Category: OCF

20NOV2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That – Of Mice and Math

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Sunday, the day of rest.  A good day to regroup and sets things in order for the upcoming week.  Especially this week.  Had a blast with the old grandsons yesterday.  Fun outing, good food.  Got home and skipped dinner.  Skipped all food and drink and maybe that was a mistake.  I was still recovering from that virus that was in the house the last couple of weeks.  But I figured I could skip the cold meds.  Big mistake!  Woke up at 4:30 am with a splitting sinus headache.  So, I beat a hasty retreat to the cold medicine and then sat up for a half hour to let it knock down my sinus inflammation.

But today I’m definitely on the mend.  So, I spent time working on minutia.  I’ve been using the Logitech M570 Wireless Trackball Mouse as my pointing device for the last six or so years.  It’s a great device in most ways.  But unfortunately, the switches for the left and right click buttons give out after a couple of years.  So now I have three of these things that double click when they shouldn’t.  I finally looked into the problem and found a YouTube video that shows how to replace the microswitches and eliminate the problem.  Now I’ll have to buy a soldering iron and some other bits of gear and become a technician.  Well, that’s kind of fun.  Plus, I’ll fix the other two mice and become mouse anti-fragile for the foreseeable future.  Yeah me.

The other thing today was about was to delve into vector analysis.  I never had the time back in the day to play around with the more advanced theorems to get a solid handle on the tensor notation.  In the past I’ve been exposed (as if to a disease) to Del Notation, Dyadics, the Laplacian and equally complex concepts.  The Kronecker delta and how to expand the determinant was something I had to memorize in order to solve some problems in physics.  But if I’m being honest there was very little comprehension on my part at the time as to how these manipulations made sense.  Now I’ve got some time I think I’ll take another whack at it.  The question as to whether I still have sufficient brain cells to thread my way around it and whether those brain cells can retain it remains to be seen.  But it might be fun.

So, amid my other occupations I’ve added electronic technician and math student.  That should make Thanksgiving week an interesting time.  Maybe I’ll buy the microswitches and soldering iron on Black Friday and get some huge discount.  I’ll probably also have to buy some kind of giant magnifying glass on a flexible arm just to see the attachment points for the switches.  It’s a pity I can’t purchase new eyes too.  But once again, the future we were promised all those years ago before Blade Runner hasn’t quite materialized yet.  Well, no need to get all whiny about it.  Magnifying glass works too.

So here we go into Thanksgiving Week.  Turkey, gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie, old movies and family.  What’s better than that?

19NOV2022 – OCF Update

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Today I escape from The Compound and bond with the old grandsons.  We’ll watch pathetic superheroes skitter around the big screen and eat some popcorn and then hang out at my local steakhouse and talk about their latest adventures.

It’s a source of wonder and joy that they actually like me.  Reliable sources inform me that’s not a typical result.  So we’ll spend some time and absorb some calories and maybe fifty or sixty years from now when I’m just a headstone in a field one of them will have a stray thought about me and maybe smile.  That would be perfect.

So things will be a little slow starting out today.  Enjoy your Saturday.

Per Un Barbiere di Qualità!

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Princess Sack-of-Potatoes’ birthday party was a great success.  My daughter’s in-laws were very congenial and we all good-naturedly performed all the kids’ party rituals.  We dutifully sang off key to ‘Happy Birthday” and applauded the blowing out of the four candles.  We watched as the cake was cut and the opening of the presents and even a spirited game of pin the tail on the donkey.  Only for some unknown reason it was tape the nose on the clown.  This particular clown looked like some kind of nightmarish psychopath which I found quite disturbing but the kids were unperturbed.

When we had all eaten enough burgers and potato salad and cake and ice cream and all the presents were opened the parents gathered up their kids and headed home.  Camera Girl agreed that the event was a great success and we began some of the clean-up.

