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February 28, 2007

Nextel Support

As you may recall it wasn't that long ago that I became disenchanted with my cell phone service. I'd forgotten the date of an upcoming doctor's appointment and had called the doctor's office for clarification. The office called me back and left a message on my cell phone that was not delivered to me by Nextel until almost 3-days after the appointment passed. This ended up costing me $85.00 as I had to pay for the missed appointment.

Now, before you get all pissy and point out that the missed appointment was my fault, I'd like to mention that the appointment I ultimately missed had been set more than a month in advance, I realized I'd lost track of when it was, and I made a reasonable effort to find out when I was supposed to show up for it. And, generally speaking, I do a pretty good job of keeping track of the trips I need to make to the doctor -- I have my hormones checked two or three times a year (it used to be quarterly), I see a psychologist every five weeks or so, and I see a chiropractor monthly. Additionally, I have three boys and there is seemingly no end to dentist's appointments and doctor's appointments I cart them around to. Not to mention soccer games, football games, baseball games, chess lessons, skating lessons, etc. All in all I do a pretty good job of keeping track of things.

I'm guessing my failure rate is something less than 1% over the past 13 years (using the birth of the first child as a starting point.) I know I've only paid for one other missed appointment in that time -- which is why I take great pains to keep it from happening now.

So.

I missed an appointment, it cost me $85.00, I thought maybe Nextel would want to pay for a bit of it. Say maybe $10 or $20.

I called Nextel to get their opinion on this and while they were sorry about my inconvenience, they really weren't interested in breaking out the company wallet and sending any cash my way.

I wrote them a letter. A nice, pleasant, not hateful letter (see, the trips to the psychologist are helping ... though my laid-backness may be more a hormone thing now that I think of it). I explained what had happened and went on to say that I'd be dropping my service in March -- when my contract expired. I also said that were it not for the $200 penalty I'd be hit with I'd cancel immediately.

Some time passed and I got a call from Nextel.

The woman who called was very nice. She said she had received my letter and that I was going to get a credit for $85.00. She also said an engineer would be calling to help with the problem I was having with poor coverage and delayed messages.

Several engineers ended up calling me over the course of several days. Test messages were left -- one that went straight to voice mail without ringing my phone. An engineer stopped by work and we took a look at the various Nextel towers and signal strengths using some sort of GPS-enabled tool he was running from a notebook ... it was really pretty cool. We drove by my house to see what the problem might be. Hours and hours and hours were put into fixing my problem.

So many hours, in fact, that I wondered if it wouldn't have simply been cheaper for Nextel to say, "Kiss my cellular ass, you cranky son of a bitch! Good riddance!" when they got my letter.

I asked the visiting engineer about that -- though I phrased it differently -- and he explained that if I were having some sort of problem that there may be others with the same issues, so they had to look into what was going on.

Anyway.

I'm sort of torn. Nextel went way beyond the call of duty in fixing my problem (Although I guess I don't really know if it has been fixed. I don't get all that many calls so I haven't been able to test the fix all that much) but I really need a hard line at home more than I need a cell phone.

And I don't want to pay for both.

When it was just money -- when the only thing Nextel had done was throw $85.00 my way -- I was still bound and determined to cancel my service. The whole event had passed from wanting Nextel to pay for a bit of my missed office visit into the realm of principle. The problem I was having shouldn't have happened. I shouldn't have had to call. When I did call someone should have been able to say, "How about we credit you ten bucks." The second lady I spoke with was a bit snippy. I wrote a letter.

When you become a 45-year old man you'll realize that the act of writing a letter to complain about something moves that something right into the principle column.

But they didn't just credit me $85.00. They bent over backwards to find out what was wrong. And it wasn't just lip service. And everybody I spoke with was local to the United States.

They seem to be doing Technical Support the way it should be done. And that should be rewarded.

Posted by delmer at 4:18 PM | Comments (5)

February 27, 2007

Support

I am not the smartest man you'll ever meet.

I may be one of the nicest. I try to treat others well. I know I have good intentions. And the things I do over the course of the day don't eat at me and leave me wondering if I'm doing the right thing.

Nice? Yes.

Smartest man you'll ever meet? No.

And yet, I seem to know more about the wireless network in a big hotel in California than even that hotel's tech support knows. Granted -- I'm in the same country as the big hotel in California even though I'm 2,200 miles away from it while the tech support department for their network is offshore someplace. But nobody has ever approached that hotel on my behalf to sell them my services as a wireless-network technical support person. Somebody must have done that in order to get the current company the support contract ... and those people are not doing a great job.

As I've said before, I love all people. I think everybody deserves a chance to better themselves. I wish we could all get along better.

However, one of the big problems I'd had in the recent past is that it wasn't uncommon for me to end up on the phone with a tech support person that was not able to help me as their English-language skills don't allow them to vary from the script they are reading, I couldn't understand them due to the difference in our accents, or they had been placed into a support position for which they are ill suited (that is, they're in over their head.)

I have gotten in the habit of avoiding companies who I've had tech support problems with and my tech support headaches have dropped to almost zero.

Yesterday one of our sales people called me after work. He'd been trying to connect to a wireless network at a large hotel in LA and was having problems. He'd been on the phone with the hotel's wireless tech support person and they were getting nowhere. The tech support person eventually told our sales guy that he needed a bridge and that he'd have to go downstairs, sign some paperwork, and take the bridge to his room.

Our sales guy had already had a full day and thought he'd call me before trudging down to the lobby. I, and again I'm not the smartest guy you'll ever meet and I'm not necessarily a particularly smart IT guy, had him connected to the Internet in less than five minutes.

It wasn't a bridge problem.

The only part of 'technical' that should apply to my level of support for that hotel in California is that 'technically' I was off work when I got that call.

You know in IT, you can punch out any time you like, but you never really leave ...

(Yea, I know. That's sort of weak. I'm not really the wittiest guy you'll ever meet either. It's a good thing I'm nice. And a damned delight to be around. And I'm salaried -- I never punch in or out.)

Posted by delmer at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)

February 26, 2007

Late February Search Results

I'd hoped to post a bit of a video file from our past Christmases tonight. I can tell, though, that the video won't be ready until I'm in bed.

I'd considered posting an update to my Nextel experience, but, that requires more time than I have to give right now. I will say that Nextel has gone way beyond the call of duty in trying to solve my problem, and I'll have more on this later.

This morning I prepared a crack about John Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia, when I was still half asleep. I don't remember how the whole thing went other than it had something to do with the fact that I'd paid $50.00 for something and how if I were to use Mr. Howard's magic math I'd be able to get the same thing in Australia for about a buck and a quarter. (Like I said, I was half asleep.)

I've meant to take a minute to post this month's interesting and oddball search phrases ... and I have about a minute now. So here we go:

granny gallery: This one is always #1. Not because people are looking for my mother's art work ... they're looking for porn.

delmer: This was #2 this month. People are looking for Delmers have actually found a site written by one. If they're old teachers of mine I hope they stopped by on a day I said something moderately intelligent and mostly lacking in things about my bowels.

safety squat bar: Alright. A few hits on safety squat bar makes me feel like I'm helping someone, somewhere.

dostinex recall, dostinex heart valve and cabergoline heart valve: More that make me feel like I'm helping people. Helping, may be the wrong word.

sinead snow kids vs pirates: I wonder what this person was looking for. I've mentioned Sinead just once.

dreams about clowns: I'm certain I didn't help this person at all.

vicky vallencourt tits

bath jello

arcserve manager slow: I'll bet you that I make no mention of what causes Arcserve Manager to be slow in whatever entry this appears in. As I recall it has something to do with needing to load IPX on the NetWare server and using that protocol from the workstation.

low testosterone and constipation: I never had constipation when my testosterone was low. I'd hit the can three times a day: morning, afternoon and night. (Anybody remember the jingle for Rubel's Rye Bread? It went something like -- Morning, afternoon and night, it's Rubel's Rye Bread time ... so if you want the taste that's right ... it's Rubel's time ... for breakfast, lunch or midnight snack ... blah blah blah. Midnight snack is the only part of that last bit I feel strongly about. And I'm really not sure how to spell Rubel's Rye Bread. This would have come from a commercial in the mid 60's.)

