This past weekend I took a small vacation. I went to the ocean, I attended a cookout, I got married. You know, all the normal stuff.
It was month end at work – that is, the Finance Department was closing the books on the month’s financial activities – which is not the best time for me to be away from the office. As it was, however, I really didn’t want to miss the cookout and I opted to travel. And, anyway, in the 125 month-ends I’ve been involved in we’ve had trouble just about one time… and that was because I’d missed something; I’ve made sure not to miss that since.
So, I hopped a plane and got busy getting married. The Finance Department got busy tidying up the books. Engineering got busy filling up the network drives.
I was finished getting married on Friday at 2:30. Finance had the month closed Saturday. Engineering had the network drives filled about 3 p.m. Sunday… I know as that’s when people started leaving messages for me at home. (Well, “person” actually, but “people” sounds more George Lucas-y.)
I’m not complaining – taking a look at the network gave me something to do after I got off the plane Sunday night.
And honestly. I’m not complaining. I’m just having some fun with this and trying to be a helper.
In the days that have passed I’ve removed about 13 gigs of data from our servers and copied it to DVDs. This sounds like a very simple process, and it would be, were it not for the fact Engineers are a bit anal and create very detailed directory structures. What this has led to is a directory name + file name that exceeds the character limit Windows XP is comfortable working with – which appears to be over 250 characters but fewer than 256 characters (I kept losing count/interest and was too lazy to Google) – there were about six files Windows refused to work with as they errored on the file name.
In the end I shortened a couple of directory names, copied the data off, then renamed the directories back to their originals.
Today, July 1st, is Canada Day. The day in which Canadians in Canada, and all over the world (as if they’re not spread thin enough already up there) celebrate.
Celebrate…
Celebrate something…
Perhaps celebrate the fact their Independence Day celebration comes three days before our Independence Day celebration. Does this seem a little suspicious to anybody but me? Year after year after year we’d been celebrating our Independence on July 4. Since 1776, in fact. More than ninety years later the Canadians come along and decide to have a big whoop-de-do just three days prior to ours. They must have known our party was right around the corner – it was certainly on the Snap-On Tools calendar by then.
Imagine that year after year after year you host a Super Bowl party and then one year your friend and neighbor decides to host a Stanley Cup party the same night. You both know a lot of the same guys… everybody wants to see football… nobody gives a crap about hockey*… but the neighbor is serving Poutine — in what can only be an obvious attempt to upstage you – and you know the guys won’t be able to resist.
That’s what this is like – there’ll be parades, parties, cake and ice cream, and The Snowbirds will be performing somewhere, I’m sure (I can almost hear the song they always sing) – in an obvious attempt to upstage us.
If it weren’t for those pesky folks in Mexico, the Canucks would have the first North American Independence celebration of the year.
And this reminds me of one of Kathleen Madigan’s jokes. When she asked a Mexican person what the Cinco de Mayo celebration was for, the Mexican person replied, “for winning the war for our independence.” Kathleen then asked, “Who’d you beat in the war?” The Mexican person said, “France.” “Big deal,” said Madigan, “Who hasn’t?”
Canada’s Independence came more as a peaceful political process than a war of any sort. (My thought it the French Canadians had July 1st of 1867 off. They do, after all, enjoy a good scrap.) At that time, the part of North America that is now Canada was sectioned off into four provinces. Just four; can you imagine how much easier Geography class would have been if we’d just needed to remember four state capitals?
As you know, I’ve recently married a Canadian person. (A woman Canadian person to be precise.) Surprisingly, and I know because I’ve checked with our HR department, I don’t get today off. Ah well, marrying a Canadian comes with plenty of other benefits – for example, since the wedding and regardless of where I am, I instinctively know where magnetic north is; it’s almost as if I gained some type of Dolphin super power the moment I said “I do.”
Anyway, all across Canada (and the world) today Canadians will be celebrating the peaceful process by which they became independent.
Happy Canada Day.
I’m sure there will be Poutine.
*They don’t give a crap so much they don’t realize the Stanley Cup playoffs are a good ways off.
Friday morning Big D and I made a run to pick up some ice. Despite the fact we were in Vancouver, British Columbia – and totally unfamiliar with the Canadian ice-procurement process – we shot out the door acting very much like we knew exactly what we were doing.
