You may have noticed...

...that posting here is getting a little spotty. I still shoot for every day, but right now it's more of a guideline - my internet access is over a mile's drive from the Lair, and if the weather turns nasty - which it definitely will - you may find things getting a bit sparse.

I'm working on getting the whole thing moved over to the Lair, and then I'll probably post so much you'll get tired of it. Till then, please bear with.

Introducing Basie the Wonder Dog!

I took a bunch of pictures with M's Mom's new dog Basie and the boys, but the lighting was terrible and they didn't come out. And anyway...well, this is a family blog. They play dominance games in ways that could make them a floor show in the raunchiest of gay bars.

But he did hold still for one good portrait later...

Remember, children. Mr. Policeman is your friend.

Michael, stop kicking Mr. Policeman.

5-Year-Old Boy Arrested At School

STOCKTON, Calif. (KCRA) -- Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

H/T to Kevin Wilmeth.

The Chain of Obedience

I don't endorse everything these guys have out there because I haven't seen it all.  But what I've seen is interesting.

Rule One for wood stove users: Don't run out of wood.

Since moving into the Lair I've barely cut any wood at all.  My chains are all fairly dull from cutting at D&L's place for their use, I had one session since then and now I'm reluctant to use the chainsaw till I get them sharpened because you take off a lot of use from a chain by getting it really, really dull.

For all that I've been watching my consumption over the past two weeks, and as I expected/feared it's faster than I hoped.  So while the weather is still bearable I need to take the matter more seriously.  Yesterday I finally cobbled together a sawbuck, to allow me to bring logwood home and cut it as I need it.  M bought himself a full-size bucksaw and lent it to me, and I gave it a try.  Cut up a log well enough, but I have to say for all the noise they make (I hate noise these days) chainsaws are much to be preferred.

Of course as a credentialed survivalist I have an emergency backup woodpile, consisting of several discreditably large stacks of old pallets.  But those really are for emergencies, like when I let the regular pile get too low and then get the flu or something.  For now, I'm going out to S&L's place with the trailer after shit-shoveling and pile it full of a bunch of already cut juniper they've been after me to haul off.  Your garbage is my winter heat.

I didn't see that coming...

So now something unpleasant seems to be going on between Click and Little Bear.

Long-time readers know that LB may as well be the issue of Click's own womb, as far as she's concerned.  She has, I'm happy to say, ceased to bring him rabbits of the dead kind for consumption.  But other than that she's his mother and he's her personal monster.

Until last night.

He was lounging on their communal bed, and she was by the door looking out her transparent little cat door, and nothing apparent was wrong with their world, when out of the blue and for no discernible reason he lunged at her and snapped.  Twenty minutes or half an hour later he did it again, sending her flying under the oven, which has become her current hidey-hole of choice.  I don't know what it was about, but she was taking it seriously.  He didn't murderously attack her or anything, but something had him not wanting her near him.  I scolded him severely both times, and both times he looked ... not very contrite.

Later she crept toward the water dish, watching him very carefully.  And he was eyeing her, and I spoke sharply at him, and he turned his head away but things were not right between them.  She's taken to sleeping on the big chair nights, so I wasn't too worried about anything happening overnight.

This morning when I came down they were playing together as if they'd never had a harsh gesture.  I'm confused as to what that's all about.

This is a genuine disappointment.

Ol' Embarrassing Barney isn't going to stay in Congress.

But who will we find to laugh at now?  Seriously, it's like an era is ending.  First Teddy dies, and now this!

UPDATE:  Whew.  On further reading, it seems this will make Maxine Waters the ranking democrat on the banking committee.  So hilarity should continue to ensue.

"Here's to red pens!"

Once upon a time I sort of inherited a company department with a stable of tech writers.  Prior to this I'd always worked alone and this "promotion" marked the beginning of my career's downward slide, because I'm really no damn good at inspiring others to their finest efforts.

But one thing I was always very good at, and considered very important, was copy editing.  "My" new writers didn't agree, and the most controversial and second most painful thing my job entailed was getting them to go along with it.  I actually had a writer who disregarded my wishes to the extent that he ignored the revisions and delivered his unedited draft to the customer.  The customer - who was paying big bux for this - called to express his dissatisfaction with a draft that, among many other problems, misspelled his company's name, in big bold letters, right on the title page.  That guy, by pure dumb luck, wasn't related to the boss which meant I could can him.

Then there was the dissatisfied employee who sent his resume' in answer to a blind classified ad I'd posted, unaware that he was sending it directly to the desk of the person with whom he was dissatisfied.  I marked it up in red pen with helpful suggestions for improvement and mailed it back to him.  Neither of us ever said a word about it.

That was purely the most unpleasant job I've ever held, and I remember it clearly and with not the slightest shred of fondness.  Got to thinking about it while reading this piece, called "What Editors Think of Writers." 

