Timing…

Last week Friday while Jay was at work, I went out for something and things seemed about normal until I got back home. The overhead garage door wasn’t quite closed. It wasn’t truly open, but there was a gap of a couple inches or so. I had no luck getting the door up and open, nor fully down and staying there. I gave up, having parked on the street and being a bit ill yet (cold hit me hard the previous Saturday – mostly over it, but some effects linger) and tired.

Jay checked it out at lunch and saw what I missed: One of the springs was broken. The door is too heavy to lift without the aid of the springs. Home Depot in $DISTANT_TOWN was called as they were the only place that would do anything on Saturday. And Saturday came and went and the call back from them never came. I think they got called again on Monday to let them know they lost business and we are Not Impressed. Jay then found who had done the installation for us (some years ago we had the overhead door & such replaced as the old one never quite worked right and tended to jam.

The fellow came on Tuesday, I think, and realized just how heavy the door is and found he doesn’t even carry springs that big now. (“As long as nobody runs into it, that door should last forever.”) He’d have order in or have made up the right springs. He might have them as early as Thursday afternoon, but Friday was more likely. It was Friday.

We got lucky, relatively. The spring failed when both vehicles were out of the garage so we weren’t down to only one (or none – a third is in storage). Also, the weather was relatively warm most of the week. Window scraping happened only once, I think.

Very late Friday morning or very early afternoon the job was done. And just in time. It’s snowing and the vehicles are in the garage again.

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That Old Familiar (Unwelcome) Feeling

It’s the cold and flu season again and, alas, I do not possess immunity to every last bit of misbehaving RNA. I am now several days into whatever this is (I am guessing the all-too common cold, variant who-knows) and while I can get by enough to get things done (but not much more than absolutely necessary, for now) it is most certainly No Fun. From experience I know how this version will go. Been through it before, or a had a close variant before… but not close enough for the immune system to thwart before it began.

First was the always-cold feeling and much rest under layers and layers of layers and layers. Add cough of no great power or frequency, and general blah – with sore throat. The always-cold faded, the congestion arrived, the cough (yes, I have some DM, and no I am not about to exceed the recommended dose) worsened, but the sore throat lingered in an exponential decay sort of way.

I expect in a few more days I’ll feel well, aside from weakness and blah (which will last another week or so) with the exception that attempting speech will be a dubious thing indeed. And a few days after that, it’ll just be the weak blah until all the systems truly recover and “spin up” again

What Isn’t Being Said, and How What Is, Is Skewed.

Once upon a time, for reasons external, I had a subscription to Newsweek. It was that or U.S. News and World Report and I opted for the cheaper one. I am unsure it was better value, but it certainly was cheaper. Perhaps I would have been informed with USN&WR, but the subscription I had did provide an education. I rather doubt it was the education that was intended.

At that time, at least (no idea of now), there was a page of quotations from the week. It might have been under the banner “Conventional Wisdom” (or not, it was a while ago) which was a phrase of the time. One week, during a mid-term campaign, one of the quotations was then-President George H.W. Bush reply to the question of how he felt about the women who where running for Senate. Newsweek reported his reply as being, “I hope they lose.” And that certainly sounds sexist, doesn’t it? Except Newsweek was pulling a Radio Moscow with that. While it was technically true that the President said that, they omitted what else he said, and thereby removed context.

I learned this from, of all places, NPR (that bastion of right-wing conservatism – I’ll wait while you finish laughing. Done? Good.) which reported that the full response was, “Since they’re all Democrats, I hope they lose.” Partisan? Yes, but that is expected. Nothing sexist, simple party preference. This was the final nail in the coffin of Newsweek‘s reputation, for me. I’d had suspicions, sure, but when NPR reveals your Narrativium to be bilge.. well, that thing you’re orbiting is called a ‘drain’.

It wasn’t quite the last nail in the coffin of the so-called MainStream Media for me. Other things aided that. There was a nasty radioactivity exposure incident (improperly decommissioned and scrapped out radiotherapy device and the glowing powder was a cool toy… until it did what things radioactive enough to glow tend to do. Cesium-137 is NOT your friend.) in South America which I heard about via shortwave broadcast (perhaps BBC, almost certainly HCJB, maybe others) and saw nothing about on any US TV news program. Nothing. Until six months later there was a short bit about it.

Then there was a Guardian article (with mostly correct spelling!) about how somehow basketball filled in the gap in the USA that other countries filled with soccer. Puzzling, I know, but it seemed to make sense as I read it… until late in the article where there was shot at then-President Bush (which one hardly matters). An article about soccer and basketball… but they HAD to get in a stupid anti-Bush shot. Even with proper spelling (ain’t spell-check amazing?), they are still just the Grauniad.

And recently there was a woman fired from a job because, as reported, she once (years ago) wore “blackface” at a party. Alright, at “blackface” what did you think of? Something like an old time Minstrel show? That’s what was intended, I imagine. But that’s NOT what actually happened. That woman dressed up and had makeup to make her look like, as close as could be managed, to a member of a band she liked. That’s not Minstrel, but actually rather flattering makeup. But the general reporting is “blackface” rather than, say, “tone-adjusted.” Why? Because “blackface” gins up outrage and outrage sells… and fits Das Narratif. Narratif uber alles, ja? Ja! The Narrative is… manure – and I’m being far too kind.

