All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
If any features or functions on this site seem to have stopped working, let me know. Today I was having problems with what are called plug-ins and I had to deactivate them all and reactivate the ones I want working. The problem is over the years I’ve added way too many of them (25) and I can’t even remember which ones were useful. So unknowingly I may have deactivated something useful.
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We now return you to your original program already in progress.
So yesterday Ithaqua, the Great Old One known as the “Wind-Walker” knocked out my electric power and internet connection. What a vindictive jerk. Well, the generator kicked in but it caught me flat-footed. I hadn’t loaded my post for yesterday or the night before’s, “Photo of the Day.” So, apologies.
I went through the whole dance. I charged up an old flip phone I keep for just such situations and tried calling up my truly useless power utility and my truly useless cable company. And spent about fifteen minutes with each trying to escape from their AI and get information from an actual human being. Completely in vain. The power company told me it was after their business hours so no actual humans at all. The cable company had humans but they are actually worse than the AI. They know nothing, they care about nothing and they sound so bored all I could think of was the, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys. I noticed that both outfits promised to call me when they knew something about restoration of service.
Power returned almost 24 hours later around 3pm today. And ten minutes after restoration the flip phone rang and both companies called to say that service would soon be restored. Words failed me.
Being cut off from television, the internet and any news of the outside world was at first annoying. But by late this morning I think I was starting to enjoy it. I watched a movie on DVD (Mel Gibson’s Hamlet) and some music on an MP3 player (Traveling Wilburys) and felt relief that I wasn’t entranced on YouTube or X. But all too soon Camera Girl saw a convoy of utility trucks heading down our road. So, she dared me to get up and follow them. I drove about a mile up the road and there was a truly colossal white pine being sawn into manageable pieces and stacked by the side of the road. An hour later the generator cut out and the phone started ringing and civilization had me by the throat again. Oh Ithaqua, we hardly knew ye.
So now I have to find out what I missed. As far as I can tell, nothing. Democrats prancing around trying not to look irrelevant, ridiculous and despicable, but failing. Trump and his merry band running around breaking stuff and calling out world leaders as losers. Cable news companies firing their half-witted staff by the bucketful. Check, check, check. So basically, nothing happened while I was hurled back into the nineteenth century (well, kinda).
But there was some progress. We got some warmer (if windier) weather and the majority of the ice melted off the bottom driveway. So, I went out there with various shovels and hammer-sliced it off the blacktop and piled it on the grass. And I went to see what condition the west field was in. It’s the wettest area of the fields and in spring it can be 6-8 inches of mud that makes it a bad idea to walk on it. But it’s drying nicely and maybe tomorrow I might go back there and cut down the older raspberry canes and put down fertilizer for their spring growth. And I took out a pair of binoculars and looked at the trees and sure enough the buds are ready to bust open anytime now. So, ignoring the world for a day was a great thing as far I can tell. But I’m back and ready to chronicle whatever tomfoolery the usual suspects get up to. But it’s good to see the world is finally shrugging off winter and Dunwich is ready for spring, renewal, new life and all that crap.
This is an explanation for the “Test” post today. I’ve been struggling to eliminate delays in posts showing up on the front page of the site. There’s a thing called caching that cuts down on the site server’s work and therefore makes the site quicker. But if it delays updating the site then folks don’t see the new content quickly. I’m fighting a war to get the cache purge to happen every fifteen minutes. I may have succeeded but only time will tell.
And now I return you to your regularly scheduled test pattern.
If you attempted to access the site today for some period between 9am and 10 am EST you may have seen the dreaded 404 ERROR message on your screen. And so did I! A week or so ago I upgraded my site. I needed more memory and resources.
And so for a day I experienced some wonky stuff where my posting disappeared and my hair fell out and I turned into a werewolf briefly. But then everything was okay. Well, today I was on-line and doing this and that when suddenly my connection to the site turned into that 404 ERROR message. I tried the limited things I could think of and they were completely ineffective. Then I went to my site host and started crying and shrieking and after about an hour of fiddling with settings it got fixed.
They never warned me this was going to happen. To be fair it’s more complicated than that. They didn’t check to see if I had a particular firewall arrangement that has to be aligned with any changes to the host IP address. But as everyone knows I’m the lamest web master in the multiverse so there was no chance of me anticipating the problem that came up.
Anyway, apologies for any interruption to your viewing pleasure and back to the show.
I’m upgrading my plan with my site host. Of course after I approved the plan I get a message saying it’ll take two day to implement and by the way, don’t modify the site in the interim or the changes may be lost. If in the next couple of days you notice any monkey business this is likely being caused by “progress.”
Well, what did I expect with AI is “helping” me. I’m starting to wonder if there really are any human beings on the other side of the wire.
At this dawning of the rolling year, it is more than normally desirable that we make some slight provision for improving our behavior. Some people try to lose weight or stop smoking. Others look for a better job or start a hobby. I’ve vowed to finish my book. And to accommodate that effort I will be clearing the mornings for writing and editing the book. This may impact my posting schedule (from time to time) but I think it’s necessary. Time slips by too quickly if there are too many competing priorities.
