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three days without pills

Paydirt?
Sunday night and I wrote more than one entry’s worth, so I split it in half and will post the spillage tomorrow. Makes things easier for me, and helps to avoid last week’s spotty posting style. This entry can be summed up as a “blog update,” so to speak. The “meat” of it is down below, but here’s a couple shorter updates before we get to that. Enjoy.

First off, an update on my post about my attempts to kill off the bermudgrass armies marching on my front lawn. This past Friday, nearly a week to the day I sprayed, I finally started seeing results. The weedy areas are browning up, but the good turf still looks healthy, untouched. I’m not sure if I need another application or not, I was going to do it on Saturday – but I think I’m going to give it a few more days lest it just needs more time and I over-poison.

Next, remember that ridiculously obscure state-mandated test I mocked when we learned Sharaun would have to take it for her teaching credential? She took two of the three units (the hard two), and, to her immense surprise, passed them both. The day after the test, she came home so bummed, convinced she’d failed. She didn’t even logon to the website to check her scores. But, when the official results came in the mail – she had passed both. It really made her happy, and that made me happy. One more unit to go (the one about songs and dance and whatnot), and she’ll be done.

Flashing waaaay back to the entry where I learned of my allergic-to-cold malady – last week I ran out of my allergy medicines, and I forgot to fill them right away. By the third day without pills, I was nearly unbearably itchy. I itched when I got out of the shower, when I drove to work with the windows down, after coming back into the air conditioned building where my sheen of summer sweat slowly cools off. Guess this nuisance disease is here to stay for a little longer, which really bums me out.

Finally, remember when I told you that Pat and I had talked about fixing up my grandpa’s old highbanker? We were planning a camping trip with a gold panning theme. Well, we finally pegged the weekend for the trip – Labor Day, and on Saturday Pat urged me to bring over the pieces parts of the machine so we could try and get it up and running. My previous description of the machine, linked above, was actually inaccurate. What I was describing was a dredge/sluice combo – where my grandpa’s old equipment is really just a water-assisted sluice, also known as a “highbanker.” It consists of an engine, which runs a pump. The pump sucks water from the river and routes it through a hose to a sluice. You then dump buckets of sediment onto the sluice and the running water powers it over the “riffles” (bumpy-edged stuff) in the sluice. The heavier stuff (including gold) collects at the bottom of the riffles, usually on black rubber mats. These “leavings” are then panned to reduce them to the “take,” or gold. It’s a fairly brilliant idea – elegantly simple.

My grandfather’s old highbanker was in need of some repair. First, we had to ensure that the old Briggs & Stratton motor was still operable. Once we emptied out the old oil and fuel and replaced them with fresh stuff, we mounted the motor to a piece of 1″ board and fired it up. Without much effort, the old motor was puttering away like a champ. Now, let me explain the basics of how the contraption works. While modern power-sluices or highbankers employ a motor/pump combo unit, my grandfather’s solution was simply a small engine powering a stand-alone pump. The two are connected by a drive belt, the engine turning the pump. In my grandfather’s original implementation (which I only know about because I was given hand-written instructions from my mom’s cousin when I inherited the machine), simplicity ruled. Both the pump and motor were mounted to pieces of 1" thick wood, and these two pieces were connected by way of a couple door hinges. When you connect the pump and engine with the drive belt, the two hinged planks can’t lay flat, and the weight of the pump pulling on the hinges provides the tension on the drive belt. Imagine it like this:

I spend too much time in Visio.

With this “clapper board” arrangement, there’s no elaborate mounting constraints to ensure the proper amount of belt tension – gravity takes care of that. Not to mention, you can tap out the hinge pins and separate the pump and engine boards for easier transport and storage (also mentioned in those hand-written instructions). When I got the parts, both the engine and pump mounting boards were missing, as was the drive belt. Pat and I made a trip to the hardware store and picked up some hinges, 1″ board, and a drive belt for an edger. We quickly mounted the engine and pump, and connected them with the door hinges. The gravity-tension on the belt worked perfect! We then moved the whole rig out to his backyard, where we’d be testing it in the pool. We attached the short intake hose to the pump, and dangled it into the pool. Then stretched out the long output hose around to the other side of the pool. Pat suggested we “prime” the pump by pouring some water into the intake hose and pump itself, this way, the pump would start sucking water as soon as the engine started turning it. His suggestion was a good one, as the pump would only start sucking water well after it was properly primed. Once we got it – it worked like a charm. So good, in fact, that we were both surprised by volume of water the little rig was transferring. Some imagey-goodness for your approval:



Affixing the hinges to the engine side of the “clapper board.”

