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July 31, 2006
Analysis of a Road Trip: The Beginning
Perhaps you recall the entry in which I mentioned that The Boys and I were going to go to Tennessee for a week of fun in the sun with my parents and uncle at Dale Hollow.
My Uncle Ben has a house on the lake; the fun of this is complimented by the fact he also has a houseboat, jet boat and wave runner. Sweet ... sweet ... and ... sweet.
(The fun of this is further complimented by the fact that Granny and Big D, in addition to being super parents, are party animals. Sweetest!)
The trip to the lake was awesome and there will undoubtedly be entires about it -- but this entry, and the several entries that follow -- are about the trip that came post lake.
And it goes:
Following the trip to Dale Hollow The Boys and I were going to head off to Evansville, Indiana to hang with some friends and Their Boys.
Curious about the amount of driving I might be doing at the end of the week, I Yahoo Mapped driving directions from the Dale Hollow Marina in Celina to a dealer of Coup de Villes in Evansville.
(Obviously, the Coup de Ville thing is something I threw in just after Marina/Celina hit my ear. But, wouldn't you have been disappointed had I not gone for the cheesy rhyme? Of course it doesn't work at all if you are one of those who pronounces Celina like vagina. You say Sa-Lee-Na I say Sa-Line-Uh ... sa-lee-na, sa-line-uh, va-geen-a, va-gine-uh, let's call the whole thing off.)
Where were we?
Four hours from Dale Hollow to Evansville. Not bad.
From conversations with mom and dad I remembered (remembered is the keyword here) that it was also about four hours from Granny and Big D's to Dale Hollow. The Boys and I would be able to make both drives without anybody going crazy.
As it happens it is something just over five hours from Granny and Big D's to Dale Hollow -- not that it would matter -- since that isn't where we were going. It is, however, just over four hours from Granny and Big D's to where we were actually going: Norris Lake.
I had heard mom and dad say the drive would be four hours -- and I squirreled that away in my brain. I'd also heard them say we were going to Norris Dam, more than once, and I turned that into Dale Hollow -- more than once.
The oddest thing about this is that I've been to Norris Dam ... sure, it was 36 years ago, but I've been there! I remember it!
I've never been to Dale Hollow.
Even now.
I can see how this may not be terribly clear. I've reread this several times and I'm having trouble following exactly what I'm saying. And I'm saying it. And the whole thing happened to me. If it were only as simple as removing the Evansville/Coup de Ville line I'd take that step. But that isn't it.
To simplify things -- and to simplify them in such a way that I don't have to erase any of the stuff above -- how about a list:
We'll continue this tomorrow. How about some photos.
Posted by delmer at 10:02 PM | Comments (2)
My Super-Ex Girlfriend and Mom
While on vacation I was filling mom in on the recent adventures the boys and I had been on.
"The boys and I went to see My Super Ex-Girlfriend," I told her.
She made a choking, questioning sound and said, "Uh ... which one."
"No. Not an ex-girlfriend. The movie."
"Oh. There's a movie ..."
Okay. It doesn't tell very well, but it's something I want in the blog to remind me of the story when I'm old and gray. It was funnier than I type it.
Posted by delmer at 12:58 AM | Comments (2)
July 30, 2006
Home again
The boys and I have returned from vacation, the roaming vipers and pit bulls I released in the house to keep it safe have all been caught, caged, and returned to Rent an Insanely Dangerous Animal and Vipers R Us, and the fridge has been checked to make sure that nothing I left in there had got all full of itself and joined the world of sentient beings.
Tomorrow we will start a series of stories. A series that may go just one day (making it a super-mini-series) but that will likely go three or four days. The series will be an analysis of the road trip the boys and I took from Vacation Spot A -- which was, at one time identified as Dale Hollow -- to Vacation Spot B. 
Men will not want to miss it as it will provide an opportunity for some multi-national, cross-cultural, Internet-enabled male bonding.
Women will not want to miss it because it will provide a point of reference that might be able to, someday, someway, provide some insight into the way the males around them think. Of course, this might be a stretch.
Men should bookmark the series for quick reference just in case a four-hour trip expands to something more than that. Something more than double that. You know, maybe men should just print the series out and keep it in their glove box. (Actually, I can see the day coming when State Troopers ask for proof of insurance and proof of having read Delmer's Vacation Roadtrip Series.)
To hold you over I've provided a picture of Touchdown Jesus which is located on I-75 in Monroe, Ohio. Built several years ago, at a cost of $250,000, and leg-pressed into place by Pat Robertson, Touchdown Jesus keeps watch over travelers as they jet up and down the interstate.
A spokesperson for Monroe's Solid Rock Church, when asked about the larger-than-life Saviour never said: "We felt that tithing was getting out of hand. Too much money was coming in and we needed something to let the congregation know that we had more money than we could ever spend -- I mean, we'd already fed all the hungry, provided clothing for all the poor, and had the deacon's Hummer detailed -- we needed, to paraphrase Barney Fife, to 'nip the giving in the bud.' What better way to get this message out there than to build a 62-foot tall eight-ton half-buried Jesus?"
I guess it's their money.
Sorry about the blurriness. These photos were taken from a moving vehicle; one that sorely needs detailed.
Posted by delmer at 11:09 PM | Comments (2)
July 29, 2006
Life in the Country
(Saturday)
Years ago I lived in a small town in the country. One of my neighbors told this story.
His phone rang at 3 a.m. one morning. It was his son calling to tell him that his car had broken down.
"Where are you calling from?" asked the dad.
"I'm down at the Smith's."
"What are they doing up at this hour?"
"Oh. They're not up," the son replied.
The car had broken down just down the road from the Smith's. Rather than wake them up, he just walked into their unlocked home and borrowed the phone.
Posted by delmer at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2006
Dear Business Owner
(Friday's entry ... auto posted)
Here's a thought.
But before I express that thought, let me say that I'm for the legalization of all drugs. Do what you want, whenever you want. Just do it at home. And you need to be at least 18. Twenty-one would be better, but if you're old enough to be shipped overseas on Dubya's behalf, well, you should be old enough to make your own decisions.
Not that I think a lot of people make their best decisions until they're out of their 20's.
I'm pretty sure that Dubya, at one point in his life, would have been all over legalizing most drugs.
Personally, I think drug use is a bad idea. But it's up to you. Just keep it at home.
Now the thought. And this is for business owners.
Your employee smoking areas should really be behind the store. I don't care to walk through a gauntlet of smokers standing at the front door. I'd prefer to be kept in the dark about the fact that the person bagging my groceries or cutting my deli meat was all but sucking his/her fingers just moments before serving me. Yes, I know they washed their hands before returning to work; I'm still put off by it.
Smoking areas behind the store will also keep customers from noticing the obviously-under-18 employees when they're on break.
Oh. Here's another idea. When drugs are finally legalized, I'd put them at the end of the chips and Twinkie aisle.
Posted by delmer at 12:25 AM | Comments (4)
July 27, 2006
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
(This is Thursday's entry.)
Jack, Haydn and I went to see My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
The movie is rated PG-13 and I normally watch movies like this without the boys before I take them to see them. I just feel safer doing things this way.
I don't know what went wrong this time. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been to too many Over the Hedge type flicks recently. You know, movies you don't really have to worry about at all. Cars, Shrek, Over the Hedge, Hoodwinked etc. all fall into this category.
I think I was just in the habit of not previewing movies before hauling the kids off to the theater.
