After that wonderful Thanksgiving holiday I’m a little groggy from all the food. But we must soldier on. I’ll be out of pocket today for miscellaneous reasons. Hopefully this evening I’ll be able to do a little writing. So hang in there.
Tag: OCF Update
20NOV2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That – Of Mice and Math
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?
12NOV2022 – OCF Update
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.
06NOV2022 – OCF Update
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.
Happy Halloween 2022 – This’N’That
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.”
14OCT2022 – Coming Up for Air
Today the younger cohort of the grandson army invaded the Compound with ruthless abandon and bottomless appetites. So basically, all writing efforts were abandoned and we settled into a format of games (chess, billiards and scrabble), junk food (chocolate chip pancakes, mac and cheese and ice cream sandwiches) and Dinotasia. And it was a lot of fun. The little guys are getting alarmingly good at pool and chess. I find myself feeling more and more like a trapped beast. Their mockery of my performance in these games of skill is becoming crueler. But I soldiered on pretending that I was just toying with them.
Camera Girl spent her time in the kitchen whipping up breakfast, lunch and endless snacks to keep these ravenous locusts from attacking the woodwork and linens. When their mom showed up to cart them off, I collapsed into a pile of shattered nerves and vowed that when they show up tomorrow morning that I will shackle them to the wall of the deepest ancestral catacomb and promptly wall them up. Well, we’ll see. Maybe we’ll skip the Dinotasia. Tomorrow there’s a local soccer game we’re attending with the littlest guy and then they’re back with their siblings for whatever weekend events their parents are presiding over. But I like when we get them in age groups. The older and younger cohorts no longer overlap in tastes and activities. In fact, I suspect I’m no longer grown up enough for the older kids. They’ve outgrown Dinotopia and I’ve started to balk at some of the Marvel Comic Universe that is their staple diet. I’m going to have to pick and choose to find stuff for us to watch together. But we can start thinking about ways to treat them as adults soon. College age grandchildren is something new for me. But we’ll figure it out. Maybe I can get advice on computer coding problems I’m having. It’s sort of a return on investment for the forty-five years I’ve invested in this social experiment. Am I asking too much?
So, I’m way behind my reading for the day and I’ll see what’s worth writing about. What is interesting is a sense of panic seems to be slowly oozing from behind the façade of the fake news industrial complex. It’s as if they’re slowly signaling to the true believers to prepare themselves for the fact that maybe the abortion crusade isn’t going to save them from the Mid-Term wave that seem to be regenerating. For all of the happy talk about Joe Biden’s renewed popularity, inflation is ravaging the household budgets of the working and middle classes and urban crime is frightening the pants off of even the suburbanites who live within fifty miles of the dumpster fires that used to be our cities.
Well, hang in there, folks. I’ll be up to snuff soon and full of annoying opinions and outrageous pronouncements. I’ve got a new movie review and some other stuff coming up and I’ll astound you with my sagacity and perspicacity. And if not those then some other -city words that I haven’t looked up in the thesaurus yet. To be continued.
07OCT2022 – OCF Update
Today was a day of hard labor. Camera Girl cruelly tasked me with completing my various long neglected yard projects. I was like some kind of medieval serf sweating in bondage and there was no reprieve until all was done. But I will confess it’s a relief not to have that stuff gnawing at the back of my mind. I even put up some signs on the road for the Dunwich Republicans. Chances are Cthulhu will eat them the next time he’s walking down my road but hopefully the metal posts will give him gas. When I finished there was barely time for a shower before dinner.
Dinner was splendiferous, only partly because I was starving. It’s really impossible to overvalue a wife whose a good cook. I think the Bible says something about worth her weight in rubies. Well maybe that wasn’t specifically about cooking but I’m sure the Lord was throwing that into the equation too. After all God invented woman as a helpmate for Adam and what’s more helpful to a tired working man than a good home-cooked meal? Of course he could have made them a little less observant of our faults. But all things considered I’ll take the package as it stands.
Afterward, I was too tired to write a post so I watched a Japanese ghost story (actually four stories) from 1965 called Kwaidan. It’s very long and very weird. Now I’m staring at the computer screen and thinking, “I got nothing.” So I think I’ll retreat upstairs and get some shut eye before the weekend. I’ve got no chores to do and no errands to perform so I can produce some clean copy tomorrow.
So tomorrow I’ll be tanned and rested and I’m sure that Biden or Kamala or some other blithering idiot will provide the fodder for a withering attack that I’ll frame in 500 words or more. Have a good night.
