I put off upgrading to Snow Leopard because I didn't want to risk my web apps. Last week, I decided it was about time.
I checked on my backups (check), then Thursday morning, I started the process.
The basics went well.
When I started to check my web apps, things weren't so rosy. The database wasn't there. Oops. Or so I thought.
I then charged in with every random thought that came to me. The result was reinstalling MySQL, php, phpMyAdmin, retrieving my databases from Time Capsule (not straightforward, but thank God for Internet help pages), downloading a new version of CodeIgniter, and then laboriously updating every CI app. But only as I need them.
Back to normal. But a circuitous route to just where I was.
I have just begun reading/listening-to William Least Heat-Moon's book Roads to Quoz. I picked it up because I had so enjoyed his first book, Blue Highways. My mom gave it to me in the early 1980's. That book tickled my fancy because the premise is the author's circumnavigating the United States. And using the smaller roads, the ones marked in blue on road maps. Starting from Missouri, he first had to get to the coast, visiting his Scottish ancestor's grave in South Carolina. Native American that seeks his European heritage.
When I saw Roads to Quoz, I added to my basket. Didn't know the word quoz, but I figured all would be revealed. And in the opening section, he talked about his fascination with the 17th letter of the alphabet (Q), his wife with a similar obsession (so much that he calls her "Q"), and finally quoz. It is to him a curious wonder, one unexpected and not sought after as much as noticed. With this preamble, he and Q set off towards the Arkansas mountains and I traveled along.
The next day, I decided to check for multiple meanings of quoz, and possibly for its etymology. Google is as good a choice as any. The first six entries recapitulated Least Heat-Moon's definition. The seventh was a link to an economics site. It was Charles Mackay's Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds from 1848. Economics? 1848? So I linked over and ended up in chapter 13. While the book is best known for the economic bubbles (the South Seas bubble and tulipomania), chapter 13 talks about the catch-phrases of mid-century London.
Quoz! was a sure fire laugh riot.
Following that was "What a shocking bad hat!" [Ed. Anyone watch the credits after House, M.D.? "That's some bad hat, Harry!"] This one derived from a hatter seeking election in Southwark, who courted voters by saying "What a shocking bad hat you have got; call at my warehouse, and you shall have a new one!" It is unreported whether he won or not.
The next all-purpose line was "Hookey Walker," from a song lyric, later shortened to "Walker!"
After Walker! lost popularity came the anonymously created "There he goes with his eye out" or ".... her eye out."
And a host of others, trailing along
- "Has your mother sold her mangle?"
- "Flare up!", an exceptionally long-lived favorite. The newspaper named Flare Up! folded when the phrase lost favor.
- "Does you mother know you're out?" Good for young men with a high opinion of themselves.
- Then there was "WHO are YOU?," a phrase that could arise naturally, to much merriment.
- "Cherry ripe!" from a song.
- "Tom and Jerry."
- The poetic "The sea, the sea!"
- "Jim Crow" from a vaudeville minstrel song.
Whatever. Our age isn't afflicted with such limited powers of expression. We're cool and have been since the '40's. Ish. Wassup, anyways? You know? Snap! Totally! Talk to the hand. Dyno-mite!
Help, I'm drowning.............
Deer hunting this year was my second and my niece Rebecca's first. Last year, I got the only deer. A lowly spike horn.
This year, brother-in-law Mike offered me the use of his 10-foot stand. Last month, we'd moved it to behind the shack/lodge, about 100 yards. Compared to last year, the deer hunting experience was much different. Rather than looking through a 100-yard tunnel through the trees, I was up in the air (cooled by same) with a 350 degree viewpoint.
Saturday morning, I headed out alone at 6:30 AM. Central Standard Time. Talk about cold. Minus 2 degrees. I climbed the tripod and settled in. I stayed till just after 9:00, my toes starting to lose feeling. I had seen nothing but heard one nearby shot.
Back at the shack, everyone else was already in. Brother Mike was the shooter and we had the job of bringing his 8-point buck in. My niece Megan (planning to pursue a job as a physician's assistant) began learning how to field dress.
[Ed. I don't know for sure, but I suspect field dressing a moose is just like field dressing a deer. Just on a grander scale. Might take more skill not to screw up in a smaller work space. Just sayin'.]
At 2:30, we were out the door. It was up from minus-2, but under 10. I sat in the tree about 40 minutes. I was watching NW from my stand, right where the bait was on the road, right where the deer path was visible in the light snow. I glanced over NE to see a deer looking straight at me. At least straight toward my stand. I was higher than a deer would normally look.