Anyway, My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a fine movie. It's cute, it's funny. Luke Wilson is always likable. Anna Faris is alway cute. Uma is often cute when she's not playing a skank. Eddie Izzard's in it.
However, there are more sexual situations and innuendo than I like to have my boys -- and when I say boys, I mean children -- exposed to.
I can't blame Uma, Luke, Anna or Eddie. It was all my fault.
Posted by delmer at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2006
Are You Experienced
(Delmer and the boys are on vacation and all entries are being auto-posted using the scheduling agent. This will appear on Wednesday)
The company I work for is ISO/TS certified.
One of the best things about being ISO/TS certified is that one of the criteria for keeping the certification is not that the IT guy has to understand exactly what it means.
In a nutshell part of what it means, though, is that we have in place those checks and balances necessary to assure that we produce a quality product for our customers. And having the certification opens the doors for us to do business with companies that require the certification.
Having and keeping the certification is a big deal. It was a lot of work to get.
We are audited on a regular basis.
Last Friday we were audited.
And really, Friday was a good day for IT to be audited as my IT mojo had been working pretty well all week.
The auditor happened by while I was in the middle tweaking some Oracle tables prior to vacation. I thought the timing was pretty good as, well, nothing looks more geeky to the non-IT folk as a screen full of SQL commands and the data they generate.
The auditor and I talked briefly and he asked to see some data I kept. Not a problem, I'd had the database he needed to see (one I'd written) opened just the day before and it would be in the list of recently used programs from within the database application. Unfortunately, and uncharacteristically, I'd been in about a dozen databases that day; the one I needed had scrolled off the list.
And I froze. I couldn't remember where it was.
Ahhh. There's a backup on my PDA ... but it wasn't current. I'd left the cables -- both of the sync cables -- at home for several days!!
The auditor wasn't there to put me on the spot. And he'd had, I'd learn, plenty of experience with the mico-panics people have during audits. He told me he'd move on and come back to me later.
I found a sync cable -- I'd put one in my bag that morning -- and plugged my PDA into a USB slot. My PC blue screened. That has never happened ... so maybe I was due, or ... maaayyybeee it was a curse.
Nah. I was just due.
I rebooted. I synced. I found the database I needed. The auditor eventually found me.
We passed the audit. Angels sang. Pat Robertson celebrated by bench pressing a Humvee.
Posted by delmer at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2006
Fine Dining
(Delmer and the boys are on vacation, having left only the Dobermans home. This entry should appear, as if by magic, sometime Tuesday.)
Off the top of my head I can name the following restaurants that are within easy viewing of Cemetery Road.
McDonald's, Wendy's, Max & Irma's, Fridays, Damon's, Iaconno's, Jersey Mike's Subs, Subway, Sammy's Buffet, something that is obviously an Asian place though I can't think of the name, Quizno's, another Asian place, Starliner Diner, that other sub place that everybody likes but the name eludes me, Bob Evans, Texas Roadhouse, Donato's, Panera, Arby's, Taco Bell ...
This list does not include all the restaurants a person might see as they drive around looking for a place to eat. I've certainly forgotten several.
If I feel like a grilled chicken sandwich I'll go to McDonald's or Wendy's. A chicken taco: Taco Bell. For steak I'll choose Damon's or Texas Roadhouse. For family dining I'll usually go to Max & Irma's or Bob Evans.
And really, mostly, for breakfast I go to McDonald's, for lunch Mama Lia's or Mel's and for dinner Mama Lia's or Mel's. Mama Lia's and Mel's didn't make the above list as they can't be seen from Cemetery Road.
The point of this exercise?
I normally know what I want to eat before I go into a restaurant. I at least normally know what a restaurant serves before I go through the doors.
I don't walk into an Arby's, McDonald's, Rax, Taco Bell, or any of your other served-at-the-counter restaurants clueless as to what I might order. I certainly don't stand in line and piddle around and wait until I'm at the counter before I even read the menu items.
Normally I don't have to wait in line ... this is the special power I have that I've described before. Regardless of where I go I am almost always the first in line and 10-seconds after I arrive the line has grown to extend out the door. It's not flying, but it isn't bad. This power works best when I'm with one of the engineers from work. It's sort of a Super Twins thing we have going.
Twice, recently, I've been out alone -- and this weakens my power sometimes -- and found myself behind people who seem clueless as to what the restaurant we're currently in might offer. (A similar thing happened in March.) And if they do know what the restaurant serves they're really not sure what they want or even of they're hungry. It's as if they were driving along one minute and a second later they've found themselves at the counter of McDonald's with no explanation as to how they go there. They express their puzzlement over their predicament by making statements such as, "I'll have a large with extra cheese, pepperoni and green olives. What's that? You don't have pizza? OK. A loaded baked potato with ... what? Big Macs and Quarter Pounders? No. Let's go back to my original order. A large with extra cheese ..."
I understand parents not knowing what their kids might want to eat. I have three boys and when we go out to eat, unless I ask what they want, I'll misorder for at least one of them. Even though they get the same thing every time and as they tell me what they want I'll have a sense of deja vu as if that child and I have had that same conversation many many times before.
My children and I have that conversation in the mini van. Not at the counter of whatever restaurant we're about to enter.
Really, doesn't this make the most sense? For everyone?
Posted by delmer at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2006
Sleep and Exercise
(Delmer and the boys are on vacation, having left at home nothing more than free-roaming vipers. This entry should appear sometime Monday morning.)
It was just over a week ago that I had some sleep problems. Two nights in a row I had trouble falling asleep and both nights I woke up early and had trouble falling asleep.
One of those nights I woke up at 12:30 a.m. I couldn't believe it was only 12:30 -- I'd only been asleep for about an hour. At 3:30, not having fallen back to sleep, I got up, showered, and prepared to go to work. As I dried off I felt a bit sleepy and decided to give sleep another shot. I met with success.
The other night I awoke around 5 a.m. and didn't even try to go back to sleep; I just shot off to work.
Every six months or so I'll have a couple of nights of poor sleep. Sometimes this will extend to as long as five nights. It's nothing I worry about.
Every night following those two nights I've slept like ... something ... something that sleeps really soundly. A well-fed lion maybe. A porn star. I've slept like a porn star. I don't know what it means or if it even has what it takes to make it in mainstream conversation -- but it will do here.
I've slept really well. I've gone to sleep almost immediately and I haven't had any instances of waking in the middle of the night -- which is uncommon almost any night; I normally wake up once or twice and look at the clock. Not last week though.
And yet, I've been really tired and sort of worn down. Not sick feeling, and during the day I feel pretty good. It's when I get home that I'm beat. If I sit in my recliner for even just a moment it's all I can do to get back out of it. I can't say I've been eager to take strolls or ride the bike.
I still rode -- I did two 30-mile rides and a 17-mile ride -- and when I get on the bike I feel OK. The other nights I had four-mile strolls and felt OK after the first couple of steps. Friday night I had to force myself to get out and at no point did I feel good about the walk.
I probably just need a break. We'll see how things are when I get back from vacation.
Posted by delmer at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2006
Weekend Geekitude
(Delmer is on vacation. With any luck this posting will show up Sunday sometime.)
Friday night and early Saturday morning were hours filled with geekiness.
About 9 p.m. Friday evening I put my DVR back into service. I'd unplugged it last October when I moved -- which means it's been sitting in a corner for almost a year.
A person would like to think that a piece of electronics can be unplugged and set aside for a year and then work when it is plugged in again. Clocks often work like this, lights, ovens, the list is endless. And I honestly had a pretty good feeling about my DVR.
