Monthly Archives: June 2016

Balderdash!

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Happy Thursday morning!

It’s about 8:30 in the main cabin at Ulvik and looks like it’s going to be yet another gorgeous day.  Yesterday did not disappoint.  Nor was anything of import accomplished, which added to the non-disappointment aspect of things.  I drove to the Cornball Store to get “T” some sticky buns yesterday morning, and took a fairly long walk later in the afternoon.

Much of the rest of the day was spent either reading or lounging on the screened porch of my cabin (pictured) and enjoying the ever-present breeze and perfect temperature.  Of course, falling in the lake was also accomplished.

“T” fried up some Tilapia for dinner last night, which was quite good.  In other happenings, I finally won a game of something!  Don’t remember the last time that that happened.  The game, “Balderdash,” was something that Jamie brought with him; it’s sort of a cross between “Dictionary” and messed-up trivia.  Players are given a subject, guess what it means, and then everyone tries to guess which answer given is the correct one.

Kind of goofy, but – as I said – I won.  So there’s that.

We may take a trip to Echo Rock this morning, which involves taking one of the boats through the Magnetawan Locks.  I don’t think I’ve ever done that.

More from the lake

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And so we’ve come to Wednesday.

It’s about 11:30 right now and a beautiful Ahmic day.  A bit nippy out of the sun (probably low 60s), but I’m sure that the docks are in the 70s.  I couldn’t make myself jump in the lake when I woke up 5 hours ago when it felt like about 55 degrees.  Pathetic, I know.  Jamie – who arrived yesterday afternoon – and Cy both said that the water temperature was perfect.  I opted for a hot shower instead, though I’m sure I’ll hit the lake within an hour – after which I’ll take a nap on my screened-in porch.

I made jambalaya for dinner last night, and thought that it was pretty good.  In addition to chorizo sausage and all the “regular” stuff (onion, peppers, garlic, etc.), I included bacon, ham, and scallops.  Made a lot of the stuff, which was good because Patrick and his wife (a Canadian couple who’s last name I cannot recall) showed up.  Got some nice compliments on the slop, and there’s enough left over for lunch today.  I always like the stuff better after it’s had a day to marinate in the fridge.

Had a bit of a scare – or at least an uneasy feeling – yesterday morning.  I got a text message from my neighbor asking if I’d left yet and saying, “The house looks occupied!”  I forwarded that to Jenny, who replied that she thought that she’d heard water running the last time she went to check on the cats.

After grilling the neighbor a bit, I learned that she was just referring to the lights going on and off (they’re on a fairly complex schedule), and Jenny and I decided that the running water was probably the refrigerator.  Heard from her last night that all is well, all doors are locked, etc.

A bit freaky.  Had me on the verge of heading home after only two days here!

I also drove down to Huntsville yesterday – mainly to get ingredients for the jambalaya, but also to look for souvenirs for a few friends in Atlanta.  Wasn’t able to find anything that wasn’t stupid, so I guess I’ll try Parry Sound this weekend.  We’d planned to go there on Friday, but realized that Friday, being Canada Day, won’t be good.  The whole town will be closed.

So what to do Friday?  I hear that there will be a Canada Day parade in downtown Magnetawan, which should be fun.  I’ve been here for at least one of those, and it was so much like a July 4th parade in Shoreham….

 

God’s Country

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After two years away, I’m finally back at the Mag.  Joined Dianne, Cy and “T” at around 3:30 yesterday afternoon after a fairly pleasant drive from Lima, OH, in which I’d spent Saturday night.

The drive from Atlanta to Ohio was uneventful – once I actually managed to get out of Atlanta.  Seems like the west-side traffic gets worse down there every day.  It took me close to an hour to make it from Duluth to Kennesaw.  After that, it was smooth all the way to Lima, and I arrived there at around 7:30 Saturday night.  Woke up early and hit the road by 7 :00 in order to get to Magnetawan before dinner.

After said dinner (dirty bird (a.k.a. bastard bbq)), the four of us played Oh Hell until 10:30. CY was the big winner, followed closely by “T”.  I, as usual, got my ass kicked.  Never have been good at cards.

We got a couple of brief showers on the lake last night – enough to hatch some mosquitoes – but the sun is out today, and it’s absolutely beautiful weather.  When I woke up this morning (at 5:30 – ugh), it was about 68 degrees in my cabin.  I’d estimate that it’s currently in the low 70’s, and there’s a perfect western breeze coming in off of the lake as I sit on the porch this morning.

