Life's Lessons...

My cousin Mike D. sends along this parable:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.  "What food might this contain?" the mouse wondered - but he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer's wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness. So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

Send In the Old Farts!

Via my lovely wife, who says she agrees with this 100%:

New Direction for any war: Send Service Vets over 60!

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 42 to join the military. They've got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35.

For starters, researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry.' We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for awhile..

An 18-year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10am. Old guys always get up early to pee, so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch.

If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys.. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we're used to soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course however... I've been in combat and never saw a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training.

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too... I've never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way.

Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons, who know that their best years are already behind them.

HEY!! How about recruiting Women over 50...in menopause!!! You think MEN have attitudes??  Oh my God!!! Put them on border patrol. They'll have it secured the first night!

My wife agrees with this?  I'm going to be 60 in a few years.  Hmmm...

Update: The New Roof...

The project is moving right along.  Chris (the contractor) and his two boys were here yesterday (Saturday) to work on getting the roof in a waterproof condition.  He's worried that we'll have some rain before he gets it “buttoned up”, but that seems pretty unlikely this time of year.  At far right, in a carefully positioned shot, you can see what the red roof will look like when it's all done.  The photo immediately to the right shows what the roof really looks like right now – covered with the high-tech underlayment that's making the roof waterproof now, and that provides a good base for the metal roof to lie on.

The metal roofing parts are being made right now, at the roofing manufacturer.  They're going to take between two and four weeks longer to be finished, so once the fascia, underlayment, and soffits are all installed there will be a hiatus in the project until the materials are fabricated.

This short video gives you a tour of our roof in its current condition.  Pardon the low quality; it was shot with a Blackberry!

Most Excellent Car Signage...

Via my mom...

(click to enlarge)

Los Zetas Captures Ranches in Texas...

The open-borders crowd has some thinking to do.  Mexican nationals – members of the much-feared “Los Zetas” drug cartel – have captured at least two American ranches in Texas.  The ranchers are ok; apparently they escaped.

Personally, I think our response should be carefully nuanced, using all the appropriate tools at our disposal.  That would include Hellfire missiles, bunker-buster bombs, C-130 gunships, artillery, tanks, guns, U.S. Marines, and anything else we've got that will kill invading scum.  We need to send a clear message: if you take or harm our citizens or their property, then you die.  Quickly.  Without hanky-twisting, prior notification, or preliminary negotiation.

Something tells me that this administration's response will somewhat less effective than a Marine detachment...

Update: I tried to get a bit more information on this report, and ran into some articles calling it a hoax.  So...take this with a grain of salt until (and if) I can confirm it...

Miniature Explosions...

The frames at right were captured on a 10,000 fps video camera with a macro lens aimed at a sphagnum moss just as it shot out its spores.  The donut-shaped vortex allows the sphagnum to shoot its spores much further than would otherwise be possible for it...

Google Go...

It's a new programming language from Google.  I just ran across it for the first time, and I haven't had a chance to look at it carefully.  From the docs and FAQs at their site, they've made some interesting design choices, especially in moving away from the formality of strongly-typed languages like Java and C++.  I'd love to spend a few days just playing with it, but I don't have the time just now...

The World is a Funny Place Department...

Generally, most of the visitors to my little blog get here in one of two ways: either they are crazy enough to have bookmarked my blog, or they've searched for something that appears on my blog. 

For the last few days, though, a third category of visitors has dominated: those who clicked on a link in an email to this post.  Apparently it caught someone's fancy, they forwarded it in an email, and those people forwarded it, and it went on and on.

Leaving me to wonder...why this particular post?  I have no idea...

The Roof Project: Update...

Well, we're a few days into the project now, and we're still very pleased with progress.  The old roof is now entirely gone; we've got bare wood exposed to the elements.  With the old roofing material gone, some problem areas were exposed (mainly some deteriorated wood toward the bottom of the roof), and these will need to be fixed.  Some of the fascia boards are warped, and Chris (the roofing contractor) is going to fix those as well. 

One piece of the red metal fascia cover is now in place – a bright red horizontal stripe that looks very colorful indeed, given the large area of surrounding white or dull colors.  Debbie is very happy with the color.  Let's hope that continues when the entire roof is covered.

I'm thinking that this red is so bright that we'll easily be able to spot our house when we fly into or out of San Diego (nearly all flights pass with 10 miles or so, high overhead).  Our roof will look like a multi-megawatt beacon.  It might even be visible from space!

Another View of the Manipulated Jobless Number...

This time from the WSJ.  There's a lot of interesting material at the link, but to my point in a previous post:

If people without jobs become discouraged and stop seeking work, the unemployment rate will decline (other things being equal). On the other hand, if people become hopeful about future employment, job seeking will go up—as will the unemployment rate.

This way of measuring job availability is clearly flawed. One simple alternative would be to measure the labor force as the number of people with jobs. Unemployment would be determined based on increases or decreases in the number of people employed relative to historic job growth.

