Service Recommendation...

A few weeks ago, Debbie noticed some odd “growths” from a tiny crevice in the drywall of our livingroom.  Both of us thought “Termites!” and we decided to call in a pest control company.  On the basis of nothing more than their clever radio ads and advertised guarantee, we decided to call Corky's Pest Control.

It turned out to be a good decision.

First Corky's sent out an inspector – who showed up at the appointed time (even way out in the boonies where we live!), and quickly determined that we did in fact have termites (of the subterranean variety) and what we should do about it.  He prescribed a pesticide “curtain” around our entire house, with special attention to the area of infestation.  To create this curtain, they would have to dig a small trench around the entire house to soak the ground to a few feet deep with pesticide.  Our home, like many others, has a concrete “apron” around parts of it.  In those areas, they would have to drill small (3/8") holes through the concrete, 18" apart, and inject the pesticide at high pressure.

Our house has a feature that complicated the process just a bit.  We have a covered patio attached to one end of our house, and the wood of the patio roof connects directly to the wood of our house's roof.  That means the termites could eat their way into our patio, and from there into our house – so to make the house safe, the patio also needed to be treated, exactly as the house.  The inspector quoted a price for the entire job that we thought was very fair, and we signed up for the treatment.

A week or so after the inspection, Corky's pesticide applicator showed up (again, on time per the appointment made).  He worked all day to dig trenches, drill holes, apply the pesticide, patch the holes, fill trenches, and clean up.  We were very happy with the quality of the work he did, but there was a bit of confusion.  Normally he doesn't treat patios, and though he saw the inspector's order to treat the patio, he thought it wasn't the right thing to do.  It was a Saturday, and the inspector wasn't available for consultation, so he didn't do the patio, telling us that if it turned out that he was supposed to do it, he'd be back out again.

Well, a few days later we got the treatment report from Corky's, and it was very clear from that paperwork that the patio should have been treated.  Debbie called Corky's, had a pleasant conversation about the issue, and was promised that the pesticide applicator would be back out on May 11th to finish the job.  No hassle, no reluctance – just a straightforward acknowledgement of the issue and a promise to make it right – and on May 11th, the pesticide applicator showed up exactly as promised, and in fact made it right, treating the patio area exactly as the inspector had intended.

I think that recovering from a problem situation is a great test of the quality of a service provider, and Corky's passed this accidental test with flying colors.  If we need termite service again, we're calling Corky's – and we're recommending them to our friends and neighbors...

'Till the End of Time...

Your morning inspirational tear-jerker...

Mullah Omar Captured?

Breitbart's Big Journalism is so reporting, with a disturbing twist in the backstory...

RIP, Guenter Wendt...

In my teens and early 20s, I was a serious fanboy of the first three manned space programs (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo).  I read everything I could get my hands one, listened to radio programs, and watched the very limited footage available on television back then.  Several personalities loomed large after that immersion, and one of them was Guenter Wendt – the famously authoritarian “owner” of the white room at the top of the gantry.  Guenter was the last person the astronauts saw after they were sealed in their capsule.

Guenter Wendt died on May 3, at age 85.

Mule Raffle...

Reader Simi L. passes along a slightly rewritten oldie-but-goodie:

Curtis & Leroy saw an ad in the The Oxford Eagle Newspaper in Oxford, Mississippi. and bought a mulefor $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day.

The next morning the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry, fellers, I have some bad news, the mule died last night."

Curtis & Leroy replied, "Well, then just give us our money back."

The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."

They said, "OK then, just bring us the dead mule."

The farmer asked, "What in the world ya'll gonna do with a dead mule?"

Curtis said, "We're gonna raffle him off."

The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead mule!"

Leroy said, "We shore can! Heck, we don't hafta tell nobody he's dead!"

A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis & Leroy at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and asked, "What'd you fellers ever do with that dead mule?"

Curtis said, "We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do."

Leroy said, "Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898."

The farmer said,"My Lord, didn't anyone complain?"

Curtis said, "Well, the feller who won, got upset. So we gave him his two dollars back..."

Curtis and Leroy now work for the government.

They're overseeing the Bailout Program.

For my readers in Europe and on the West Coast: there really is a chain of stores called Piggly Wiggly. Really, there is.

Elena Kagan...

The WSJ has a good summary of Elena Kagan's background and experience.  There's lots more on the intertubes.

My own take: she's far less bad than someone Obama might have appointed if the political situation wasn't so disastrous for the Democrats right now.  I suspect he and his aides have done the political calculus, and are betting that Ms. Kagan has the right combination of relatively mild leftism and absence of rabid anti-conservatism to at least have a chance of making it by the Senate.

It could have been much worse...

Happy Mother's Day!

I've been saving this contribution (from reader and cousin Mike D.) for today:

WHY GOD MADE MUMS

Answers given by 2nd year school children to the following questions:


Why did God make mothers?

1. She's the only one who knows where the selotape is.

2. Mostly to clean the house.

3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.


How did God make mothers?

1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.

2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.

3. God made my mum just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.


Why did God give you your mother and not some other mum?

