It's Never Too Early (to Be Late)

From Austin, Texas to the world (and back to Houston) here's Stevie Ray Vaughan, playing Texas Flood.

• If I understand this correctly, the lovely FLOTUS got on a plane for Houston and the press blew up because she was wearing heels. This is what passes for journalism (and political discourse). The real fun came later in the day, when Boy George said he wouldn't hear of Melania bashing.
• Ladies and gentlemen, we are observing history as it happens... the republican party is inclusive of gays. Some gays are voting republican. A musician has said something positive about a republican. Republicans are repeating what he said. The whole world has gone topsy-turvy. Dogs sleeping with cats, sun blocked out, people with eye injuries after the sun was blocked out...
• The dems are automatically obstructing everything, having taken over for the republicans, who did it during Obama.
• No, nothing's going to change as far as we are concerned: we'll still get screwed.  But if someone told you, twenty years ago, that gays and republicans would be playing together nicely, you would have had them committed for their own good.

Selena Gomez's Instagram account was hacked, resulting in nude pictures of Justin Bieber being displayed for a short period of time. This is not related to The Fappening and the account was restored quickly. These celebrity accounts are falling like dominoes. Funny as it may be, if you don't take security seriously enough, you will be next. I don't care how many Bieber nudes you have - I don't want to see them.

• With the Horrors in Houston, once again Amateur Radio has stepped up and helped. Like 9-11 and Katrina, these amateurs (hams) put their operational skills to work. Radio works when cells go down or are overloaded. It works locally to globally. Even the government (uh-oh) recognizes the value and has contributed financially to the effort.

The hearing-impaired dog just went off like an alarm, in Attack Mode<tm>. The mailman showed up. Normally Marshall sleeps by the door, just feet away from the mailman. Today he happened to be monitoring from another spot and actually saw the home invader mailman, setting off the Dog Alarm. I haven't heard that in a long time. It was nice and everything, but I didn't really miss it.

• The Definition of Marriage: I get homicidal when I hear JG Wentworth commercials. So she sings along with them.

The NYPD will be tossing 36,000 Windows phones after a year because Microsoft has decided not to support the phones. Way to go, Microsoft! Do you have any idea what the phones must have cost the NYPD?  Rest assured this contract came through friends, so there was significant money involved (plus who in their right mind purchases Windows phones?). Now they will have to purchase another 36,000 phones. If I were a NY taxpayer, I'd be pretty upset. This is a valuable, visible lesson for any governmental purchase; this stuff goes on all day, every day.

• When Life Gets Tough - annoy people. It's good for your spirits.

The Bed
I live in a non-standard household.
No, really?
Really.
You're putting us on.
No, really.

The house is non-standard. The occupants are non-standard. Even the dog is non-standard. The neighbors are non-standard. Even the sun is non-standard, in that it won't shine in the house. Seriously - light doesn't penetrate the house.

Ok, perhaps that's not the sun's fault.
The house came from a kit. Believe it or not, stuff got delivered and someone built it. It's pretty interesting, if you think about it. It's still standing, which is very fortunate. Unfortunately the person who assembled the house seemed to get everything right except for one small niggle: the house got turned around. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he was dyslexic. Maybe some neighborhood joker turn the plans around when he stepped away. Maybe he was $*#@ing stupid - I don't know. The end result is that the house is perfectly set up for a vampire - the sun doesn't get in. While my deathly pallor has caused some to accuse me of sleeping during the day, perhaps in a coffin, this is not true. Although I may try to avoid direct sunlight, I do like to know it's still out there. And none of it gets in, although I'm sure the siding is always warm.

Where was I?
Oh yeah, non-standard.

Being married to a non-standard wife is... well... non-standard. She has The Mother of All Sleep Disorders, which means she has to catch it where she can. This frequently means she's in bed before I am. I have no problem with this - I'm used to getting in bed in the dark. I spend a large portion of my life in the dark - why shouldn't it extend to the bedroom?

I wouldn't dream of turning the bedroom light on and waking anyone, especially the dog, so I always walk into a dark room. This would be no issue for normal people, but as I said, we're non-standard.

Like Charlie Brown kicking the ball, I assume, foolishly, that there's a clean path from the door to the bed. If there were enough light for video, I could produce some classic video. Maybe some of that green video that you can shoot in the dark.  The first obstacle I have to look for is Marshall, who may or may not be a few steps in, completely blocking access to the bed. Trying to be a good person, I really attempt to step over and not disturb him. This is sometimes funny when he's not there and I wind up stepping over nothing. This potentially sets me up for a great stumble, turn, stumble, fall.. right into bed.