The thing that caused the concern is that my DVR is a home-built job. It's a PC I put together that runs KnoppMyth -- a flavor of MythTV.
KnoppMyth has proved to be very reliable and, like I said, the box worked when I unplugged it.
And then the box wintered in the garage and spent spring in the corner of the spare room as we worked around it. There was a lot of time for something bad to happen to it.
I made all the connections, turned the DVR on, and then tried to make a connection with my notebook. No luck.
The fix? All I had to do was reboot. See ... it even works for IT guys, not just users.
I updated the TV listings and then set the DVR up to record Eureka, Stargates SG1 and Atlantis, Psyche, Deep Throat: The New Beginning, and Monk. I was pleased to see that my old schedule -- The Saint, Desperate Housewives, Lost, According to Jim, etc. promised to have some shows waiting for me when I returned from Dale Hollow next week.
I know you know ... there is no Deep Throat: The New Beginning.
Oooh. I need to set it up for Myth Busters.
With the DVR up and running I set about getting scheduled postings to work in Movable Type. It was pretty easy and I should have had it up, running and tested in under an hour. However, as I mentioned in Saturdays entry, my Internet connection got flaky. I expected this to happen as my incoming cable connection is split a couple of times and RoadRunner would rather it not be split at all. (I removed one of the splitters Saturday afternoon and am hopeful this might fix things.)
I was able to get the scheduled posting to work in no time if I ran the script from a command line at the server, the trouble I had was getting a cron job to run the script. I suspected the command I was typing in was buggy ... my suspicions were correct.
If you get this entry Sunday sometime ... and if you get only this entry ... and if you continue to get one a day for the next week ... you'll know everything is working as it should.
Posted by delmer at 1:10 AM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2006
More Scheduled Posting Testing
Testing the scheduled posting feature took a little longer than I'd hoped. It's really a pretty easy thing to set up.
However, during the testing process I lost my Internet connection for an hour. And then it would come and go. Unfortunately I can't say I was really surprised by this -- I'd just moved my cable modem from the location in which it never failed to the location in which it was problematic. It worked well for several hours and then became unreliable.
Once the connection dropped the second I hit ENTER to kick off a perl script on the server. My computer advised me that a software error had caused my connection to abort and for a short while I thought the perl script had caused WADLL to melt down.
It didn't take long to realize I'd lost my connection.
This test should show up some time after noon on Saturday.
Ahh. This post contains Amanda Tapping again -- in a 'float image right' box that allows some text to be added but also typically causes the right sidebar to disappear. I usually fix this by hand. This time I've piddled with the tag that floats the image.
Posted by delmer at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
Scheduled Posting Test
This is a scheduled posting ... written Friday night as I sat in front of Stargate SG1.
Written in Ecto ... exported to a text file and pasted into the Movable Type editor ... eventually posted as a scheduled event.
With any luck it will appear as a blog entry early Saturday morning. That is if I can get the CRON job set up correctly.
For fun here's a picture of Amanda Tapping. Click the thumbnail to get a larger view.
You know, up above I said I was going to export this. Actually, it's going to be a cut and paste right from Ecto.
Posted by delmer at 12:25 AM | Comments (2)
July 21, 2006
Vacation Time
The boys and I will be making a trek to Dale Hollow next week. My uncle has a houseboat and a regular house down there and we're going to spend some time on the water and just taking it easy.
Away from computers. Away from Game Cubes. Away from cable TV. 
Away from the Internets.
I'm guessing that posting, starting Monday, will be somewhat sporadic until the next Sunday. Maybe so sporadic that it can only be described as not there at all.
I know that you all have lives and that a week without new What's A Delmer Look Like postings will have zero impact on you.
However ... I have no life and it is important to me to pretend that my being gone will leave a terrible void in your life. A void that cannot be filled even with vanilla ice cream with an Oreo or two crushed up and spread on top of it. A void that even Must See TV cannot fill. A void the Noid would find challenging.
See. I have such Not the Life that vanilla is my favorite ice cream.
Posted by delmer at 2:35 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2006
Dance Party
I was at Brown's Grocery in Midway, Ohio, oh, about 10 years ago.
According to the 2000 census the population of Midway is 274 and the village has a total area of 0.7 km. It is small. Charming, sure, but small.
Brown's Grocery is exactly what you'd expect to find in small town. It isn't a Wal-Mart. There aren't hundreds of people in there at a single time. Heck, there aren't tens of people in there at the same time.
On the particular day I was in there I'll put the count at two people: me and the person tending to the cash register.
In the back of the store there were two stand-up soda pop cases. One was probably full of Pepsi products and the other Coke. The fridges were set so that as I faced the Pepsi case and looked through the doors the Coke case was to my left. Between the two cases in the corner was a dead area.
I think you'll get a better feel for the layout if you take a moment to study the incredible illustration I've provided below.
I'm no Dave, but you've got to admit that my graphic makes you almost feel like you're there. And it's a little scary ... isn't it?
So there I stood. Looking into the Pepsi case. To my left along the wall was the Coke case. What do I want what do I want what do I want I kept thinking to myself. I did not open the glass door to make my decision. People do this all the time -- open the door and stand in front of the open fridge trying to make their decision. The doors are glass ... I can see through them ... I keep them shut. What do I want what do I want what do I want?
I knew it was going to be a Pepsi product.
What do I want what do I want what do I want? Is someone looking at me? Is someone looking at me from the area between the two coolers? The dead area that nobody could possibly fit in? That's a foolish notion.
Maybe a Diet Pepsi. Do they have the one-liter bottles? Maybe if I opened the door and let the cool air rush over my feet. No! Only idiots do that.
That cannot possibly be someone looking at me from the corner between the coolers. I'm not even going to look
I looked. Someone was there and I was so startled that I squealed. Not screamed. I squealed, as Dieter would say, like a leetle girl.
Just as quick as I squealed I realized the folly of my squealing. The person standing where nobody should have been standing was a life-size (someone's size, anyway) of Kramer from his stint as a Pepsi pitchman.
"Could you hear that up here," I asked the guy at the register.
"Yea. Did something get you?"
"Just the Kramer cutout."
Posted by delmer at 12:09 AM | Comments (2)
July 19, 2006
Patron Saint of IT Dudes and Dudettes
A while back I complained about some software that I'd received that didn't work as promised. Or at all.
The software was part of our backup package -- specifically the client agent for two NT boxes.
Our Production NT box contains the full-blown backup package; the agent is supposed to interact with the backup package in a way that reduces network traffic. We backup overnight, so traffic reduction is not an issue for us. What is an issue is getting our data backed up; and the agent was having trouble doing this -- it would start the backup, probably do one drive of a multi-drive computer, and then error out with a message indicating that the agent and full-blown package just weren't getting along.
The above had been going on since day one with one of our NT boxes and no amount of reading Tech Support Documents or piddling would fix it. I'd started backing up the box without the agent -- which worked well -- some would say even better as is was faster than using the agent.
I eventually quit using the agent on the other box as well.
And of course the fastest box to backup, that is the fastest box other than the one hosting the full-blown backup package, was a Linux box. Linux was backing up to an NT server faster than other NT servers were.
Things worked well for a very long time. Years. Forty-two years if your name happens to be Rover. About six if you have the ability to read this.
And then things went to hell in a hand basket. Sure it was a Longaberger Basket -- well constructed in Ohio by Ohioans working in a building that looks like a big basket -- but a hand basket nonetheless. Backups across-the-wire quit working reliably; the Linux box quit backing up as did the two NT boxes that would have been using the client agent had they ever worked.