And then there’s this asking about so-called dog whistles. Note the full text of what the President said (if some is a bit repetitive) compared to what is being reported.

The media might claim I (and others) have stomped on their foot. But the smoking gun, in their own hand, stilled aimed at their foot, tells the real story.

Minimalism vs. Ability

I am in the midst of the extended project of “committing a Neatness” in the house. I do not expect to truly organize every room (see Tasks, Herculean) but do hope to get the more common or apt to be seen into a semi or quasi presentable state.  I am up against years of accumulation (not so much hoarding as sloth) so it will be a while.

I had been considering, and really still am, not replacing  each bottle in the liquor collection. Some would stay, of course. I’d not care to be unable to make a Manhattan, Martini, Sazerac, and a few others. But do I really need the seldom-used Frangelico and the I-still-have-this Chambord? And then, just now, I found yet again how wonderfully convenient it is to see a cocktail and just grab the right bottles and make it without having to wait or make a trip to get this or that.  Maybe I do need to reduce the collection some. But not severely. Perhaps the right solution is more shelves and have the most commonly used most accessible and any rara avis can be off a bit.

And since I’m wondering, are there any “no, you need to keep that because of this” drinks that call for the Frangelico or the Chambord?

The Smell That Wasn’t There

Every autumn, as it gets colder, the furnace gets switched on (and the air conditioner off) or as I’ve taken to saying, we switch from the cooling regime to the heating regime. And there is the peculiar aroma of the first use of the furnace for the season. It is, very roughly, hot dust – and not the same as the “magic radio dust” that was once found baking on vacuum tubes that had been in service for some time.

Yesterday, I switched from the cooling to the heating regime… and wondered if the furnace was even working. Oh, the house was reasonably warm or at least not cold. But that telltale smell wasn’t there. But that was also exactly as it should have been. The furnace would have been used a few days earlier, but we waited for the air filter to be swapped out and the air filter wasn’t getting changed until after the ductwork had (finally) been cleaned. The ductwork was cleaned (and a lot of crud removed), the filter changed, the furnace engaged… and.. no “first heating of the season” smell. Those ducts are, if not clean, clean enough.

Hopefully that will make things such that $HOUSEMATE’s asthma is less likely to act up and The Great Never-Ending Atomic Cough doesn’t resume (it does end, but it doesn’t feel like it. I’ve quipped it happens twice a year and only lasts seven months each time…) The office humidifier is also cleaned up, filled up, connected up, tested and ready for when the weather is cooler and drier that it is today. Today, now that we are alright with running the furnace, and the humidifier is ready, is, naturally warm (for Minnesota in October) and wet.

A Lack of Clarity

Some time ago I bought a rubber (alright, synthetic rubber) mold for making ice balls. Nice, big, spheres of frozen water. Great for chilling a drink and diluting it only slowly. For what it’s worth, I also have in my possession steel spheres for NOT diluting a drink, but only chilling it. I find I use these very seldom. Mainly, I forget about them. That and I tend to make drinks that are not “AND” drinks. That is, I do not do Rum AND Coke, Scotch AND water, Scotch AND Soda. I might on occasion have a Gin & Tonic. But most of my cocktails are potent liquor, with modifiers, and there is no mixer as such. Thus, some dilution is a Good Idea.

I tried, for a while, to make truly clear or transparent ice with the molds. And nothing truly worked. I tried distilled water. I tried boiled water. I tried water boiled twice. I tried distilled water that had been boiled twice. I tried such with a setup that supposedly would slow the freezing to let any gasses escape. Nothing really worked. An insulated setup to really slow the freezing down might help, but there is only so much room in the freeze and I prefer the freezer to mainly filled with actual food.

It is a big deal? No. The point is to have a cold drink, and that happens whether I use steel, ice spheres, or the crescent-like “cubes” from the fridge’s ice-maker. A truly transparent sphere of ice would be a ‘neat trick’ and might be impressive in presentation, but I make the drink for myself, or maybe $HOUSEMATE, and we aren’t hosting any cocktail parties or such. Heck, if we wanted to impress any guest we might ever be likely to have, and they drank, we’d offer them single-malt scotch (Over time, there’s been a small accumulation. I like Islays and $HOUSEMATE prefers anything NOT peaty – claims peaty means “Band-Aids”) and ice wouldn’t come into the equation.

Still, I’d like to get a truly transparent sphere of ice at least once, if only to prove to myself that I can do it. Do I need impressive or showy ice? NO! Just like I have no need of doing silly things like setting a drink on fire. Though I did one ignite a small amount of 190 proof rectified spirits to see the flame such as it was.

As others have managed it, I know it IS possible. Just that the set-up I have isn’t doing it. Perhaps if I had a thermoelectric setup (Peltier junction) and a microcontroller… but that seems going to extremes for what really might well be a one-off. And, really, does anyone REALLY care about ice clarity? Alright, anyone who has real work to do and isn’t some poseur?

Stupid Question Time (Ox Slow)

The WordPress theme I am using now is alright, but has a deficiency – or I am deficient in setting it up, one of those. Older posts don’t show that there are (or are not) comments. I would like that to be indicated. Ideally, a half-way decent looking theme with that option that is freely available. However, I am willing to consider paying (a bit…) for something if that’s the only way to get something that has that feature and is not eye-bleedingly rotten. Any suggestions?