03OCT2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That
I find the increasingly surreal reality around me both dizzying and slightly depressing. So, I’m trying to distract myself from it with more pleasant subjects. Last week I started listening to some of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Unfortunately, the library I’m borrowing it from didn’t have the entire four opera set (Sir George Solti’s version) available. In fact, all they’ve sent me so far is the third opera, Siegfried.
As promised, there are a lot of people singing at each other in German with extremely powerful voices and what seem like lots of emotional problems. I confess that my lack of German is hampering my appreciation of the dialog but I found many of the melodic parts of the soundtrack very stirring. I was disappointed that the library didn’t send me Die Walker (“The Valkyrie”). I’ve always admired the Bugs Bunny version where Elmer Fudd sings along to the “Flight of the Valkyrie” with the magnificent refrain “kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit.” It seemed the height of musical sophistication at the time. So far, the experiment has been amusing. We shall see how it develops.
After watching “The Northman” I’ve decided to review some of the other versions of the play, Hamlet. I’ve been a fan of Olivier’s version but I think I want to watch Gibson’s and Branagh’s versions again. One of the only advantages that Branagh’s version had is that it’s comprehensive. Olivier left out the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and although I see why he did it (time constraints) I do miss those sections. Next summer I’ll try to attend a live performance of Hamlet somewhere. There used to be a Shakespeare company in the Berkshires of Massachusetts that I sometimes attended. They were pretty good. I’ll have to see if they still exist and find out if they’re covering Hamlet next year. If not I’m sure some place in New England there is a production. After all it’s supposed to be the best play by the best playwright in the English language. Surely someone is still doing it. My only fear is that it will be exuberantly woke and all the characters will be wheelchair-bound transgender vegans. That’s bound to take away from the dueling scene.
My scorecard for the November elections is kind of encouraging at the moment. It seems like the Democrats are trying to psych themselves up. There’s lots of talk about all these women who registered to vote and all the passion about abortion. But there is a definite sense that even people like Chuck Todd sense a shellacking in the making. Losing the House is already a foregone conclusion. And it’s starting to look like the Senate will also go to the Republicans although whether it will be one seat or a handful is hard to say. What with Mitch McConnell actively working against some of the Republican candidates it’s hard to figure exactly how the numbers will pan out. Mitch really is an awful man to have as an ally. But even he may not be enough to throw the Senate to the Dems while Creepy Uncle Joe is undermining what’s left of Western civilization.
As for the Ukraine war, well that rolling disaster is just another example of the dysfunctional Deep State tampering with the world as if it were their personal Frankenstein’s laboratory. There seems to be no end to their appetite for destruction. But this one may be the payoff. I get the feeling even the Germans have had enough winning. They’re going to go on a low temperature, low power diet this winter and maybe even these true believers may finally say enough. Who knows, even their died in the wool Greens may beg for some nuclear power this winter when their toes freeze off.
Well anyway, that’s what’s going on today. I hope your week has begun well.
05SEP2022 – OCF Update – Laboring Laboriously on Labor Day
Apologies for my tardiness.
Here on Labor Day I toil at clearing the stubborn and laborious kitchen sink drain line clog. So far I’ve expended capital for a new auger, two gallons of drain cleaner and almost all of my patience. The only progress is that clog has gone from impenetrable to semi-permeable. The muck must be breaking up but it is a dismal slog.
And we are due at my daughter’s house in an hour for a holiday brunch. So I have been unable to produce my daily post. Most annoying. But I will have everything well in hand by the end of today. The news roundup I’ve seen is just same old, same old. So I’ll have to think of some interesting things to divert my thoughts from Joe Biden and the decay of the Republic.
Enjoy your morning and we’ll meet back later.
The Hour Approaches
Tomorrow is the flight. In fact, I’m heading out the door in eight and half hours. So, the era of radio silence is upon me. I’ll try to monitor the news in case Creepy Uncle Joe morphs into a giant cockroach or centipede or something. Or if Joe and Kamala resign and Nancy Pelosi takes up residence in the White House. If that happens, I’ll have a lot to say. But short of that I’ll probably be incommunicado for most of the trip. I’ll post pictures as well as I’m able and I may put up some posts with my impressions of the mountain west. The daily photo and quote are already loaded and scheduled for the whole trip.
I hope everybody’s summer is progressing as planned. Unless I’m eaten alive by a grizzly bear, I expect to re-emerge on July 21st revitalized and rededicated to insulting leftists whenever they say stupid things, which is always. I’ll check on the comments so feel free to leave them. This the longest I’ll be away from the site in six years so I’ll probably suffer withdrawal symptoms out there in the wilderness. But it’s probably good for me to unplug and deal with life without the internet for a change.
Hasta la vista baby.