No plans for today at the moment. I’m sure that napping will be involved, and maybe some tennis. There is also a decent chance that I’ll go into town, as I need both Vodka and a mosquito/deerfly net for my hat.  I took a walk this morning, and the flies were terrible.

 

V-3!

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I’m at home this morning.  Not for long.  It’s about 9:20 now and I expect that I’ll be in the office by 10:00.  Going in late because the heating & air guy is here doing whatever it is that they do twice a year.  Mainly change the filter in the furnace.  Truth be told, that is such a pain in the ass that I’ll gladly write the annual $150 check just so I don’t have to do it.  I’m not sure who the genius was who designed the filter holder in my furnace, but getting a new one in without either destroying it or cutting your hands and arms or both is nearly impossible.

He tells me that my air conditioner is blowing out 52-degree air, however.  That’s nice.  It’s apparently supposed to blow 55-degree air, and the unit is nearly 30 years old, so bully for me.

Should you be wondering, my thermostat is generally set at around 83 in the summer, so I’m not overly concerned about the cost of the difference between 52 and 55 degrees when the air conditioner is actually running.  It doesn’t run much.

As noted in the title, I’m three days away from starting my first real vacation in about two years.  Last year’s had to be juggled all over the place because I had possible strike duty and couldn’t go anywhere out of cellphone range.  Also couldn’t go to Canada – the dates just didn’t work out.  I ended up taking a week in October to visit Lake Superior (and I’ll do that again this year, I think).  Not having strike duty looming over me this year, I’m headed to Magnetawan this weekend and will spend at least a week and a half there before heading back.  Maybe even two weeks.

This will be a great thing, in spite of the bugs, because it is bloody hot in Georgia.  The temperatures have been climbing well into the 90s for the last few weeks, and when there’s a breeze, it feels more like that which would come from an electric heater.  No relief at all.  I generally start my morning walks at about 5:40.  Even at that time, I’m covered in sweat before I’ve gone half a mile.  Incessant heat basically sucks the life out of me.

I’m also looking forward to finding out if a week in clean air will clear up this stupid allergy/sinus infection/whatever, which is still making me sneeze regularly.

No.  I’m not going to a doctor for sniffles.

Work has been work.  Really not much going on, though I did do a bit of coding last week.  I’ve also managed to move most of the call center televisions away from a (very expensive) series of broadcast boxes that are painfully inefficient, difficult to troubleshoot, and completely unnecessary.  All of the center’s 43 televisions, save 2, are now being fed over Ethernet from three laptops and two u-verse set-top boxes.  My boss (and his boss) are pleased with this effort, since we currently pay something like $2500 annually for “support” on the broadcast boxes.  Said support is generally not good, and I’ve never understood why they were set up in the first place.

Got a document from Dad yesterday – the rough draft of his memoirs.  I’m up to 1942-1946, and am already fascinated and thinking of all of the various things that I can google to fill in some of the blank (to me) spots in his childhood.  A map of where he lived, more about my grandmother, etc.  Would also like to look up some of the songs that he sang as a very young child, as I have never heard of most of them.  Maybe I’ll bring a digital recorder to his house sometime and make him sing them.

Sort of like the guy who wandered around the Appalachian mountains to record folk songs, right?

The heating/air guy seems to be about done, so I’ll wrap this up and write a check to him.  Next entry will probably be from Canada!

 

Jury Duty

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I’d dared to hope that, after 50 years without having ever been summoned for jury duty, I’d make it through life as a jury virgin.

Three weeks ago, I – for lack of a better g-rated phrase – got laid by the Superior Court of Gwinnett County.

To say that I was not pleased by the county’s new interest in me would be a bit of an understatement. Sure, it’s my civic duty. Yes, it’s an honor and a privilege (I’m required to say that). And I even get $30 for participating in this incredibly boring endeavor. But the simple facts are these: I don’t want to do this, I’ve never wanted to do this, I have virtually no trust or respect for any aspect of our legal system, and I’ve done what I thought was necessary to avoid being in the jury pool – namely, giving up my right to vote.

Turns out that Gwinnett County started using DMV records to fill the pool…

To clarify one of the above statements, I should say that I think the idea of American jurisprudence is a fine one, and it might have been great at some point. Unfortunately, it’s turned into just another business, in my opinion.

The police are a revenue arm of the local government, not a force driven to “serve and protect.”