Now I don’t intend to abandon the website. OCF will have its daily photo and quote. And whenever something needs my approbation, scorn or explanation I will promptly respond. And I will link to anything that I think interesting or thought-provoking. But when there’s a slow news week and I’ve already gassed off about the usual suspects I may just take a pass. On days like that maybe I’ll link to a song I like or a clip from a movie that makes me smile.
And from time to time, I’ll put up a chunk of my story to get feedback from the readers here. And I’ll write about writing sometimes!
So, none of this is dire. With Trump entering the White House in a couple of weeks I’m sure I’ll have all kinds of stimuli for posts that will make it impossible to do my fiction writing work. After all, the world is drifting into troubled times and that is sure to goad me into taking to my little soap box and barking out condemnations and propounding simple-minded plans of action.
But I do see that I’ll have to prioritize writing if I ever hope to finish that darn book. I do think there is some writing in me. And I won’t know how hard or easy selling books is until I give it a good old American try.
As for the news today, we’ve all been watching the attack in New Orleans and then listened to Biden try to string a few dozen sentences together without sounding like Max Headroom (and failing). I love how he tells us the guy is a follower of ISIS but not to jump to conclusions. So, because he’s a Moslem whose parents came from the Middle East and he’s declared jihad on America we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that he’s an Islamic terrorist? Would that be insensitive to the various followers of the religion of peace? Well, never mind. Biden is so laughably irrelevant that he might as well have started to read from a Dr. Seuss book as the words of that speech his handlers handed him. More interesting would have been a statement from Trump advising the federal law enforcement agents not to destroy any of the evidence before his team has a chance to see what really went on. Well, this is a small part of what I expect at the border for the foreseeable future. So, it barely merits comment. Let’s pray nothing bigger is in the wings.
And just to show that my heart is in the right place, I’ll put together a few things that might lighten your day.
Well, another day in captivity. But there is the possibility I’ll have at least most of Saturday off. Surfacing and looking around I see that the consensus is growing that Trump is leading Harris in the swing states. So, of course that means Harris declares him Hitler. Well, as anyone who’s been on the internet for a few decades knows when you pull the Hitler card you lose. But it’s always fun to see someone bring back the classics.
Honestly, all of the “drama” in the last week and a half of the election is overblown. Harris is an unlikable person who comes off as a phony and an emotionally unstable individual. Really the only question is whether the Democrats have alienated enough of their base to lose so conclusively that normal voter fraud will be insufficient. And since half the polls are rigged, we’re just going to have to wait until election day (or later) to find out.
Well, I’m fine with that. I just hope the Democrats are out of snipers. Trump is doing a rally in Madison Square Garden and there isn’t anywhere to hide on that stage if someone sneaks a gun in. But let’s assume they’re not stupid enough for a third try. Honestly, if anything like that happened to Trump at this point, it really would tear this country apart.
Well, anyway, that’s where the election is right now. In my circles I can tell that the rank-and-file Democrats are very, very nervous. So, I’m just ignoring all the horse race stuff and shrugging off all the “convincing” arguments about why one or the other of them is going to win. It’s mostly just whistling past the graveyard.
It turns out the Yankees managed to get into the World Series this year. Back in the 1990s Camera Girl and I followed them very enthusiastically. But since Major League baseball started allowing their players to take a knee during the national anthem, I swore off all the sports games. So, she was watching the game tonight. Well, she fell asleep and I was writing my post and in the bottom of the tenth down by one run and with two outs the Dodgers get a walk-off grand slam. Poor Camera Girl.
So tomorrow I plan to enjoy all of this unseasonably warm weather. I might even try to photograph some of the remaining autumn color that put on such a nice display when I couldn’t shoot it. I’ll try to find an opportunity to make a few macro focus stacks with the new firmware programming. Of course, everything is turning to mush after the frosts we had last week. But who knows with all this heat the bugs and critters might be reawakening. Now they’re predicting something like eighty-degree weather for Halloween. That would be something. But I’ll still be trapped inside so it might as well be Antarctica as far as I’ll be concerned.
Something occurred to me while I was perusing my Complete Shakespeare. The Honeymooners is sort of a reverse version of “The Taming of the Shrew.” Basically, Ralph Kramden has set the male sex back about four hundred years. Over and over again Alice proves him wrong and shows him to be a pathetic loser. As much as I like the show, it is interesting that the Honeymooners is the template that all modern art uses to describe the relations between men and women. It’s certainly not a flattering paradigm for us.
You know, maybe it’s time to revive Shakespeare’s play. We may have reached the inflection point where giving the girl bosses a taste of their own medicine might be the best action. Even though I’ve never had to beat Camera Girl, I don’t see any reason not to reinstate the rule of thumb. I’ll have to write at depth about this in a couple of weeks from now.
Well, I’ll leave it there. Enjoy the day. I know I will.
As previously whined, I am entering an extended period of limited access to the internet and limited time to post. I will check as circumstance allows but it will be inadequate. I’ll catch up at night and try to provide content but I predict quantity and quality will suffer.
Apologies from the management. On with the show!
