Disclaimer: Hope you like barrel scrapin’s, they go real good with pork rinds but not those fake ones made from corn, only the real kind will do.
Upstanding citizens I harken to thee,
I just got kicked off the couch. Apparently my listlessness and weird aura was driving her nuts. I get that way sometimes when my brain gets full - full of to-do’s, worries concerning proper punctuation use, potential possibilities, a myriad of projects in various stages of mis-completion, old jokes from the 4th grade ("What do you get when you cross a helicopter and a rhino?"), license plates from the past (1BFW877 and PC 6408 to name just a few), esoteric metric conversions (355 ml = 12 oz, 454 grams/pound, 15.4307 grains/gram, etc), song lyrics ("don’t wanna be a bum, you better chew gum"), movie quotes ("Think ya used enough dynamite there Butch?"), Pi (for some inexplicable reason I memorized it to the 26th decimal place – talk about useless!), and a running list of ’fodder for email updates’. So in an effort to cleanse my aura (I did go to Evergreen you know) and improve marital bliss, I’m going to throw some fodder your way, hopefully freeing up some of my much needed internal RAM in the process.
Wargames, the Tony version
Speaking of RAM, our laptop had been running hot recently. Not hot like the freaks that hot rod and overclock their computers so much that they have to super cool them (You can’t make this stuff up.), nor like ENIAC (gotta love Wiki) which required giant industrial fans to keep it cool, but hot enough that it’s two tiny fans had been running more than usual and it had shut itself down several times. No biggie I figure as I’ve taken more than a few things apart, many of them highly electronic and some even worked when I was done messin’ with them. So after a bit of head scratching I managed to get most of the case off. It’s like one of those puzzles you buy at a magic store – impossible unless you know the secret, or in my case just get lucky. My first impression was: "Wow, they don’t build these things like they used to". There’s nary a recognizable component in there, and apparently they now employ very, very tiny beings for assembly as my fat fingers reaching into the computer to unplug impossibly tiny surface mount ribbon connectors was reminiscent of King Kong reaching in to pick up Fay Wray (check it). How is it that a fairly hardcore hacker/phreak/programmer/geek who rode ’first chair’ on the home computer wave of the early 80’s (my first computer: complete with a cassette tape recorder for storing programs, 16K RAM, and screaming 1 MHz processor) could be this lost inside something as simple as a computer? If I would have continued on the trajectory that I was on back then I’d certainly be wearing an earpiece Bluetooth phone, listening to my ipod, and accessing the ’net with my custom spec’d and self-assembled super computer via a hyper fast wireless network. Instead I’m just a total Luddite: no cell phone, no wireless, no portable music, no clue. I still vividly recall my first day of Intro To Computers in 9th grade (they wouldn’t let me take Computers II without it; however they did let me skip Typing class which is ironic as my typing was very fast for programming in BASIC or TRS-DOS but absolutely sucked for writing anything in English or any other human language for that matter). The teacher (an older bleach blonde chain smoker – kind of like a hardcore version of Flo from the old Alice TV series: "Kiss my grits!" as performed by some down home folks) handed out questionnaires to gauge our computer knowledge. The last question was "What do you want to learn in this class?" You should have seen her face as she was reading the questionnaires aloud to the class and came to mine:
"Lots of you put down that you’d like to get more familiar with computers, a few just want to play games which we will have some time for, and who is Tony Smith? Um, we won’t be teaching machine language in this class."
Within the week I was promoted to unofficial TA and spent a good portion of the semester making 1000’s of copies (literally) of educational software programs on 5 ¼" floppies via a gaggle of Model III’s arranged in a semi-circle (Ah, the good old days). By the end of the semester word got around that I knew computers and would frequently get called to the Office, not for smoking in the boys’ room, but instead to change a printer ribbon or solve some other computer related malady. Things progressed this way into college where the programming languages ForTran 77 (now now, don’t get your panties all in a bunch it stands for Formula Translating which isn’t an acronym so it shouldn’t be in all caps although I seem to be the only one in the world that feels that way) and Pascal were added to my quiver. Around about that time Microsoft Windows really came into popularity. That was a transitional period for me as I just couldn’t make the jump to the ultra-buggy and resource hogging GUI (that’s graphical user interface) and therefore went from programmer to just plain old user; it’s been a steady decline since then. Which brings us back to me, my fat fingers, our laptop, and it’s microscopic parts strewn about my desk. To make a really drawn out story slightly more bearable I’ll abbreviate this considerably. To no one’s great surprise the cooling fins were full of dog hair courtesy of Mozart, the dog that never stops shedding. After a good cleaning, I reassembled the computer and amazingly it is no worse for the wear. And unfortunately for you the keyboard still works.
