Category: Uncategorized

Let’s Look Through The Mailbag!

Reader “Fiancee” writes:

Hi Bob!

You’ve been spreading rumors over the internet suggesting that a certain sister and her fiance haven’t contacted you regarding a new purchase. Poo! [She] has tried to call you twice. Anyway, you two can fight over that one. My essay suggestion is this: Talk about indoor tiles on the ceiling, you know the white ones. Can you discuss what it entails to rip down, what I might expect to find underneath, what to do when we get there, good and bad scenarios, how much space usually found between the tiles and the original ceiling. And of course cost parameters! [She] is already chomping [sic] at the bit. Let’s talk soon.

Yikes! And it turns out that he’s exactly right. After I posted that, I thought it might be good fun to actually check my messages (both on the gizmo by the phone and the voicemail thingy). Sure enough, she did call to tell us the happy news and sadly, we failed to listen. We’re horrible people and should be ashamed, so we will be.

What should one expect when tearing down ceiling tiles? Asbestos! Lovely, useful, insulating asbestos. Oh wait, what’s that? Cancer-something? Whatever.

Considering the age of the “remodel” that I’ve been hearing about, chances are nine out of ten that the tiles are made of the stuff. If you’re made of money, you can hire an asbestos abatement crew to come in and remove it. If you’re not, you can certainly remove it yourself, but take a bunch of very over-the-top measures to keep from breathing it. If it were me, I’d get a garden insect sprayer, fill it with water, pump it up, and spray the hell out of the tiles first. Wearing a respirator (not a cheap/crap dust mask) and goggles, I’d scrape the stuff off while keeping it wet. Scrape it into garbage bags and seal them when full.

I heard that there’s wall to wall carpet that’s going away, so that’s a good drop cloth, but make sure that the asbestos fibers don’t dry out and become airborne before the carpet is removed. That makes the ceiling repair time and painting time short, but you really, really don’t want to breathe that stuff. At all.

Is that enough for now?

Your contrite pal,

bob

Happy Monday!

I’m too dumb to think of a Question this morning, but I’ll post one this afternoon (and another tomorrow morning). That sounds fair, doesn’t it?

You bet!

bob

Disaster Fails To Strike! Film At Eleven

Friends, there is nothing as anticlimactic as a job well-done. My coworkers and I disinfected the servers from our desert outpost, but also relocated the server room from a maintenance closet to its former location upstairs, reconnected said servers, and got them up and running before 5:00 on Friday.

Ho hum.

Sure we left San Diego at 5:00 in the morning with said servers in the trunks of our cars and ended up fairly punchy by the end of that day, but that’s what we’re getting paid for, right? We continued working there on Saturday to tidy up, tweak some things, wait for the wiring guy to fix some bits he messed up on Friday, and take some pictures. Even after all of that futzing, nothing went wrong. Where’s the fun in that?

My folks are planning a big party in a couple of weeks, so I spent the rest of Saturday working on their house. They have an outdoor ceiling fan (I didn’t even know that weather-resistant fans existed. The thing has plastic blades fer crissakes!) so I spent my time wiring it and tying it in to the patio lighting. Not the most exciting pursuit to be sure, but it did involve some roof work perilously close to the drop from the power pole. As you know, I don’t get along very well with three phase power supplies, so at least that bit was nerve-wracking. We have to have some drama somewhere, don’t we?

By the way, did you know that my sister is buying a house? Me neither! I hear that it’s a fixer-upper. Hell, I know all about fixing-upping and I’d be happy to help, but alas, I’ve heard nothing about it directly for her or her fiancee. The second hand stories I’ve heard though don’t make the joint out to be all that bad. More cosmetic than structural as far as I understand it. Executive take-away: I’d be happy to help!

There’s much more here to be explored. Something, surely, that could conceivably be entertaining. I’m a little to fried from the roadtripping to make something engaging out of it right now (and you’ll move on by tomorrow, so we’re left in the lurch. -ed That’s been the M.O. hasn’t it? -bob).

Your sleepy and sore pal,

bob

Let’s Take A Look At The Logs!