nextel service sucks: I feel sort of guilty about this and am going to change the title of the entry so it is less Googleable.

crepinsek squat bar: This is the one I wish I'd have bought.

what does poop look like: Your guess is as good as mine.

bare feet in snow: Somebody wanted to see someone barefoot in the snow and I was able to accommodate them.

hills for sled riding in hilliard

serial killer jeffrey delmer: They mean Dahmer. This is not the first time this has come up. Someone once asked me what it was like having the same name as the serial killer Jeffery Delmer.

i like parites that never end dogs that love cats and i like twins lyrics

rules for catholics dating: You both need to be single.

what they wore in the eightys: I hope this wasn't for some sort if history assignment. I feel old enough already. And, for what it's worth, I still wear that stuff.

record of how long someone has held their pee: I'm not familiar with the tune, but I'll bet the lyrics are something like: pull over, I gotta go, pull over, I gotta go (repeat.)

who lived on houseboat steel rockford macgyver: Rockford lived in a mobile home. I don't think either Steele or MacGyver lived on a boat. But, I'm not sure.

sneezing with a tummy tuck: Should be avoided at all costs. It's been four months and it still hurts a bit.

what's dating like in norway: I'm thinking cold. And that the extra layers of clothing gives her that much more time to change her mind.

what does it mean when a bunch of birds keep hanging around your house: Your cat is a pussy.

chunks in my spurm

chicago divorced four inches elton john blog motorcycle

southern baptist dating rules: You both need to be single and born again. No dancing. No card playing. Do not meet each other's gaze for periods of more than 10 seconds at a time. Eyes above the neck at all times. Ten percent of whatever you were going to spend on popcorn goes to the church. One of the two of you must yell 'amen' every 15 minutes for no obvious reason.

rules for dating friends: There is only one rule ... don't.

ou est sylvie? a la piscine. [(Avec Edit, ou avec Claudine? ... Avec Edit. (And I think there should be an accent mark over the E in Edit)]

what does a testicle look like: A hairy grapefruit. Of course, I can only speak for myself.

dating over an hour away: I really hope people aren't coming here for dating advice. But the rule here is: don't.

how to get a king sized bed up a small stairway: You let the delivery guys do it.

sighting of sasquatch in clarksville tn

train routes that go to or by hooters of manhatten

abductions like this are fairly rare but not that uncommon

male spurm yellow chunks: I think 'spurm' might be the thing keeping this person from finding a more helpful site.

what s a boner look like: Googleing this takes a person to my first entry mentioning John Howard. I don't think it's a coincidence. Although I am lying.

rules about dating friend's exes: Don't. They'll hate you.

protein shake fart

will school be canceled tomorrow in massachusetts because of snow

british word for fruitcake: pomme de terre.

amanda tapping bounce tits: What ...?

expected gains on the penis using androgel: No gain in size past what the good Lord gave you originally.

what does john howard house look like: It's a three-bedroom Cape Cod with a sunken living room and all stainless steel appliances in the kitchen.

i want to date a women that looks like my ex-wife?

wiping till you bleed

shops in corby that sell prom gloves

somerset kentucky places for gay men to hookup

how do i keep rats away from getting into engine compartment of my car

spurm of 65 year old man: I'm guessing it may have yellow chunks in it.

klee status ipod irwin colon

poop that makes you bleed

what does a spider s inside look like: Sort of like a smudge.

how many calories do i use up riding bick: It all depends. How long does Bick last before he reaches that drooling, sleepy stage?

whats the name of the thing on your bike that moves the chain on and off of the sprockets and its not called the shifter! Derailleur?

what s good for testosterone "The Testosterone Syndrome" by Dr. Eugene Shippen.

small kid massive poops

naked dream high school

renting a springboro city school gym We used to do this all the time in 1977-78 in Franklin (which abuts Springboro). It was $10 for two hours. I wonder what it costs now.

combos beats snack boredom: 'Cos they're more than just another snack.

Well, that took more than an hour. I left out some of the less sensible/more offensive items and I still droned on a lot longer than I'd intended.

I should probably mention that pomme de terres are potatoes. The thing that is close to Fruit Cake in the UK is Christmas Pudding.

Posted by delmer at 9:43 PM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2007

Photos from Saturday

At the end of each ride I take a picture of myself for God only knows what reason. It probably goes with that whole keeping track of stuff I do thing. I think I do it so I'll have a concrete record of what conditions were like on a particular ride; not that I'll ever check on it again. Maybe it's because I always have the camera with me when I'm on my bike and I figure I may as well use it.

Maybe I'm just nuts.

Anyway, I took these pictures yesterday before I went riding.

This is a shot of the garage from a less-depressing looking angle. You'll notice I keep my Van Gogh up against the back wall.

I thought someone had ridden their Harley to the Masonic Lodge. As I was walking to Mel's for lunch I noticed the motorcycle was on a trailer. The guy to the left is holding a "Going Out of Business" sign for the local furniture store. The store has been going out of business for at least 15 months now.

This is me fresh out of the shower. Yes, Mom, my hair is wet. It is important that a person shower before embarking on a 20-mile bike ride. Mostly it's important that a person is clean before going to Mel's for lunch. Going to Mel's for breakfast brings with it no such requirement apparently -- I'd climbed out of bed that morning, threw some sweats on, and shot off to Mel's.

This is me post ride. I look like I'm about to die. I didn't feel that bad but I look like I need somone to strap an oxygen mask on me.

I sit my camera on that picnic table when I want to take photos of myself. Which should explain the left-leaning look of a lot of the pictures you see. For what it's worth, I lean a little toward the left without the help of the camera.

Posted by delmer at 6:14 PM | Comments (3)

February 24, 2007

Weather Monger

There was a rumor at the beginning of the week that the temperature might touch 50 F (10 C) today. As the week progressed that was adjusted down to the upper then mid-40s (something colder than 10 C). The forecast also called for thunderstorms on Sunday -- which all pointed to Saturday being a good day to take The Mighty Schwinn out for a roll.

I have a 15-mile course laid out that I can easily turn into a 12 mile course if I'm not careful. It has been my intention, several times, to put in 30 miles by making two loops. Unfortunately I've never been able to pull this off as my house always looks so inviting as I approach it and I often hear a little voice in my head saying, "Fifteen miles is pretty good on a day like to day. Most people in the city haven't put in anything near fifteen miles this afternoon. How about some ass-sitting time."

And I cave and stop. It's for a similar reason that I don't run on a track very well. For every mile you run on a track you have three opportunities to think a partial mile is pretty good. I do a lot better biking or running a distance from home and then biking or running that same distance back.

For today's ride I thought I'd bike out to my friends John and Natalie. I've know Nat for very close to 30 years and John for as long as he and Natalie have been married.

Earlier in the week I'd e-mail Natalie to let her know I'd drop Girl Scout Cookie money off today. This obligated me to make the trip for, while I'll do things that disappoint me, I'll do everything I can to not disappoint others.

I plotted a 10-mile course to John and Natalie's and set off. Ten out, ten back and then ten somewhere else and I'd have thirty miles in.

The ten out was rough. The wind -- and a big, cold one at that -- was in my face the whole way and at one point very early on I almost decided to drive instead. But, I stuck it out.

As I mentioned, I've known Natalie for about 30 years and this entitles her to worry about me in a way that most people aren't allowed and have little desire to. If we were to rank people in the order they are allowed to worry about me, cosmically speaking, the list would be something like:

My Mom
My Dad
My Sister
My Brother
Other Close Relatives
Female Friends who have known me a long time
-- a bunch of unnamed people/groups --
The bank that holds my mortgage

Natalie's primary worry concerning me is that I may be lonely. At least that's what I think it is. It could be that she's concerned that I have a itch on my back that I'm unable to reach. In any case it isn't uncommon for her to suggest fixing me up with a friend she has who seems to have an unreachable itchy spot on her back.