In Memoriam
I like to keep these updates light hearted, but unfortunately I’ve got some bad news. Boeing Surplus, absolutely without question the coolest ’store’ that I’ve ever visited has fallen prey to the bean counters. For those of you not familiar a little background may be in order. Boeing is one of the largest manufacturers of airplanes in the world. As one might expect a fair amount of tooling, equipment, supplies, materials, etc are required by this juggernaut. Rather than dump excess, old stock, worn out, and/or obsolete items they offered them for sale to the public at absurdly low prices in a gigantic warehouse. Here’s some of the "must-haves" that I spotted there over the years: an early (as in very large cabinets filled with vacuum tubes) electron microscope, blocks of titanium the size of Volkswagen bugs, vats full of nearly new files/drill bits/zip ties/Adel clamps/AN fittings/heat shrink tubing all sold by the pound, rows of airline seats, and some of the biggest machine tools I’ve ever laid eyes on. It was a veritable treasure trove, and a must visit whenever I made it back to the Seattle area. Some folks are even more upset than I am: http://www.saveboeingsurplus.com/.
Ripped from the headlines (or in this case the classifieds)
Seen in Lewistown’s News Argus: "Wanted: old motorcycle, big anvil, church bell, and Ruana knife". I’m not really sure what’s going on with this guy: either Wile E. Coyote has moved to central Montana or the Freeman are gearing up for another standoff.
Spring is here (well, if you ignore the snow): time to gear up!
Back in the day I used to knock road bikers as ’roadie dorks’ that just stayed on the pavement because they couldn’t hack a real sport like mountain biking. Then one day I actually tried it and my firmly held opinions regarding the sport were forever changed. It’s darn fun, and will kick you in the heinie if you’re not very fit. So, not long after this (about 1996) I built up a road bike and bought some Sidi road shoes from Dave Parks who was a dedicated racer back in the mid to late 80’s. They were old enough to have been made at the beginning of the neon era (which afflicted cyclists who are naturally predisposed to garish colors/outfits several years before attacking the general populous), yet they served me faithfully for all these years. You just can’t beat Italian leather! Their final hurrah was this February; as I was finishing a sprint interval on the rollers both shoes simultaneously ejected their retention straps causing a YouTube worthy wreck. Good times. So, I needed new shoes, but having been spoiled by years of bro deals during my tenure in the bike industry I simply couldn’t pay full pop (or anywhere near that because I’m cheap as hell) I went shopping online. After much searching I located a suitably sized pair of high end Sidi’s on Craigslist in Monterey, CA. $40 and they looked to be hardly used! So I emailed the fellow and asked if he’d be willing to ship them and accept payment via PayPal as I’m not exactly local to his locale. He said no problem, but would have to charge me for shipping and wanted a couple of bucks for PayPal fees. At this point I’m jacked as I’m looking at spending $52 for shoes that would have retailed for about $300. Nice fellow, he sent me a link to his website. He likes to ride long distances hauling lots of gear. If I haven’t cured you of any desire to read ever again you should check out his blog. He’s much more concise than I. After receiving my payment he fired back a sweet video of him and my new shoes. It went like this: "(holding up the shoes) Dude, Tony, thanks for buying these shoes, they’re sweet, I mean just look at them, they’re like new, and $52 is really a good deal, sorry about having to charge for shipping, but THE SHOES MAN!!! Look at them they’re really nice…". The video continued for several minutes and was a total scream. What? No Link? Yeah, go back and read the first item in this update and you’ll understand how I managed to save a copy of the email but not the attached video. Nothing like a joke without a punch line…arrgh, incompetence!