– or –

Ashley, You’re Freaking Me Out

As is my custom, I thought I’d take a look at the logs for this thing. I was interested to know if this Question Revival Week had garnered any more hits (sadly, no. actually fewer) and found that a page hit reported on own my Jaunty Blog Log (which should look like this: http://www.btherieau.blogspot.com/) came up thus:

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/ashley/Desktop/umbria/gender%20files/data/sample.2443.html

So I’m Ashley’s gender studies lab rat? Is that it? Am I really Sample No. 2443? What exactly does that mean? Dear Ashley, what have you learned from this mess? Post a comment and let me know.

I would be really freaked out, if the next guy hadn’t ended up here by searching for “…girls in pajamas nu_de.” Dear Mr. Perv. if they’re in pajamas they’re not n-ude, get it? Just imagine the internal conversation; “rocket science or ped_oph/ilia, gee, I don’t know, rocket science seems so hard…” (words searched on by creepy dudes obscured on purpose so the search engines won’t find them, as was the full search term. -ed Thanks! -bob)

The more prosaic search terms, like “subway tile + black border” are much more welcome, as you might imagine. I’d like to see more people arrive here looking to adopt German Shorthaired Pointers, or even the occasional Jeepster people, my people after all, but no. I get the gender studies folks and some real creeps stumbling upon my humble musings.

Sure, I’m trying to take the high road in this post, but I found myself laughing out loud at this Gizmodo post. And I’m kind of a vegetarian fer crissakes!

This really didn’t come together very well, did it?

Your best pal ever,

bob

P.S. No Question tomorrow, I’m afraid. It’s going to be a very early and long day. We rebuilt some infected servers today and will be driving to the desert to reinstall them in the morning. The wee hours of the morning. My coworker is taking the company car and staying in a hotel, I’m taking the Jeep Grand Livingroom and staying with the folks.

I think that I get the better end of the deal.

Get Out On The Highway!

Would you rather…

form a unity government by choosing a running mate from the other party,

or

forgo replacing that cracked windshield in favor of wearing a full-face helmet?

a) Paid for by Ralph Nader/Ted Nugent ’04 Committee

b) It’s tough on the coiffure.

Tort Reform Fever!

bob

Tomorrows’ Question Today!

Would you rather…

put crumbled bits of cheese in your flatbed scanner,

or

have your chances of contracting a drug-resistant infection compared to a prison stay?

a) “You know, like a Rembrandt still-life…”

b) “…or sitting on the bench in a public shower…”

I feel icky,

bob

Oh No!

Just noticed a post on BoingBoing (after a leisurely scroll) that, on the surface shouldn’t have provoked a second thought, but instead reminded me that the streets here in our little neighborhood were named after centuries-old streets in the UK. To those of you who might have entertained the thought, don’t bother. The folks around here aren’t into that.

Okay, maybe they are.

Your pal,

bob

Incendiary!

Would you rather…

run the Abu Ghraib Prison Gift Store and Visitor’s Center,

or

the only filling station in Fallujah?

a) I just can’t keep the Martha Graham dance videos in stock…

b) Business is booming!

That’s disturbing,

bob

Missing A Little Bit Upstairs…

Would you rather…

tear around the neighborhood in your Corvette at 5:00 a.m.

or

scream at the top of your lungs for a sports team appearing on your television?

a) What? Gas is $2.95 a gallon? You’re kidding?

b) I just know that they’re really playing for me!

…or downstairs?

– bob

Memories, Like A Window On Your Mind

I followed a thread this evening from a reader (via the logs) and started reading the posts I made in March of this year. “Wow, that guy was desperate,” I thought. I also thought hard about, based on what I know now, what that mess meant. More importantly, if the writing was any good.

The chickenhawk stuff is—as you would imagine—passe at this point, but you could count on that. The job stuff is charming and naive. The social commentary appears a little tired.

Hindsight IS 20/20 after all.

The writing does appear to be much more lively than what has appeared here in the last couple of weeks though. For that I apologize. The new job has been fairly taxing so it has kept me from devoting as much energy as I would like.