Took me a while to confirm that the deer had antlers and to move verrrrrry slooooooowly to my right and raise the rifle to my shoulder. In turning right, I changed my angle just enough that I aligned the two trees near the deer with another tree fairly close to me. Most of the deer was behind the trees. So I aimed like my father-in-law had told me: right where the deer probably would emerge. When it did, I shot. I looked out and saw nothing. But the deer had gone about 10 yards further away from me and expired.
There I was without a hunting knife and without the expertise to use one. But the good news was that I had a good reason to get in out of the cold.
Opening day, two deer and the rest of the season, nothing.
Just before we headed south back to civilization, my father-in-law told me that if I kept up (two seasons, one shot each, two deer), everyone would start calling me "One-Shot Jack." High praise.
I'm doing a little modest woodworking. One project, for example, is extending the molding around the opening for the clothes washer and dryer. When we replaced our dead dryer, we found that the smallest full-size dryer is larger than our 7-year old one, just enough bigger that the bifold door scrapes the dryer door when it is opened.
While the full-credit solution would be to tear out the (non-load-bearing wall) with the door and move it out a couple of inches, we're not going to do that. It's too big a job for me to do well, and too small to deal with finding someone competent and oversee them to do the work.
Two solutions occurred to me: one is rounding the edge of the existing doors so that the doors wouldn't touch each other; the other is removing the molding, installing 3/4 " wood around the door frame, then putting the molding back on. Best of all, would be to combine the methods: molding extender and rounded doors.
So, what do I need to do? The wood I found is the right thickness, but a little too wide. And too long. So the order of events is this:
- rip the extender wood to the right width
- prime and paint the extender wood so that it will match the existing moulding
- miter the ends of the extender wood
- nail up the top piece of extender wood
- cut the vertical pieces of extender wood to length
- nail up the vertical extenders
- nail back up the original moulding.
What could be simpler? And I have table saw for ripping, a work table for painting and priming, a miter saw for mitering and cutting to length, and a router (with router table) for rounding door edges and extender pieces that don't fit neatly over the existing mop board. Virtual workshop to the rescue.
The problem is swapping out the unused equipment to make room for what I'm doing. First I haul out my excellent work table. Table saw and extension cord out and set up. Rip like crazy. Put up table saw, sweep, and put out drop cloths for priming and painting. Set the painted pieces aside, remove the drop cloths, and set up the miter saw. Get out the shop vacuum to clean up the sawdust. Miter ends. Utter foul imprecations when I find I've cut the pieces too short. Back to Lowe's to get more wood. Swap out the miter saw and swap in the table saw. Swap out table saw, swap in the painting workspace. Wait the requisite time. Swap out painting context, swap in miter saw. Install top piece. Discover, unpleasantly, that the vertical pieces will have to be routed to fit over the mop board; or I'll have to remove the mop board (and the quarter round cover the hard-wood edges), install the vertical, then trim the mop board to fit. Choose Plan A, and ratiocinate a plan to get the routing right the first time. So I don't have to buy even more extender wood and start over.......
Compare this thrashing to a real workshop with the various tools in their places (with bright shiny faces), me just walking place to place, all the equipment attached to a central dust collection system.
Bliss.
And a dream, never to be realized. Sigh.
When I retired the first time, I had a set of 3-month projects lined up to keep me focused. One of them was completing a screenplay on Richard III. The notion of writing something for publication has been around for a long while. Now that I think about it, a very long while.
About 1986, I decided to submit some poems for publication. I picked the most prestigious U.S. Journal, Poetry. They gave as an example of a first-time publication "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." In case I catch on, thought I, having Poetry as my first venue seemed good. I submitted. They declined. I didn't submit again.
About 1988, I found myself writing sketches autobiographical about a suddenly-single guy, eking by and being lonely. I know, wildly innovative. I even showed them to friends, to some encouragement. I also planned a longer novel and collected a lot of background and other material. Blocked out a short story of revenge gone awry. An historical novel about the sudden emergence of democracy in ancient Greece. But nothing resulted.
On first retirement, unexpected things intruded -- life and death things -- so my schedule for writing was pushed back. After the attacks, I went back to work, and spent no time on writing. When I retired again, I had other bright ideas. One about my experience of school desegregation in high school. Another about going deer hunting for the first time after I started receiving Social Security. Bright ideas that faded with the passage of time.
So what am I to learn from this? I could give up the idea of actually writing something for publication. I could change my habits so I can finish things. Is there a third option? Maybe I could start writing in my journal again. Just to shake off the rust.....
During the election, I had to provide an email to see information on a lot of sites. So I created an email especially for that purpose, the better to cut off unwanted mail after the election.