Lawyers have very little interest in “justice” out “finding the truth,” but are deeply concerned about their win/loss record, about how far they can climb politically, and about cashing in.

Judges used to be lawyers – enough said.

Prisons are more private concerns, with a financial stake in staying filled to capacity (or beyond it), cutting costs wherever possible, and using prisoners for what amounts to slave labor – road crews, for example.

In short, I think our legal system is a joke and a shadow of what it was meant to be.

Yet here I am…. Sitting in a big, hot, room, on an unbelievably uncomfortable chair, waiting for my little pod to be called. And I’ve been doing so for the last two hours.

Call me a cynic. Call me a bad American. Call me unpatriotic. Call me all the bad names you can think of.

But please – don’t call me for jury duty again.

TGIF

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You know it’s not a good afternoon when you find yourself googling “how to stay awake at your desk.”

I actually have a playlist that I set up years ago for just such afternoons.  I believe it was the logical extension of the cassette mix tape that I made in the 80s and called “Late Night Driving Stuff.”  Being much older and wiser when I moved into the digital age, my stay-awake-at-the-office playlist is entitled “Good Working Shiznit.” *

Unfortunately, even this vital stand-by isn’t working for me today.  My eyes just don’t want to stay open.  Probably because I didn’t get to bed until close to 11 last night (was running a trivia game on the other side of town).  I never have been a morning person.  Don’t know why I thought it’d be a good idea to teach the cats to get me up at 5:30.

Yeah, I do.  Because, as obnoxious as they are, they’re still light years ahead of an alarm clock.

12 more spams since my last post .  I can see those getting to be annoying.  Might be time to just disable comments.

Anyway, life in the great white-hot south continues.  It is brutal today.  Went outside to go to lunch and thought I’d have a heat stroke before I got to me car.  If it were possible, I’d be heading for the mountains tonight, but Jenny and her brother are coming to the house to see the cats tomorrow AND I’ve got jury duty next week, so I have to call my juror decoder-ring number sometime this weekend.

I did text my friend Brett a few days ago and suggest that we give it a shot next weekend.  During the wet trip that I mentioned in my last post, I showed him my “RavPower” charger and mentioned that I’d managed to charge my phone with it for a full week before it needed charging.  That was all Brett needed to hear.  He got home and bought one…and a USB lantern and a USB headlamp and a new USB speaker and on and on and on.  I said, “Cool.  Let’s hit the woods.  And you do realize that charging everything you own from one power source is going to kill the power source in 24 hours, right?”

Smart guy.  Really smart.  Just dumb sometimes.

NorthCountryTrail

A part of the trail between the Au Sable Light Station and the Log Slide at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

I got my RavPower last year in anticipation of making a long hike on the AT sometime this year.  Have pretty much decided that that won’t happen, but I think I will go back to Michigan for a week or two in the fall and get some trail miles in.  I’ve found myself almost craving the hypnotic solitude of the North Country Trail in Michigan.

How to describe how gorgeous that trail can be….I really can’t do it.  I mean, just look at the photo and them imagine that the only sounds you hear are birds, the breeze through the tops of the trees, Lake Superior crashing about 300 yards to the left, and the sound of your boots on grass and/or packed trail.  Imagine that the temperature is in the mid-60s.   You feel – literally – like this area has looked exactly like this for the last 5,000 years, and you’re walking along game trails that mound builders used.  And you see a bear off to the right.  And you poop yourself and the bear walks away.  And then you walk the 5 miles back to your car in what seems like 5 minutes because it’s just so freaking perfect.

So yeah, I’m thinking about doing that again this year and maybe doing some back-country camping instead of staying at a campground as I did last year.  Though, to be honest, it was one of the nicest campgrounds I’ve visited in quite a while.  I could live with doing that again, too.

But I should probably do some work first.

* Lots of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, some  ABBA, up-tempo BST and Billy Joel.  You know.  Good working shiznit.

Oh yea! Spammers!

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You know how I said that this weird URL might help keep spammers out?

Yeah, that didn’t happen – although it’s fairly obvious that the 11 spams so far were all robotic.  Guess I can’t do anything about that, and some of the “comments” are sort of amusing in their complete idiocy.

Taking a short break from fixing software issues while listening to the soundtrack from Hamilton this afternoon.  Not really paying attention to the words, but the music isn’t bad.  Considering its success on Broadway, I’m sort of surprised that it hasn’t been made into a movie yet.

Andi Sprague had surgery on her leg yesterday.  Jenny tells me it went well.  Now the fun part – recovery – begins.