But I was in the mood for something interesting.  Lately I have been watching YouTube videos of the operatic aria “Largo al factotum” from the Barber of Seville.  It’s the song that everyone remembers from various classic cartoons of the 1940s that has the famous stanza, “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ipb9xbXSAY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJIpVj_YkNo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKDXr_fimQ8

I watched about a dozen different versions, some going back to the 1920s.  And it occurred to me, “What an interesting character Figaro is!”  Here is the swaggering braggart.  He is a big fish in a little pond.  In his own mind he is a hero, a Hercules of a thousand great labors.  He is always in demand and always acclaimed by the crowd.

And of course, he is merely a legend in his own mind.  His actual trades are barber, dentist, wig maker and a sort of go-between for couples in love.  He passes love notes and such things.  So, he really is a nothing.

But he has a quick wit, the gift of gab, a way with women and enormous self-confidence.  And putting those things together creates a formidable character.  Some people may recognize someone like this.  I knew someone of exactly the type.  They always have a treasure trove of amazing personal stories.  And their personal lives tend to be an awful mess.  They combine recklessness, selfishness and even a bit of cruelty along with their natural abilities as a clown, a skirt chaser and a leader of the riff-raff.  In many ways they are fascinating personalities but they leave a trail of angry women in their wake and never seem to grow up.

And it occurred to me that is why I enjoy the aria.  I recognize the type that Figaro is the symbol of.  And the scene captures that reality splendidly.  And the music is wonderful.

And what a great character he would be to put in a story!  Somehow, I’ve got to have a swaggering braggart in one of my stories.  It would just be too great a thing to ignore.  And in fact, I need him to be a recurring character in a “world” that I make.  It will be a sort of an homage to an old friend that I knew long, long ago in a place far, far away.

Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo!  Fortunatissimo per verità!

12NOV2022 – OCF Update

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Today is Princess Sack-of-Potatoes’ birthday party here at the Compound and there will be about thirty people and I’ve been elected to grill duty.  After a day of heavy rain and wind we’ve been blessed with sun mild temperatures and a light breeze so everything looks good.

So stay tuned.  I’ll be back with some things to say later on.

Election Day in Dunwich

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Election Day was my first day at my new gig as Dunwich Deputy Election Scourge.  My job was to apply a gigavolt prod to the Great Old One voters to keep them moving in the chutes.  To some people this might seem a little odd.  Well, most towns don’t have Great Old Ones (GOO) as a component of the voting population.  These must be given their own separate line and voting booths and kept under tight control or they would escape the line and begin eating the humans.

Things went very well all morning and at 4 pm I was starting to think we’d get through the day without any trouble but at 4:20 pm we had our first incident.  One of the high school ballot checkers foolishly leaned up against the steel sides of the chute while drinking a Diet Pepsi.  A tentacle wrapped around her ankles and dragged most of her through the space between the steel guard rails.  Four nearby scourges began firing on the GOO with their prods while the Chief Scourge shouted in an Australian accent, “Shoot her, shoot her.”  But it was all for naught.  The ballot checker had long since disappeared into the florescent green maw of the GOO, never to be seen again.  All that remained of her was a dismembered hand with shiny blue nail polish still holding a bottle of Diet Pepsi.  The clean up crew kept carefully outside of the safety lines that surrounded the chute.  Needless to say, morale amongst the election checkers plummeted.  Buffy had been a popular member of the team and would be missed at the high school senior prom.

But we redoubled our vigilance and kept a close watch on the younger volunteers to prevent another regrettable incident.  When it was 7:50 I began to think we were out of the woods.  But in the final minutes, disaster struck again.  A final GOO entered the chute and headed for the checker area.  When the Checker went through the list there was no record of Azathoth (sometimes referred to as the “Blind Idiot God”) ever having registered in Dunwich.  This was not well received by that symbol of primordial chaos.  But before the checker had a chance to state that same day registration was now a reality in Dunwich, the monstrous nuclear chaos from beyond angled space punched a ten-foot hole through the hardened titanium wall and flattened the unfortunate checker into the concrete floor with an invisible limb.  It then began pulsing energy in all directions, preparatory to collapsing time-space and thereby forcing Earth through a singularity.