Sounds right to me...

BS Removal Kit...

The web site really exists, though it redirects to a T-shirt store...

Clyde is the Man!

Via my cousin Mike D.:

A farmer named Clyde had a car accident. In court, the trucking company's fancy lawyer was questioning Clyde.

"Didn't you say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine,'?" asked the lawyer.

Clyde responded, "Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule, Bessie..."

"I didn't ask for any details", the lawyer interrupted. "Just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine!'?"

Clyde said, "Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road..."

The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Clyde's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule, Bessie".

Clyde thanked the Judge and proceeded.

"Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side.

I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans.

Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her.

After he looked at her, and saw her fatal condition, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes.

Then the Patrolman came across the road, gun still in hand, looked at me and said, "How are you feeling?"

"Now what the hell would you say?"

Why, “I'm fine, officer!”, of course...

Sad, But...True...

Via my lovely (laughing) wife:

Was George W. Bush an Idiot?

Via my lovely wife:

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a TelePrompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, would you have said that he is clueless.

If George W. Bush would have flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in Texas, would you have thought he was a self important, conceited, egotistical jerk.

If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?

If George W. Bush had misspelled the word "advice" would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoes as proof of what a dunce he is?

If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?

If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?

If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If George W. Bush had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have approved.

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 15 months -- so you'll have two years and nine months to come up with an answer.

Pat Condell on the Ground Zero Mosque...

Interesting rant by the ever-fascinating Pat Condell, via my cousin Mike D.:

Most Terrifying Unemployment Graph?

Via The Atlantic.  Someone at the Department of Labor is probably going to have a stern talking-to over this.  Why?  Because it exposes the ongoing lie in the published unemployment percentages.  The Bureau of Labor has been publishing unemployment percentages this year that range from almost 11% to just over 9% – but the only reason those numbers are so low is because the Bureau rather arbitrarily removes millions of people from the unemployed category by saying that they've given up looking for work (and somehow, magically, that means they're no longer unemployed – only a bureaucrat could think that made sense!).  How do people get classified as having given up?  The biggest factor: how long they've been unemployed!

The real unemployment number is somewhere around 15% to 18% (the Bureau doesn't release enough data to compute it precisely, or at least I couldn't find that data).  There are a lot of people who have been out of work for over six months now...

What's Wrong With Obama?

Via my cousin Mike D., a psychotherapist's estimate of Obama's mental health:

Let's return now to my original question: What is wrong with Obama? My guess is a great deal. The answer is complex and likely includes some combination of the above.

Along with the brain issues are personality disorders: narcissism, paranoia, passive-aggressiveness. There's even the possibility of the most destructive character defect of all, an antisocial personality. Untreated abuse can foster antisocial traits, especially among boys.

If my assessment is accurate, what does this mean?

It means that liberals need to wake up and spit out the Kool-Aid...and that conservatives should put aside differences, band together, and elect as many Republicans as possible.

Because Obama will not change. He will not learn from his mistakes. He will not grow and mature from on-the-job experience. In fact, over time, Obama will likely become a more ferocious version of who he is today.

Why? Because this is a damaged person. Obama's fate was sealed years ago growing up in his strange and poisonous family. Later on, his empty vessel was filled with the hateful bile of men like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers.

Obama will not evolve; he will not rise to the occasion; he will not become the man he was meant to be. This is for one reason and one reason alone:

He is not capable of it.

Read the whole thing...

SSH Hacks...

Useful, geeky stuff for those who have VPN challenges...

Surprise!

On the way home from work last night, I picked up a package at the Post Office.  It was from a friend (Franz M.) in Munich, Germany, and it was full of slide rules.  I haven't purchased any slide rules for many months, so for the first time in a long while I had the pleasure of opening up a box with some beautiful old instruments in it.

My favorite of the bunch is a circular “Columbus Calculator”. Mostly it is conventional in design, except that it's made of engraved metal (that is, the scales are engraved).  I'm pretty sure that the engraving is photolithographic, and it's very nicely done.  The face is plated (with brass, I think) and the plating has worn, exposing parts of the underlying metal – yet the scales are still perfectly readable and usable.  I've never seen another like it, nor can I find any reference to it online...

Morning Walk...

Another beautiful, cool, high desert morning in the chaparral.  I walked the dogs at around 3:30 am, under a clear, dark sky overhead.  As the season progresses, the Pleiades are now visible in the northeastern morning sky.  These are the harbinger of one of my favorite constellations, Orion, which will soon be visible in the eastern morning sky.  Jupiter was bright and clear in the southeast sky.  And in a broad band from the north to the southwest, the Milky Way cut its swath.  Beautiful.

The air was full of desert scents, and also, intermittently, the musky odor of some large mammal (I'm guessing a mountain lion, but I didn't see it).  All four of our dogs were quiet, noses down, scoping out the events of last evening.  They were happy to go back inside the house; I think they were nervous because of the animal smells...