A bag of ice at the local gas station was $2.39. I’d like to point out that this was a very small bag of ice. Very small. So small, in fact, I felt compelled to get two. So small, in fact, here in Ohio we’d have called the bags “ice cubes.” (Seriously, my Canadian friends, you are getting ripped off when it comes to buying bagged ice. And don’t get me started on eggs … you guys know they drop out of chickens … right? There’s no magic … $2.75 a dozen is too much. (And, my American friends, that’s not the free-range chicken variety. Just your normal, run of the mill, chicken eggs. They don’t have Maple Leafs on them or anything. The cartons say “oeufs” in addition to “eggs,” but it’s hardly worth the extra $1.75 to have egg cartons printed with the noise we make when someone punches us in the stomach. Now that I think about it, that might be the noise you make in the following scenario:
Me: How much are a dozen eggs?
Clerk: Two seventy-five?
Me: Two seventy-five?! Oeuf!
At least that would make some sense.))
Where were we?
Ice.
So we got two bags of ice.
The clerk said, “That’ll be $4.78” and my dad laid a $5.00 Canadian note on the counter.
“Hold on,” said the clerk, “not $4.78, but …” and then he said something I didn’t catch. I wasn’t paying attention as I assumed it was tax or something.
“Will you take change?” dad asked, and I knew he meant in order to get an even number of dollars back.
“Not a problem,” said the clerk. And I watched as dad replaced the five with a ten and then added some change, an amount we’ll pretend is forty-eight cents.
The clerk handed dad three dollar coins.
I put a bag of ice in each of my pants pockets and we made our way out the door. As I sat in the van it occurred to me we’d paid more than seven dollars for our ice.
“You gave him ten-something and he gave you three dollars back. This was over seven bucks!” I said.
“You’re right,” dad commented with mild surprise. We sat there for an instant and dad gave a little hand wave which signified “ah … I’m not going to worry about it.”
“You’d better get that out of your pockets before it melts,” dad said as I started the van. “Here. Use this sandwich bag.”
(Two days later I went to Canadian tire and made a mental note of the price of everything I picked up. I’ll have no more of this. And next time I head north I’m taking my own ice. And oeufs.)
You know how, sometimes, you’ll be involved in a legal action. And due to the actions of an attorney it drags on and on and on and on. And it starts to wear you down and you eventually form the “This is sucking the life out of me will this never end?” thought.
When that happens… isn’t it supposed to be the other guy’s attorney that beats you down and leaves you feeling that way?
A year ago this month I visited an attorney to tie up some legal ends. I wasn’t being a jerk about anything, I was well within my legal rights. So well within my legal rights that there is a state agency that will help me get done what I want to get done. Using the state agency, however, “will take a long time.” I know because the attorney told me so when I asked her if there was another way to accomplish what I wanted accomplished.
She also told me to leave her $2,500. I tapped into a line of credit I have to do this. After all, the process wouldn’t take too long and I’d recover the money in short order and, were she to spend every nickel of the $2,500, conservative estimates – her conservative estimates — had me a whole lot more than that.
I’d asked that nothing start until August 10; more than a month after we met and very close to a month after she had my retainer.
I did not expect to have to micromanage. After all, she is an attorney. I’m also pretty sure she had some form of calendaring tool in which she would write/type, “Get going on Delmer’s thing.” However, when I’d not heard anything by late August I made a call, she and I spoke, and the ball got rolling.
I figured she’d call me and provide updates. In the actions she was taking she was providing deadlines for the other side to reply – it was my thought they’d reply and she’d call me.
When the first deadline passed I waited for a call. And waited and waited and waited.
Then I called her. And called and called and called… over the course of several months. It wasn’t like I was calling daily as I didn’t see how that could help and I’d only be irritating the office staff by doing that.
And how hard could it be to call me, anyway?! When I called her I’d actually have to form the “I should call my attorney” thought, pick up the phone and dial. It took all of five seconds. SHE didn’t even have to form the “I should call Delmer” thought – there would have been a little note in her “messages” pile telling her to do so. It would have taken her well under five seconds to start the call process. Her day could have started as simply as forming the “I wonder what I should do today” thought followed by, “Oh, look. There’s a message to call Delmer” thought.
And, dammit! She should want to call me. I’m a delight on the phone.