On top of adding comments to this thing (just click on the post date below), I think that I’ll revive The Question only because I miss it. Question ideas will be welcome as usual, and I will write it (unless my former compatriots want to get back in the game). So plan on a new Question on Monday the 17th with all the dumb goodness that it used to bring.

Beyond that, I had a very productive, if sticky, day building and deploying computers. I also took a little trip to the airport to pick up somebody I’m no longer allowed to mention here. You know, some person. An entity if you will.

Purposefully vague,

bob

Yes, They Can Make It Political

Gee whiz, if we never went to war in the first place, a young engineer would’ve never been subjected to such a cruel fate…

Golly, if we hadn’t started on this adventure into the Middle East to avenge the president’s daddy, we wouldn’t be embarrassed by those prison photos…

Our credibility on the Arab Street is in tatters, maybe the U.N. can help…

Did I just about get all of your objections down? Sure, I missed the oil thing, but you know how well that’s going don’t you? David Brooks suggests a “if we lose we win” strategy by staging Iraqi elections early and allowing candidates a platform of, essentially, “I’ll get the infidels out sooner than my opponent” or “I’m tough on Americans, vote for me” as a speedy way towards democratization and building Iraqi national unity.

I say that’s exactly wrong.

To be very brief, the rotten core of Islamic fascism will never be satisfied if we throw the world’s supply of carrots at them. They certainly can’t be held up as exemplars of rational thought by any stretch of the imagination. It’s Jihad Time my friends, so in my very humble opinion, I propose that we give them what they want, to see what’s behind the curtain. If it’s seventy virgins, so be it. At least they’ll be out of our hair in the here and now. If it’s lovely raisin loaves, happy eating—you bastards.

No, I don’t propose turning the entire region into a pile of molten glass. I will suggest that, contrary to the current fashion, we stop with the self-flagellation that clearly turns these monsters on and get down to the business of prosecuting this second major battle in the war on terror. (you forgot that we’ve been at war since 2001, didn’t you? remember who started it? You should.)

It was about a year ago when I speculated on the brutality to come in our “stateless” war on shadowy underground terror. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of it.

Or even the middle.

But we will surely win. We have to.

– bob

Spic Or Span

I have a deadline of sorts today. The 1912 House has become a filthy mess and I need to change that—TODAY. Clearly I’d prefer not to, instead filling out the rather “thin” offerings here, but there’s work to be done. Shininess to achieve. We have chrome, dammit, and it must be polished!

But first, an aside. During my days at San Diego’s Omnipresent Charitable Organization, I often find myself in the midst of the disadvantaged. You might even call them the downtrodden, but for this… at least they bathe. Our company provides meals, job training, and showers to those who are down on their luck, all for free. Certainly there are those who don’t take advantage of all of those services, in fact, there are some who are pretty grimy. They’re the tiny minority. Most people down in the heart of downtown seem happy to get cleaned up if for no other reason than to protect their health.

So it falls to reason that the people serving those less fortunate might learn from the example. To clean up once in a while. This is not the case.

Within the last couple of days I’ve worked on computers full of a fluffy amalgam of lint and grease, that once warmed reek of rancid bacon fat, that were so sticky that I found myself emulating Lady Macbeth once out of sight of the client (the killing part? – ed no, the obsessive hand washing part, geez – bob). It’s clearly not ergonomically correct to type while arching your palms to avoid the bits of yesterday’s lunch remaining in the keyboard tray, is it?

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, and I’ll do anything I can to help the people on the front lines get back to work. But I had to ask, “do you think it would be a problem if I wore latex gloves while I fix some of these machines?”

Maybe Chemtool will help.

Your pal,

bob

“The Groupen”

– or –

How To Succeed In The Restaurant Business Without Really Trying

I got suckered into attending the German Shorthaired Pointer Club board meeting this evening. The downside is that the only thing we had in common was the breed of dog that lives in our houses. Oh sure, the occasional leash-free park or best dog door discussion came up, but after that, we mostly shared awkward silences or quick glances at the menu. The upside was that the board meeting was held at McKee’s Tavern in Rancho Bernardo. My brother-in-law had wanted to discuss additions to his website so he sat down at the table and we had a little chat in between those other silences. I was saved.

