This past week I received a snail mail from my best friend and cohort in sci-fi/fantasy/folklore nerdism.  Hadn't heard from him in a long while, since he's been without a computer or internet access for some time.


Not only did he send a letter, but also a massive tome entitled The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.  A pleasant surprise.  I've always thought I should have something about Tesla in my library.  I only hope the technical stuff isn't too far above my head.  Sure, I graduated from electronics tech school as the valedictorian with a 4.0, but that doesn't mean I'm up to Tesla's level.

So how did I end up a meter reader if I have an associate's degree in electronics engineering?  I spent pretty much all of the 90s putting the education to good use.  In the very same month that I made my last education loan payment, I was laid off.  I took it as a sign.  I was already completely burned out on working a bench job for several years, and I think I was going a little nutty being cooped up in a radio-proof cage for all that time.  I decided it was time to take a turn toward the kind of life most of my male ancestors lived (who I know of), and started looking for something that would keep me outside and improve my physical conditioning.  So here I am.

My father worked for the highway department pretty much all of his life.  His father and my great-grandfather were pretty much jacks-of-all-trades, doing what they had to to provide for their families.  On the other side, my other great-grandfather was a carpenter.  In fact, carpentering has been prominent on both sides of my family, but I seem to have not much talent in that area.

Anyhow, here's hoping he gets his email set up soon, and if you're reading this, I will try to write a letter back pretty soon.

Spread ant poison, overlayed it with one pass of flea and tick killer just for kicks, strategically placed a few ant traps, mowed the grass, sweated like a politically incorrect term.  Now the kids can play on their swing set again.

I need to buy more fire ant poison.  I usually use Amdro but any recommendations will be welcomed.  A couple of passes around the house twice a year keeps them at bay, but I'm behind schedule this year because of all the rain.

I'm done for the day, except for probably having to take some OTC allergy dope after mowing the grass.

This post at Baboon Pirates reminded me of something I saw once.

Back when I was a teenager I was fishing in the Cibolo Creek down south of Stockdale.  It was one of those hot summer days so I wasn't interested in doing much moving.  I hooked a small leopard frog and ran the float out so the bait would be several feet deep and let it drift into a big hole, going for a good blue cat or maybe a yellow.  So I was sitting there just watching the cork float when I noticed a squirrel walking out on the limb of a pecan tree nearby.

This limb was already hanging very low, just above the water, and as the squirrel got farther out on the end of the limb, his weight made the tip of the limb dip into the water a little.  He backed up, I guess not wanting to get himself wet.  I watched him for a few more minutes, and finally noticed what had gotten his attention.  A pecan had somehow gotten lodged in a fork between two twigs sticking out of the end of this branch.  Seemed like the squirrel had his heart set on that pecan.

But the trouble was, every time he walked out on the limb, it would dip down into the water again, and he would run back toward the trunk.  And then out of the water would come the end of the limb and that pecan.

Finally he must have screwed up his courage enough and went for it.  All the way to the end of the limb he went, and when he finally grabbed that pecan he was a good two inches or so deep in the water.

And that's when it happened.

An enormous blue cat erupted from the water and took that squirrel off that limb.  It wasn't much of a fight.  A big splash, a few bubbles, and that was all.

I was astounded.  I had never seen anything like it.  I had never heard of anything like it.  If anyone else had been there to talk to, it wouldn't have mattered, because I was speechless.

Well, I didn't have anything else to do so I just stayed there and left my hook in the water, although I didn't hold much hope of catching anything with a skinny little frog after seeing that catfish eat a squirrel.  And then something even more amazing happened.

That blue cat swam back up to the surface and stuck that pecan back into the fork on the end of that limb.

Hard work today.  I have no energy for blogging or even reading blogs.

I will say that I still have had no replies to the emails I sent out.

Oh yeah, I also got rained on today.  Of course.  And it stayed so humid and cloudy that I never dried off even when it stopped raining.  It was like working inside a pressure cooker.