While at John & Nat's we discussed the weather briefly and it came up that we're expecting an ice storm of some sort this afternoon -- starting at 6 p.m. (Sweet. If there was ever a guilt-free excuse to cut a 30-mile ride short that was it.) We talked about our kids. What's going on at work. Friends we have in common from high school. Oh ... and the fact that Natalie has a currently-single female friend -- who I assume has a nice set of nails as Natalie thinks we should get together.

The ride home went as I hoped it would; the wind was at my back the whole way.

I really wasn't in the mood to find myself outside in a sleet storm and decided to cut the trip to 20 miles. (After all, there are a lot of people in the city who didn't put anything near 20 miles on a bike today.)

Posted by delmer at 4:54 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2007

WWGCD

I had a minor surgery scheduled for yesterday afternoon. And while it was one of the first things I was going to have done since my insurance change it was nothing I was worried about. Nothing big.

As I drove to the doctor's office I spent some time considering what an idiot I've been concerning my contacts. Not only did I quit wearing the contacts I had due to the fact that they seemed to quit working well for me, but when I got new contacts -- granted, more than a year later -- I chose, as the best solution for my eyes, almost the exact same prescription I'd been wearing before.

A person should really be in better touch with his body.

On top of this, if finally struck me yesterday just what my problem was regarding getting the contacts to fit in my eyes. In my defense, the multi-focal contacts are a big as manhole covers, so I may have more of a challenge than other folks. Again though, you'd think I'd have a better clue about my person.

Anyway.

Like I said, the surgery was minor and didn't even require that I be put under. I was on my back, awake, the whole time while the nurse and doctor went about their business. I mostly tried to lie there relaxed and not appear to nervous. This became increasingly hard when the doctor stopped cutting and got a worried look on her face. She turned to the nurse, they exchanged some quiet words, I heard the nurse say something like, "I checked the pre-approval paperwork myself," and then there was some more quiet talk.

Finally the doctor looked down at me and asked, "Is there a chance you've already had a vasectomy?"

Oh f*ck I thought. I knew something about this felt familiar -- just after the shot to the testicles I'd had one of the biggest deja-vu experiences of my life.

What would George Costanza do?

"Wait, I'm not here for a vasectomy," I said. "I just want a tune up!"

"A tune up?" the doctor exclaimed, "what do you mean? What's a tune up?"

"I don't know. You're the doctor. Whatever you normally do for a tune up."

"There's no such thing as a tune up!" she said, her voice taking on a tone of you-gotta-be-shitting-me-ness.

"Okay, then. Well ... uh, generally speaking, how do things look down there?"

"Very nice," she said, seeming to calm down a bit. "Is that tattoo what I think it is?"

"Yep," I said, always eager to talk about my tattoo. After all, not a lot of people get to see it. "I put it on myself."

"Did you use an actual Spirograph to apply it."

"Yes I did," I said, finding it a bit hard to hide the pride I felt in my work.

"It looks like you had to use one of the larger wheels."

"Thank you for noticing."

Posted by delmer at 7:13 AM | Comments (4)

February 22, 2007

Charge!

You know, sometimes when I'm watching porn I feel compelled to seize my sword.

I normally stop short of charging into my neighbor's home and brandishing it about. Maybe I lack the spunk of the guy in this story. (You folks in the UK can do whatever you want to with that last line.)

(Based on the story, it looks like the guy had good intentions.)

Posted by delmer at 9:03 AM | Comments (4)

February 21, 2007

Contacts

I'm pretty sure I started wearing glasses about the time I turned 40. I was certainly at least 40, but I don't think I was 41.

The first pair of glasses I had were not the best -- the prescription was a bit off and I had trouble reading things like street signs at night. As a matter of fact I could see better through the cheap reading glasses I got from the local supermarket than I could from the prescription glasses I had. As I'd never had glasses before I just assumed that was the way things were supposed to be.

I think that a couple of things went wrong with the first glasses. One of the problems was that when I went in my right eye was watering quite a bit -- I thought it was due to allergies when, in fact, it was due to the fact that I needed glasses and the eye was doing a lot of focusing work. The other problem was that, at some point before the eye exam was done, the doc said that I had 20/20 vision ... so I sort of quit paying real close attention as he went through his "Is this better or is this better ... this or this" stuff. Hell, I had 20/20 vision -- I certainly wasn't going to need glasses.

And then he wrote up my prescription.

"Wait," I said, "I thought you said I had 20/20 vision."

He said that was true but that I still needed glasses. To prove his point he had me close my eyes and then he held a lens over each eye one at a time. He had me open each eye individually and I could see perfectly -- then he'd move the lens and things would blur up and I'd feel my eye start to focus to clean up any blurriness.

A buddy of mine, an eye doctor, has told me that (I think, and he'll correct me if I'm wrong and he'd certainly explain it better than I'm going to) Optometrists do enough of the is this better or this stuff that it might have been hard for me to screw up that portion of the eye exam. That is, you don't have to be dead on for each of the close ones, you know those bits when you find yourself saying "The first one ... no wait! ... the second one ... no the first one ... wait ... pretend I just sat down -- let's start all over with that eye-blowing thing. The fist one. Definitely. Can you prescribe weed?"

So maybe it was the incredible wateriness of the right eye. I remember thinking, as I was going for that first eye appointment, that maybe I should postpone it as I could barely see out of the watery eye due to my allergies being so bad (the allergies that seemed to affect only one eye).

The point is, my eye doctor didn't screw up. I did.

At my next exam, a year or so later, I got glasses that kicked vision ass. I thought they were bifocals. They weren't.

But the contacts I got at the same were bifocal -- or multifocal. And they seemed to work well enough although they weren't exactly super great. I had trouble reading street signs (like street names), the distance vision wasn't super great, but they were pretty good for a while. As time passed I found I had more trouble reading things like books and my computer and gave up on contacts altogether; I figured my vision was getting worse. I went at least a year without using them and left a box for each eye unused in my office at work.

So, last month I had an eye exam and I told my eye doctor about my wish to wear contacts again. I also explained that I didn't want to be a pain in the butt, but that it might take a couple of tries to get something that works for me. He was fine with the whole thing and gave me a pair of contacts to try.

After two weeks the left eye seemed dead on but the right eye seemed to have trouble when I read from my computer or books -- so I went back to the eye doctor and got a new contact for the right eye ... and then another one as I immediately lost that first one to the floor.

After two more weeks it looked like I'd found a winning set. The new right-eye contact hurt my distance vision a bit, but I could read pretty well.

Armed with my unopened boxes of old contacts I went back to my Optometrist's office. I took the old contacts to make sure I didn't buy anything I didn't need -- you know, just in case the old right-eye contact would now work in the left eye.

The boxes I took with me were, and this may not be dead on but it will work here:

Left eye: .75
Right eye: 1.00

The lady behind the counter called up my records, looked at my boxes, and said:

"The contact you currently have in your right eye is the same one you brought in in the box ... a 1.00. The left eye is a .50, or a bit weaker than the old contact."

So, basically, my eyes are mostly the same as they were when I quit wearing contacts -- or maybe the left eye has gotten younger (I'm kidding). And I've chosen, pretty much, the same contacts I had that I quit wearing because I couldn't read well with them. I obviously have no idea what's going on with my body.

I didn't buy new contacts. I thought I'd use up what I had first.

Maybe I'll find the left eye was the problem all along and that the .75 was creating problems as it should have been a .50, though I'm certain I recall closing my right eye when I needed to read something and I couldn't see.

You can be sure I'll let you know. The story is just ... that ... gripping.

