Expl*sives, Home Improvement Stores, and Vacation

Your love is like   gingivitis

• So this Air Force targeting AI had a success rate of 25%.
• However it thought it was 90%
• Air Force being a microcosm of government

The problem here, and there's always a problem, is that work is forcing me to take my vacation days or I'll lose them. I thought I had a few.. it turns out I've been off most of December.

Back when I was unemployed, I featured content for each day. While I will try not to do that on each vacation day, I will get some vacation content in. And when I say vacation content, I mean stuff I might be forced to do while forced to take vacation days.

You see, the reason I have so many vacations days left is that I don't take vacations. WHAT - you ask? Who TF doesn't take vacations?

That would be me, as I mentioned above. Please try to keep up - there will be a quiz at the end of the blog.

There's always a reason we can't vacation. In fact there are just two:

1. money
2. the dog

I know vacation sex is awesome, but it's a distant memory, as we haven't had a vacation since Bush the Lesser made up some stuff to invade one of those countries beginning with I. You have to picture this: I'm ok flying, but Mrs. lefty is not, to the point where the attendant asks me to have her stop trying to roll down the windows in-flight or they will. As we get in our seats, the captain announces we have gone to war with the I country. Mrs. lefty was not impressed. After we gave her the entire bottle of pills the doctor gave her, she was still ready to run up and down the aisles, inviting everybody else on the plane to put their hands in the air and PANIC with her. She's very considerate that way.

So we don't get out much.

As of this date, I am 'stuck' with two weeks of vacation. While this would be hitting the lottery for most people, I am not most people. I have approximately two states: working and sitting. Since I won't be working, I'll be sitting. All that unstructured time will not be a positive thing, especially for Mrs. lefty.

Is it time to go to work yet? Is it time to go to work yet? Is it time to go to work yet?

SHUT. UP.

What is there to do?

We can go to the mall, the other mall, your favorite restaurant, the other restaurants, the guitar stores, the other guitar stores, the outlet mall, visiting and being social, getting some home improvement supplies...

NO. I don't wanna retail therapy. I REALLY don't wanna be social. Haven't we been married long enough for you to know never to suggest that?

I wanted to see if you were listening.

Apparently I was (mistakenly) listening.

Hey, I know... we can do some big projects around the house. We have lots of time now.

Which malls did you say we could go to?

I have a whole list of projects that you need to complete around the house...

I am allergic to work. Exercise causes cancer. Manual Labor was a Puerto Rican. Ladders make me dizzy. Work makes me sweat, and you don't want a sweaty spouse.

The list keeps getting longer. How do you expect it to get shorter?

By hiring people. I look at it this way... if we pay an expert to do it, it will cost less than me making the attempt, failing miserably, then having to call the expert. Dammit, Jim, I'm a knowledge worker, not a doctor.

Maggie's husband replaced her whole kitchen. All I'm asking is to replace the water spigot.

The entire house is non-standard. Last time I tried to replace an outlet, it had 220 volts, instead of the normal 120 volts. I don't know crap about plumbing, but I know enough to know the faucet will be connected up with WWII bailing wire and the standard faucet connector will need a flamethrower to make it fit together. I like to think of myself as smart enough to know what I don't know.

What you don't know is a very large topic. How about the rafters?

Look, I just bought more life insurance. It is in my best interest to stay off ladders. On the bright side, I'd probably fall off without you even having to saw through most of one ladder leg.

The air conditioner?

It's December. Do we really need to use the air conditioner?

Take this stuff to the basement.

We already can't walk in the basement, due to your 'stuff.'

We could have some sex....

I have a backache. HEY... YOU'RE TRYING TO TRICK ME!

Instead of telling me what you can't do, tell me what you can do.

We could go to the guitar store.

You mean the one that never has any left handed guitars, that you complain about all the time?

Let me think about it. Hand me my laptop and I'll sit on this chair.....

[2 weeks later]

Honey... Honey... time to get up.

What time is it?

It's January - time to go back to work.

Nah, I don't wanna go to work. I'm tired. Can't I just lay back down for a little while?