Mounting the pump, the clapper is attached and hinged.


The hinged pump providing tension for the drive belt.

Hoses attached, getting ready for the test.


It works!

Labor Day could be payday if this thing works out right. Well, not really… but it would be super cool to at least get some dust/flakes from the process. I’ll be happy if we find anything. Changing subjects a bit, we’ll be camping for the next two weekends. This coming weekend at Erik and Kristi’s wedding, we’ll be camping on their land – where the ceremony and reception will be held. I’m actually in the wedding, so I’m really excited about heading down. I’ll be taking Thursday afternoon and all of Friday off from work so we can head down early for the rehearsal and dinner, and get in a couple more evenings of camping. It should be a great time, the weather is supposed to be perfect – and they dug a true firepit, ringed in stones and accented with stump-chairs – not to mention the beer. So, wedding camping this weekend and gold-prospecting camping the next. I’m pumped… really looking forward to both.

With that, goodnight or good-day – depending on where you are.

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happy birthday sharaun!

Lil' Chino?
Didn’t write last night because I had nothing to say. Went out for some beer and “networking” after work, ended up staying out late and talking shop with some other work-folk. Nearly Wednesday now… or at least Tuesday night, the week is flying by again. Time for another post, so here goes.

Tonight, Sharaun and I watched some show on the Discovery channel that documented the conception-to-birth process through a mixture of following actual pregnant women and some pretty decent CG animations of the baby’s journey from egg and sperm to birth. It was a pretty cool show, documenting the fetus’s development throughout the pregnancy (do you know I had to look up how to make “fetus” possessive? The whole s-apostrophe/apostrophe-s thing is one grammar concept that I still get confused on). Anyway, the show of course culminated with video of the women who’s pregnancies were followed finally giving birth. At several points during the show, I had to stiff-face back some tears, lest Sharaun realize that the whole thing was so blindingly amazing to me. Crying isn’t something I’m accustomed to, but seeing some of that stuff and thinking about it going on in my wife’s belly at that very moment was just too much.

Oh man, I want this so bad. Honestly, I could watch the Andy Griffith Show every day – I always revert to the TiVo’d episodes when there’s nothing else on. These are even better though, because they’re restored and uncut, containing scenes that even TV Land doesn’t air, and as a bonus have the promo-spots that Andy did for products. DVDs are funny because, for the most part, I don’t care about them. The few I own (less than ten), I never watch. So, I don’t normally desire to “own” movies or DVDs of TV shows. However, with things like this set – and the Land of the Lost set I ordered on impulse – the obsessive collector in me takes over. For the completist, these “season” compilations with full uncut scenes and bonus items are like the Holy Grail. Now if they’d only come out with an authorized version of the Wonder Years… because this one is bootleg as hell.

No visible results yet from the deadly poison I administered to my ailing lawn last week, but I’m still encouraged by stories on the ‘net that mention at least a week timeframe for results, and some at two weeks with a couple applications. Hopefully the death will be widespread and completely unexpected by the weedgrass – I’m thinking shock and awe.

Goodnight.

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dressing the part

I make more money than you.
Monday morning, 7:30am. Guess I drank enough water last night to offset the 12-year scotch that coursed through my system as I finished up and published Monday’s entry, ’cause I feel fresh as a daisy. I’m not a fan of liquor by any stretch, and a “scotch on the rocks” is probably the last drink I’d order by choice. Changing subjects, in her haste to leave this morning, Sharaun grabbed my keys on her way out the door – her own keys being in her purse, which she also took. This leaves me keyless. No way to start my car to get to work, no way to get back in the house once I’ve locked the door behind me. Luckily, there are enough folks who work with me that live near here that it’s not hard to score a ride in. It’s kinda nice, sitting here in the air conditioning, listening to some vintage Cure… almost makes me wish I was friendless and had no one to call to get into work.