I decided it was time to upgrade the full-blown package and this is where I ran into a good news/bad news scenario.
The Good News: If I acted now I'd save about 75% on the price of the software due to some sort of you waited too long to upgrade but we've got this amnesty thing going on program. Sweet.
The Bad News: The new full-blown package doesn't run on NT.
More Good News: The client agents do. Aaaaand they work with the current full-blown package.
I ordered the software. The new client agents did not work with the existing full-blown package right out of the box and it looked like some piddling and reading of Tech Support Articles were in store.
I did some ugly, manual, less-than-ideal backups for a couple of days while I sorted things out (I copied pertinent data to another computer for a couple of days).
And then a miracle happened. A miracle I can only assume was facilitated by Saint Isadore of Seville ... The Patron Saint of computers, computer users, IT guys and gals, and The Internets in general. 
between customers
St. Isadore of Seville, as I'm sure you know, started out as a barber. One day, while the Pope was getting a trim -- the Pontiff wanted something neat but that didn't look like he'd just gotten a haircut -- his excellency complained that the network at the Vatican was slow and the IT department at the Holy See couldn't seem to figure it out. Izzy suggested rebooting anything that had a flashing light on it. This worked like gangbusters for the Pope and set the stage for Vatican II a millenia later. The Pope declared the improved network performance a miracle.
During subsequent haircuts Isadore would flush blue-screen-of-death demons from the Pope's laptop and show him how to format a floppy disk. Each of these tasks was also proclaimed a miracle by the Pope and, well, three miracles is what you need for sainthood (unless, of course, you're a very popular modern-day Pope, then simply dying is often enough).
Isadore was in.
And today, 1370 years after his death he remains on call. Dozens of beepers, a Blackberry or two and a plastic Bugs Bunny fob hang off his hips. It's a lot of work ... all the time. Sure, he tried outsourcing some of the smaller jobs to the Baptists but found that their on-hold music drove people to the competition. In the end it was always him, alone, at night in the dark, with skin like leather and the diamond hard look of a cobra, manning the call center.
Sometimes he longs for the days when his only worries were whether or not his scissors were sharp and his smock was clean. But he always comes through -- even if the hold time is a couple of days or more.
Which is where I found myself.
A couple of days passed and I was looking over the backup. It was working -- a full backup of everything and in just about five hours. The backup was soooo good that I noticed that one item backed up was an idea I'd had in a restaurant the day before that I'd simply written down on a napkin, stuffed in my pocket, and then ran through the washing machine. In the past users have asked if I could retrieve data that had never been in a position to be saved to tape and I'd told them that was impossible to do; obviously I'd been wrong all these years.
How could things have gotten this good this fast? Nothing new had been rebooted. Nothing had changed in two days.
And yet. Something must have. I did install new client agent software on the two NT boxes. Even when they aren't in use as part of the backup they run as a service. Maybe there was a bad file somewhere that the new software overwrote. Maybe maybe maybe.
Maybe the client agents not only failed but left the full-blown package in a state that didn't allow it to backup the Linux box. Maybe the last failed backup involved an attempted use of the new agent and when I decided not to use it things worked right away.
Maybe some sort of short-term curse had been place on my servers.
One makes as much sense as the other.
Posted by delmer at 7:53 AM | Comments (5)
July 18, 2006
A Story from the Steel Mill
About 25 years ago I worked at Armco Steel -- now AK Steel -- in Middletown, Ohio. This is one of the stories I heard while working there.
Before we start I should point out that my time at Armco was short, as life experiences go, and I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to processing steel. And, I may not use the correct terminology, give the best descriptions, or identify mill parts by their actual names. For example, in this entry you'll see an image identified as a 5-Stand Cold Mill ... for the past 25 years I have simply referred to this item as Gary.
Anyway, I worked in the Cold Mill. If questioned under oath I'd say it was the Number Three Cold Strip.
In the 5-Stand Cold Mill illustration, the coil would enter the mill from the left and make it's way between the blue rolls and exit at the right where it was respooled. The mill reduces the coil to a more uniform thickness as it passes between the rolls.
At the top and bottom of the blue rolls are larger, gray (in this picture) rolls. These are backup rolls and, I believe, they apply to the blue rolls the pressure necessary to reduce the coil thickness.
The whole thing is noisier than you think.
Rolls were typically kept on stands near the mill and were changed on a fairly regular basis. One of my jobs was to guide the crane -- well, lead it ... I was a crane leader -- as it sat the new rolls onto the stands. Rolls could be changed out in pretty short order.
Backup rolls weren't changed nearly as often. I can remember one night coming to work and being told we'd be down for a while as the backup rolls had to be changed. We were down 5.5 hours (which may be uncommonly long ... there may have been other things going on as well.)
Usually, again as I recall, backup rolls were changed while the mill was down -- during regular maintenance. I don't know where backup rolls were kept, but they surely weren't sitting on stands near the mill.
And our story begins.
The mill was down and at least one backup roll was being changed. When everything was put back together the mill was fired up. It was then that the workers discovered that someone, let's call him Bob, had left a good-sized wrench sitting on a roll. In the process of reducing the wrench to a more uniform thickness, a set of rolls and a backup roll were damaged.
They needed replaced. And they were. And this took a while.
When everything was put back together the mill was fired up. It was then that the workers discovered that Bob, again, had left a good-sized wrench sitting on a roll. Another set of rolls and a backup roll were damaged.
More rolls and a backup roll would be replaced.
As the guys worked on the mill the foreman came out with a length of rope and started tying it to Bob's wrench. When Bob asked what was going on the foreman explained, "I'm going to tie the other end of this rope to you. If that wrench goes in, you're going in with it."
Disclaimer: I don't know how a wrench could mess up a backup roll. All these years I've assumed that it was somehow drawn up into the space between the rolls and backup roll and, while I can certainly see how that would mess up a backup roll, I don't know if it is reasonable to expect it could make it to that area.
Posted by delmer at 5:18 PM | Comments (2)
July 17, 2006
This is not turning into a cycling blog
Not long ago, as you recall, I decided to take the Schwinn on its first 50-mile trip in almost 20 years.
As you may further recall, it hurt a lot. At the end of the trip my shoulders -- well, upper body in general -- and neck were killing me. I thought this might have been related to a trip to the gym I'd made earlier in the day.
Upon further reflection, you know, some quality time spent in the shower thinking about my life, things at work, that new mole on my thigh that seems to pulse in time to what I think might be Baby Got Back, I decided the aches and pains might have been caused more by a misconfiguration of my equipment.
And speaking of my equipment, just a moment ago I proofread what I'd typed so far and found that instead of typing that new mole on my thigh that seems to pulse I had typed, that new mole on my thing that seems to pulse. That's not really important to this story. I just knew you'd want to know.
Ahem.
So I checked my handlebar and seat heights. According to what I've read, handlebars should be about even with the seat or up to two inches lower. For the extremely aerodynamic rider, the bars can be four inches lower. If the bars are too low it can lead to shoulder and neck pain.
My bars were four inches lower than my seat.
I'm not real concerned about aerodynamics. Fully outfitted, with water, my bike bag, and my body, the Schwinn comes in at 275 pounds. Elite Cyclist David McCann weighs 73 kg or 160 pounds. I'll bet his bike comes in at something less than or right about 15 pounds, taking him -- and this is so cool and unplanned -- to a total of 175 pounds. One hundred pounds less than me and my rig. Put me on his bike and the whole package comes across at about 245 pounds. I'm guessing that aerodynamics is not the thing keeping me off the Tour de France.