(If I were the kind that went to bars trolling for women, I wouldn't want to do it in my contacts. I have trouble making out features until I'm right on top of next to someone. It has been explained to me -- prior to an evening of drinking so my facts, more so than normal, may not be dead on -- that part of my problem with contacts has something to do with being farsighted ... something something something ... when I was younger I had it great and now all the nearsighted when they were younger and having to wear glasses brats are somehow getting their revenge.)

Posted by delmer at 8:54 PM | Comments (1)

February 20, 2007

The Bridge

Jack, the middle child and one of my three favorites, recently read The Bridge to Terabithia.

He was very excited to find that the novel (beloved novel, some say) had been turned into a movie and bound this excitement to the excitement of having President's Day off school which led to a cumulative excitement level so great that despite the preferences of 66% of the other children in the household to see Norbit we were unable to keep ourselves away from The Bridge to Terabithia. The excitement was sooo great that once we were at the theater it was all we could do to not buy $15 worth of Milk Duds.

I'm not much on troll movies that don't also feature Hobbits and took my PDA so I could read a little bit more about Harry Dresden (I don't care for trolls and faerie creatures in movies -- unless of course there are Hobbits -- but I'm reading a series of books about a Wizard who lives in Chicago and spends time fighting vampires, ghosts, etc. What can I say?)

I wasn't able to read as much as I'd intended as I kept getting distracted by the movie. It was very good.

Toward the end Jack, the child who had read the book and knew what was coming, came back to sit by me. This was about five minutes before the thing happened that made me cry a little bit and six minutes before I cried just a little bit more.

I do not need kids' movies to bring me to tears. You know, now that I think about it when the jet blows up in The Incredibles and the mom stretches herself out to become a parachute and save her children I got teary eyed -- both times I saw it at the theater ... the second time I knew it was coming! ... it was a cartoon both times I saw it!

Anyway, I don't need kids' movies to bring me to tears.

And to address the larger issue: Why would anybody go to a movie they knew would make them cry?

Back to the smaller issue ... this is the second kids' movie I've seen recently that has brought tears to my eyes.

Of course, Epic Movie made me cry for a whole different reason.

Posted by delmer at 12:01 AM | Comments (7)

February 19, 2007

Weird Dreams

It's been a while since we talked about the odd crap that goes on while I sleep. So, here we go ...

The other night I dreamed I was talking to a couple of younger guys about Samson's godfather -- who happened to be Frank Gorshin. I was initially surprised that the guys didn't know who Frank Gorshin was. I was more surprised that when I said "He played the Riddler in the original Batman" they were still clueless. I woke up before I was able to describe the Star Trek episode he appeared in.

I've no idea where that dream came from. And, by the way, Frank Gorshin is not Samson's godfather; not now ... not when he was alive.

Saturday night I dreamed that a friend of mine had a scorpion and we needed to cut half its stinger off lengthwise -- and just the tip. The tip of the stinger, as a matter of fact, was sort of marked (by Mother Nature) by a line where it should be cut. Looking back on it the scorpion had longer legs than a real one -- sort of crab legs. At some point the scorpion rushed me and ran his stinger into my thumb. My buddy grabbed him and pulled him off and my thumb started oozing a white icing-like substance which turned more fluid as it came out. I woke up shortly thereafter.

I don't remember who the friend was. The scorpion, I'm sure, came from a book I just finished reading, "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher. It's about a Wizard name Harry Dresden that lives in Chicago; if you get the SciFi channel you may have noticed a series called "The Dresden Files" -- it's that guy. I think the scorpion had long crab legs because Haydn and I were watching "Cast Away" Saturday and Tom Hanks was spearing crabs.

Posted by delmer at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2007

No Fear

A friend of used to refuse to order mushrooms on his pizza. He liked mushrooms, he was just afraid he was going to get a poison one that would either make him sick or kill him. This is one of those thoughts that I put in the category of irrational fears.

We all have them. A woman friend of mine used to have a fear that -- and this is a complicated one, so I'm not sure that I'll get it all right -- but that she'd be locked in a closet and somehow a tidal wave would come by and she'd be unable to get away from it. As irrational as this sounds she would later add a curling iron to the fear that actually made it worse and more irrational.

I don't know if this next thing falls into the irrational fear category but, for as long as I can remember, before drying off after a shower I'll give the towel a shake -- just in case a spider is on it somewhere. Wet or not, I don't want to be rubbing a spider on me. Especially one of those hairy ones.

If you're laughing at this you can stop.

Last week I gave the towel a shake, and a spider hit the floor.

Which, I think, puts this fear into the rational fear category ... even if being worried about spiders isn't terribly manly.

Posted by delmer at 6:54 PM | Comments (5)

February 17, 2007

A Jack Story

I'm convinced this is on the site somewhere -- but I've tired of looking for it and I want to make sure I have a record of it.

Anyway ...

Samson was just hours old which would have made Jack something like two.

Jack, who like the Pterodactyl in the Land Before Time Series had some pronoun trouble when he was younger, was holding Samson. We were still at the hospital.

As Jack looked at Sam he said, "I like the new baby. I'll miss he when he goes home."

It looks like the joke was on Jack.

Posted by delmer at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)

A Dramatic Re-Enactment

Day: Monday a couple of weeks ago.
Time: 8:30 a.m.
Setting: Work

I had just walked into the engineering area.

Mike: "How'd it go this weekend."

Me: "It's still not as rigid as it could be. But I put some rubber bands on it."

Scott: "What are you two talking about. Not rigid enough? And putting rubber bands on it?"

Even though I was directly involved in the conversation, I hadn't heard it the way Scott had.

My next line could have been: "She was happy enough with it." But that would have required an additional something to have happened and would attach a whole new level of uneasiness to this whole thing.

My mother had asked I have something made for her. Mike drew it up and produced it (it is not his fault the item isn't rigid enough, it is exactly what I asked for) and I applied tension to the piece using rubber bands. Mom would be happy enough with it if she had seen it.

Posted by delmer at 9:46 PM | Comments (2)

February 16, 2007

A soldier here ... a soldier there

The United States has a population of almost 300 million people.

Australia has a population of over 20 million.

The United States has 140,000 troops in Iraq and people over most of the rest of the world seem to hate us.

Australia has 1,400 troops and you can't think of Australia without thinking of (and feeling sad about) Steve Irwin. The Aussies, I believe, are universally loved. (And I'm OK with that. The few I know seem very nice ... not Canadian nice, but still not bad.)

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard (I'm guessing not the John Howard I went to high school with) has suggested that terrorists should be praying for a Democratic victory the next presidential election as one of our Democratic candidates announced a plan for US troop withdrawal and Howard thinks that is a bad idea. More simply said, if the Democrats win, the terrorists win.

This is a very bold statement for a man halfway around the world to make.

John Howard thinks it is just fine that Australia has a mere 1,400 troops in Iraq -- which is fewer than half the number of American soldiers killed since the war began -- as Australia's population is just 20 million. Fourteen-hundred seems just about right to him.

I'm not sure what type of sliding-scale-troop-deployment math tool he's using, but, if you are to consider that the population of the US is (not quite) 15 times that of Australia, it would seem that Australia should have at least 9,333 troops.

Now, in all fairness, it is my thought that Australia and the rest of the Coalition of the Dragged Along, should have zero troops there, as should we. But until Howard is able to arrange for more Australian troops to be sent over to Iraq, and until he arranges to take the Australian funding of the war to just over $24 billion USD ($30 billion AUD), he needs to STFU. (By June of 2006 the Australian contribution to the war in Iraq was $1.2 billion AUD or $938 million USD.)

It is easy to put a dollar price tag on things like war (The NY Times has a nice article here), but that isn't what my anger is all about. I may have more easily been able to dismiss Howard's comments as those from just another dumbass had it not been for the fact that it was just a few weeks ago one of my coworkers was in tears as her grandson had been injured by some sort of anti-personnel device. He, another American soldier and an Iraqi entered a building and the device exploded; the Iraqi was killed, the other American was more seriously injured, and the coworker's grandson had more minor injuries. Of course, had the guys been standing in a different order he could have just as easily been killed. Hours passed between finding out the grandson had been injured in an explosion and finding out he going to be OK.