Lemme hit you with a quandary I’ve been thinkin’ on the past couple weeks. I’ve been thinking lately about “dressing the part” at work. What I mean is, changing the way I dress to be more in-line with my newly bestowed responsibilities. Using my acute sense of perception, I’ve noticed that most “bigwigs” at work wear decent looking slacks and shirts most of the time. So, while I hate “dressing up,” I’ve been considering changing my daily uniform to something more becoming a “manager,” junior or not. I’m not talking long-sleeves and ties or anything, just something a tad “dressier.” I’m even willing to make the long-pants-in-summer sacrifice for this, that’s how much I’ve debated it. Problem is, I’m torn about actually doing it… being able to see it from two totally different angles…

Part of me thinks this is very logical, something that I should definitely do. I think of a new-hire, fresh out of college, and their 1st impression of me should I be appointed their manager. Here’s a junior manager, wearing shorts, sneakers, and a t-shirt. Is he going to respect me more or less than a junior manager who’s sharply dressed in slacks and a nice polo shirt? As judging-a-book-by-its-cover as it sounds, I think the clothes do manage to communicate some sense of professionalism – lending some “cred” to the manager title. Not saying you can’t be #1 stellar manager in shorts and a ballcap, but I also think that dressing the part may help me actually act the part. Odd as that sounds, when I’m dressed up I feel more important and actually act a little more professional. After all, the saying “The clothes make the man” must exists for a reason.

While part of me does see logic in it, another part of me sees the idea as horribly pretentious. Young snot makes good and all the sudden starts dressing like he’s hot shit. I don’t want that at all. Heck, there are people twice my age who’ve worked here three times as long as I have – and here I go getting some minuscule promotion and start dressing like CEO or something. There’s got to be a happy medium between the two extremes. I’ve considered “breaking in” the new look: starting with one day a week, maybe bumping that to two or three after people warm up to the new duds. I’ve set myself up really, since going from my daily vestments of today to Dockers and buttons each day would be a pretty evident change. What a silly thing to worry about, right? You’d think, but it’s been on my mind of late.

I love the new look of audioscrobbler, or last fm or whatever it’s called now. It’s actually a really cool site. My profile’s been linked in my sidebar for a while now, and I’ve been aggregating stats on my listening habits for a little over two months now. I hope the service stays free; it’d be interesting to go back over a year and see if my listening habits line up with what I say the choice albums were for that year. Right now the “overall” charts look pretty accurate for what I’ve been digging the past couple months. We’ll see.

Goodnight.

Posted on

scotch on the rocks

Glug glug.
Today, no two paragraphs are about the same thing. At least I had some time to write this weekend. Time that should’ve been spent mowing lawns or painting walls or doing laundry or any number of other things – but wasn’t. Tonight was Chivas Regal scotch on the rocks at a coworker’s place for dinner… four of those and the fingers are a little heavy and stubborn on the keyboard.

Got my bermudagrasss killer in the mail the other day, and I eagerly opened the package to find the pint taped securely shut across it’s lid. Anxious to put the stuff down on my weeds, I sat down to read the product label and advisories. Apparently this stuff is the most caustic poison on earth. You can read the warnings for yourself, but this is some evil stuff. When applying, you’re advised to wear long pants, a long sleeved shirt, and special gloves to avoid skin contact. You can’t breathe it or get it in contact with your skin, and God forbid you somehow get it in your eyes or ingest it. You’re supposed to triple-wash the container before recycling, and are advised not to burn it or spray it near irrigation or animals. When I placed the order online, I chose the full pint over a half, thinking that, if I did need to do several applications to get the job done, I didn’t want to run out. Turns out the stuff is so potent, that you use less than an ounce for 1000 square feet of turf – so my $60 pint is probably enough to treat an entire city.

I’m sorry Death Cab, I probably jumped the gun. The more I listen to your new album, the one I panned a last week, the more I realize that my downloaded copy is probably not the real deal. The quality isn’t stellar, and some of the songs sound half-done. If this is, indeed, the studio version and not some comp of demos or whatever, I’m cool with that too. It’s not 100% bad, but it’s not what I’ve looked forward to as a follow up to that album with the bird and string on the cover. It’s slow, and drippy, with only a couple peppy numbers to break the melancholy. Most times, I love the dreary indie-pop, dig the teary-eyed horned-rim stuff… but this stuff is kinda… bland, kinda… vanilla. I’ve got some hope that, when and if the proper album leaks, it’ll be a little more polished and a little more instrumented… but who knows.