Synopsis: They try not to.

The internets are over here, and the Lair is 'way over there...

Spent part of the morning installing Click's new cat door.  Sometimes I think she damaged her head in transit or something: She's been using cat doors since she was a little kitten, she's very far from a little kitten now, and on her second - not her first, her second - transit she managed to get her paw stuck in the door and it freaked her out.  I had to rescue her that time, and then when she was outside and wanted in she stood outside for damn near five minutes before she seemed to remember that all she had to do was walk in.

M brought me a bunch of hardware I needed for the Lair, and yesterday and today I've been fiddling with sink plumbing, hanging things on new hooks, and the cat door.  Now I've got to drill one last hole for a drain pipe, then go around expending my last can of expanding foam to fill various gaps.  Even after a good night's sleep, though, all I wanted to do after the cat door was nap.  I needed to come here to Landlady's barn to update the blog and find a hole saw, but probably would never had done it except the boys started agitating to do something more fun than lay around.

But in consultation with Landlady, I hope that the dish and modem will soon move to the Lair, and then I'll be able to surf the web in my own anachronistically rustic setting.

Hope you guys are having a nice holiday - all the folks are gone now and I'm probably gonna find the saw, pick up a few things, then head back and make good on that nap.  BTW, I did get a couple of pix of M's Mom's monster dog, but didn't bring the camera with me.  He's a beauty - I'll post the pix in a day or two.

I'm having fun.

Sorry, busy day yesterday.  M's Mom is visiting, she made it for Thanksgiving - which we don't particularly celebrate, but still it's a long weekend so everybody shows up.

M's M has a dog that makes Little Bear look cute'n'little, a Great Pyrenees mix named Basie.  Ghost and LB took to him like a long-lost brother, and the boys have been toodling off to show him all the cool stuff.  Basie's a city dog, never been off his leash in his life and thinks he's died and gone to Kentucky - which basically he has.

Yesterday I had shit-shoveling in the morning and then had to run get the tractor over to S&L's to move a bunch of big tar-covered timbers like railroad ties on steroids to fix an eroded spot on the steepest part of their driveway.  That took a while, so between that and the company I never even visited the internets all day. Hope they were okay in my absence.

Today's likely to be the same, which doesn't matter because I see by my traffic stats that not many people are here anyway.  :)

Move along, citizens. The bad man is gone now.

Crazed terrorist abuses bicycle, authorities react authoritatively, danger is averted.

Scotland Neck Police Chief Joe Williams said they received a call Monday night about a man who fell off of his bicycle and injured himself in the parking lot of the BB&T bank, 1001 Main St. The caller was concerned that the man was drunk.

When Officer John Turner arrived, he saw Roger Anthony pedaling away along 10th Street. He followed Anthony in his patrol car, briefly put on his sirens and lights and yelled out of the window for him to stop, but Anthony continued to ride away, police said.

Williams said Turner then saw Anthony take something out his pocket and put it into his mouth. At that time, Turner got out of the car and yelled for Anthony to stop. When Anthony didn't stop, the officer used a stun gun on him, causing him to fall off of his bike.

Anthony was transported to Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where he was declared brain dead, his sister Gladys Freeman said. He was taken off of life support on Tuesday.

Freeman said her brother was disabled, suffered from seizures and had trouble hearing. She said he was riding his bike home from her house on Sunday night. Anthony lived alone in an independent living community.

Okay, so you saw a guy fall off his bike. The thought occurred to you that he might be drunk. This concerned you so much that you called the cops? I mean, I can sort of understand the cop's actions. I don't like them, but I sort of understand. Acting like a cowardly thug toward someone who seems to be disregarding your authoritah, whether or not he's actually breaking any law, has somehow become standard police practice, and if he dies he dies. Guess next time he'll stop, huh?

Yeah, that's just the way cops think, and I can't even get upset about it anymore. But what the hell were YOU thinking, buddy?

"Never mind the guy with the beard. Well done, Citizen. If you see something, say something."

H/T to Balko.

How do you really feel, lady?

Wait for it.

Aw, hell. The dragons on Pern are wearing black today.

Anne McCaffrey is dead at 85.

I won't say she was my very favorite SF writer, it's been a long time since I read her, because I hate it when they get an idea and then beat it to death as she kinda did with the Pern books. But I did read and enjoy several of them, and The Ship Who Sang was one of my all-time favorite SF stories. RIP.

Seen at Bear's Blog.

I still like my M1A better, but he does have a point...

Hee. They've been tweaking the AR design since the mid-sixties, and signs like this are still needed. Kalashnikov got it right in one.

Seen here.

Her Majesty is Not Amused.

