eagle in the Flights of Wonder Show

Kitty!!

Grumpy Kitty

Hungry Kitty

Sleepy Kitty

No clue what this thing is or why it's standing on its knees.

Well, I should stop messing about here and get on my inside work. The weather is supposed to clear tomorrow, so with a bit of luck, I'll get some outdoor work done as well.

...and We're Back

We're home to stay for a very long while. Debbie is coming into her busy season. With some luck, I'll be busy as well. I have a number of lines out at this time, and Friday I will be out sniffing around some more. In any case, between now and at least mid-April, don't even bother to ask. We can't.

As I mentioned before, this is our first Christmas since 2005 that we've spent with anyone other than the two of us. Compared to the Grand Chaos of Christmases Past, it was a cakewalk, but it was still more than our normal just-us, monkey-bread-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner, NCIS-24-hour-marathon, not-even-get-dressed-let-alone-leave-the-house Christmas. My parents are forever telling us we're boring. I prefer "lazy". Pō-tā-tō, pō-tă-tō.

Tomorrow is Debbie's day off because she will be working Saturday, so we may sneak off someplace like Disneyworld. Which means more driving, but nothing like what we've been doing the last few weeks. Maybe the Christmas... er... Holiday decorations will still be up.

And that's pretty much it for the week. I have several hundred photos on my camera that I haven't even looked at. If I find anything even moderately interesting, I'll post it. Otherwise, I may get some Mickey pictures up over the weekend.

Done...

...at least for a few months. I decided that rather than spend the day circling Zephyrhills begging for a job, I would complete my last eight hours of CPE in one go. I managed it, although I think I broke something in my brain. At least I can now read something fun instead of reading tax code, hence Watership Down over in the Currently Reading list. It's been years if not decades since I last read it, and I figured it would be relaxing for my poor noggin. Not much else to report; tomorrow is more money we don't have out the door for doctor visits for me and a trip back to the dentist for Debbie to put one of her temporary caps back on. Then a day to do some chores in the morning and get ready to head out of town again. This will be the last time in a loooooong time we leave our wee little homestead; we're just about tripped out. We'd forgotten how hectic this time of year is after seven quiet Christmases with just the two of us. We had figured it would be just us again as my family normally all head up to Michigan for Christmas with my grandpa. But no one can afford the extra drive back and forth, and Grandpa is to the point that he doesn't recognize hardly anyone and wouldn't know if they were there or not. So they're all here, which is good, but, again, a bit more chaotic that we're used to.

Well, off to read about some wascally wabbits. (Elmer Fudd is in Watership Down, isn't he?)

Work, Work, Work

So we finally landed at home Monday afternoon. At least for a couple weeks, then it's back on the road for another trip. The plan for this week was for me to focus on finding a place to do taxes for the upcoming tax season, but that went out the window. We spent Monday afternoon unpacking, rebooting, laundry, etc. I spent all day Tuesday trying to get my required CPE complete before the end of the year. Should have gotten on this sooner, but with all the moving and stuff that needed to be done on the trailer, I'm now scrambling.

Then Wednesday, we both had our initial appointments with the new dentist. We expected a quick in-and-out; a few x-rays, a "plan of attack", then appointments at some future point to get things rolling.

Heh.

Instead we were there for five and a half hours and got socked with a $5,000+ bill. After that, we sort of just came home and stared off into space trying to figure out where in the %&#@* we were going to dig up five large.

Thursday, I finally had to do some work outside. The oak trees decided to drop all their leaves while we were out of town, then it rained on them. The oak leaves down here aren't like the ones in Michigan. These are very small and flat so they stick to everything and leave permanent stains on whatever they touch. I just couldn't leave them any longer, so I went at the outdoor work with a vengeance, sweeping, raking, trimming, mowing, edging (a weekly activity in Florida), more sweeping, weeding, mulching. Then I figured the day was pretty well shot anyway and while I was sweaty and dirty, I may as well attack the shed. Since moving here, we've been shoving things into the shed any ol' way, figuring we'd deal with it later. Well, "later" was yesterday: pulled out shelving to make more floor space, relocated/rewired outlets, cleaned and made a first pass at organizing all the clutter. There's still a long way to go, but at least the basic outline is starting to take shape.

And that brings us to today, which was another brain-buster trying to cram in CPE. I really should have started this sooner. Meanwhile, because of the dental fiasco, Debbie's work schedule has been completely jacked all week, just adding to the chaos.

And yes. I'm whinging. Deal with it.

Tomorrow and Sunday look to be more of the same other than a break Sunday night to go to the Christmas cantata at my parents' church. Maybe next week will be normaler.

Passing Through

In between coming from and getting ready to go again, there is this:


Sweet. And note this time around that a) Paramount hasn't ordered free advertising off the internet (yet) and b) the video can be embedded; all without the whole world screaming at them first. Good to know that at least one corporation has learned how to muzzle their clueless lawyers.

More when I have time. At least we'll be mostly done after this weekend. I really need to focus on a couple things for the rest of December.