I was sitting in church this Sunday, looking down at my folded hands as I often do during a prayer. That’s when I noticed a smallish raised bump on my finger – what I used to call my “writing bump.” A callous from holding my pen/pencil tight as I write, only now it’s merely a dwarfed miniature of what it once was. I just don’t write anymore. Thinking about it, I write so little, I can name the few instances when I do: signing something, such as a document at work ; writing the one check a month for that single remaining bill which I can’t setup for auto-debit; or taking quick notes during a meeting. All of this probably amounts to only a few hundred words per week. Using my hands to write has almost become a thing of the past. I type everything. Back in college, when I would fill both sides of a piece of notebook paper with the step-by-step operations of a laborious LaPlace transform – my writing bump was prominent, well-worn. Since college though, the actual times I hand-write something have dropped so sharply, I hardly have a bump at all.

Goodnight.

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killing spree

Moving and and getting comfy before certain death.
Wednesday night already, week’s going fast. Gonna be a short entry tonight, not much to write about and not much time left to write it. Fell asleep on the couch right after dinner, 8pm-ish, and didn’t wake up until around 11pm. Did the dishes, took the trash to the curb, and logged on to do one late-night work e-mail check and finish up the blog.

I’ve got another trip to Taiwan coming up in early September, and I’m super-bummed because I can’t stay at the Sherwood. For those who’ve never read my Taiwan posts before, the Sherwood is a posh hotel that’s practically across the street from where I work in Taipei – and it’s my favorite hotel ever. Turns out there are several conferences in town the week I’m there, and the hotel isn’t offering their “extra low” company price that week. Since their regular rate is more than twice the discount rate – I just conscience spending that much more when there are cheaper hotels in town. You don’t understand how much this disappoints me, half the reason I look forward to going to Taiwan is staying at the Sherwood. I love the hotel, and I love the hotel bar – where I’m good friends with the staff. I have friends there, I’m comfortable there, and it’s familiar. I don’t want to stay at some other hotel. I even went so far as to have a buddy try and work a deal with the front desk to get me the cheap rate hookup. While he was able to score the company rate for a few of the nights, the hotel wouldn’t give me the whole stay – so it looks like I’ll be staying across town. Great. Now I’ve got to pay for a cab to and from the Sherwood bar to the hotel where I’m staying each night.

The other day I popped my head out the garage sidedoor to throw a bag of trash into the dumpster. For some reason, I stepped outside to survey my bleak and barren backyard landscape. Looking closer at my fence, I noticed a large colony of wasps had setup shop under one of the cross members in the fence. Moving in for a better look, I noticed two smaller hives in the same section of fence. Immediately, I was excited. I love spraying wasps with that long-range wasp spray. For them, a poisony death from the sky; for me, a chance to play God, annihilating an entire city – wasp-Sodom. Standing back a good 10ft, I hit them with the foamy asphyxiator and listened for the “plop” of their flightless bodies hitting the ground as they dropped dead. Wasps that were away begin returning, only to find their under-construction neighborhood is now a dripping mass of death, and fly around in confusion.

Guess I’m going to bed now. Two paragraphs is better than none I suppose. Goodnight.

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dreaming of murder

Bastardgrass.
Came home for lunch today to get away from the cubicle. The bread had little blooms of bright yellow mold all over it, so I made a bunch of little turkey and cheese sandwiches out of Club crackers instead. They were just as good, and they filled me up. My fingers smell like rosemary turkey and pepperjack cheese. Watched a little Andy Griffith (the one where Andy makes Opie give up football to spend all his time studying, and then sees the error of his ways and relents), and then decided to come back here and write a bit before I have to head back. I’m in no rush, work didn’t rest while I did last week and I’m doing double-duty to catch up. I think I’m back in the swing of things, all caught up on mail and working hard to offload a lot of things I’ll no longer be responsible for now that I’m a facnypants “manager.” My goal is to be able to give my focus to the “new” stuff I’m supposed to be doing, and portion out the “old” to others. It’s working… I’m slowly disengaging… but it will take time and effort to fully untangle my previous commitments and set them adrift on their own. I’m still happy though, not burned out yet, and not ready to give up yet – so, bring it.