So, having my handlebars lower than my seat really isn't needed and I decided to raise my handlebars. This required buying a new, what we used to call, gooseneck.
It is now called a handlebar stem. Which makes more sense. I've never been able to figure out an instance in which the handlebar stem might goose me. The seat stem, sure; take the saddle off and ride on the stem and each bump you hit will provide a little bit of a goose.
I am able to conjure up several scenarios in which the handlebar stem might rip off a man's package as he's flying over the handlebars and suspect this might be part of the reason bike shorts come with all that extra up-front padding. I'm also guessing that Man's Package Ripper was hard to get by marketing departments as the gooseneck manufacturers were looking for a new, creative, name to call their product. Now we're stuck with handlebar stem.
(Okay. The item I'm talking about looks like the neck of a goose. When you're bored Google on goose +butt ; you'll turn up a lot more hits than you'd have thought possible.)
So, I replaced the handlebar stem with a very very long one and now my seat and bars are at the same height. I had to rerun my brake cables to make it all come together (right now ... over me) the way I wanted.
I've done a 50 since the change, several 20s and 30s as well. Everything feels better -- my hands, neck and shoulders -- and I expect it to remain so ... up until I take that trip over the handlebars and the added four-inch height of my handlebar stem Lance-Armstrongs me.
Posted by delmer at 7:16 AM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2006
Got Dibs?
The boys and I were discussing the Pepsi/Superman contest when I mentioned that I had won $10.00.
Jack: "How are you going to get the money?"
Me: "They're going to send it to me in the mail."
Haydn: "When will it be here"?
Me: "In a couple of weeks?"
Jack: "I call it!"
Me: "You call it!? You think you can claim money coming into the house just by 'calling' it?"
And then I considered: Wouldn't it be great if life were this simple?
When it's announced at work that you'll have raises this year you boldly yell, "I call Mr. Smith's raise." Which will work best for you if Mr. Smith happens to be the CEO of the company you work for. Or at least someone who makes more than you do.
Why is it when it's time to clean the house nobody ever calls the bathroom?
Posted by delmer at 8:33 AM | Comments (1)
July 15, 2006
No women were thrown out of windows during the writing of this entry
Haydn was very young. Probably about two.
I was doing my impresson of Eddie Murphey doing his impression of James Brown.
Haydn was doing his impression of me doing my impression of Eddie Murphey doing his impression of James Brown. Of course, he didn't realize it. He was just playing along with me.
Me: Owww! Hot pants!
Haydn: Owww! Hot Pants!
Me: Too hot!
Haydn: Too hot!
Me: I'm gonna kiss myself!
Haydn (pausing, and losing his James Brown-ness): Why?
Posted by delmer at 9:02 AM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2006
Three days in the hole
I've spent each of the last three nights fixing a hole in my bicycle inner tube.
A hole. Not three different holes. The same one.
"Why not just do it right the first time," you ask.
I all fairness, I though I'd done it right all three times.
I had noticed the front tire of the Schwinn had been losing air. Not at a fast rate -- I could always pump it up and ride on it for about two hours without any noticeable loss of air. However, over the course of 24 hours the front tire would lose enough air that it would develop a spongy feel and I figured it was only a matter of time before I was out riding and I'd find air rushing out of the tire at such a rate that it bothered the people around me.
And, of course, I'd be in the position of having to patch the tube on the road somewhere.
Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the tire near the garage, before it became a problem? Yes it would.
Taking the inner tube out of the tire is an incredibly simple process and the whole patching-the-tube task can't take 15 minutes the first time you do it. This is easy enough to get down to less than ten minutes with nightly training.
The first night I took the tire off and found the hole in pretty short order. I removed the sliver of whatever-it-was that was in the hole and got out one of my glueless patches. I marveled at how easy the new (new to me, anyway) glueless patches made things. I had the tire on the bike in almost no time.
The next day I checked the tire. It was very flat -- not just spongy. It seems the piece of whatever-it-was provided a bit of air-leaking resistance. Moreso than a glueless patch does.
In all fairness, I probably did something wrong with respect to applying the glueless patch. You find that hard to believe? Read on.
The second night, having removed the glueless patch, I opted to go with a traditional, old-school rubber-cement-adhered patch. Even though the light was dim as night fell, I was able to get things back together and the tire pumped up rather quickly.
Had I attached that patch correctly, this entry would have been titled Two days in the hole. So, we can only assume there is a third patch attempt coming.
And here it is: The next day the tyre (that's for our British friends) was flat. Bollocks! said I.
I removed the tube from the tire and admired my handiwork in full sunlight. Ah there's my mistake. The patch was very near the puncture but not covering even the least bit of it. It was so close to the puncture that if you had taken a Sharpie (fine point) and traced around the patch it would have gone over the hole. Had I been trying to get the patch as close to the hole as I possibly could without covering it in the least bit I wouldn't have done as good a job as I had done by accident.
I removed the patch and applied another. I then took the inner tube into the kitchen and put it in a sink-full of water. It looked good.
And this morning ... the tire is still hard as a rock.
Posted by delmer at 7:07 AM | Comments (3)
July 13, 2006
Road to Prediction
Let's revisit yesterday's predictions and their outcomes.
What can we gather from this? Well, we could assume that my psychic abilities are non-existent. Or, we can assume that if we were to convert time to distance (and therefore, loosely, space) that a workday would be at least twenty feet long. In this entry I've stated:
If I could have one supernatural power I'd like to be able to see into the future. Right now I can see far enough into the future to know when someone is going to come to my office. But, I'm sort of at the end of a corridor and if anybody enters the corridor they're probably on their way to see me. Basically, I can see about 20 feet into the future. I need to see at least a day or two.
As you know -- if it's on the Internet, it's true. That entry has been on the Internet (and, hopefully soon, The Internets) for over a year, which puts it very close to being divine fact.
So what do we know?
Therefore a workday is longer, when reduced to distance, than 20 feet. Were it 20 feet or less my predictions would have been dead on. We still don't know the upper-distance limit of a workday ... it could be 21 feet ... it could be a football field ... it could be something far greater; but this is a start. As soon as my Government Grant comes through I'll get busy on coming up with a better answer.
In other news: The Running Man almost ran into me in the McDonald's Parking lot this morning. This man is sooo rushed that he cannot be bothered to follow the simple traffic pattern set up my McDonald's and insists on driving against the flow. He also refuses to take one of the first spots he comes to and has to drive 3/4 of the way around the building to get as close to the door as he can; he is, after all The Running Man not The Marathon Man.
Who am I kidding? He's a rude dumbass.
Posted by delmer at 8:25 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2006
Predictions for Today
I predict that today:
Why? Because I have the Man of Steel on my side.
Normally, when I interact with the Man of Steel -- and I'm not talking about Pat Robertson and his weak-ass leg press of 2000 pounds -- I'm talking about THE MAN OF STEEL; the guy who can blow out a star like it's a birthday candle ... Superman!
Ahem ... normally when I interact with The Man of Steel I get this:
Today, I got this:
Which means I could have won up to $1,000,000. (Or all of British Columbia if we're talking Canadian dollars.) The guy in the image -- the non-Super-guy -- was talking and telling me who I'd helped capture. I had my speakers off but it obviously wasn't Lex as the reward for him is the beforementioned one million and the next image I received was:
Still, ten bucks is ten bucks. And I'll sleep better tonight knowing I've helped make Metropolis a little bit safer. (Which is something, because as I put the period on that last sentence, the ThinkPad barked an error at me. The day is still young.)