[Bush has just asked for 100 billion more dollars (where one billion equals 1000 million) to fight the war which will boost the $366 billion we've spent to $466 billion. Should he get it I'll expect Howard to pony up $31 billion USD ($39.6 billion AUD) before sticking his nose in the Democratic process over here.]

[One more bracketed item. I'm not sure all the math above is correct regarding conversion from USD to AUD and numbers of troops. I'm certain my ratios regarding US participation vs. Australian participation in Iraq are more fair based on population -- which seems to be the yardstick Howard is using -- but I may not be dead on. At the very least I put some thought into what I typed here before shooting my mouth off which is more than I can say about the Australian Prime Minister.]

Posted by delmer at 5:59 AM | Comments (1)

February 15, 2007

Everybody's talking about the Weather

According to The Weather Bride it is currently -1 F in Hilliard (-18.3 C) and with wind chill it feels like -12 F (-24 C).

Which, not to beat a point to death, is colder, I think (at least with respect to raw temperature) than any day last week that school was canceled. And while school was out yesterday and the day before due to snow -- it is in today.

The Weather Bride, while admittedly chipper-looking enough and having a very pretty smile, insists on giving Ohioans Dew Point information and that is a line that could best be used for something else -- maybe a link to my blog. I believe Dew Point has something to do with the temperature at which moisture in the air does something and is supposed to let us know just how sweaty we're going to be. We used to get this as part of the weather when I lived n Massachusetts and I'm pretty sure we didn't get a humidity value there -- so the two must be related. I remember the weatherman spewing out info on Dew Point leaving my roommate and me wondering just how sticky the day was going to be. Why we cared, I don't know ... we were going to wear shorts and T-shirts regardless. (I went running one day at noon (and I swear the temperature was just over 100 ... unless of course historical New Hampshire weather records shows it was never that hot between 1985 and 1987) and didn't sweat nearly as much as I would when I ran in Ohio at midnight. It was never that bad, humidity-wise, up there. The people in the Boston area used to bitch a lot about the humidity but really, aside of the Irish mob guys, they're all a bunch of warm-weather-sissies up there; they are kick-ass winter people.)

Nobody we spoke with in New England, mostly our buddy Paul, was able to give my roommate and me an explanation of what Dew Point was.

The loose point I'm trying to make is that it's really pretty easy to just step outside and check for stickiness -- but, for some reason we still wanted to know what the humidity was and we wanted to know from the safety of our recliners. (Which must be the same affliction that strikes people who put Weatherbug on their computers. It would be easy enough to look outside, or call up The Weather Bride, but people seem to want to have the temperature icon in their PC taskbar. If you are curious, I've removed Weatherbug from several PCs at work that were having problems and those problems went away.)

So, Dew Point in Massachusetts was sort of useless to us without the corresponding Humidity reading. To her credit, The Weather Bride gives both. According to her, current conditions are -1 F, 78% Humidity with a Dew Point of -6 F.

Reading that, and without stepping outside, I know: It is really cold and while the Humidity is moderately high, the sheer coldness is going to keep me from feeling too sticky. At -6 F, I think something special is going to happen to the moisture in the air -- common sense tells me at something around 32 F (0 C) it should turn into a solid of some sort and fall to the ground. However, this is the Weather we're talking about so it's hard to tell what might happen.

Pretend this was summer. We'll say it's 87 F (30.5 C) and everything else stays the same. Humidity is 78% and Dew Point is -6, which wouldn't happen and that's the problem.

So, it will be hot but only moderately sticky (78% humidity isn't all that bad ... it isn't my favorite, that would have been the Gunnison, Colorado humidity of 1983 which, I swear, was 14% or thereabouts. It is so dry up there they don't even paint their cars -- they don't have to, nothing rusts. Everybody tools around in big, old, bare-metal Buicks.)

(You would not believe the struggle I went through to find humidity values for summer in Columbus, I'm sure there are easier ways to get it, but I finally got my data from a House Dust Mites report from 1977. In the period studied humidity was 62-84% that summer. AND! ... what's up with the study I found that gave state temperatures in Centigrade?)

Let's say part of that again:

Pretend this was summer. We'll say it's 87 F (30.5 C) and everything else stays the same. Humidity is 78% and Dew Point is -6, which wouldn't happen and that's the problem.

So, it will be hot but only moderately sticky. We get that from Temperature and Humidity.

Leaving The Weather Bride with an extra line on her webpage that would be far more useful if it were a link to this blog (unless, of course, you want to know anything about the weather.)

Update:

It was killing me, so I did some Dew Point research via KFOR in Oklahoma City.

This seems to suggest measuring how sticky you feel remains the same acorss temperature. You don't have to have common sense telling you that 78% humidity in winter isn't as bad 78% in summer. You just have to know that you don't want to be wearing a gray shirt on those days the Dew Point is 70 regardless of season.

Posted by delmer at 8:22 AM | Comments (2)

February 14, 2007

A weather update

Do you remember the memory I had about a previous mild December? Anyway ...

Just after they tossed us out of work yesterday it quit snowing -- and little ice balls started coming down. I'd hesitate to call it sleet as it didn't have the unfriendly feel I normally associate with sleet. Later in the night snow returned and continues this morning.

Franklin County is currently under a Level 2 Snow Emergency which means we're discouraged from driving and people should call before heading to work. What this means is that the roads are pretty wide open and that the people that are on them have the confidence needed to get to work without causing too many problems. You and I, as I'm sure you are aware, have superior driving skills (mine are just a bit better than yours, probably because it's my blog and I say so) and I imagine you hate getting stuck behind idiots who have no business on the road when the weather is anything but sunny and dry. There are times when Franklin County should declare a Level 2 Heavy Dew Emergency. Not only does it rhyme, but it would serve to keep goofballs off the road and putting around at 20 mph (-3 kph) until the dew burned off enabling the rest of us to get to work in a less stressful environment.

Before I go any further, let me say I'm not advocating ripping up and down the road at 60 mph (roughly 100 kph) on snow and ice-covered roads. but there are times when scooting along at 15 mph when conditions would easily accommodate something a good deal faster is doing more harm than good.

I suspect pulling out short in front of someone who is tooling along at almost 30 (on straight-as-an-arrow) roads instead of waiting for him and his really sweet minivan to pass because there is nobody at all behind him is always a bad idea. I further suspect this occurred to the guy who did it to me yesterday about 1/2 way through his maneuver when her realized the lack of traction was not going to give him the out-of-the-box acceleration he needed and that he was going to more-or-less limp out in front from me. Of course, maybe the guy's a total idiot and that thought never dawned on him.

It looks like we've had about 6 inches of snow in this area. Port Columbus Airport reported four inches at 1 a.m. last night, other areas were reporting more. Six inches is about average probably. Which, for the women readers out there, is just a bit deeper than you've been led to believe since you've started dating.

When I lived in New Hampshire we were getting snow 17 inches at a time. I recall the weatherman saying snowfall would be between 7 and 17 inches and thinking, "Heck, I could make that kind of forecast." Ten inches is a pretty wide range after all. I elevated the weatherguy from mere weatherman to weathergod when folks near the ocean got seven inches and we, further inland, got 17. One of the weather phenomena they'd have in New England was something called a "Nor Easter," which is pronounced as you would expect in the following sentence: "The heathen hordes recognize neither Good Friday nor Easter." It describes a cold and serious winter storm; if the storm is brining with it a lot of snow they call the whole weather system a "Ron Jeremy," though I've always thought "Peter North" would be a better moniker, what with having a direction in the name and all.

Oh, my mom called this morning to remind me to not go out in the cold barefoot. She's concerned that I could slip on the ice, knock myself out, and get serious frostbite before anybody finds me. Just as one little voice inside my head (even as it appreciated the concern my mother had for me) thought the whole idea was pretty absurd, another little voice was reminding me that her concern wasn't much different from that which I have for my children; I always tell them to not do anything as simple as make a peanut butter sandwich if I'm not home -- I'm afraid they'll give themselves a serious cut with the butter knife they'd use.