1. We're related.

2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's mum like me.


What kind of a little girl was your mum?

1. My mum has always been my mum and none of that other stuff.

2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.

3. They say she used to be nice.


What did mum need to know about dad before she married him?

1. His last name.

2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?

3. Does he make at least 8000 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?


Why did your mum marry your dad?

1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my mum eats a lot.

2. She got too old to do anything else with him.

3. My grandma says that mum didn't have her thinking cap on.


Who's the boss at your house?

1. Mum doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such an idiot.

2. Mum. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.

3. I guess mum is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.


What's the difference between mums and dads?

1. Mums work at work and work at home and dads just go to work at work.

2. Mums know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.

3. Dads are taller and stronger, but mums have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friends.

4. Mums have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.


What does your mum do in her spare time?

1. Mothers don't do spare time.

2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.


What would it take to make your mum perfect?

1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.

2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.


If you could change one thing about your mum, what would it be?

1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.

2. I'd make my mum smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it not me.

3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.

Blondes and Computers...

Forwarded to me by reader Doug W.:

During a company's recent password audit, it was found
that a blonde employee was using the following password:

       “MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofyWashington”

When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be …  at least 8 “characters” long and include at least one “capital!”

Har!

Government In Action...

My sister-in-law Gina P. passed along an email containing a letter from the State of Pennsylvania to a landowner in the state, and the landowner's response.  It's very funny, but it turns out that the version she sent was modified (why do people do these things?) from the just-as-funny original.  This really happened, but in Michigan, not Pennsylvania. 

The indispensable Snopes has the real dam thing.

Disappearing Food...

My mom passed along this note from a friend of theirs:

The latest thing in our house is that our 4 year old black Lab has figured out how to open the refrigerator. The first time was when I was in California. Owen and Matilda thought one of them had failed to close the refrigerator door. June, the dog, ate a blueberry cobbler, leftover spaghetti, a bowl of grapefruit and oranges, sausage, rice, and soy beans. Matilda made another cobbler. June ate it too. By that time Matilda and Owen were beginning to think it wasn't them but they couldn't believe a dog could really open a refrigerator. That night they caught her. She puts her nose down at the bottom of the door, right where the gasket is and just pushes. Now we have a child proof lock on the door. The only problem is people who forget to lock the lock. One night this week someone had a late night snack, didn't lock the door, and June ate a whole pineapple i'd peeled and cut up. It hurts to be outsmarted by a dog.

Mo'i (one of our field spaniels) would behave just like this, if only he could figure out how to open our refrigerator.  We have one of those extra-large refrigerators (very handy when you live as far from a grocery store as we do), so we're extra-vulnerable.  Thankfully he hasn't been smart enough yet to figure out how to do it...

A Preacher I Can Find Some Agreement With...

Via reader Dick F.  If you're a regular reader, you know I'm not a religious guy.  But the preacher who delivered the prayer below, to open a new session of the Kansas State Senate – there's a preacher I might find some agreement with.  His name is Joe Wright, and he's the preacher at the Central Christian Church of Wichita, Kansas.  His prayer (from 1996, but even more relevant today):

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.

We have abused power and called it politics.

We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Amen!

You tell 'em, brother Joe – and keep telling 'em, will you?

Top Ten Democratic Slogans for 2010...

Found at a site I'd rather not link to (because there's much on there I don't want to support).  But these are priceless...

The Democrats know they're in trouble for the 2010 mid-term elections this November.  Obviously the cure is a new slogan, or at least that seems to be the progressive theory.  So they came up with candidates for the new slogan, and these are the top 10:

10.  Bitterly clinging to taxes and abortion.

9.  We didn't destroy your freedoms; you can visit them at the Smithsonian.

8.  If you want us to listen to your opinion, move to Europe.

7.  Someday none of this will be yours.

6.  We can't tax terrorism, so who cares?

5.  Please don't vote us out!  None of us can do real jobs!

4.  Why the Founding Fathers limited government: racism.

3.  Reducing America's carbon footprint, one job at a time.

2.  America: we just can't wait to see how it ends!

1.  Making everything in this country free, except you.

Vote this November.  The list above should be all the guidance you need...

Tiny Single-Board Linux Computer for $89...

This brings all sorts of fun little projects to mind.  The board is less than 4 inches square, consumes less than a half watt of power, and has all the basic things you'd expect (Ethernet, video, sound, serial, USB, SATA, and expansion capability).  It's called the Hawkboard, and it's the best thing I've seen yet for hobby projects that need (or would benefit from) a “real” computer in the middle...

Quote of the Year...

By a commenter over at Megan McArdle's place.  The context was Megan's post about SWAT teams shooting homeowners or their dogs for “aggressive behavior” in reaction to the SWAT team's attack on their home.  The commentor said:

Do we really want to live in a country where when someone busts into your house at night you're supposed to assume they might be cops?

Well said, brother!

Armed men entering our home without warning will be met with very aggressive high-velocity lead.  We keep a 7 shot semi-automatic shotgun readily at hand, though we had more need for it in our old home in Chula Vista than we have out here in the far more law-abiding Lawson Valley...