Posted by delmer at 7:20 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2006
My Visa Account Has Been Suspended
Information Regarding Your account:
Dear VISA Member! Attention!
Your VISA Credit Card has been violated!
Someone from Bulgaria tried to access your personal account from 2 different ATM's but with wrong pin! We were forced to freeze your Credit Card until you will confirm your identity online!
Please click the link below and enter your account information to confirm that you are not currently away. You have 3 days to confirm account information or your account will be locked.
https://www.usa1.visa.com/verifiedbyvisa/usa1/update.asp
Click on the "Confirm identity " link in the Activate Credit Card box and then enter this confirmation number: 1291-3821-1345-9233-3925
Thank you for using Visa!
Verified by Visa Team
Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
VISA Email ID VU294E22
I had almost deleted the above e-mail and dismissed it as a phishing attempt when something caught my eye. Something that spoke to me. Something that said this isn't the work of some 15-year old in a basement but the is the genuine article -- an item put out by an overworked and overstressed Visa customer service department.
It wasn't the lack of Visa graphics. Everybody knows that phishers can easily insert those to make an e-mail look more legit. Phishers are that hip. That cool.
It wasn't the reference to Bulgaria. As it happens, I summer there and make use of many of the 22,000 ATMs located throughout Albena, Sofia, Varna and Plevin. Of course, I always use the correct PIN.
No. It was neither of those things.
When you, I anyway, receive an e-mail that is obviously phishing it has an almost Barry White feel to it. It has a very smooth, sexy delivery. I get just a little turned on. I know when it comes to that phisher I'm his first, his last, his everything.
The item I received today that I've so cleverly put in a colored box at the top of this entry had nothing at all like a Barry-White delivery.
It was more Gilbert Godfried.
been stolen you
sonuvabitch!
Dear Visa Member !
Attention !
Your VISA Credit Card has been violated! Someone from Bulgaria tried to access your personal account from 2 different ATM's but with wrong pin! We were forced to freeze your Credit Card until you will confirm your identity online!
Nothing says that this is an honest-to-goodness warning from a credit card company like the use of exclamation points. These people -- the Visa folks -- want to get my attention. They want me to know they care. They want me to know that they appreciate my business so much that they close with:
Thank you for using Visa!
Because saying, Thank you for using Visa you crazy sonuvabitch, we love you is not very business like.
Posted by delmer at 7:33 AM | Comments (0)
July 10, 2006
Good Guys Auto Show
The Good Guys Auto Show was in Columbus this past weekend giving car nerds a reason to drag themselves out from beneath their Fords, Chevys and Dodges and spend some time in the sun.
My approach to autos is the same approach I take with super models ... even though I'm not a car guy I do appreciate the look of a fine automobile. And, even though I'm not a super-model dater -- well, you can fill in the rest.
Here are some photos. Click to enlarge. You'll notice that, like super models, these items look like they might be high maintenance and expensive to maintain.
Posted by delmer at 5:26 PM | Comments (0)
July 9, 2006
What do you think of when you think of New Jersey
When I think of New Jersey I think of Tony Soprano crossing some bridge that is rather near not some of the best looking area you'd ever see. It's sort of industrial and dirty looking.
And the Bada-Bing -- which is way more a titty bar than a (Danger Will Robinson: Non-work-friendly link ahead) Gentleman's Club (maybe, despite what I said in an earlier post, Columbus Gold does sell food).
Sure, once in a while they guys will drive out into the country for a picnic and to off a Russian (am I the only one waiting for him to come back -- they never found the body) or a girlfriend but, otherwise, New Jersey looks pretty bleak. At least on TV.
The part of Jersey I've seen -- my buddy's neighborhood, the surrounding burgs and the Manhatten Hooters -- is pretty scenic. It's full of trees, parks and other green areas, nature and scantily-clad women serving wings and beer. (Granted, the Manhatten Hooters is in Manhatten, which is more New York, than New Jersey, but if the rest of the world is going to refer to Ohio as a generic destination somewhere in the midwest I'm going to stick all the New states together. New England will remain separate as it is its own grouping of small states suffering from a similar, yet snootier, identity crisis as the midwest. For the sake of this blog entry we'll pretend New Mexico has not yet received statehood.)
Where were we. Ah yes. The Manhatten Hooters is a sight to see. We, the Hooters and I, seem to disagree on the spelling of Manhatten, and while I'd normally let spell check clean this up, I'll leave the misspellings in this time to see who notices.
I don't get to the Hooters too terribly often. Only when I'm visiting my buddy, Joe. And only if it isn't raining and we feel like taking a train into the city and walking around. And only if his wife will let us.
The pictures from this page were taken from Joe's neighborhood. In addition to the turkeys, I encountered deer. Coyote, and baby black bear sightings have been reported in the neighborhood as well.
He doesn't live in the boondocks, people. The wooded area behind the house isn't that deep. I'll bet you couldn't hide more than two or three bodies there.
Posted by delmer at 12:03 AM | Comments (3)
July 8, 2006
Turkey
While in New Jersey a couple weeks ago my buddy's son suggested we go bowling. So off we went.
I had not bowled in 20 years or more and the last time I'd bowled I wore a size 12 or 13 shoe. The shoe size is important only because there are more people wearing that size so the shoes are one more feet and more lanes more often and the shoe bottoms glide better on the lane surface due to having more wear.
At least that's what I think. What I know is that my shoes -- size 14 -- looked almost brand new and they'd stick during my delivery.
During the first frame I picked up my ball with loose-fitting finger holes and approached the pins. As I started my delivery I said, "I haven't bowled in 20 years." I released the ball as the shoe stuck a bit ... and I got a strike. An impressive pro-bowler one -- the pins exploded; they had to close the lanes on either side to clean up the pin shrapnel. 
My second ball ... another strike.
During my third delivery I brought my arm across my body funny and while it had the right spin it was obviously not going to hit the pocket. That is, until it kissed the rail (yes, we were using bumpers) and shot back between the 1 and 2 pins for strike number three.
The automatic scorer had no idea that the ball was originally on its way to the gutter and gave me a turkey. And, I may have had enough spin to keep it out of the gutter without the bumper. That's what I tell myself.
It really doesn't matter.
What does matter is that the next day -- or maybe that evening -- I was sitting in my buddy's sun room when I caught motion out of the corner of my eye. A mobster was dumping a body in my buddy's backyard.
No. Two Wild Turkeys were walking through the backyard. (And a Captain Morgan.)
By the time I'd gotten my camera ready the turkeys had moved into the neighbor's yard and the shot I had at a photo was less than perfect.
In the interest of honesty and clarification: After further reflection it occurred to me that I had bowled about 5 years ago. Also, while I bowl right-handed my ball travels down the lane from left to right with a clockwise spin; I've never been able to throw a ball the other way.
Posted by delmer at 9:43 AM | Comments (0)
July 7, 2006
This week in IT
A while back I installed Linux on a PC to test a report-generating package.
The install went well enough even though I had somehow managed to download two corrupt images of the first CD before finally getting a good one; part of the Linux install asks if you want to verify that the install CDs are good -- mine had failed the integrity test.
So, I completed the operating system install. I installed some other packages, I removed some of those that didn't work, I added newer versions of some of the old stuff, yada yada yada etc.
In the end, everything was working and ready for the next step but, with all the additions, deletions and tweakings I wasn't happy with the state of the PC. I decided to do a fresh install of everything on the PC, using my notes as a guide.