Ah, the calm before the storm. I have this weekend completely off before the next seventeen days of misery and isolation. So, I’ll enjoy these two days to the hilt and then, “abandon all hope ye who enter here.” For what it’s worth it seems like Trump is enjoying himself a lot more than Kamala. Her cackling has diminished and her ranting seems to have replaced it. From everything I’ve heard she is a truly awful person that makes those around her miserable. If she loses, I wouldn’t be surprised if her marriage ends and many of her other connections to human society.
The latest “controversy” is that Democrat voters will be using the branding ,LA (get it, comma la) on their clothing to get around the restrictions against wearing the candidates’ names or images at the polling place. So, we’ve reached back to, I guess, kindergarten or at most grammar school in our tactics. What’s next, will the Democrats be telling “yo mamma” jokes?
Anyway, the weather around Dunwich has been remarkably mellow for this time of year. I understand we’re expected to have a string of three or four 75-degree days ending on Tuesday. That’s phenomenal. But because I’ve gotten used to fall weather, it’s almost too warm for comfort.
I wrote that post about Sony adding focus bracketing to their firmware update for my A7IV camera. I intended to wait until after my captivity before updating the firmware but it’s killing me to not try it out. I think I’ll bite the bullet tomorrow morning. I have this dead luna moth that I found this summer and I’d love to play around with focus stacking it. Well, we’ll see. Tomorrow is a busy day. We have a kid’s birthday party coming up and I’m sure Camera Girl has a laundry list of honey-do’s lined up for me. And honestly there are several things I should be working on anyway. So even if I update the camera I may have to wait.
It should be interesting to see how the country changes regardless of who “wins” the election. I think there’s a growing cohort that realizes that something is very broken with our whole social order. The fragmentation now extends to a polarization by sex. Younger women and men are lining up in opposition to each other philosophically. I really do believe we are seeing the beginning of a permanent split. Basically, women who have accepted the new template for living for a career will not be having children. And that means that men will have to find wives who want to have children elsewhere. I guess mail order overseas brides will become more the rule than the exception and over time the cat ladies will die out. Well, that’s a solution of sorts.
The “October Viewing” movies has been fun for me but it’s gotten me thinking about what a monster is. Is it only freakish creatures like Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster or can it be a man like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates? Obviously, the actual humans are scarier because they really exist. When you hear about the things that Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer did to their victims you understand that inside they truly are monsters. So maybe creating fairy tale creatures like the movie monsters is a way of distracting ourselves from the true horrors that we don’t want to contemplate. But our society has grown up and now we prefer to scare ourselves with realistic monsters. I remember when I read Thomas Harris’s “Red Dragon” back in the 1980’s it struck me as an interesting crime story and nothing more. But when I thought about the way that that the murderer selected his victim families by working in a photo lab that developed family home movies, it chilled me to the core. If a motivated psychopath could select his victims without any direct connection to him then how could anyone hope to protect his family from this random agent of horrifying destruction? Basically, you can’t. Random chance rules all of our lives. That I found horrifying. So maybe I should include “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs” in my October Viewings. Or maybe that would take away some of the fun. Well, October is waning I better hurry up and make up my mind. What do you folks think?
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
After yesterday’s post I received several communications from readers outraged at the manner in which such a venerable and iconic entity as the First Selectman could be allowed to leave this continuum. Many simply refused to believe the facts such as they are and hang onto hope that Cthulhu lives. As the quotes above attest there is a tradition that Cthulhu can remain inert for literally billions of years and still reanimate and wreak a terrible vengeance on mankind when the stars align just right (or just wrong).
Well, I will not speculate at this point on the Great Old One’s chances of resuscitation. As Hamlet very cleverly noted, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And if we add to heaven and earth the depths of hell, then we begin to list the span of infinities where knowledge of the First Selectman can be hiding. And since I already miss the old villain a little bit, I’ll keep an open mind as to his chances of reintegration. Let’s leave it there for now.
I have finally completed the herculean task to which I was yoked. My spirit, such as it is, has rebounded measurably and I look around me to see the state of life in the here and now. I note the same stale prattle about polls and bickering with the names Trump, Harris, Vance and Walz attached. Frankly all of this is too tedious to even consider. Let all of that stew for a while.
The summer wanes and school children are already frozen with existential dread at the approach of Labor Day. But, this time of year is not without its charms. I was forced to rise hideously early Tuesday morning and so I was out and about before 4:00 am when I happened to look up at the sky and was struck by the brightness of the stars and planets and their inspiring beauty. If I had not been on an unavoidable mission, I might have stood there for a quarter hour and marveled at this arresting vision. At that moment I was reminded of this aspect of reality and how these incomprehensible phenomena we call stars can be both the source of our lives and these beautiful beacons that light up the night sky that we so rarely bother to view. So out of the most tedious and soul-crushing activities it is possible to experience a moment of primal joy and wonder.
But now I’ll spend a day or two catching up with my various duties. Bear with me as I take up again the reins of my daily routine and restore order to my life. I must write and trim some posts and schedule them and I must read up on any “news” I might have missed and try to draw inspiration from my surroundings and the important things that need to be said and done.
So good morning!