Well, maybe not directly into bed. Something will invariably will have appeared in front of the bed. How it gets there, I can't even begin to guess: maybe stuff rearranges itself when the lights go out. Maybe there's some Quantum Rearrangement happening... this isn't my field, so I feel it best not to spend too much time on it. It would only hurt. So I trip on the dog that may or may not be there, stumble, turn, stumble, trip, teeter, then fall onto the bed.

While I'm falling, I have to worry about the Quantum Spaniel, who may or may not be in the bed already, whether or not I tripped on him when he may or may not have been in the way of the bed. For someone who isn't in the field, I sure deal with quantum physics a lot.  So Marshall may be laying at the foot of the bed, or on my pillow. I have to fall in a way that I won't fall on top of the poor guy.

The wife has not moved.

Now that I have done the Bedroom Dance across the entire room, I find myself (or most of myself) in bed, hopefully not on top of any living being. Regardless of marital status, it is unacceptable to land on your spouse for most, if not any reasons.

If Quantum Spaniel wasn't at the foot of the bed, he is snoozing on or about my pillow.  At this point it's ok to wake him so he'll move his fuzzy butt out of my way. So now he fakes sleep and plays stupid. Huh? You want me to what? Get up? MOVE? I don't understand. Say it a few more times. Gently tap my butt, so I can continue to pretend I don't understand. I can figure out how to get all sorts of things outside my reach but I'm really stupid when I don't want to leave your pillow.

FINALLY he moves to a different spot and I settle down to Blissful Sleep.

No I don't.

Stuff appears in my bed. Different Stuff than appears on the floor. Sometimes a pile of clothes. Last night, several packages of new sheets. Maybe a towel. Some books. A chainsaw. The odd bit of jewelry. Colored markers.. there's no telling and no reason for it.. the stuff is just there. The only thing these have in common is that they quickly become airborne, accompanied by screaming (usually mine).

The wife has not moved.

Along with the screaming is the nightly Litany of Self Pity. There's no written version but it goes something like this: GOD $(#&ING DAMMIT, CAN'T I GET INTO $&#@ING BED JUST ONCE WITHOUT THIS #&@&ING NONSENSE? IT'S DARK AND I DON'T WANT TO BOTHER ANYODY AND ALL I ASK IS AN UNOBSTRUCTED PLACE TO #*@&ING SLEEP. NO DOG. NO CRAYONS. NO CLOTHES. NO CHAINSAW. I WORK ALL DAY AND ALL I ASK FOR IS A BED I CAN GET INTO WITHOUT PAIN OR OBJECTS THAT DON'T %*#&ING BELONG THERE. I ASK FOR VERY LITTLE - AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I $(#&ING GET.

The wife has not moved.

Sometimes I do a little reading from my phone before I nod off. As soon as I silently click and the light comes on, the wife startles and sits up. NOW she sits up. The words are always the same: "What's wrong?" Nothing. "Oh."

The Sleep Number mattress leaks, but only my side, so I have to pump it up. She sleeps through that too - or at very least does not hit me with a cast iron pan, which is also in the bed, for reasons no one can explain.

Hey Fatass - The Shorts....

It's getting warmer and more sunny, which can only mean one thing: air conditioning. Ok, air conditioning and leaving the house. Two things: air conditioning, leaving the house, and hamfests. THREE things...

For newer readers, a hamfest has absolutely nothing to do with pork or pork products. Hams are amateur radio operators and this is, for lack of better term, a radio and electronics flea market. There are many across the US at different times, weather depending.

A hamfest is a unique event. World War II was also a unique event.
Let me try this again. A hamfest is a wonderful insight into a universe you've never seen or possibly heard about.

Unattached ladies - if you're looking for Marriage Material, or are horribly desperate, this is the place to be.  You can peruse all sorts of men and pick one who matches your standards and likes. You can find overweight men, overweight men with suspenders, grossly overweight men, and men on scooters. Dark-haired men with short hair, dark-haired men with long hair, many gray-hairs and the odd gray-haired man with a pony tail. For the entire time I've been attending hamfests, I can recall one man with blond hair. I have no idea why this is.  Some of these fellas will probably die quickly, leaving you the insurance money.

As for men looking for women, you might as well go buy a single winning lottery ticket at your local convenience store. At certain events, Mrs. lefty was one of two women. This is a big plus for women, because you're going to be the best-looking woman at the fest (if not the only woman). The one or two there seem to be spouses or vendors. Having said that, there were a lot of women there today. It was bizarre. In addition to being stared at by lots of men, Mrs. lefty was stared at by women, mostly with sour, jealous faces. Some women are weird.

It's not that there are no women in amateur radio - their ranks seem to grow yearly. You can routinely turn on your receiver and hear women locally. You can also hear local men, gabbing about nothing with the women, all of them sounding like women. One must take a test to operate these radios.