The Edge has a very interesting article written by Freeman Dyson, Heretical Thoughts Abut Science and Society:

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

That's just a taste of a long article that should be taken in in full.  Non-scientist sci-fi fans may recognize Dyson's name.  He's the guy who conceived the Dyson Sphere.

I know I haven't done much on the blog this week.  I've been kind of running out of steam.  Also I had to work today (Saturday).  One Saturday overtime per month isn't too bad.  It gives me just enough extra money to make the payment on the new air conditioner that I hadn't planned on buying just yet but had to anyway.

I've also just started playing around with some freeware called Page Plus SE--the non-pro version--which is a desktop publishing program.  Several years ago I put together a sort of chapbook using nothing but Word.  It was a major ordeal, and in a computer crash (the old desktop) I lost all my custom formatted templates that I had made.  I'm hoping this Page Plus will make recreating the book a little easier.  I do still have a few copies of the old book still laying around here.  I think I managed to print up 7 or 8 copies.

Today I broke out an old fanny pack to try carrying work stuff in.  It's from Uncle Mike's, and is blue denim, like jeans.  Has a velcro quick-release pouch for a handgun, plus two other compartments.  Today I just carried a flashlight, my cell phone and some Sqwinchers in it, but it was actually pretty comfortable and didn't get in the way like I thought it would.  I've had it for years.  One of those things I bought to try out and never got around to it.  Now I'll have to see if it's easily washable.  It should be, since it's just denim.  I don't suppose washing will damage velcro, will it?  I think it would probably be a good idea just to hang dry it, and not put it in the drier.  I wouldn't want the velcro to get full of lint.

Maybe I'll come up with something more pertinent tonight, after I've had a nap.

Looks like a joke, but it's not.  This ad for an Australian movie to be released on August 16 kicks off a survey of mutant/monster animal terror films at Cryptomundo.

Such movies never did anything for me, I must say.  To me, they're all just sort of boring (and usually stupid) and not worth wasting time on.  However, the thought of mutant killer sheep really cracks me up.

Note they don't so much fly as plummet...

This just cracked me up.  From UPI - British pubs in need of aromatic makeover:

The Sunday Times of London said a lack of cigarette smoke in British pubs has revealed the quite unpleasant odor of sweat and stale beer, prompting one company to begin placing fresher scents inside the pubs its manages.

Included among the unique smells now filling Mitchells & Butlers pubs are freshly cut grass and a pleasant ocean breeze.

Oliver Devine, a marketing manager, said such smells became necessary once the true smells of pubs were laid bare by the smoking ban.

"Appetizing food smells have increased but others are less attractive, such as stale food and beer, damp, sweat and body odor, drains and -- how do you put this nicely? " Devine said, "flatulence."

I'd take the smell of Escudo over flatulence any day.  Heck, I think I'd even rather smell Half & Half.

Fresh cut grass doesn't do a thing for me.  That smell is nothing to me but a signal that I'm about 5 1/2 seconds away from a minor allergy attack.  And as for "pleasant ocean breeze," I assume they've somehow managed to create it without any trace of dead fish.

Via Nobody's Business.

Check out Esquire's list of The Seven Wonders of the Totalitarian World.

The new Seven Wonders of the World are nice. Too nice. These seven wonders aren't, celebrating the greatness that men do in the name of evil.

Via Dark Roasted Blend.

The dice that I thought had been stolen many years ago have been found.  I must have stashed them away and forgotten they were there.

My wife, while looking for something else, found a plain white box which held an old USA puzzle that I used to play with as a kid, some Yahtzee scorepads and a set of standard issue Yahtzee dice, and a whole bunch of polyhedrons.

The original red dice that came with the Basic D&D set are in there--the ones made of plastic so soft that the corners rounded off as you used them.  Plus two or three full sets of other polys that I used for DMing, and my special two sets, one white and one transparent--and set apart in a small leather dice bag, that I used when I was a PC instead of the DM.

Also there are 2d6 that are black with a skull and crossbones in place of the one-dot.  I don't remember where they came from.  I probably picked them up because they looked cool or something.

Now I guess I can start teaching the kids how to play Call of Cthulhu.