These photos are from the front of the building today. It was sort of windy and I really didn't care to venture too far out into the lot; I didn't feel like taking my shoes off.

Posted by delmer at 8:48 AM | Comments (2)

February 13, 2007

NEWS FLASH

The office just closed. We're all free to go home if we want.

So ...

Work has been canceled due to snow!

UPDATE:

There's no if we want to leave to it. We've been commanded to go home.

Posted by delmer at 11:47 AM | Comments (2)

Look ma, bare feet

OK, not exactly Columbo-like sleuthing, but she didn't need to be Columbo in that case. Another conversation went something like this:

(Do I really need to explain who said what there? I'll let you make use of some of your sleuthing skills.)

You know, the house was spotless when they came home from vacation ... I'd just made one mistake ... one involving a vacuum. At least it wasn't this one.

Moving back to present day.

Word around the office is we're expecting 6 to 10 inches of snow. I just popped over to one of the news stations and they're saying "up to a foot in areas north of Dayton." Dayton is an hour west.

This morning I decided to let the minivan warm up while I got ready for work. I was wet, having just come out of the shower, and was trying to make the best use of my time. I figured the van could warm up while I was getting dressed and spending 20 minutes trying to get my contacts in. (I put the left on in almost immediately -- and it was backwards and hurt a fair bit. I removed it (which is always harder when they're in backwards), flipped it inside out, and put it in again. Once again, backwards. Third time was a charm.)

From the door to the minivan isn't all that far and I considered running out in my underwear. Who was likely to see me at 6:30 a.m.? Who was likely to believe it if they saw it? But really, I'm too old to do crap like that.

And then I started feeling sort of selfish. Sure, I may be too old to do crap like that, but what about my mom. She's older. And with her oldness, being a woman and all, has come years of wisdom and just general smartness. And who does she have to share that wisdom with? Mostly just dad, and in all fairness, he's pretty smart too -- about as smart as a male can get -- so there are just one or two things she's likely to be able to tell him.

Me? I've got years to go before I'm full of wisdom or just generally wise up. So why not give mom a chance to share some of her wisdom and do some basic momming? She probably misses it -- I know I miss being a dad when my boys aren't around (and I'm not eating pizza off my belly) and I have them every other week.

So, this is for you mom. Please feel free to call and tell me to bundle up.

This picture was very dark and at first I thought I was solid black. Picassa got it this light. Had I known it was going to be this dark and so hard to see love handles I'd have gone out shirtless. That would have given the good people of Hilliard pause.

Footprints
Our Lot
Our Lot
A City of HIlliard Plow

Posted by delmer at 7:36 AM | Comments (5)

February 12, 2007

Vista Upgrade

A comment at Blogography led me to this French video promoting Vista.

Do you need Vista? I don't know.

I do know that most people probably won't understand a lot of the features in the operating system. And, since they're not going to understand them anyway, why not have a hot, French girl telling you all about them.

I know what you're thinking, but Delmer, your bilingualness is legendary. Of course you are going to like an add with a hot, French girl in it.

Assuming that readership is split evenly among men and women, I'm guessing that 50% of WADLL readers will like the add as well.

Posted by delmer at 5:22 PM | Comments (3)

February 11, 2007

A Fool and His Bike

When I climbed on The Mighty Schwinn it was about 21 F outside. The wind chill dropped it to about 11 F. At the end of the ride it was 25 F (16 F with the wind chill). Accepting 23 F and 13 F as the averages, we can go with -5 C ( -10 C with wind chill) and avoid putting too much in the way of conversions here.

I put in just over 15 miles and took a McBreak at 10 miles to have a salad and let the toes warm up a bit.

I knew before I left home that the cold was going to be a biting and soulless type of cold but decided to head out into it anyway. This is the same mental approach, unfortunately, that I apply to dating and it has led to too much time spent with cold, biting, soulless women.

(Naturally, none of those women are anything like the women who typically read WADLL. The women that stop by here are incredibly warm, nurturing, soulful, and are better looking than the average female though, admittedly, they have questionable reading habits.)

(Gentlemen: Yes, women exactly like the one you are dating or married to. You know what I mean.)

The sun was shining which made it easy enough to overlook the biting and soullessness, in the same way a nice smell a nice ass a cute smile being a female makes it easy enough to overlook any cold, biting, soullessness a woman might have going on.

Fortunately, spending too much time in the elements leads to only physical scarring and if you bundle up well enough, none of that.

I had on my special socks with gym socks over them (and the toes still got cold), my padded gray tights beneath my black tights (and underwear beneath it all for more layering), two of those Under Armor-type shirts, my Captain America jersey, the high visibility jacket, a pair of cheap cloth gloves beneath a pair of thicker gloves, and a balaclava.

I was never cold. I'd probably save a fortune in heating costs if I'd dress like that around the house and turn my furnace down to about 40.

Posted by delmer at 3:16 PM | Comments (5)

February 10, 2007

How Green Was My Valley

Well, I was sort of wrong about getting the varicose vein zapped yesterday. I wondered how this was going to play out insurance-wise as I wasn't sure a person could just bounce into a doctor's office and have a laser gizmo inserted into a vein without some sort of prior insurance approval. Still, I thought the zapping was going to take place yesterday. The appointment turned out to be a pre-meeting in which we discussed what causes varicose veins and what we're likely to do with the monster I have.

The vein in question starts at my groin and runs down the inside of my leg almost all the way to the floor. Lately it seems to be getting larger and I fear it is just a step or two away from taking on sentient characteristics. Just the other day I had a sense that a remedial form of calculus was being worked on near that part of my body.

Samson went to the doctor's office with me and was given the opportunity of listening to my lungs and heart. He thought both sounded fine as did the doctor.

Fixing the vein involves running something up inside it that has a laser on the end of it. I was hoping that a group of scientists might get shrunk down and shot into me in a small submarine, but that isn't covered by my insurance carrier.

A laser is still pretty cool. It is inserted near the top of the vein and run up it a bit. As it is pulled out it is heated and irritates the vein walls. When the vein heals it closes.

There's something like a 98% chance that the procedure will be successful and less than a half percent that the procedure will enhance my psychic abilities.

There are a fair number of things that can cause varicose veins. Heredity is one -- and my dad has popped a vein out the last year or so ... of course, he's 71.

Low testosterone can cause them as well. I've been there.

The upside to the whole thing is that when the vein is treated the circulation will improve ever so slightly in my leg and the increase in blood flow will be redirected right to my manliness; I know this for a fact, I asked the doc.

And it only seems fair.

[No, mom, I did not really ask the doctor this.]

You'd be surprised just how hard it is to get a good picture of your own varicose vein. The one on this page is of the vein just below the knee. I had to crop it tight too keep it from looking any more obscene than it already does. You know, if you zoom in tight enough, I'm guessing on just about any body part, you'll find it looks a lot harrier than you ever thought.

Had I not promised to provided a photo of the vein I'd have skipped it altogether.

For what it's worth, I'd considered posting a picture of one of my nipples last week to show surgery-recovery progress ... I spared you that.

Posted by delmer at 9:46 PM | Comments (3)

February 9, 2007

The Cold Week in Review -- and in a similar vein ...

This woman gets paid to have opinions.

And this on is about why school was closed Monday and in session on Thursday (which was colder).

She's also kept better records of the temperatures over the course of the week.

Hey, I get my varicose vein zapped this afternoon. I'll try to have some photos later. (What will you do to hold the excitement at bay as you try to make it through your morning and afternoon as you anticipate a treat such as that? And you should really read that last sentence with a mock-high-school-cheerleader voice that's at least an octave higher than your normal voice.)

Posted by delmer at 7:00 AM | Comments (3)

February 8, 2007

Plowing

As you know I have super parents.