The picture for today is one that I took of the river, Little Santeetlah Creek, on the banks of which a buddy and I set up camp a couple of weekends ago.  It rained the whole time – pretty miserable, really – but the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is so damned gorgeous that we had a good time anyway.  JK is definitely in my top 5 places to throw up a tent and spend a few days (camping is allowed just outside the national forest part).  Great hiking, a beautiful river, very few people, no cell coverage.

Anyway, Brett and I spent a few days shooting at cans with my pellet pistol (purchased for its remarkable resemblance to a real gun and hopefully a deterrent to anyone who wants to mess with me when I’m camping.  If it’s not, I guess I’ll get a real gun one of these days), getting soaked under a leaky tarp, taking one short hike, and taking cheesy pictures of the river.  I rarely bring my DSLR with me anymore, and decided to see how much I could mess with the aperture and shutter settings on my phone’s camera.  I thought it did okay.

I need to empty out the band’s folders tonight, but I really don’t want to.  Would much rather go play trivia.

So maybe I’ll do the folders tomorrow.

Snuffles

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Had a fairly boring weekend.  Mowed the lawn and did some shopping on Saturday before going to a watering hole to play some trivia (came within 18 points of a perfect score – good for #2 in North America); and did absolutely nothing on Sunday other than taking a long walk in the morning.  Spent most of the day watching the new implementation of Roots and doing laundry.

Also took a walk on Saturday morning.  Both walks featured tiny bits of rain which did not mitigate the ungodly heat and humidity.  You’d think that it’d be comfortable at 5:30 in the morning.  Not at all.  This is going to be a long, hot, summer.

I’ve been sneezing my head off for the past several weeks and it’s really getting annoying.  Picked up some Claritin and Flonase last week to see if either of those will help.  Just started a regimen of the latter yesterday.  I’m not sure exactly what I’m allergic to at this point.  Thought it was the cats, but I’m ruling that out for now.  Also thought it might be a new detergent that I started using about a month ago, but switching back to the old one hasn’t yielded any improvements.

The Puff’s company is pleased, anyway.  Can’t buy enough of the stuff.  Here’s hoping that a couple of weeks in Canada will clear things up at least temporarily.

In my spare time, I’ve been amusing myself for a couple of months by playing two computer games in a series called Medal of Honor.  Both are first-person shooters (in that the action involves a scene as it would be seen if you were in it, and you’re shooting at things) set in WWII.  The first one, Medal of Honor, Pacific Assault, puts the gamer in the marines at Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and a few other Pacific islands.   The second, MoH, Allied Assault, has the player landing at Normandy and fighting through the French and Belgian countryside.

Both are graphically excellent, and seem to be fairly historically accurate, too.  Both have inspired me to look up details of several of the battles that “I” have been involved in (Tarawa is fascinating.  I wouldn’t mind visiting).

I found it somewhat amusing that, when I watched Saving Private Ryan last Monday (Memorial Day), it became apparent that a number of the scenes depicted in MoH, Allied Assault were taken directly from the movie.  Not just close or similar, mind you.  Exactly.  From the scenery and “battle plan” for D-Day to the towns, weather, and sniper towers throughout the movie.

Anyway, they’re fun games that kill time and make me curious enough to look up WWII history, something that previously hasn’t interested me in the least.  I’m currently watching an HBO series, Pacific – you can probably figure out what it’s about.  Quite well done.

Explanations

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Might as well kick this thing kjiayunbqgpm7onkmoikig5re6xs8pqfn7x5ube8jk1xoytyw95ooff with a few explanations.  Why am I doing this again?  What is Graceful Chaos?  What is that weird green logo?  What’s with the photo of a photo on a wall?  And where did that stupid URL originate?

Have no fear.  I shall endeavor to provide satisfactory answers for each of those questions.  If I can’t, then sue me.  It’s my website, and I can do what I want.  I’m an American.  I have the right to be an idiot if I so choose.  Says so right there in The Constitution or The Bible or The Catcher in the Rye or one of those books that starts with the word “The”.

So why am I doing this again?  Why not?  I told Dad I was thinking about firing up a blog (or revisiting one of the old ones) to entertain him and myself.  And I’ve had a spare domain just sitting out there on a server in Arizona doing nothing for the last year, so I thought I could kill a couple of birds with one sniper-like shotgun blast.  Anyway, I started playing around with the unused domain a while ago – and recently renewed it for a few years as a kind of catch-all for my stuff – so I installed WordPress on it.