After some serious frustration over trying to rid my yard of what I thought was a crabgrass infestation, I sat down at the PC and did some serious research. Turns out what I have is actually bermudagrass and not crabgrass at all (actually, I think it was Pat who 1st suggested I may not be dealing with crab, but some other weedgrass). Anyway, after actually going out into the yard and pulling a “runner” to hold up to the monitor in comparison, I was 100% sure I was dealing with bermuda. This beast of a weed has gotten out of control, it’s creeping runners are splayed out onto the sidewalks and driveways in the worst spots, like glaring neon signs shouting “poor lawn maintenance” to the neighborhood. After several unsuccessful applications of specialty weedgrass killers (albeit, most mistakenly targeted at crabgrass), I’ve had no luck stemming the march of this devil across my lawn. What’s worse, I think it’s sucking up all my real turf’s nutrients and making it struggle for survival. I… hate… this… grass.

Yeah, I know, why be this anal about a lawn? I can’t answer that. I don’t know why it bothers me so, grates on my nerves, makes me grumble every time I drive home and see it creeping into my driveway. But boy does it, and for that reason – it must die. So, delving deeper into the bottomless resource that is the internet – I ended up finding what seems to be a miracle product. A specialized weed-killer that specifically targets the bermuda nightmare grass, and kills it dead while leaving desired turf unharmed. Oh, I was doubtful, but I saw pictures folks – real, live pictures of the before and after results. This guy successfully annihilated an infestation that appeared to be much larger than mine. Of course, this godsend toxic chemical isn’t available in stores. But, it’s made right near here in lovely Fresno, and it’s available… wait for it… right through the internet. So, I whipped out the credit card and authorized the ~$60 pint to be shipped right to my front door.

You don’t even realize how utterly excited I am about this. I simply can’t wait to kill, murder, destroy, and/or obliterate this crap. I have fantasies about standing over huge patches of bermudagrass, browning in its throes of death, as I toss back my head in maniacal laughter. I’ll watch you die, bermudagrass, then I’ll spit on your grave. If I can get the bermudagrass killed and green up the real lawn, get a new tree planed where the old one has been long-dead, and do something with my sideyard planter that’s just a weedy pile of mulch – I’ll have a front yard I can be proud of again.

I still haven’t been over to anyone’s place where there’s a scanner so I can scan in Lil’ Chino’s ultrasound pictures… sucks that my scanner is busted.

‘Night.

Posted on

speaking of “watery”

Scooping.
Oh man… Peter Jennings died. What a bummer. My folks were ABC News folks, and I grew up listening to Jennings do the evening news every night. When my turn for adulthood came, I, too, chose ABC News for my occasional didn’t-get-to-check-the-internet-much TV news outlet – and Jennings was still there. I watched the first tower fall live in the top “window” of a Woodstock-style two window layout, the bottom one containing Mr. Jennings. Not like he was family or anything, but something about people who report the news gives me respect for them… like they are so much more “tied in” then us John Q. Publics. Now he’s just another old-timer reference that Lil’ Chino won’t understand, like Cronkite to my generation.

I don’t know what’s up with this new Death Cab album yet, I can’t seem to peg it. For some reason, I can only get about halfway through before I want to switch to something more uppy like the World Leader Pretend or HARD-Fi albums Ben recently turned me onto. Death Cab have always been good for some melancholic languid indie pop, but this album sounds particularly watery-weak to me after the first few listens. Maybe I’ll get over it, it’s not fair really since I’ve not yet once sat down and listened to it once front-to-back. I wonder if any Mr. Gibbard’s radio-success with Postal Service will spill over into this new album? I’m sure that, since they’re now under the major label umbrella, they’ll release a single proper, and perhaps even have some help payola’ing it into rotation. My thoughts are that, from these first impressions, they’d’ve done better commercially riding the last album rather than this one. But what do I know.

11:11pm and I’m working. Trying to get back into the “swing” I was in before strep took me out of the game. Sure, I’m still busy; and sure, I have crap due tomorrow that I’ll be working on tomorrow… who cares. The whole being sick thing kinda forced me to see that the company lives on with or without me, and I’m not nearly as critical as my swollen head may lead me to believe. That’s good, really, because it gives me some leave to slack a bit – and when I say “slack” I mean not work until midnight.

Wow, what a crap entry. Goodnight.