I don't just say this because I know the folks read my blog and I'm hoping for that last, big, change in the will that leaves me solely in charge of the vast Wells holdings. I say this because I mean it.

Earlier in the week, wait, before I go any further, school has been out all week due to cold. Yesterday it may have been due to cold and snow -- I'm no weatherman, I don't know.

You'll note that yesterday's blog entry started:

Those days I got to work before 8 and at least one morning I was there before 7 a.m. due to the fact school was closed and I didn't need to get boys on the bus.

Today I rolled into work at 8:30 after driving the boys to school. It is -2 F (-18.8 C) and -18 F (-27.7) with the wind chill. It is at least as cold today as it has been all week and it likely feels colder than it has been; last night they announced a Wind Chill Advisory until 10 a.m. today.

I puzzle over why we had school today and not the rest of the week. My kids are out tomorrow for Parent/Teacher conferences.

Anyway, earlier in the week I told the story of how much harsher winters were when my dad was little and how much heartier children were then.

If you don't want to click back to the story let me describe a birthday card I once saw that captures the essence of that entry: On the outside it said, "Dad, I know you'll like this birthday card." And on the inside it said, "I had to walk 10 miles, uphill, in a snowstorm to buy it." Which led me to believe that fathers everywhere make it a habit telling tales about when they were younger.

One day dad and I were driving along talking about something that led to him telling me that when he was little his dad (my grandpa) used to plow a 40-acre field walking behind a mule that was pulling a plow.

That sounds like a lot of work, and I may have said as much.

"And," dad continued, "When he was done with that field he had another 40-acre field across the road that he had to plow."

Which, again, sounded like a lot of work but also made me wonder if dad wasn't pulling my leg a little.

"Do you have pictures of this I asked," trying to suggest that I was on to him.

"No. But I remember walking behind him and breaking up dirt clods with my toes." The way he said it was like he was bringing forward a memory (I won't be able to describe it well, you know how I am) and I knew he was sharing something that had actually happened. (I remembered breaking up dirt clods with my toes in the back yard and could see dad doing it in my mind.)

The oddest part of this whole tale -- or the part I think is most odd -- is that grandma maintained that after grandpa spent a day out plowing he'd come in at night and not even stink. I don't know if grandma had sinus problems, maybe walking in the hot sun all day burned the stink off a man, or maybe grandpa carried a can of Tag Body Spray in his pocket next to the Mail Pouch.

What I do know is that Haydn can wake up in the morning and be kicking a serious funk off his body; he's asleep and kicking up a stink!

I'm thinking of getting the boy a mule and a plow.

(Hey, I found this while looking for the Mail Pouch link.

Posted by delmer at 8:47 AM | Comments (1)

February 7, 2007

Again, No School

School is canceled once again.

The last two days school has been canceled the night before due to cold. Yesterday and Monday when I got to work it was -2.

This morning when I got to work it was 1 F ... a difference of three degrees. Yet, when I went to bed last night, school was still on, and this was despite the fact snow was falling.

Well, it was an excuse to get the boys to bed earlier.

Posted by delmer at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

February 6, 2007

No School Again

It's just after 7:30 and we're once again at -2 F (-18.8 C).

And, again, school is canceled.

I know my parents read this and that this whole school-being-out problem is likely killing my father.

As many of you probably suspect, my dad had to walk 10 miles to school each day in all kinds of weather. Not having the money to spare for the cafeteria, and not having a bag to use to tote food to school, he had to return home for lunch each day and then, of course, get back to class before recess was over. It made for very good cardiovascular health (and may be the reason dad is in such good shape today).

This all happened way back ... back before global warming ... back when the winters were fierce. Back when if someone were to say, "Northing's impossible," someone else would pipe up and say, "Oh yea, have you ever tried to stretch a gnat's ass over a lard bucket." And while I'm inclined to think that a lard bucket has a rather wide mouth, I'm betting it would be pretty hard to stretch a gnat's ass over just about anything.

Snow in south-western Ohio used to fall to depths of three and four feet each and every Monday of each and every winter. This was also back during the time, and if you're old enough you may remember (if you're not run this entry by your father) that Mother Earth was having an Axis problem -- worse than the one Churchill and Roosevelt would ever have -- and she sort of wobbled around the sun. This led to a condition in which if, let's say, you had to walk 10-miles uphill in a snowstorm to get to school that by the time school let out you would find that your walk home was uphill too. I know this seems to defy geological laws.

Life was certainly a bitch.

I remember dad telling me that things got a little better for him in fourth grade as for his 10th birthday he got his first pair of shoes. Things got a lot better that Christmas when he got laces for them.

We've canceled school because we don't want our kids to stand outside waiting for the bus.

[And I say that sort of for fun. There are kids that have to walk to school, and kids whose wait for the bus isn't 20 feet from their front door. At -2 F it doesn't take a lot of exposure to the elements to create exposure problems.]

Posted by delmer at 7:37 AM | Comments (5)

February 5, 2007

No school

Yesterday's entry was rather short, so I'll repost it here in it's entirety:

Ignore the part where I mention I'm Earl-like. You want to focus on the part where I say it's 10 degrees F (-12C). And before we go any further, let me point out it is currently -2 F (-18.8 C).

Last night the boys and I were watching the news looking to see if school was closed today. I never dreamed it would be, but we'd been flipping around on the TV and had stumbled across some closings, which got the boys interested.

One of the stations runs the early news and they were interviewing a woman who said that if school was open tomorrow she would drive her child to school to keep her out of the cold. The woman went on to say that if it is too cold the schools should be closed for the safety of the children so they don't have to go out into the elements.

Jack (at 11) gave this a hearty "Yea!" and then went on to explain that sometimes it was too cold for school to be open.

In the photo below, at 10 F, Jack is the middle-height child in front of me. He's wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt and has his coat open. In a rare move his hood is up. During the course of running our errands I turned to him once, as we exited somewhere, and asked where his coat was. He hadn't worn it in.

Of course, none of us have our coats closed. and nobody is wearing anything particularly heavy.

For my mother:
After this photo we climbed into an already-running and heated minvan. And the boys and I have discussed how even limited exposure to extreme cold can cause a person problems. Rest assured that by last night, when we left Kroger and the had dropped while the wind picked up, everybody was happy enough to be bundled up.

Posted by delmer at 8:55 AM | Comments (1)

February 4, 2007

My Name is Earl

It's was about 10 degrees F when I took the following photo of the boys and myself. I thought it would be a nice change from me dressed as a Ninja and I thought that mom and dad would like to see a current shot of the boys (they've been out of state and haven't seen the boys for about a month, I think.)

It wasn't until I opened the photo on my computer that I noticed my resemblance to Earl from the TV show. For those of you that aren't familiar with the show, Earl is never able to keep his eyes open when he gets his picture taken.

Posted by delmer at 9:53 PM | Comments (0)

February 3, 2007

The Garage Gym

In yesterday's entry I showed a couple of photos of the workout equipment I have in the garage.

My garage, by the way, is awesome and is one of the things that got me interested in the place I currently share ownership in with the bank. It's detached and bigger than your average two-car garage, so I have room for my van, a bunch of other crap, and I don't have to walk pinned to the walls as I make my way around the lawn mower.

The pictures below show a little more clutter than is normal. Just picking up the towels would go a long way toward making things look neater.

I have three Olympic bars and a Safety Squat Bar, a Power Cage, a set of dumbbells that go from 10 to 85 pounds with a couple of threes and twelves thrown in for good measure. A fair amount of Olympic plates, two Olympic benches, a smaller bench, a Nordic Track recumbent bicycle, a curl bar, some straight bars, a couple of weight stands, and some standard plates. There are also some dumbbell handles that allow me to make lighter-weight dumbbells for Haydn. And a lat station.

I got almost everything on sale, at garage sales, at the second-hand place, or I inherited it. One of the Olympic sets I've been hauling around from place to place for almost 20 years -- a roommate left it behind when he moved to Massachusetts and I became the owner.