I once left a message and told her assistant to put hearts and smiley faces on the slip so it would catch her eye. She returned that call – I think it was in December. We’ll say it was December, in the end the month really doesn’t matter. What matters is she said she was going to do something. What’s funny is I’d decided to call and ask for my retainer back but before I could she returned my call and I figured things would start to move forward.
Things didn’t, but time did.
I continued to call for updates. Again, not daily. I’d call, leave a message, and wait… knowing she might call at any minute. Weeks or weeks and weeks would pass before I’d call again and leave a message with the office manager or her assistant.
I finally started calling at least weekly, and I made several calls several days in a row. Each time I was told she was busy, and I don’t doubt it, but these calls were being made toward the end of May and by that time they’d had my retainer almost 11 months.
ELEVEN MONTHS! That’s a lot of busy.
Especially when you consider I’d referred two people to her and she worked with both of them and, in either one of those cases when my buddies called to make use of her legal know-how she could have easily said, “I’d really like to help you out, but I need to do something for Delmer first.” But she didn’t. She already had my money, why not get some more?
During my last call to her assistant I asked for my retainer to be returned. The assistant told me I’d need to speak with the office manager.
When I spoke with the office manager I was calm but I expressed my displeasure. The office manager, a person I know outside of legal problems, told me she’d asked about my case and each time she’d asked had been told I was “on hold.”
I asked that all of my retainer be returned, explaining I’d be money ahead had I never met with the attorney – after all, I was paying interest on the $2,500.
A week later I received a check for about $2,380. Which means I was billed for less than one hour in the course of eleven months.
That seems a little light for almost a year of work. Especially as I know I didn’t get billed for the call in December.
All of this brings us to some questions:
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If you know you’re only going to bill an hour over the course of a year, why do you ask for $2,500 up front? Why not just send a bill out each month and have your client send payments in to you?
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If you know you’re not going to do crap for a person why not suggest they use the state agency?
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How hard is it for an attorney to make a call? Don’t some of them have a person who places the call and then connects them to the attorney? I’ve seen it on TV.
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Can an attorney, ethically, take your money and then ignore your legal woes?
My biggest fear regarding this involves one of my buddies. He’s still making use of her “help” and I’m concerned that one day he’ll call and say, “She’s not doing sh*t for me. Why would you ever refer me to such a person!” And somehow he’ll get screwed.
To you, my buddy, I apologize in advance.
A most excellent day for a woman might go like this.
An incredible day for a man goes like this.
My cable has been acting funky. Which is not an excellent thing, really. It’s been funky for a while but it was funky in a way I thought might be self-healing. However, after several fruitless weeks of giving it a chance to self heal – and as we’re getting close to new episodes of Eureka and my SciFi channel is one of the funky channels – I thought I’d finally give Time Warner a call.
I called them yesterday evening and after a moment or two of troubleshooting the guy on the phone decided an on-site visit was needed. As luck would have it there was a slot open between one and three today. I took it.
At 1:15 I got a call: The Cable Guy was on his way to my place.
I arrived a few minutes before he did. As I sat in my (really sweet) mini-van the FedEx truck rumbled by, stopping about a block down the street from me. I’d checked the FedEx site earlier in the day and knew I had a delivery scheduled to come later – a delivery that required a signature. Per the website the package was due to arrive at 4:30.
I sensed more than knew my package was on the truck just down the street and started to walk toward it. I’d not taken two steps before the truck started moving. Rats! But wait, it swung into a parking lot, made a U-turn, and headed my way.
I signed for the package and the FedEx Gal pulled away just as The Cable Guy pulled up.
The Cable Guy had my SciFi channel (VH1 and others) crystal clear in just a few minutes.
So:
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I’d gotten my cable fixed closer to 1 o’clock when given a one-to-three window.
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I’d gotten my FedEx package while waiting for the cable guy. Which meant…
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I wouldn’t have to leave work at 4:15 to try to meet the driver at 4:30. By which time I’d have missed the package anyway which would have led to a delay in getting it (and it’s rather important).
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Everything was done by 2 p.m.
All very cool and great things, right.
But it gets better.
While the cable guy was visiting he left me a new remote. On the old one all the numbers and words had worn off the buttons and three of the five buttons across the top – the programmable ones that let me control other electronic devices – had quit doing anything at all past flashing once in a while.