As it happens, my install CD came up corrupt. Which ... shouldn't ... happen. It had been sitting unused and untouched. It's a CD.
I burned a new one from the image I had. It failed the integrity check. I downloaded a new image. I downloaded an image from another mirror ... then another. I replaced the CD drive in the PC I was using as a test box. I burned images from different burners. I created coaster after coaster.
Finally, I did the integrity check in a different PC. And it passed.
So -- I am unable to install this version of Linux on the box I had already installed this version of Linux on.
While this was happening I received some software from one of the big software outfits -- not Microsoft, if you're curious. The new client agent -- the one that was supposed to replace the one that didn't work very well all of the time -- doesn't work at all. At least it fails 100% of the time so I never have to wonder if it's doing what it's supposed to be doing.
I guess things could be worse. On Wednesday our Accounts Payable person came in to run checks to pay our vendors. She had taken the week off to extend the 4th of July holiday and the trip in, I felt, was above and beyond the call of duty. Running checks should take a couple of hours.
As you know, no good deed goes unpunished.
Something went wrong. Something that caused the software to yak out an unneeded sheet of paper while allowing it to keep the stream of numbers (and some letters) that should have appeared on that sheet -- and many more sheets -- way deep down in its digital bowels. It was as if our ERP package had attended an all-night fondue party and was bound up in the worst way.
Calls were made to tech support.
Some more yada.
Thursday afternoon our AP person had checks.
It took two days.
Our AP person is off today.
Posted by delmer at 7:10 AM | Comments (3)
July 6, 2006
Peri Gilpin
I awoke briefly and debated whether or not I should climb out of bed or snooze a bit more. I drifted back to sleep ... barely.
In my dream Peri Gilpin (Roz from Frazier) was walking toward me with a 2.5 inch hard drive in an external USB enclosure.
I'm not sure I was even fully asleep; as soon as I saw her with the hard drive enclosure I just knew things like that didn't happen. She probably has people to carry her hard drive enclosures.
Something I meant to mention yesterday: On the trip to Mechanicsburg, on the 4th of July, I passed corn field after corn field. You will be happy to know that all the corn I saw was well past knee high. Fear of flying scarecrows and creepy little kids named Micah kept me from dismounting the trusty Schwinn and getting too close to the corn, but a lot of it looked about chest high.
We grow the hell out of corn here in Ohio. And we do a pretty good job with soy beans in alternating years. We also kick out a fair amount of Comedians, Crooners, Rockers, and Freak Shows
Oh. And Porn Stars.
(You'll find most of the above, at one time or another, available in Steubinville)
Posted by delmer at 12:05 PM | Comments (2)
July 5, 2006
The Trip to Mechanicsburg
Yesterday afternoon I set of toward Mechanicsburg, Ohio on my trusty Schwinn. The ride, according to Gmap Pedometer was going to come in right at 25 miles for a 50-mile round-trip excursion.
We'd had storms move through earlier yesterday and more were expected. These were to be of the pop-up variety, most likely, and hard to plan for. My original intention was to lunch in Mechanicsburg; waiting for the weather sort of pushed that back.
I must have hit the road around 3 p.m.
Oh, and I was pretty sure the Mom & Pop restaurant I was certain Mechanicsburg would have would be closed, so I packed an apple in addition to my three liters of water.
The trip out was rough. I don't know how hard the wind has to blow to take it's toll, but pedaling was harder than I'd hoped it would be. The pedaling that normally took me to 16-17 mph was returning 13-14 mph. Three miles per hour isn't a lot when you're tooling down the road at 70 in a Buick -- on a bike going less than 20 it's a greater percentage of the total.
I held on though ... assuming the wind would be at my back on the way home.
I was a little concerned about rain that might come in. Concerned, mostly, that a brief storm would blow through and behind it would the calm that sometimes follows a storm. A calm that kills the wind. (By God, if I was going to fight the wind on the way out I wanted it at my back on the way in!)
I used my pseudo-country-boy-Spider sense to try to figure out how likely getting rained on might be. This 'sense' is comprised mainly of observing clouds and livestock. The clouds looked fine and the livestock -- cows actually -- were of little help ... half were sitting, half were standing.
Do Cows sit before it rains? This comes form Usenet.
Sort of like cows sitting down before it rains (change in pressure causes insects to fly lower, so the cows sit or lay down to get away from the insects)
This too:
Didn't you know that cows sit down when it's about to rain?? It's so they can get a dry spot and not have to sit in the wet.
Are cows really sitting? Dogs sit. And dogs lie down. If a dog were in the same position a cow was in when we say that cow was sitting, we'd say the dog was lying. I think cows lie. I don't know that I've ever seen a cow sit ... a horse, once or twice, in a movie ... a cow ... no. I know when a cow is on its back and you rub its belly really hard her hind leg will go all crazy, just like a dog. This is part of the reason we keep cows in barns instead of living rooms. Crazy-leg cows are hard on the furniture.
(Prediction: At some point someone will come to this site after having Googled "crazy leg cow")
I rolled into Mechanicsburg having averaged 14.1 mph for 24.5 miles. I was tired.
As I'd thought, the local restaurants were closed. There was a Subway shop that was opened, but the couple in front of me was taking far to long to decide whether or not they wanted pickles on their subs and I lost interest in ordering. The Schwinn was out of eyeball range and I was concerned for its safety. It's not like the Mechanicsburg Crips were likely to do a drive-by and blow out my tires, it's just that I didn't want to fall victim to some good-natured small-town lets-throw-this-bike-in-the-back-of-the-pickup fun. I really don't think that was likely to happen either -- but what do I know? I mean half the tippable objects in the area were already sitting/lying ... country kids gotta have their fun somehow.
While in the Subway shop I decided to take a bathroom break. Now, sometimes I give out too much information -- if you're a regular reader, you might understand what I'm talking about and you may want to skip down to the next paragraph. Anyway, at the Subway shop I decided to take a bathroom break and, during the course of this operation managed to pee on the tile wall just a bit. I know, I know I know. I've been peeing unassisted for decades now and hope to continue doing so for several more decades ... how does this happen? I can blame it on: The Costanza Effect -- dehydration leads to shrinkage just as being in a pool does .... and ... The Bicycle Shorts Effect -- which kind of mushes things around and leaves them at unfamiliar angles; the shorts also help with the shrinkage thing. (I felt pretty bad about the wall-tinkling until I got home and peed on my own floor due to the same things.)
I had Combos and jerky for a snack.
The ride home was excellent. The wind was at my back and I hit stretches where I was doing a fairly easy 25 mph. I was not about to die when I got home -- I was just tired.
(FWIW: I've tinkled several times since the Subway incident and, much like Elvis Costello, my aim is true.)
Posted by delmer at 7:30 AM | Comments (2)
July 4, 2006
Delmer Wells' Day Off Part III
In the post I made at 12:50 a.m. I predicted I would spend the day doing the following:
Weather permitting, I will:
How'd I do?
I had breakfast at Mel's.
I watched the parade -- though the route wasn't what I thought it was so I had to walk down the street a block to see it.
I didn't make lunch in Mechanicsburg. I had a snack there. And it is about 24.5 miles there or 49 miles round trip.
I made it home.
I didn't make as much headway in the garage as I'd hoped. I mean, I moved like one thing.
Grilling burgers? Or chicken? Geez no ... the bike ride came later in the day than I thought it would and I didn't have the amount of sitting-on-my-ass-and-recovering time needed to make firing up the grill sound the least bit entertaining. And we're getting some thunder kicking up. But honestly, even if it were sunny with zero humidity and the Swedish Bikini team was sitting around my grill waiting for me to rub Coppertone on them while the burgers grilled ... well, okay, I'd find a way.