Fun at Dad’s expense
The other inhabitants of this humble abode seem to take a very perverse pleasure in taunting yours truly. Our microwave was very intelligently designed with a ’sound on/off’ button so that it can be easily SILENCED. I can’t stand the beeping, whether it’s in the car or the kitchen. Never have been able to. Step one in vehicle ownership for me has always been disabling the beeping (although strangely enough two of our current cars have not been disabled yet – I must be slipping). This is usually rather simple: crawl under the dash and either locate the beeping offender and unplug it, or just start unplugging things until the madness ceases. I recommend the use of hearing protection while doing this as it gets really loud under there and it makes it easier to refrain from smashing things indiscriminately. Years ago in the Strong Frames van I had to resort to extreme measures as something vital was incorporated into the beeping module – the darn vehicle wouldn’t start when it was unplugged! However, that beeper shut right up when I filled it with hot solder. Back to the microwave story…smarty Cialeo likes to sneak into the kitchen and set the microwave to ’annoy’ so that when I’m warming a bottle at 3 AM it beeps incessantly at me. Haha, Dad’s annoyed! This is all fun and games but lately it’s taken an ugly turn with the blatant violation of one of the tenets our great country was founded upon: The Separation of Salty and Sweet. Whenever we have pancakes they’re usually accompanied with delicious bacon: porky, smoky, peppery, salty BACON. Like any sane law-abiding person I place mine on a separate plate to maintain the required minimum clearance from the syrup. These freaks, I mean people, that I dine with not only allow intermingling of bacon and syrupy pancakes but adorned with maniacal grins they deliberately slather, dip, and even bathe their bacon in syrup. ACK!! As a kid I thought my folks and brother were the only ones that suffered from this great affliction but I was way wrong.
I’m not alone: Coffee Addicts Unite!
Usually when I send these out into the ionosphere they are received much like old I Love Lucy episodes that are now polluting the airwaves 53,500,000,000,000,000 km from here: not much fanfare (although I suppose we’ll have to wait a while to hear back from anyone/thing that far out there). However my most recent diatribe regarding The Great Coffee Debacle must have resounded heavily on my readers as I received a glut of emails and phone calls regarding it. Astute readers from all over the country gave their sympathy and suggestions. Kathy of Rapid City spoke of an old Minnesota farmer’s trick: egg coffee. No I haven’t tried it yet (you go first!), but fittingly the whacky Minnesota cyclists here have: Egg Coffee. Mr. Austerberry from Michigan responded with the following: "You really should have looked deeper into your chemistry equipment. Think you could have made the external pressure of your aqueous solvent and organic suspension equal the external vapor pressure momentarily. A period of dissolution and mass diffusion followed by a rapid phase separation using gravimetric filtration media may just have worked . . . . Hey but I am just a dumb chemist." No, I don’t know what he’s talking about either. Many folks inquired to see if I was still using the Mr. Frankenmaker. He’s back in the basement, ’waiting in the wings’ to swoop in and save the day should he ever be needed again. Not long after the incident in question I located a vintage Bodum French press on eBay for super cheap; it even had the little insulating cork mat and yellow plastic stirring spoon. Other popular comments were: "Jeezus dude, you’re nuts." and "No need to differentiate Minneapolis from St. Paul as it’s all just the Twin Cities, you know". My favorite though was from a Mr. Elias in Bozeman: "much like major constipation, which I might add is greatly reduced due to the medicinal properties of coffee...it’s one hell of a colonical lubricant". Remember folks, once it hits my computer and/or brain (assuming I don’t forget it) it’s all public domain so watch what you say.
Kids
Isabella is the smilingest baby I’ve ever met. She’s been really easy on us so far. Currently she bears an uncanny resemblance to Cialeo, this is compounded when I dress her in his old clothes. Cialeo has been an awesome big brother, helping out all the time and really caring about how Izzy is doing. Cool.
Until next time,
Tony