Birdemic...

Birdemic is apparently a recently released movie.  I haven't watched a movie in years, and there is zero probability that I'll ever watch this one, even before reading these reviews on IMDB (at the behest of a friend who thought that this was a movie I might actually want to see). 

But the reviews themselves...now that's a whole 'nother story.  Those make very entertaining reading.  Here's my favorite:

Where does one start? How can you mentally digest something like Birdemic? I am still in shock. I have seen some shitty movies in my time. But Birdemic, friends and neighbors, is the worst movie in the history of film-making, on this planet or in any other dimension for that matter. It is bad, OMG, right off the scale on the shitometer. The acting? Poor Alan Bagh, is he a living, walking wooden plank? Special effects? I swear, the birds are cardboard cutouts dangling from strings. For some reason, they explode when they hit something. Why? Why is that? Can't somebody explain, for freak's sake?

Everything stinks so very gaggingly. A rhesus monkey with a camcorder poking out of its arse would do better. Beware, my friends, beware of this abomination that is Birdemic.

An American Mulim Speaks Out...

We really need to see much more of this.  M. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim and former Navy Lieutenant Commander, wrote a letter to his fellow Muslims.  It concludes:

Whether we declare it or not, the United States is at war with the ideology of militant Islamism. Islamists are not afraid to call for the complete destruction of the principles that built our great country. The United States cannot afford to be timid in our response to their actions. We, Americans, especially American Muslims, must show Islamists that their ideology is beyond being simply ‘dangerous’, or ‘violent’. It is in fact treasonous and punishable as a capital crime against the state as an act of war. Our founding fathers knew how to articulate the values of liberty over theocracy. Where has that American penchant for the defense of religious freedom and liberty gone?

Our elected officials and leaders must show true ideological leadership if we are to ever begin the long process of ridding ourselves of the scourge of Islamist terrorism. We cannot cower to victim-mongering American Islamist organizations that thrive on keeping us on the defensive and from addressing the very real Islamist threats to our security. Platitudes that only condemn violence and ignore ideology are an obstacle to needed reform.

Our leaders must wake up and engage in the global war of ideas and demonstrate that the rule of one law that protects universal religious freedom (Americanism) takes precedence over the Islamic state. America in fact provides the best atmosphere for Muslims to practice our faith and it is long overdue for American Muslims to also wake up and empower honest reformist Muslims to declare the 'Islamic state' dead. We will never slow down the recurrence of Islamist terror against our citizenry until such a movement from Muslims against political Islam is palpable.

Go read the whole thing.

Lesser Goldfinches...

I took this photo (as usual, click to enlarge) last Sunday, of a group of Lesser Goldfinches (Carduelis psaltria) feeding on niger thistle seeds in our feeders.  These are very common birds here; we have dozens that visit our feeders and waterers every day.  This time of year the black-capped males have very bright yellow plumage.  Sometimes when perched in a tree they'll startle observers with their almost neon lemony color.

The angry-looking bright red bird (out of focus) in the upper-right is a common house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus), perhaps the single most abundant bird on our property.  This fellow is perched on another feeder that's serving up black oil sunflower seeds...

Starting to Look Like a Very Big Deal...

Memristors, that is.  If you're interested in electronics at all, this is something you'll want to keep an eye on.  I first heard about them in 2007, but didn't get too excited at that time – we've seen too many such claims of new “fundamentals” and seemingly miraculous new capabilities that ended up being just so much hogwash.  But memristors are following the same pattern that any new technology development does: replicable results, multiple people working on it, and increasingly impressive results from labs.

In other words, it's starting to look like the real deal.  And it has the potential to foment much change in electronics – most especially with storage.  Single chips fabricated with conventional semiconductor techniques, with the storage capacity of hundreds of today's disk drives, archival quality storage lifetime, and nanosecond write speeds.  If that ain't miraculous storage, I don't know what is.

The “new fundamental” bit with a memristor is that it represents the fourth fundamental electronic component.  The other three (resistor, capacitor, and inductor) have been known for 200 years or so; the memristor would be the only component ever added to that list.  In the 1960s a theoretical physicist predicted that memristors should exist, based on the symmetry of the mathematics used to describe the other three components.  Looks like they really do exist, and (more importantly) are actually producable...

Black-Headed Grosbeak...

We've got several pairs of black-headed grosbeaks (Pheucticus melanocephalus) at our feeders this year.  I took these photos last weekend (all with 400mm stabilized telephoto, handheld).  THe first two photos are of a female, the last of a male.  As usual, click to enlarge...

  

Apollo 11...

If you're ancient enough, and were at all interested in space exploration, I'm sure you'll remember that day in 1969 when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins lifted off from the space center in Florida – headed for mankind's first landing on another body in space.  Here's a view you didn't see back then: a slow-motion camera focused on the Saturn V's first stage engines as the vehicle launched.  It's narrated and quite interesting.  Even after all these years, I remain awed by the remarkably advanced technology of Apollo 11...