As it is just me, I've opted for a modified version of Pat Robertson's Age Defying shake. Well, it's the shake I've been drinking for ages, whenever I'm not in the mood to make real food but I'm hoping to have serious gas.
You know what. Protein shakes, until you get used to them, do make you gassy. And not just the cute little is-that-a-fart-I-smell type. These babies are paint peelers. And even when your body gets used to them, when you do have gas, the farts will strip the enamel off your teeth. I get the biggest kick out of knowing Pat Roberson has let a couple of these babies fly. (But, of course, I am an immature man.)
Posted by delmer at 7:44 PM | Comments (2)
Delmer Wells' Day off Part II
This is the third entry for the 4th of July. You may want to perform some browser magic -- that is make the appropriate mouse clicks to get back to entries one and two -- so you don't get lost in these entries ... it would be kind of like coming in at the middle of a Stephen King mini-series. You know, without all the blood and gore and the seven-figure advance.
Breakfast at Mel's was very good, as it always is. I was wrong about the parade route -- it didn't go in front of Mel's or my house. It looks like I could have had breakfast anytime up until Mel locks the doors at 2:30.
The weather is pretty nice. It's overcast and cooler than you'd expect.
The Hilliard Marching Panthers?
After breakfast I had an incredibly relaxing experience. Unfortunately it involves my bowels and it would be inappropriate to talk about in mixed company -- unless, of course, you're in a crowd and yelling about the experience into your cell phone (Yes. I stole the idea from the Bud Light Real Men of Genius bits). And really, only one or two of you would have any real interest in the story (but those one or two have probably just experienced a mild, relaxed chill down you spine ... you are that in tune to what I'm talking about.)
I took a trip up the block and watched a bit of the parade. The batteries in my camera were, unbeknownst to me, about to die, which may have affected the autofocus in the later shots.
I'm on my way to work now. I'll be one of the only ones there and it is the perfect time to take the network down, remove the platters from the hard drives and dust them off with some Lemon Pledge.
You're getting the bonus entries today due to the fact I don't want to piddle through post-parade trafffic.
Oh ... and I love each and every one of you and want you to know you're special.
Yea. It's the second thing. The thing about you ... not the first, about-me thing.
Posted by delmer at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)
Delmer Wells' Day Off
If you read today's earlier entry you'll see that I've got a weather permitting in there.
Current weather conditions are:
As thunderstorms go this is a pretty pleasant one. The wind isn't blowing so hard that rain came in my bedroom windows and the temp is pretty pleasant. We have the Baby Bear version of thunder and lightening out there: it's just right. We periodically get electrical storms here that can be described as nothing short of impressive.
On the map below you'll see Columbus in the center. To the south you'll see some yellow that denotes heavier storms. Hilliard is just a bit to the north and west of Columbus and you can see that the storms have sort of passed through. Using a much-less scientific method -- looking out the window -- I can verify that the storm has settled down to a light rain.
If I wanted to piddle with this some more I'd eventually get up some better radar photos that show that the current heavy storm has just moved away from us but that a new heavy storm may appear later.
But ... but ... but.
I really need to get to Mel's for breakfast. A parade may or may not start in about 30 minutes and I'd really like to get across the street before they close it off.
Ferris Bueller may have little trouble crossing parade routes -- the rest of us, I'm not so sure.
Posted by delmer at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)
Fourth of July Celebration
How will Delmer celebrate the 4th?
These are my plans -- at 1 a.m. Tuesday morning -- we'll see how they shake out.
Weather permitting, I will:
I'll let you know how it goes.
Have a Happy 4th.
(I'm sure the Brits will ... they've got to be tickled to be rid of us all these years.)
Posted by delmer at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 3, 2006
Coincidences
I've read several books recently in which one of the characters will say "There's no such thing as coincidences," or something similar.
Sunday I was looking at the flower bed behind the house. There is a phone cable that comes off a pole in the garden, lays across the ground, goes under the fence and disappears under the sod. There are also a couple other lines that come up from the ground that are cut off a couple feet above the flower bed and tucked behind the pole between it and the fence. It looks like a tangle of junk.
I told dad that I was going to bury the wire that was laying on top of the flower bed -- this wire was exposed for about 20 feet. Dad told me he'd looked at the wire and that it didn't appear to go anywhere and that he couldn't imagine the phone company would run a line like that.
The box the wire was terminated to was about chest high on the pole so I opened it. On the interior of the lid was written, "You're welcome."
Dad told a story about being younger and being in a house in which the residents were borrowing phone service from the neighbors. We thought the "you're welcome" might be an indication of that type of borrowing.
Rather than cut the wire I decided to detach a couple of connections from the box. No use in creating a really big problem. I thought I'd call the phone company and have them take a look at things so I could get the mess of wires straightened out.
Coincidentally I saw a phone guy walking down the alley this morning. I flagged him down -- which, as it happens, was really unnecessary as he was on his way to my backyard.
The phone guy said my neighbor's phone service was dead. I told him I was pretty sure I knew what happened.
When I disconnected the long cable that was strung across my flower bed I'd also disconnected the neighbor's phone.
The good news is that the phone guy determined that three of the four cables back by that pole or laying across my flowers were unneeded. Two of the three he had a ready explanation for. The long, exposed one, fell into the mystery cable category.
The phone guy had the neighbor's service reconnected in just a few minutes.
Posted by delmer at 10:09 AM | Comments (1)
July 2, 2006
Keys
I just had dinner with some old friends and heard this story about a brother-in-law.
Bob, the brother-in-law, had a softball game to play. He also had a set of car keys he needed to keep track of; these he tucked safely into the front of his coaches shorts.
Realizing it would be better to pee before the game than having to go during, he set off to the men's room.
As he pulled his shorts down his car keys fell free from his shorts and into the toilet. Inconvenient, but not a tragedy.
He leaned forward to retrieve the keys and, in doing so, triggered the toilet motion detector and auto-flush.
I don't know exactly what happened next, but I imagine there was that bit of Bob that hoped the keys might not have gone down the toilet.
I also imagine that Bob jumped back when the toilet flushed. He must have. Otherwise it gets kind of hard to explain how he triggered the auto-flush a second time.
Disbelief at what was happening probably played a role in triggering it the third time.
In the end ... the keys were gone.
And, really, they may have been gone after flush one.
Posted by delmer at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
July 1, 2006
Moving
The day started simply enough. I met some buddies at 10 a.m. to help one of them move. We figured we'd be done around 1 p.m.
The original plan called for two trips to South High (to make use of a storage facility there) and a trip or two to The Condo (where the mover is moving to.)
One guy was going to have to bail at noon.
By 11:00 we were certain that we would have to make only one trip to South High. We'd gotten everything we'd needed to take there in one load. Sweet!
At noon the buddy bailed.
We made the first trip to The Condo sometime around 1 o'clock. The wife of the guy moving had already moved in. Based on her input -- that the guy moving (her hubby) owned a lot of junk that really shouldn't be moved into The Condo it was determined that we would be making a couple more trips to South High. The Office and My Garage also became staging areas for some of the stuff.
I am in no way complaining. I am simply marveling at how even a great plan (the one put together by four guys) can be made even greater by the input of a single woman.
We were finished at 7 p.m. -- and this is due more to the four guys miscalculating how much stuff there was than it was to late-in-the-day plan modifications.
Posted by delmer at 9:48 PM | Comments (1)