Before we retreated out the rathole I punched the upload button to preserve the ballot data.  Then I hit the timer for the tactical nuke and released the goat blood into the floor trough to distract the GOO and give us a chance to escape.  One minute later the bunker we had entered was buffeted by the fifty-kiloton detonation.  A few minutes later we exited by another tunnel that opened about five miles from ground zero and we proceeded above ground to election HQ to fill out the paperwork and tally the votes.

An irate state election rep who had received a complaint from Cthulhu called to officially chastise the town for gross discrimination against a protected class (GOOs), levy a fine and strip us of our status as a sanctuary city.  We absorbed this abuse, finished up the election tally, submitted it to the state and to the press, licked our wounds and headed home for a very late dinner.  Well at least Azathoth didn’t get to vote.  That bugger is a well known progressive and it was already a pretty bad night for the Right so every little bit helps.  Some of the Republican Town Committee tried to blame this on Trump.  You can’t please some people.

Politics sucks.  Next year I’m hoping to get on the town road crew instead.  It doesn’t pay as well but they don’t have to wear radiation badges and necklaces of garlic and wolfsbane.  So you have to take that into consideration.

Progressives really are monsters when it comes right down to it.

07NOV2022 – OCF Update – Election Overload

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So today I was at the election setup from early morning till night.  Coming home by the light of the bright full moon I was decidedly overwhelmed at the prospect of another thirty hours of this relentless marathon.  I’ll be very glad when it’s in the past.

Posting today and tomorrow will be by necessity minimal.  But after tomorrow and a good night’s sleep things will return to normal and I’ll have something to say about the results of the election and what that means to us all.

So bear with me and we’ll get back together soon.

06NOV2022 – OCF Update

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Today is a family get together.  Lots of quality time (and store bought pizza!) with the grandkids.  So an interesting mix of family fun and indigestion.  I expect it won’t be a late day because tomorrow is school for the kids.  Which means I’ll post something later.  I ahve another rmovie review.  I bought this book on gangster movies and I’ve trying out some of the picks.  It’s definitely a mixed lot but I intend to soldier on for a while.  Next up is In Bruges.

The news items continue to indicate that the Dems are going to get their butts handed to them on Tuesday.  Surprisingly I expect to be the least plugged into the elections I’ve ever been because I’ll be … working on the election!  Maybe this will provide a different perspective for me on what these events tell us about our country.  We’ll see.

So, stay tuned and I’ll try to maintain some semblance of continuity on the site as I become flotsam in the Dunwich election tsunami.

A Day in the Life – photog Interrupted

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I’m back, I’m back!  I was in election jail.  I was being trained.  Oh, the horror, the horror.  Please pity me.  I will live to regret getting involved in this flying circus.  No power in the ‘Verse will be able to make this turn out right.  But I’m committed and the wheels are in motion.

That was last night.  Today I was out of state and helping out a friend.  It involved travelling through rush hour traffic on an alternate route with too many lights and not enough lanes.  Just my luck the main highway had a major accident and copious amounts of traffic spilled onto the road I was on.  I watched in horror as my remaining time and gasoline trickled away into history as I sat in crawling traffic.  The magical E mark on the gas gage and the digital clock on my dashboard competed for my attention.  Finally, the gas gage won and I exited into a station.  Imagine my horror when the gas pump refused to work!  It would deliver about eleven cents worth of gas and then the valve would bang shut.  Like some pre-technological savage, I mumbled some kind of incantation to the gods of petroleum and performed mysterious wrist turns to put the gas nozzle at some undefined angle to align the earth and the flow mechanism to ensure a sacred resonance that would grant me more gas.  After ninety-nine cents of gas had been delivered (or more likely, had been falsely charged) I gave up.  As a beaten man I returned to the road and its molasses-like flow.