When the time came to order dinner, we naturally asked about the special of the day. That’s when the story began. My brother-in-law’s mother told him about her favorite sandwich—The Groupen—a Reuben with grilled Grouper instead of corned beef. All the rest is there, the rye bread, the grilled sauerkraut, the Swiss cheese. “Of course,” Billy said, “it’s hard to get Grouper here in San Diego, so I use Mahi-Mahi instead and you get onion rings instead of fries…”

What’s not to love?

From a quick peek around Google, the “Grouper Reuben” can be found predominantly in Florida along with other Grouper recipes. Maybe they have way too much Grouper on their hands and have to find creative ways to get rid of it.

So what we had was basically a Grouper Reuben that wasn’t a Reuben and didn’t have any Grouper in it. No wonder I’m confused. Full, but confused.

Your pal,

bob

P.S. I’ve enabled comments throughout the blog as of yesterday. You wouldn’t really know by looking at it, but if you click on the permalink below (the post date), you’ll be taken to a page for this post with a comment box below it. The discussions are unmoderated to allow for some freedom, but if it gets out of hand I can simply shut the comments feature off so be nice. Sound fair?

“Momma, What’s That Awful Smell?” *

This being Mother’s Day, and with the dogs (the “grandpuppies” as Mom tells it) and me (that’s a pretty awkward construction. – ed Sure it is, but it’s grammatically correct. Sorry pal. – bob) spending the weekend with the folks in the desert, I thought it would be a good idea to send a shout out to the mothers out there (oooh! you’re so street! – ed)—after a detour to lay out what’s been going on since the last post.

The Omnipresent Charitable Organization that I work for has a satellite in the Coachella Valley and the I.T. guy there was let go a month or so ago. Since then, we’ve sent folks from San Diego there to address their computing problems every week. Only one day a week. Often unannounced.

That has been a problem for the folks stranded in the outpost because like the folks here, they have to get work done too and they need functioning computers to do it. “Don’t let them sidetrack you, just get these things done and get out of there,” was the advice, but I’m too big a softie to let their impassioned pleas go unheard. Sure, I got my assigned tasks done, but allowing myself to be pulled in every direction made for a much longer day than I had counted on. In fact, as I was pulling out of the parking lot, the Director sent a guy out to wave me down and bring me back (for another two hours).

Am I complaining? Hell no. They were all happy—and happy to see me. “Lunch is being served now, can I get you something?” “Oh no, I’m too busy. I have to be in three places in the next forty-five minutes…” “Well, I can make you a plate, what would you like?”

It went on like that all day. Friendly, courteous, and inviting is all I can say about the people down there. All I can think about is what more I can do for them. My immediate thought is organizing a work party where everyone from San Diego goes there to fix anything they see as broken. It could be good fun and we could make these fine folks really happy. They certainly relieved any fears I might have had about the place (and frankly, I was initially spooked by the new environment).

I guess what they say is true, “you attract more flies with honey than vinegar” (would that make you a disgusting insect like a fly? I hate flies. – ed That explains a lot. – bob)

Your pal,

bob

P.S. I said that I’d say something more about Mother’s Day, so here goes: Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers! I think that you’re all really neat! (How was that? – bob kinda weak. – ed)

* My favorite nephew uttered my current favorite line while my sister was in the kitchen. Her response? “It’s your breakfast, buddy.” His reply? I’m not really sure, but I’ll post an update when I find out.

I Was There

This Flash Animation pretty much sums up (through the lyrics) where I was in, say, 1982. Sure, it’s mostly British, but that’s half the fun. The rest concerns the PEEKs and the POKEs that we had to do back then to do anything useful. Oh yeah, the tape loading errors we had back then too.

You know that crappy Windows 98 machine you’re using right now? The one that always crashes at the slightest provocation? I’ll trade you my Commodore 64—straight across.

I’m good like that.

Your pal,

bob