The new remote has all the buttons labeled. The end piece that covers the IR LEDs is in place. The door that holds the batteries in doesn’t need to be taped to keep it closed. The top and bottom halves meet at a nice, ungapped, seam.
AND! AND! AND! … It has an extra button on it. An extra button marked “D.” I don’t know what it’s for, but it’s got to be good.
It might stand for Delmer.
I thought I’d toss a couple of whole chickens on the Grill today. It was, after all, beautiful out and sitting next to a grill would give me a chance to pretend I was doing something even as I sat there reading a book.
Lacking anything in the way of a cleaver or kitchen shears I pulled out the tin snips and used them to cut thorough some bone so I could spread the chickens apart. I laid the chickens out flat on the grill, closed the cover, and spent the next little bit of time flipping them over every once in a while.
In short order they looked like this. Well, actually, better than this. Here they looked sort of washed out but you gotta believe me… if Rachael Ray’s ever said anything good about the appearance of a piece of meat that’s how these guys looked. (Once you get past the unsightly-looking nub of something on the top level. That would be a chicken liver I reduced to ash.)
Satisfied that the boys and I would be eating like kings – well, The Kings, anyway… I’ve always heard they were big poultry eaters – in just a few moments I shut the grill lid, turned off the gas, and sat back down to finish a chapter in Hard Eight.
A moment or two later something caught the corner of my eye. It was an orange glow seeping out between the area between the grill lid and the grill body. Pulling up the lid I found this:
Which is such a common occurrence anymore that the act of taking a picture before saving the meat has got to say something questionable about my need to have a tasty dinner vs. my need to have photos for the blog.
(In all fairness, this looks worse than it was. The meat was still tender and juicy. The skin was a little scorched, but its a lot of fat anyway.)
A few weeks ago I put together a camera mount for my bike and shot a video.
A couple of weeks after that I edited the video. Here it is:
(A tip of my hat to Marty for all the work he puts into his videos.)
“You come from a family of eight kids,” I said, “and you turned out okay.”
“You make a good point,” my mother replied.
“Hold on,” I said, a bit of reconsideration in my voice, “maybe I’m looking at this wrong. I should probably take into account what that did to your father.”
“That’s an even better point.”
I’d typed all that up and then looked at what I’d written. I was trying to work backwards from the end to the beginning Memento-style and was having trouble coming up with time-shifting transitional elements that made sense, helped with the flow, and weren’t confusing. Unable to do so, I finally started a paragraph with, “I’d typed all that up and then looked at what I’d written…”
Tickled by the fact I’d been able to use an ellipsis, I continued.
I sat on the back porch, or what passes for a back porch at my house, with my phone to my ear. It was about two in the afternoon and despite the fact I knew there was a chance my parents had gone to an early-bird special somewhere I thought I’d give them a call. “Hello,” my mother said, picking up after the third ring.
“Hi mom. What’s going on down there?”
“Your dad and I have been working in the yard.” Which, in all fairness, had been far more likely than them having gone off for dinner at two in the afternoon. Dad had rented a Bobcat the week before and there was a chance he still had it. My folks are sort of old (I’m almost 50, I’d expect nothing less), but not stereotypically old. “What’s new up there?”
“I’m getting married,” I replied and with that reply started writing, in my head, the blog post you are now reading. It was more clever and Memento-ish then.
“Congratulation! I’ll be at the wedding!” And then a pause. “Eight children… that’s a lot.”
Most Sundays, Marty, of Banal Leakage, puts up a video of himself tooling around Utah on his scooter. (In the winter the videos are replaced with Snowy Sunday videos).
(Typically, most Sundays, I, of What’s a Delmer Look Like, put up a post that is heavy on the commas and full of suspect asides set off by parenthesis.)
Not long ago I thought I’d take a crack at making a camera mount for my bicycle so I’d be able to take videos of me tooling around Central Ohio.
I’d read Marty’s description of the process he’d used to make a camera mount but, in true man fashion, opted not to print it out and take it to the hardware store when I went to buy the bits and pieces I thought I’d need. I’m not even sure I measured the diameter of the handlebars. As a matter of fact I think I found myself at Home Depot one afternoon and thought I’d just pick some things up.