And then I reached my limit for reading political garbage on Facebook and nuked my account there.  Sorry.  It was just making me angry all the time and I saw no need for that.  Maybe I’ll sign up again after the election.  In any case, I’ve got a blog again.  And I’m not wasting time on Facebook, so maybe I’ll keep it updated.

Graceful Chaos.  Believe it or not, I put some thought into that, and I’m still not satisfied with it.  It might change if I can come up with a one-word description for something which I can’t believe doesn’t already have one.  See, my favorite style of music, by far, has no name.  It’s a combination of styles, really.  Paul Lovatt Cooper writes a lot of it (I’ve considered both Lovattetto and Cooperando) as did Paul Hindemith (maybe it’s a Paul thing??).  Basically, a simple theme is stated somewhere, gets lost for a while, and then comes back as the central flowing theme layered over the top (or underneath) a riot of technical, usually presto, counterpoints.   This type of thing happens a lot in brass band music, which may explain why I love it.

Example (indulge me):  Philip Sparke’s Tallis Variations is based, not surprisingly, on a very simple theme by Thomas Tallis.  Yes, I know that Ralph Vaugham Williams used the same thing for his Fantasy on a Theme by Tallis.  Focus, people.  I’m talking about brass bands, not orchestras.  Moving on.  It’s an extremely simple theme (it is, in fact, Tallis’ Third Mode Melody, which you can see here if you’d like: Third Mode Melody).

Sparke takes this hymn, states it early, and then goes about doing what Sparke does, which is blowing up brass players’ faces for 10 minutes.  “Cornets, play lots of 16th notes.  Horns, go fox hunting or something.  Euphs, play etudes.  Snare – I need shock accents!  Tubas, oompah your guts out. Flugel..are you drunk again?  Play like you’re drunk.  Now, everybody do all of that together.  Oh yeah – bones, take the melody and make it pretty.”

The result winds up being something like this (courtesy of the Yorkshire Building Society Band):

https://youtu.be/svI-wYQ6lpY?t=770

You see how that works?  Simple melody.  Played strongly.  On a bed of spaghetti.

I love that shit!  And there isn’t a term for it!  It is, therefore, my duty to come up with one.  Also, since it is widely known at my workplace that I am able to remain calm when everything is falling apart, Graceful Chaos seems like a decent interim name for my blog.

Understand that the reason I remain calm is because I really don’t care about the things that are falling apart.  It’s just a job, after all.

The green logo thing (an original TWD, entitled Rawr!) also fits the theme.  It is a monster.  It’s lifting weights.  It’s on a fluorescent green background.  It’s got pointy teeth.  It’s wearing a sort of argyle/plaid sweater.  It’s chaotic.  But I drew it during an outage meeting at three o’clock in the morning a few years ago and the act of doing so kept me calm.

It was at around the same time that I superimposed the glamour shot of myself into an art gallery.  Why did I include that picture in this post?  No idea.  I wanted a picture to break up the text and that’s the first one I found on my laptop.

Lastly, what’s up with the funky address for this page?  Migration?  What’s that all about?

Long story as short as possible.  I got TheUFFP and wrote stuff for it.  It was on a Windows server.  Then I wanted to upgrade lots of the stuff and put everything on Linux, so I got UFFP2.  I’d planned to move everything back under TheUFFP name at some point, but as more and more went into UFFP2, that became a bit of a hassle.  Logically, I should have dumped TheUFFP.  Except that I’ve had @theuffp email addresses for nearly 20 years and doing away with the domain name would have been amazingly painful.  So I kept it with nothing on it.  Until I was informed that the hosting account tied to the TheUFFP domain was moving to a different server and I had to move everything.

Well, there WASN’T anything in the hosting account.  It had all been moved the UFFP2 or deleted.  But, since it was such a huge hassle for other domains on the same server – the ones that had websites attached to them – I got a free hosting account for a year, and all I had to do to make it work was name it something other than TheUFFP.com.  So I named it Migration.TheUFFP.com.

Because it was, you know, migrating.

Since this is just an experimental site – a place where I can test code, store databases, post photos, etc. – I don’t really want people to just stumble into it.  Sure, some robots will find it eventually; but, realistically, if I don’t give out the domain name, normal people won’t find it.

And if they do, I’ll just delete all of their comments and lock things down.  I have the power.

I like that.

Anyway, welcome aboard.  I guess this thing’s live now.

TWD