Some of those sites sent me hard-over R announcements and news flashes. After the election, they immediately started a stream of anti-Obama links. Will there be an audit of Obama's finances, since there is one of McCain's finances (and McCain's folks had set aside money for that purpose)? Is Obama going to do the odious and re-instate the Fairness Doctrine (whose airways are they, anyway?)? Is Obama planning to take away hunting rifles? Is Obama beholden to foreign and secret contributors?
Arriving at my shooting range, I was greeted by their sign: Obama, what are you hiding? I turned paranoid to hide my Obama books in the car, lest I become noticeable. While preparing my rifle, I overheard the pistoleros next to me (couldn't not hear them). The one with the ginormous pearl-handled revolver assured his 38-wielding friend "Obama has already authorized home invasions." Gulp.
And this in an atmosphere where those like McConnell blast Emmanuel as partisan (as if none of Bush's intimates were) and urge a bi-partisanship that he never exhibited himself.
Based on Obama's steady navigation through the election, I have hopes he'll keep his eye on his goals, keep realistic in his schedule, and show rather than just say. 'Though I think he's going to be very good at the American Cheerleader role.
But a bi-partisan honeymoon would have been nice. He's not even been inaugurated, after all...........
When I was up in Wisconsin in mid-October, my father-in-law George and I went to the range to sight in the rifle. And to shoot my Glock. I was feeling pretty cocky after we'd shot the rifle from 25 yards. We moved back to 100 yds, and I couldn't even hit the paper reliably. I was humiliated. He eventually was able to hit the target reasonably well, but I still couldn't. He pointed out that I was moving the rifle all around while aiming. [Ed. I didn't think to tell him that that was the same way I play pool. Also unsteady.]
I want to shoot well enough not to embarrass him: he seems to take pleasure when I do well in the family competitions -- driving a golf ball across the pond, deer hunting.
First time I went to the local range, I was 'way off at 25 yards. I adjusted to deadeye status, but my shots at 100 yds were so far off I shot below the paper most of the time. Not humiliation, but confusion.
I started thinking about the ballistics of it all. When a thought came to me. Maybe my scope was massively misaimed.
Here's the idea. A bullet flies along a parabola, falling under the pull of gravity. The whole idea of "sighting in a rifle" is to make the scope's straight-line view intersect with the bullet's flight on the way up. For my 30-06, that shorter distance is 25 yards. Shooting farther away, the bullet continues to rise for a little while, then it starts to sink. The idea is to have the bullet hit the target you see (straight-line) both at the near point (e.g., 25 yards) going up and at the far point (in my case, 100 yards) going down.
My conjecture was that I was hitting the 25-yard target on the way down. If that was true, the bullet would continue to fall another 75 yds, missing the aim-point 'way low, sometimes off the paper altogether.
Like a mathematician, I began trying to devise formulas that would confirm my conjecture by estimating the amount low my shot would be at 100 yards. That didn't work out. I couldn't find the right approach on which to bend my formerly considerable mathematical talent. But I thought of another plan.
I went back to the range (very busy this close to deer hunting season). I began at 100 yards and assumed I was hitting 'way low. 7 of my first 8 shots missed the paper altogether. I cranked the scope up and up and up. Eventually, I got my shots onto the paper reliably. I then tried to refine my settings at 25 yards, but there was no room to shoot there, so I used 50 yards. There I was shooting low, confusing me since I should be high at 50 yards. But I polished the aim, then went back shooting at 100 yards.
Success! my shots were within 5 inches of the bull's eye. I adjusted twice, then put the last 3 shots inside the center circle, one touching the red dot.
Beyond the accomplishment (I did this!), now I feel like I won't be an embarrassment to George.
[Still wish I could figure out the equations for how much a shot will change by changing the scope a quarter of a degree......]
On 28 June, my niece Jenny Hipp got married to Chris French. It was also the 50th wedding anniversary of her grandparents. Kind of like the god Janus......
When someone you love suddenly faces a serious medical problem, smaller irritants retreat to their proper perspective. Not Kate. Not children or grandchildren. But still family.
In the promo for American Experience's episode on George H. W. Bush, James Baker says "People used to ask me why we didn't go on to Baghdad. You know what? People don't ask me that anymore."
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Hi, thank you for the article that you wrote article... A lot of time I was trying to find some... read more
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I don't think he's necessarily going to have the kind of honeymoon that I'd want, but NRA crazies and the... read more
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Jon said:
[this is good]*chuckle*"I couldn't find the right approach on which to bend my formerly considerable mathematical talent." read more
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O, well, thank`s for the article that you wrote article! A lot of time I was trying to find some... read more
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