The first time I ever went to Craig's List I found an add for a set of dumbbells. When I replied I found that the owner was moving out of the country and didn't care to take his weights with him. I don't recall the ad being for anything other than dumbbells, but when I got there I found included a bench, two Olympic bars, a regular bar, a curl bar, a sit-up bench, a couple of Parabody stands (adjustable stands you can sit bars on), some Olympic plates, regular plates and a plate tree. I got everything for $600.00.

The Power Cage is a York and was a floor model. I paid $399.00 for it. I've got it on blocks, otherwise the bar is a little low in the hooks when I go to squat.

I got the dumbbell rack, another plate tree, the lat station and some plates at Play it Again Sports in Hilliard. The dumbbell rack was originally a single two-level unit. I was afraid my kids would have trouble with it and sawed it in half making two units out it. I got the lat station with plates for about 1/3 the cost of the unit York sells that attaches to the power cage (that unit does look cooler, though).

At one time I had the two Olympic benches sitting next to each other on the floor. This ate up a lot of floor space and, at Christmas, I replaced one of the benches with a smaller job I got at a local sports store.

I got most of the rubber mats at Tractor Supply Company. They're stall mats and cost something under $35 each. I want to say I got several of them on sale and paid very close to $30 for them. The rubber mats I got at the athletic store are thinner and were almost $60 each -- I bought those before I knew about stall mats.

I've had the Nordic Track recumbent exercycle for a couple of years now. If I spend 20 minutes on this my ass hurts like nothing else and I'm bored nearly to tears. In the first picture below you'll notice the rear tire of The Mighty Schwinn; I can spend 6 hours on this and never lose my interest in what's around me.

You can see the recumbent bike, the dumbbells, the smaller bench, and the power cage with the safety squat bar and an Olympic bar. To the far right are the Parabody stands with Haydn's curl setup. The rubber mats were put down in the summer and have contracted a bit during the cold. Against the back wall is my Hillbilly Stairmaster.
The lat station, another nice shot of the dumbbells, the Olympic bench, and the plate trees.

Posted by delmer at 8:42 PM | Comments (6)

February 2, 2007

Week in Review

People, lately I've felt uninspired and probably just a bit depressed. Not I-hate-my-life depressed, just sort of blah. I'm not sure why, I haven't really been able to pin it down to any one thing.

I had a good week at work and got a lot of stuff done there. I had good evenings (and maybe I'm snapping out of the funk, when I typed good evening I thought of Lurch from The Addams Family, even though I don't think that's anything he said -- isn't that more of a vampire thing to say?) and was able to get out and do some type of exercise each night despited the cold.

Speaking of working out, I have a gym of sorts in the garage. If I can drag my sorry butt out of the recliner I'll take a picture of it and put it here somewhere. Anyway, the garage has a gas heater in it that I can crank up and theoretically heat the garage. One evening, as an experiment, I turned the gas on and put a fan near it to help circulate the heat (the blower in the heater is a bit weak, I think). After about an hour I went out into the garage and, assuming it was 30 degrees F outside (just a hair under 0 C) I think it was a smidge under 30 in the garage (a slightly thicker hair under 0 C). Having the fire going is always comforting in a primal sort of way, but mostly useless in a keeping-yourself-warm sort of way.

I've decided, that in order to do my part to help with our global warming problem I'm going to quit trying to heat the garage. My Republican friends have tried to tell me I'm a dumbass for doing this, but screw 'em, they're dumbasses for voting Republican. The other night I could see my breath while I was in the garage, still, by the end I was down to my skivvies. So, a little bit of exercise goes a long way toward keeping a person warm.

One night I was taking a stroll and the outside temperature was such that my hard-disk based MP3 player wouldn't start and instead returned a hard drive temperature too low error.

Where was I? Uninspired and depressed.

You can't see them but
there are flames in this thing

Sometimes, I imagine, it's hard to put a finger on what exactly is bothering you. Not long ago I read that a person might feel fine one moment and the next moment may have something nagging at them that they can't figure out. The reason has something to do with the way the mind works -- for example, you might be reading something when for some reason you start feeling blue and you don't know why. What's happened is that something you read didn't bother you the instant you read it, but your mind kept processing the information leaving you with the urge to find a bell tower. Or, maybe just blob around in the Lazy Boy.

I had considered that the funk might have been brought on by the fact that my anniversary would have been January 18 and the anniversary of my divorce is coming up sometime this month. Just today a friend of mine suggested this to me as well.

Other highlights of the week:

Wednesday I went out with some buddies and had wings, a grilled chicken salad, onion rings and a beer.

I cleaned the house up and have spent my week sitting around in a clutter-free home.

The other night when I was reading the instructions on the orange-flavored fiber supplement I'm taking I noticed they said I could take up to three one-tablespoon servings per day. I'd thought the instructions said a serving was supposed to be three tablespoons. I believe this might explain air-freshening quality my toots had taken on for a few days.

I left work early today as my children were due off the bus at 4 p,m. and Sammo had ice skating lessons at 4:30. My mood seemed to elevate as soon as they walked in the door.

Someone, somewhere, sometime will stumble across these photos. They'll work their way past the clutter and wonder how everything was assembled. If they read tomorrow's entry I'll tell them all about it.

Posted by delmer at 6:44 PM | Comments (3)

February 1, 2007

Hockey

Not long ago Samson and I went to an Ohio Junior Blue Jackets game.

Stinger

It's no secret that I lack whatever it is that makes a person enjoy watching sports. Having said that, last night I did see a bit of the OSU / Purdue basketball game and I sort of got caught up in it between the arrival of the hot wings and the grilled chicken salad.

Generally speaking I'd rather play a sport than watch it -- not that I'm terribly good at anything, especially now that I'm 46 and more concerned about not getting hurt than I am about putting the hurt to someone else. At my basketball peak, we'll say when I was about 20, my greatest strength was that I could stand beneath the basket and get beat on without getting too upset about it. Even then I didn't care to watch a lot of any sports.

You know, when I used to run a lot I subscribed to Runner's World and I'd read the magazine from cover to cover. Anytime a race of any length was televised I'd watch it and I'd be able to identify the leaders and some of the other runners. Can you think of anything more boring?

Maybe watching hockey.

It looks like it would be a lot of fun to play. And I'll certainly go to every game Samson wants to see -- at least the Junior Columbus Blue Jackets, as the tickets are reasonably priced.

Highlights:

The lady two seats ahead of us caught a puck.

The guy two rows in front of us and 8 seats to the right caught another puck.

The old rough-looking battle-axe lady behind me and to the left caught me in the ear with her coat and didn't bother to apologize. I wasn't surprised as she spent the second and third periods screaming Go Jackets in a voice that you just know when it wasn't being used to scream Go Jackets was being used to bitch about something. Maybe that's an unfair generalization, but I stand by it. She seemed to not notice that she was the only one in the entire arena screaming anything at all or that she was screaming in my ear.

Some photos:

The Ohio Junior Blue Jackets
And again
The Scoreboard
A closeup
Whenever the Junior Jackets score a video of a monkey riding a dog is played. Maybe some of you hardcore hockey fans can explain this to me.

Posted by delmer at 8:38 PM | Comments (1)

Jack writes the President

Today, Jack's class wrote letters to the President of the United States.

* * * * *

January 31, 2007

Dear President George W. Bush,

My name is Jack Wells. I am 11 years old and I live in Ohio. I am writing because there is a problem in sending more troops to Iraq if you do send more troops.

I don’t think it is needed to send more troops to Iraq. Aren't there enough there already? Sure the war between the Sunni and the Shiites has to end. But the longer we’re there the worse it gets. Troops are dying and we’re wasting billions of dollars.

There’s quite a number of troops who want to come back and see their families. So let them come back. Their husbands and wives might be worried about them. Their kids must be worried, too. It will be a family reunion.

Thank you for reading my letter. I hope you think about this.

Sincerely,

Jack Wells

Posted by delmer at 12:01 AM | Comments (4)