My anger was increased when I observed that there had been no increase in the remaining milage in my tank according to the gage’s wisdom, none at all.  Those eleven cents-es were completely false.  If any of the people on the road were watching me at that point, they would have seen someone screaming to himself and gesticulating like a demented idiot at his dashboard and this witness might have been tempted to call the police for my own good.

When I finally reached my destination, I was a half hour late and below E on the gage.  Luckily, the time limit turned out to be either incorrect or a ruse to get me there sooner.  This caused very mixed feelings in my soul.  But eventually I saw the humor (somewhat).  And once the race was over the rest of the errand became suddenly stress free and enjoyable.  It was another one of those beautiful fall days that inexplicably appear out of the teeth of typical drab New England clammy cold.  It was sunny and in the mid-sixties.  I had a nice snack and very good cup of coffee before heading home and at the next Mobil station I filled the tank with no other pain than the usual financial outrage that is now the standard reaction to life in Creepy Uncle Joe’s America.  Now with the needle on the right side of the F, I drove with a smile in my heart and a country song on my car’s music system.  It was Tobey Keith’s “Red Solo Cup.”  And in my new-found joy I sang along with Tobey and suddenly I hadn’t a care in the world.

When I got home Camera Girl saw what a good mood I was in so she told me to empty the mouse bucket traps in the sheds.  Well, that brought me back to reality.  Nothing like bloated soggy rodents to put things in perspective.  But still.  It was a bright warm day and the crows looked happy to see my dead mice down by the swamp.  The circle of life, and all that.  And I saw some good comments on the site and I was reminded that Senator Murkowski is about to be fired in favor of someone on our side of the fence.  And that cheered me up quite a bit.  And tonight, is split pea and sausage soup which is a very hearty and savory delight.  So even though the day was interrupted, I feel that life provided the right ingredients for a successful foray into the world.  Life is good.

Happy Halloween 2022 – This’N’That

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The last day of October is cool, bright and breezy.  Camera Girl is out and about returning a DVD player that I bought that didn’t work and as it turned out we didn’t need.  I’m supposed to be filling out an asset statement for a business I’m starting but it’s so boring I can’t keep my concentration on it for more than thirty seconds at a time.

We’ve got a bunch of Hersey’s chocolate bars and M&M candy bags ready in case the grandkids show up in their costumes.  Living out in the boondocks where there are no sidewalks means no actual trick or treaters ever show up at our Halloween bedecked door (ah well).

Camera Girl has been feasting me of late on a number of soup recipes that she’s been playing around with.  She made a minestrone with escarole added in.  She has a split pea and sausage soup and later on this week there should be a chicken and butternut squash soup on the stovetop.  These soups are splendiferous and are partially responsible for me not falling into despair over the pathetic condition of our fallen republic.  It’s almost as if these soups are an antidote to Joe Biden.

Tomorrow I have to report for duty on the election and I will be assigned the most important tasks; probably sharpening pencils and placing tape on the floor.  If nothing else it should be interesting to see just how fouled up elections are in Dunwich.

The hubbub over Musk taking over Twitter is interesting.  If nothing else it will make news blackouts less effective.  For instance, when Pelosi’s husband was “attacked” there were a lot of sources on Twitter commenting that the whole thing didn’t add up.  Even Musk hinted that maybe Pelosi’s attacker might not have broken into the house but been let in by someone there.  Before the sale Twitter might have made it a policy to delete any tweets that suggested this or even closed the accounts of those who tweeted it.  But now it’s out there for everyone to read and laugh about.  So when Joe Biden tries to tell us that somehow this is January 6th all over again the mockery overflows.

I was on my weekly zoom with the coffee walk guys and the idea of the San Francisco Militant Nudist as MAGA extremist was just too much.  They were laughing so hard they were practically crying.  The jokes about the exact nature of the hammer went on way too long.  The consensus was that Old Paul was in a dispute over Terms of Service.  He may have exceeded his milage limit or something and didn’t want to incur any extra charges.  Customer service is a dying art.

