Domestic doings

Summer in south Texas is comparable to the third circle of Hades, a delight if you are in air conditioner sales, but sucks if you are outside otherwise in the middle of the day. Coming from the temperate Bay Area, this coming summer will be a major adjustment for me. One thing in my favor is having lived through several summers in Washington, DC, another place where you wonder if from June through September there is a living creature outdoors. DC doesn't get quite as hot as the Houston area, but the humidity is as miserable.

Fortunately, Fall, winter and Spring are generally pleasant down here, and you take advantage of the nice weather whenever possible. So Sunday morning my wife and I decided to do some gardening. Our back yard has a sound wall with sod planted up to the wall itself. My wife, who has a green thumb, (mine is only green if I'm getting sloppy with a project involving green paint), laid down several rolls of a special paper that will smother a strip of grass before the wall, then we dumped pine bark mulch on top. She had already planted several bushes, one grape vine, (my idea, CalTex Vineyards has to start somewhere), and a Crepe Myrtle.

For a border, we decided to used the leftover stones used for part of the facing on the house. The builders left these stacked in the garage where they were just taking up space. Jayne unfortunately tweaked her back pretty badly, so it was my job to handle the stones. Fortunately we have a rolling cart the stones could be piled in. Unfortunately, they weigh a ton... each. But I finally got them out, and arranged, trying not to have a tantrum when Jayne wanted a few moved to make the arrangement more symmetrical.

The result is terrific though. But I was having a flashback, wondering if in a previous life I was a laborer building one of the great Pyramids. I had a brief vision of Charlton Heston saying, "I may only be a slave now, but my God will rescue his people and smite thee, then He will part the Red Sea and let us escape, then make the sea drown Pharaoh's warriors. And it will be written I will win an Academy Award, then become head of the NRA and pray at the altar of Smith and Wesson."

Anyway, I certainly got my workout, and the amount and weight of the stones I moved will of course be growing the more I talk about it. But next weekend, no moving of anything, except for ourselves to the airport. We're going to Florida for a couple of days, so I can meet more members of Jayne's family. She has an aunt and uncle there she is close to, plus her parents will be there. I am glad this is not hurricane season, as Georges chased me out of Florida in 1998. But I am checking the forecasts from the National Hurricane Center just to be safe.

What He Wishes He Could Say

I caught part of President Obama's press conference tonight. Part of it was pushing his stimulus plan, (something that could smother us with all the pork written in). He was then asked about talks with Iran. This of course is a country run by narrow minded religious zealots with their loudmouth puppet President, Ahmadinejad being their public face. I was surprised at Obama's answer. Not so much what he said, but how he seemed lost as to what to say and was far from articulate. That had me wondering, he may have been trying to sound diplomatic, something a President must strive towards, and was afraid of saying the wrong thing. So just for fun, I imagined a press conference where the President is allowed to say what he really feels:

Mr. President, what do you intend to do about Iran? Will you still talk to them?
First we'll nuke them back to the Stone Age, then convert the survivors to Scientology. After that we can have a little chat with them.
Mr. President, when the Republicans had the majority in the House and Senate, and controlled the White House, there were many complaints about partisanship. Now that the Democrats are in charge, will there be a change to bipartisanship?
Paybacks a bitch, isn't it?
Mr. President, how well are you working with Nancy Pelosi?
And they called Bush dumb?
What will you do about global warming, sir?
Folks in the Midwest want it to hurry up and get here.
Mr. President, how would you view our relationship with the press so far?
Next question, jackass.
Mr. President, your brother-in-law is the men's basketball coach at Oregon State. Any chance the two of you could play a little one on one at halftime of a game?
Sure, just as soon as I can convince him Kobe Bryant and Lebron James really are part of my Secret Service detail and have to be on the court with me.

Bit Of A Political Rant

I have to give President Obama credit for admitting he "screwed up" in not forcing Tom Daschle to withdraw his bid to be secretary of Health and Human Services. But it was bothersome Obama kept saying beforehand that he "absolutely stood by" Daschle despite his serious tax evasion issues. Loyalty is a commendable attribute. Daschle has long been an Obama supporter, and Obama felt he owed support in turn to his friend. However, to be President also means there are times feelings of loyalty must be set aside, and without reservation.

This was an issue during the campaign when Obama waited a very long time before distancing himself from his hate spewing minister Jeremiah Wright. As President one has to be ruthless and make hard decisions without being afraid of offending someone, even someone who has been a loyal associate for a long time. Perhaps Obama can learn when he needs to be ruthless, but I'm afraid he is too nice for his own good.