Hams go back to the beginning of time, or rather, the beginning of amateur radio. Some operated in the military, some picked it up as a hobby. Some built radios themselves, out of scrapped televisions and other electronics. They did what was necessary. They are quite a crafty lot. Possibly because of this, they are cheap. Oh my dog are they cheap. As bad as you've seen it at any other flea markets, hams can sometimes take it to their own exclusive level.

For a group that's almost one hundred percent gentlemen, there is some rude, confusing behavior. They walk right past you, as if you're invisible, and stand there at the tables, blocking all views of the merchandise. Maybe this happens at flea markets in general, I don't know. If a new vendor shows up late, they go into Swarm Mode and attack. You can't get within ten feet of the new table.

And what can one see for sale at these events? I think there's a word limit on blogs. The obvious would be radios. Lots of radios. Tons of radios. Radios in all shapes and sizes. Very expensive recent radios and some ancient tube radios that weigh just under one hundred pounds and are referred to as boatanchors. Then there are parts of radios: tiny little resistors, capacitors, coils, transformers and bits of this and that, some older than me. Tons of tubes, almost none of them useful, unless you like to fix really old televisions.

But that's not all! I like radios, to be sure, but there are so many weird objects, some completely unrelated, that make things more interesting. Did your VCR from the nineties crap out and you need one to transfer tapes? There were ten there, with remotes, in great condition. Computer buff? There are a lot of old, refurbished computers for sale, as well as old networking equipment. Old cables, old monitors, and really old cables. Old mice, old software, old peripherals. A huge box of cassette adapters from when you'd plug your mp3 player into your car stereo. A large collection of 8track tapes. Military surplus hats with the flap down the back so you don't get neck sunburn. Very expensive flashlights that can blind you and tiny laser pointers that can burn a hole through your skull.  Sports baseball caps, old but unused drink cozies, Barbies, costume jewelry, and a ton of old CDs and DVDs (and albums). Even a bunch of sound equipment, removed from several installations. How can one not go to these events?

I bought an SVGA cable, because one of mine is getting temperamental, for the lofty price of two dollars.

I am taking a good-natured shot at radio amateurs. By and large, they're a great group of fellows (and a few women) who would do anything for anyone. Remember: when the cell phone networks went down on 9-11, amateur radio continued to operate. They offer their services in disasters and practice for them so they're ready. Never a penny changes hands - it's completely volunteer by honorable people.

===============================

Since we were hungry and since we don't have them anywhere near us, we stopped at Waffle House. For some reason, this absolutely thrills Mrs. lefty and the internal kids.  We followed two girls in; one tall, the other not. One attractive, the other not. By this point you know that the attractive one is dressed for the weather. The other one, about forty pounds overweight, is wearing short shorts. When I say short shorts, I mean the kind that only barely cover your buttocks. Unfortunately, parts of her buttocks were intent on escaping and were having great success in their endeavor. This might not have been visible from the front, but we had the misfortune to be round the back. Fortunately this did not put us off our waffles.

Waffle House must be an offshoot of Walmart. I say this because of the employees, but mostly the clientele. Every hair color you can imagine, except brown or blonde or red. More tattoos than a tattoo shop. More piercings than Uncle Fester's bed of nails (and those are the ones we can see).

We passed a place called Indoor Skydiving. Good thing I wasn't driving, because I had to sit AND think about this for a while. How do they get the planes into the building? After watching fifteen seasons of Air Crash Investigation, I know this isn't practical. It's also too small for an amusement park ride. I'm told by someone much smarter that there's a huge fan at the bottom, which keeps you in midair, hence skydiving.  I like the plane idea better.

Hamfests and Other Porcine Efforts

Today was a hallmark day of the year: the first hamfest of the season.  For those unfamiliar, hamfests do not actually involve pigs or other pork products at all.  It is an electronic flea market, focusing largely on amateur radio gear.  Since I like amateur radio, scanners, and old shortwave tube radios that weigh more than my car (boatanchors), it's always a fun time.  The internet has largely killed in-person shopping fun so we have to seek it out where we can find it.

Today's shopping extravaganza happened in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at a place called the Grange.  This was far start enough from the house as to start entering the hinterlands, hence the Grange.  We have no granges in my town.  In fact, if I didn't know of this one, I'd say we had no granges in the state.  The date of this particular `fest is always in contention, largely as it always rains on this `fest.  They tried moving it a week in either direction and it rained then too.

What they failed to grok is that this is Pennsylvania, where the state bird is the cloud and the state color is gray.  My house not only has a cloud based largely over it but so does the state.