In any case I knew my handlebars were not round and they may be oversized (I’m not sure… I just know they are bigger around than The Mighty Schwinn’s handlebars).
These are the bits I bought.
I’ve got a T-shaped piece of PVC pipe, a plug that goes into it, some bolts that fit the hole on the bottom of my camera, a couple of hose clamps and some Great Stuff (you squirt it into gaps and it expands to fill voids), and a smaller plug that screws into the other plug.
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I’ve cut the PVC T in two and did a bit of sanding. Keep an eye on the little plug with the hose clamp circling it.
I prepped the PVC with whatever that purple stuff is called. I then glued the two pieces with purple on them together. The little plug I told you about in the previous picture… I drilled a hole it it and screwed it into the hole in the piece I glued into the hole in the PVC T. (There’s a frog on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.)
Here you can see the bolt in the plug. You’ll also notice some plastic wrap on my handlebars – that’s there to keep The Great Stuff from messing up the handlebar tape…I shot some up between the handlebars and PVC to fill in the space between the roundness of the PVC T and the non-roundness of my handlebars. (In this photo you can see the other PVC T I bought. It’s a smaller size; I wasn’t sure which one I needed.)
The whole thing took about half an hour to make. I’d written down the song list that played while I’d put it all together, but I’ve misplaced it.
On the road the camera wants to tilt back a bit more than I’d like before The Great Stuff stops it (I should have used more) – BUT – when viewing the movie I shot I couldn’t tell much (any?) difference between the camera being where I wanted it to be and where it wanted to be.
I need to trim the excess part of the T to make it look tidier.
A while back I made a visit to the Canadian Tire I always go to. I was in the mood to do some drilling and needed a bit to speed the process along. I think this had something to do with a project involving the installation of a doggie door.
I looked over the bits available hanging from the Canadian Tire racks and not only found the size I needed, but found it ON SALE. That’s right, all the bits around it were in the $9.99 range and the one – the very one – I needed was just $3.99. It was such a good price I checked to make sure I’d not picked up a bit that had been mistakenly hung up on the wrong hook. Hanging behind the bit I wanted was five or six more just like it.
I went to the checkout, paid, and strolled into the parking lot.
And then I started thinking. Something didn’t feel right. I’d bought two or three things and I hadn’t been paying close attention as they rung up, but I had an I-paid-too-much feeling. Checking the receipt I found I’d paid $9.99 for my drill bit.
Zut alors!
The native Canadian I travel with – and by native Canadian I mean one of the new natives that displaced the then-seemingly-indigenous people of several hundred years ago who’d probably displaced someone who’d been around before they arrived – suggested I take the drill bit back in and ask a question or two about it. I decided to accept it for what it was, a mistake of some sort, and not worry too much about it. After all, I HAD HOLES TO DRILL!! (And, even as I bought it I’d been wondering, “How does a company decide to put just one drill bit on sale? And how could they have come to the conclusion to knock six bucks off it?” That’s to say, it had an odd feel when I was buying it and I wasn’t in the mood to have a clerk point out the folly of my thinking.)
A month or so, and several thousand miles, would pass before I found myself in that same Canadian Tire. This time I needed a couple of small hinges.
I found a two-pack (en Francaise, “TuPac”) at a good price. We’ll say it was $3.00. The next bigger sized hinges came in at $6.00 and the next larger size something like $6.25, then $6.50. And when I say “next bigger” I mean the next increment up – I don’t mean the next size Canadian Tire carried… it’s not like the move was from jewelry box hinges to refrigerator door hinges to bank vault hinges. These were all rather close in size.
Anyway, I couldn’t believe my luck. The hinge I needed was half the price of the next larger size.
I went to the checkout, paid, and strolled into the parking lot. And that’s when a familiar feeling hit me. I checked my receipt and found I’d paid $5.90 for my hinges that had been marked $3.00.
Zut Alors! (Avec un grand “A” en ‘alors’”)
The native Canadian I travel with – and, in all fairness to her I doubt she’s done any hands-on oppression of the original indigenous peoples (she doesn’t need to, she has several children she can oppress if the mood strikes her) – suggested I go back inside and talk to someone. I told her I’d rather not and continued by saying, “That’s okay. I’ll get a blog post out of this.”
That’s worth three bucks.
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