In an earlier blog, I wrote how I wrote in "None of the Above" as my choice for President during the last election. I saw John McCain as a man who had served his country well and honorably, who was perfectly suited for the Senate, but not inspiring the confidence of leadership I want in a President. Obama came off as also perfectly suited for the Senate, and the type of guy you'd love for a next door neighbor. But his lack of decisiveness in the Jeremiah Wright case took him out of the running in my book.

I am registered as an Independent, and have been so for the last twenty five years. I rarely vote for the major parties as they are both incompetent and corrupt to the core. Unfortunately, the political system in this country makes it nearly impossible for a viable third party, preferably one close to the center instead of liberal or conservative, can exist. This means many of my votes are protest votes, something that I will continue.

Obama may learn on the job and be an effective leader, but he is handicapped by an economy in freefall, and having to deal with some of the well entrenched characters in Washington. At the top of that list is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. To say she's as dumb as a box of rocks means feeling obliged to apologize to every rock I see. My favorite sayings of hers are how we need to "Use more natural gas and get off fossil fuels," (hey doofus, natural gas IS a fossil fuel), and how she wants her congressional committees to have "More women and minorities." So whatever happened to just selecting the best people no matter their race or gender? I have reservations over some of Obama's appointees, but he has selected some good ones, and without regard for filling some type of feel good quota.

It's going to be an interesting four years.

Davy Crockett Was Here

Where I now live, Tomball, is a fairly small town of about 12,000 souls. Well, make that bodies associated with the souls, as a town of souls only poses some issues. For example, souls don't eat, so heading out on Saturday night hoping to find a good steak would be rather futile. But anyway, the town was once much smaller. The original area is known appropriately as Old Town Tomball, and features a number of antique shops, (a staple of any self respecting Texas town), a restored rail depot, and my wife's favorite, the Lighthouse Chocolate Store. Yes, it is store that sells chocolate and is shaped like a lighthouse. That's the store with that shape, not the chocolate. Tomball is, however, about 50 miles from the coast, so why a lighthouse? Who knows? But it sure looks cute.

One store that caught my fancy is Bob's Wild West. It has an amazing collection of vintage firearms, knives, books, stuffed hunting trophies, (elk, wild boar, a stray Winnebego with Arkansas plates), all those things that made the Old West, well, wild. My only experience with firearms was skeet shooting with a now ex brother-in-law. I blasted three clay pigeons and scared the rest. Too bad my lousy aim didn't make my ex brother-in-law ex that day as he turned out to be a jerk, but details. But I'm still interested enough in firearms to tell say a musket from a machine gun.

This store caters to collectors, though many of the pieces for sale could be displayed in museums. The owner is an interesting sounding guy named Bob Platz who is an avid hunter, and a talented artist. He looks like the type of guy who could regale you for hours with Texas stories, some of them even true.

But back to the collection. One group is guns owned by actual Texas Rangers, and I don't mean the ones who pretend to pass as a baseball team. I asked if there were any used by Chuck Norris, and was politely told no. I've often wondered what real Rangers thought of Walker, Texas Ranger, and while the show portrayed the Rangers in a very positive light, they must wonder why Chuck never had to do any paperwork.

I would like to go back, and do some more perusing. I do wonder if any guns used at the Alamo have passed through the shop. It would be fascinating hearing what type of authentication could be done on a gun with such a claim. I assume walking in with a claim you just found Davy Crockett's rifle in your attic would be met with more than a taste of cynicism.

Vista Still Sucks

Time for a short technology rant. A little over a year ago, in other words long enough for the warranty to have run out, I bought a snazzy laptop from Hewlett Packard's website. I primarily used it for business trips while I was with the EPA, since the government issue machines I would have borrowed otherwise would have made any self respecting paperweight sneer in disdain. It came with plenty of speed, storage, memory, nice sound, graphics, even a built in card reader for a digital camera memory stick and a webcam. Unfortunately, it also was burdened with Microsoft Vista.

Vista is Microsoft's attempt to make a computer look like Mac's OS X. And while it does look nice, it lacks a couple key features of OS X, speed and stability. There's also the compatibility issue. In order to get some of my work software to... well... work, I had to download and install Virtual PC from Microsoft. To their credit, Virtual PC does work rather well. I was able to use it to set aside a part of the hard drive to accept Windows 2000. I could then install my older work software in the 2000 partition. Switching between 2000 and Vista was actually quite easy.

Alas, Vista was still a resource hog, though after some research, I found some tweaks that substantially improved the performance. So despite some lingering annoyances, I was able to treat Vista for what it is... an operating system.

Until two days ago.

A downloaded Vista update went badly, and I started getting the feared "Blue Screen Of Death". This is not a good thing, and has been known to make users perform acts of depraved violence on inanimate objects, like their computers. This phenomena has also lead to spikes in Mac sales, and wondering just what this Linux thing is all about.