• Astronauts require 20.20 vision, but space tends to wreck it. 
• So in order to preserve vision, someone invented a sleeping bag that helps prevent degradation by squashing the eyeballs.
• Sperm count has been kept high by new exercise equipment that squashes the testicles 

Today I identify as  Spring

• Never a blog entry without Tesla: Paris' largest taxi firm suspends cars after a fatal crash that killed 1 and injured 20
• the data hasn't been examined yet, but the driver claimed he lost control of the car
• reached for comment, Elon Musk said, "Hey, any other car would have killed 1 or 2 people - the Tesla killed 20. Tesla's doing Big Things in a Big Way.

Something shifted within the fabric of the Universe the other day.

Did you feel it?

Long after I got into computers, someone asked me about 'cable control.'

'WTF is cable control,' I asked myself. Unfortunately, the question got lost among the many other questions that were being asked at the same time in my head. It's very busy up there.

A few years and some cool internet dictionaries later, I figured it out.

And when I say I figured it out, I mean I can recite the definition, but I still don't fully get it.

My personal definition of cable control is trying desperately not to trip over them. I evolved, because man does not improve himself as a human if he doesn't evolve, and upgraded the definition to trying desperately to hide the cables so no one trips over them.

This, of course, resulted in years of laughing, finger-pointing, and Lemon Face at my attempts. It turns out you not only have to hide the wires, sometimes you have to tie them together and make everything pretty. 

Small wonder I didn't get it: I don't do pretty. I am not pretty. My wires aren't pretty. When I built my last tube amp, my tube buddies looked at it in abject horror because it wasn't neat. Hey - ya know what? It works and sounds great, up yours. There are only a few places where specific wiring is needed to keep noise down - nothing else. 

So did you feel the disturbance in the Universe?

When I replaced my monitor cable, I used a cable tie to keep it neat.

just kidding. 

I mean, you've seen Albert Einstein, right? The man looked like his hair was about to take off in 360 different directions at once. Yet he was kinda smart. What benefit do I get from cable control in my house? People might see it and not be horrified. This is precisely the opposite reaction than I was going for. If I don't have wires all over the place, people won't think I'm a mad genius. But none of us will trip over it, which is the main point. Or at least one of the points. I won't trip on it because it's (hopefully) hidden. Other people won't trip on it because I don't allow them in my office. Or in my house. Trust me - it's better this way.

We just don't bother having many people over. It's only because I'm embarrassed about my lack of cable control. It has nothing to do with the ICBM parked by the couch, the 74 Camaro sitting vertically by the dining room table, the large red air compressor in the living room, the luxury liner still hidden somewhere, and the fact that the shoe room was declared unfit for habitation, so many of the shoes started migrating to other parts of the house. Thus far I've been successful in keeping them out of the sink, but I still have to contend with the pens, pom poms, and pets I haven't been informed about. In fact, no one even asks to stop by. People are always very keen to invite us to their place. When my nephew was very little, he came by and I swear, it looked like the house scared him. He was bundled up and swept away very quickly, just like the president when he gets upset.

We haven't really told anyone about the mice either, but the whole block is getting them. The few we caught looked small. Mrs. lefty made perfect sense out of this by letting on that they're babies. Oh shit - if you have babies in view, there are many you can't see. Or was that ants? You can't let them get past maturity or they lay eggs. She insists they're nocturnal but I strongly disagree: we couldn't test medical things on them if they were asleep, could we. And they're not going to pay scientists and staff time and a half to come in at night, when the mice are allegedly active.

It's not stressful enough to have rodents in the house (unless they're guinea pigs), but we have a dog who catches them. And when I say catches them, I mean outside. Inside she runs around excitedly. I'm not saying she's spoiled rotten, but if she can't get to the mice, she whines at them. This is a dog that was bred to flush woodcock out of grass for hunters to shoot. I strongly suspect they did not flush the cock by standing near them and whining. Nature is amazing.

• PowerPoint presentations from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies indicate that the company has a larger role in China's surveillance efforts than was previously known
• To the people complaining about the government getting rid of Huawei equipment, read it and weep. It doesn't take an expert in war to know you don't put the enemy's gear in your systems.
• to prolong the pain, the government is giving ISPs huge amounts of (tax) money to replace this gear.

Dehumidifier Number Four is starting to get noisy. This is not good, as this typically means they're on their way to the Great Dehumidifier Heap in the Sky. I'm surprised it lived four years. It's so humid here, I'm surprised it didn't cough and die the moment it was turned on. I hope my wife doesn't apply the same logic when I start to get noisy. Just kidding - I'd have been out of here twenty years ago if she did. A direct quote: We don't own the house - the house owns us.