Then the conversation turned to the elections and I complained that the way things are looking I might not have an excuse to give up on the Republicans yet.  One of the guys pointed to a few pretty good candidates and told me to suck it up and hope for the best.  I have to admit there are some tiny rays of light out there.  Lake is a good example.  So I kind of grudgingly agreed.

This is going to be a busy next week and more.  But it could also be filled with interesting occurrences.  Who knows, Joe might even start a war.  But I think we’re all hardened to whatever outrages the Biden machine will commit.  So Joe, “send in the clowns.”

Burn It!  Burn It All!

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Ah, the heady days of our civilizational maelstrom.  As the world we knew is ripped to shreds and flung around us in centripetal chaos I can recognize fragments of familiar things flying by.  Sort of like the images that Dorothy sees in the scene where she is riding in the tornado and sees her friends and relatives float by in a rocking chair or a row boat.

You recognize some normal American ritual or an icon of a former day.  There’s a flash of recognition and it triggers some reflexive emotion or thought.  And then it flies by and is gone and the reality of being spun around in a howling cyclone of fragmented bits of the former reality returns.

But when we’re not fighting for our lives, human beings have to search for the interesting and enjoyable things around them.  Even in hell there must be a coffee break where people gather around the water cooler (or battery acid cooler) and shoot the breeze.  It’s just the nature of the beast.

You know I really enjoyed thinking about the minutia in the giant ant movie yesterday.  Thinking about the characterizations and the movie conventions that they employed back then was the most fun thing that I have thought about in weeks.  And it occurred to me that here is so much substance, so much American-ness in these old silly things from sixty, seventy years ago.  And not because there’s great art on display.  This is a story about giant ants.  Nothing more absurd is imaginable.  Nothing less important exists.  And yet the people who wrote the script and acted the scenes managed to do a good job of creating this ridiculous world that they were employed to create.  The guy who played the booze-soaked hobo in the hospital ward was highly entertaining.  The general working with the cop to operate the bazooka for the phosphorus bombardment of the ant nest was amusing in his portrayal of upper management trying his hand at a front-line task.

Maybe that is what the future looks like.  We’ll be like the medieval monks copying and illuminating fragments of the classical world to preserve something for when the rampaging vandals have run out of places to sack and burn and whoever is left sets about the hard work of rebuilding civilization from what’s left of the wreckage.  So, I’ve found new direction in celebrating whatever fragments and shards of the old order strike my fancy and even any worthwhile new shoots as they present themselves.  Certainly, it’s an uphill battle while the orcs are still busy burning and pillaging all around us.  And from time to time, we’ll have to put down our quills and cap our inkwells and pick up a battle axe and shield to fend off the latest incursion of rampaging savages.

But there is absolutely more sense in celebrating the things that give meaning to life and to enjoy art; high or low, than there is in just bemoaning the destruction and dwelling on how low we have fallen.  After all, no one threw a switch one day and ended the dark ages and began the renaissance.  The knowledge was always there.  It needed people who were willing to apply that knowledge.  It needed human ingenuity and imagination and a little breathing space between them and the nearest barbarians.

So don’t be surprised if I sound a little happier.  Sure, the orcs may win this war.  Our whole civilization may come crashing down in an orgy of death and darkness.  We may be on the cusp of a millennium of ignorance and misery.  But as Hurin said in the Silmarillion, “ Aurë entuluva!”, “Day shall come again.”  It seems inevitable that human intelligence will persevere over entropy and stupidity.  There is in life that which strives against chaos.  I’ll bet on us.

Now, let’s take another look at that giant ant movie.  Have you ever noticed how annoying the girl scientist gets when she’s down in the ant nursery in New Mexico?  She starts yelling at her colleagues, “Burn it!  Burn it all!”

I mean who the hell is she?  Especially since Ben and Bob are going to have to haul her fat butt up several steep inclines by rope to get her out of that cyanide laden death trap.  It’s not like she has the upper body strength to get herself out.  She could at least act a little more polite.  An incipient girl-boss even back then.  Ah well.