But enough observationhal humor about Pennsylvania - anyone who has visited it has enough ammunition for days of this stuff.

The only serious problem the radio amateurs (hams) present is that the hamfests tend to start at seven or eight in the morning.  As a musician and dyed-in-the-wool computer geek, I try never to even think about seven in the morning, no less see it.  So after the initial shock of an alarm going off at six in the morning, I somehow managed to find myself out of bed and pointed in the vicinity of the car.  Fortunately the wife was driving, so being asleep was an acceptable option for me.  Not for my wife, though, which is a matter I will not be addressing in an upcoming blog entry.

The weather, albeit cold, was pretty good, as was the turnout.  Both vendors and shoppers were out in full force, even as we were parking.  Hamfests are not only fun, but very interesting places to watch people.  You see all kinds, by which I mean 95% male, 90% over 50, and 99% less than attractive.  In fact, the only way attractive people can get into a hamfest is on a minority scholarship.

Computer goodies can also be found.  And there was good news for computer people: Windows 98 is no longer considered state of the art.

I did see a few boatanchor shortwave radios, including one I really want to get my hands on: a radio called an R390.  Unfortunately it's something like seventy-five pounds and the vendor wanted $600 for it.  I had to leave it there because I left my $600 bill at home.

Just so you think the ladies are underrepresented, there are many items my wife looked at.  She spent a lot of her time pointing out things I missed, like tubes.  It's a great place to find weird tubes.  In fact, guitar players are starting to get hip to hamfests.  I saw a guy who makes guitar amplifiers locally checking things out.

But the people, the people....  today's absolute winner had to be the person I saw across the way.  It was probably the large pink shorts that caught my eye.  I naturally assumed this woman was to be observed (even after I realized this was a guy).  The wide shorts transitioned to a sweat jacket, with a tightly-tied hood and another jacket outside it.  The cherry on the top was definitely the latex gloves.

After meeting a friend and chatting about our various and sundry ailments, I realized that this would be like Disneyland for the right psychologist.  And after throwing in the wife's diagnoses, it could become a lifetime project.

Before we knew it we were hungry for lunch.  And why not - it was almost nine.  Fortunately for us, the Grange kitchen staff had been hard at work for a while, preparing stuff for our enjoyment.  As we moved toward the counter, my wife heard the Magic Words<tm>: hot dogs.  Hot dogs are timeless, so we had to have them.

The nice old lady at the counter had other ideas.  Before I could get a word out, she asked if I wanted the last of the egg casserole.  Or something like that - I couldn't understand her and my wife just stood there looking helpless.  I smiled and my wife indicated her desire for a hot dog.  I seconded.  Unfortunately it became immediately apparent that my request was not processed and that this was to be a memorable order.

We watched as the lady picked up a hot dog.  She asked about sauerkraut, which my wife approved.   `Sally' picked up what I can only describe as a little paper hot dog cozy, put the dog on it, then piled on the kraut.  At this point I can guarantee there were many internal conversations happening and I'm only talking about the wife and myself.  Finally a less flummoxed coworker asked Sally if she had forgotten something... perhaps a roll.  Sally's last remaining brain cell leapt into gear and she offered that something did indeed seem amiss.

Some laughed.  My wife laughed.  I couldn't bring myself to laugh at Sally, as her faculties were obviously on strike.  I simply asked the less flummoxed coworker for a hot dog with sauerkraut and a bun, which elicited joy from all concerned.  Sally went back on Egg Casserole Duty, presumably where she wouldn't hurt anything (except sales).  I discovered the secret to their donuts when I watched them crumbling up Dunkin Donuts boxes.  No matter, we were there before seven in the morning anyway.  My wife will not leave the house without first stopping at the local Dunkin Donuts (HER Dunkin Donuts) for an intravenous refill of coffee.

With all of that hilarity behind us, as well as the hot dogs and both buns, it was time to bid the hamfest a fond farewell.  There will be another at the Grange later this year, round about the time it's getting too cold to continue.  We will return, cash in hand, and ready to get hot dogs.

But seriously, folks, one can procure much more than hot dogs.  There were also sodas.  But I digress (still): we saw radio-controlled airplanes, toys, test gear, power tools, and all sorts of other manly day-out treats for our weary eyes.  It's a nasty hobby but somebody has to do it.

It was a great, strangely sunny day.  We even got to sit on the front steps and grumble about having trouble parking due to the damn church down the block.

But certainly you're asking yourself what other porcine events I attend.  Funny you should ask.  We're but a month or so away from a huge block party/pig roast at which my band is performing.   Yes, you know you've `made it' when you are headlining a pig roast for the third year in a row.  It will be hot.  It will be humid.  There will be pig.  And it will be loud.