Anyway, I tried restoring the computer to earlier dates when everything worked, tried deleting the errant Windows update that I'm sure was causing this disaster in the first place, then finally decided enough was enough, time to use the System Recovery files to restore the machine to its factory fresh configuration. Fortunately everything I had on the computer was backed up, so nothing was lost.

Except...

The System Recovery files were defective. The restoration would crash at certain point and refused to continue. Perusing some forums with my other computer revealed a number of angry to plaintive missives from other HP laptop owners with the same issue. So a couple of calls to HP were in order about my options. "Adolph", (kind of a strange help desk name for someone in India, where as with many other companies HP has there call center), was convinced it was the motherboard. I don't think so. A second call got "Rex", who deduced the original System Recovery files were at fault. He sent me a link to get a dvd with replacement files. Being impatient, I went with the Fed Ex overnight option for delivery.

Fortunately, the replacement files did the trick. My laptop lives again, though I now need to reload my software and files once again. And since there is a good chance I'll be traveling again with my future consulting business, I will need a functioning laptop.

And if they weren't so blasted expensive, a Macbook would be given serious consideration. Oh well, hopefully the HP will behave from now on. However, Vista still sucks.

Why Are All The Good Scams Taken?

As part of my daily entertainment, I faithfully peruse the online edition of the San Francisco Comical... err Chronicle in hopes of finding some absurdity that makes me glad I'm no longer in California. And almost without fail something will pop up with the ease of oh say breathing. Usually this will involve the latest foibles of the envirowacko movement. The wide eyed members of this group being led by cynical manipulators who exploit them for publicity and above all, money.

But are these manipulators dangerous con artists or simply brilliant business people? I think a combination is more accurate. In this case, just pepper your speech with the latest buzz words, "climate change", "green", (I'm really starting to hate that color), and "carbon footprint", and the envirosheeple will not only bleat along with you, but will be more than willing to part with their hard earned cash to keep you in the lifestyle they claim to disdain.

Anyway, the latest is a plan by a company in San Francisco to set up kiosks in the SF Airport that first allows you to calculate the dollar amount of the carbon dioxide that will be emitted during your upcoming flight. You can then use a credit card to purchase a carbon offset that this company in theory uses to invest in various projects such as renewable energy ventures, (which means that oil well I was digging in back yard may as well be converted into a swimming pool), and methane capture, (though how you fit a catalytic converter to a cow is beyond me). And of course every cent earned by these kiosks will be used for noble causes like this, except for those earnings that will mysteriously vanish into Cayman Islands banks.

If all of this isn't an obvious scam then nothing is. So why is the San Francisco Airport going along? With air travel down they need to get revenue by any means, and the folks running these kiosks are of course going to give the airport a piece of the action in leasing costs.

My only real problem with all this is that I didn't think of it. And somehow trying to set up a franchise at the Houston Airport doesn't seem like the best idea. Texans have more common sense than that.

Still Among The Living

After almost two months in Texas, I think I've settled down and adjusted pretty well for the most part. As expected, my consulting business has been slow getting off the ground. I have some good contacts from my previous job and from those some leads that are promising. But this being the holiday season people are going to have other priorities than water quality data management. I'll get serious about drumming up business after New Years.

Speaking of which, a slight digression to software. As a reward for using Earthlink, (sometimes referred to as Missing Link or Weakest Link, though overall as an ISP I can't complain), I was able to get Net Objects Fusion 8 for a pittance. It may be a version behind the newest and shiniest, but for features and ease of use it's light years ahead of any HTML generator I've used in the past.

Ok, back to miscellaneous ramblings. My wife is really into Christmas, and she's getting me more into the spirit this year. I imagine finally having my own home again, and a very nice one, plus living in a warm and cosy atmosphere does purge one of Grinch like qualities. We put some lights up outside, and at the risk of mass feline induced destruction, decorated inside.

For her present this year, I got her a complement to the house she got for Valentine's Day. My budget for the rest of my life is shot anyway because of that, so I did the logical thing and got her a better car. Her Ford Focus was becoming like an ice sculpture, nice to look at but fragile. We did some checking, and went to Carmax, (where ironically she had bought the Focus), and found a 2002 Toyota RAV4. It's a handy size with room for her saddle and other horse riding gear, decent on gas, rides and handles well, and best of all, isn't likely to have annoying and expensive mechanical issues for some time. At least that's the plan. My hope is it won't have anything go wrong for at least the five year loan.

As for me, I've put a little over 300 miles on my still trusty Corolla since getting here, so that isn't exactly wracking up the miles. And that's 300 miles of local driving. This is Texas after all, and even in this small town things are a little spread out. I still need to get the registration changed over, though I rather enjoy the perplexed looks of locals seeing my California license plates and then the Texas State Troopers stickers for supporting their charities.