• next time you call someone a brain surgeon or rocket scientist, you may not be complimenting them.. a study found neither are necessarily more clever than the rest of us

Because it's so stupidly humid, I was researching power banks the other day, between yelling at the dog not to whine at the mouse and yelling at my computer's trackpad, threatening it with a very large, very sharp knife. Power banks are a funny topic. You could spend years researching them. Since I understand banks and a little about power, it only took me a few hours.

WARNING to the iPeople: all of the banks say they're completely compatible with your iDevice. Of course they are... once you put out $30 for the adapter cables. Out of over 1,000 banks, two came with lightning plugs.

The first thing you need to know is that you don't need to waste your time - go out and buy a home generator for when your power goes out. But if you absolutely must have a power bank, you need to check the mAthing. If it's significantly over about 30,000, they're playing with numbers. Buy the best you can afford, like any other good tool, guitar, or shoes. 10,000 is pretty large. Your need is determined by your usage, in such a ridiculously complex formula, it's better to just make up the numbers.It's like this:

Customer: I need one of those power thingies.

Clerk: a power bank?

Customer: I think that's what it is. Let me call a few girlfriends to ask them.....

Clerk: No need. How large do you need?

Customer: I dunno... I'm thinking something I can put in a medium-size pocketbook

Clerk: What kind of load?

Customer: That's a pretty personal question.

Clerk: how many things will you plug into it?

Customer: Wow.. like... a lot.

Clerk: I see. You'll need our 10,000 mA unit. I don't want you coming back to complain. Or for any other reason.

Load is calculated by the POWER THE THING USES over the square of WHAT'S LEFT IN THE BATTERY AFTER THE KIDS USED IT AND DIDN'T RECHARGE IT, times the number of adapter cords you'll need to make this happen (that you can't find, although you swear they were in the junk drawer, next to the batteries for your... never mind).

Yeah, so buy a good one. Don't buy it if you can't pronounce the brand name.

You can now get them with solar chargers attached! However, there's some small print. Unfortunately it's so small, no one in the family can read it. Even your magnifiers can't read it. So small, even NSA satellites can barely read it. Let me save you the bother: Hello ladies and gentlemen. We are including this solar charger because it looks pretty cool, pretty green, and will make you feel ultra-proud of yourself, as if you're doing something to combat climate change. In reality, you should probably know that the best charging idea is to plug it right into a wall outlet, or even your computer. Charging time for this device, using the solar method, runs between twelve hours and two weeks, depending on your climate, how close you are to a window, and who's watching you and will give you a hard time if if fails to charge automatically. We recommend using the solar charging method only in emergencies, like nuclear war, tornadoes doing a Kentucky on your ass, or when your kids knocked out the electricity in the house (again) and you're too embarrassed to ask the neighbors.

NOT FOR SALE in Pennsylvania (It's Never Sunny in Philadelphia), England, and the Pacific Northwest, where suicide rates are the nation's highest because they never see the sun.

You can also buy full fold-out solar charging rigs, which will cut the recharge time from two weeks to fourteen days. If we mentioned anything about running your fridge from it, that was Leroy. You see, Leroy isn't having a good time of it at home, and occasionally prints something ridiculous and 'forgets' to delete it. Just take it in the spirit of joking around and please don't sue us (again).

NASA's Parker solar probe became the first spacecraft to touch the sun.

You're probably asking yourself how anything touched the sun and lived to tell about it. The probe is made of a brand new supermetal called Clintonium: nothing sticks to it and it can survive the heat of the actual sun.

• Bruce Springsteen sold the rights to his music to Sony for $500 million. 
• In my opinion, they overpaid by about $499,995

Dear Internet:

With the year 2022 fast approaching, I wish to unreservedly apologize for everything I said and did in 2021. It was classless, I was drunk and/or on drugs, I was stupid, it wasn't meant to be videoed, the sleeping meds left me without a memory of what happened, it wasn't supposed to be included in the interview, I did it 25 years ago and shouldn't be held responsible, it was the first time I ever heard of sexting, how was I to know you're not supposed to say c*nt? These apologies are subject to addition in case somebody else gets their panties in a twist. Thank you and goodnight. Asshole.