Well, the inevitable feline pushback showed up yesterday afternoon. The boys and I came home after shit-shoveling, I opened the door, and Click shot out like a bullet from the barrel of a gun. She hung around the cabin, ignoring every blandishment and coolly evading every attempt at capture. At first I left the door open for her, but it really is a little cold for that so I compromised by letting the dogs out to keep her company and hopefully persuade her not to flounce off back “home” like she did last time. Whether she likes it or not, this is home now.

After a bit, the boys wanted back in. I invited her to join them and she did so without hesitation, glancing up as she passed me in the doorway as if to say, “On a scale of one to ten, how stupid do you think I am?” I suppose she didn't get this old by offering herself up as a snack for the local predators too thoughtlessly, as many other cats have done in the past.

So clearly the Lair is in immediate need of a cat door. I had hoped to put that off, but not with a whole lot of hope. In the bits of debris that were once the old pantry building on Landlady's Property, there is an ancient cat door. I removed it (breaking the screwdriver right off my BRAND NEW $65 &^%$! MULTITOOL), cleaned it up, and it seems to function okay so I guess it'll do in a pinch. But I'd really prefer to get a new one before I start chopping holes in the Lair, y'know? So I sent an entreaty to Landlady to bring one up when she comes for the weekend, and she has agreed. We just have to survive – and I use that word literally – until then.

Well, this is distressing...

This is my Leatherman PST II. It's roughly ten years old. It's got a lot of wear, but is still fairly functional. I've wanted to replace it ever since I had trouble with the pliers back in the Great Tie Wire Incident at M's Dome, but only just now got around to it. It's not perfect, but it's handy and it works.

This is my SOG PowerLock. It's roughly one week old. I selected it because it was a lot like my PST II, which was long ago superseded by cooler, trendier, less useful designs. Cool and trendy does not really attract me, I just want the tools I want. My principal criticism of the new Leatherman designs is the screwdriver, which now takes the form of a removable/reversible tip that, as Landlady quickly demonstrated, is easily lost.

Unfortunately what I got is not an improvement on that. My old Leatherman Phillips has removed or installed untold hundreds, possibly thousands of screws over the years and remains useful. My SOG Phillips has successfully removed exactly two, snapping right off at the third. And they weren't even difficult screws.

Consider this post a refusal to endorse the SOG PowerLock multitool.

WHO'S "socially maladept?"

He’s a crotchety, socially maladept hermit who lives alone by choice with dogs and a cat...

Boy, you write one little book review...

I think I want to get a tablet.

This problem will eventually go away, but for a while I'm pretty clearly going to have a problem with electrical availability.

One or two CFLs will work fine at any time, even after a very overcast day. When the sun is shining you can run anything the inverter will power, but except for power tools my biggest use times are after the sun goes down and before it comes up. In my mornings I usually have three or four hours of darkness before the sun comes up, I have to be careful or the inverter will start complaining. It complains just before it shuts off. I wouldn't mind that, except that "careful" also means I shouldn't run my laptop.

That wasn't in the plan. More than half my books are in my laptop. All my music. It's the only way I can watch movies. It's not just a writing and browsing tool, but even if it were I often write early in the morning. And of course my laptop's battery is toast, and the "reconditioned" one I bought for it once wasn't a big improvement. I can't get hours of battery life from my laptop.

I'm thinking that for cabin use maybe I want something I can charge during the day and use off-line after dark. At a minimum, one of those tablet things could hold my books and music. I don't suppose there's one that plays DVDs.

Anybody got one they like? And what's the battery life like?

"Lesson of White House Strafing" is that you don't know what you're talking about, Jesse.

Ol' Bugeyes brings out all the ol' historic lies:

Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was arrested in connection with what prosecutors describe as a drive-by shooting in which a semiautomatic weapon was used to fire nine bullets into the White House’s back balcony — where President Barack Obama sometimes strolls on a break. This should get more attention than a passing headline.

Authorities say Ortega-Hernandez drove his Honda to a road about 800 yards from the White House, stopped, and unleashed a volley from a Romanian-made semiautomatic rifle with a “large scope.” The FBI located “several confirmed bullet impact points” on the south side of the White House where the first family’s residential quarters are located.

"A Romanian-made semiautomatic rifle with a 'large scope'" isn't as descriptive as it might be, Jesse, so I still don't really know what sort of rifle it is or why, at 800 yards, he only managed to hit the side of a very large building 'several' times. But before I even read it I know your proposed solution, and it ain't marksmanship training:

This should be treated as a wake-up call. It is time to revive the ban on assault weapons, and look once more at the level of gun violence in this country.

Check out the lies, damn lies and statistics on this one...

Under a federal assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004, there was a 60 percent drop in assault-weapon deaths. We need to enforce universal background checks on every gun transfer and prohibit all violent criminals from possessing firearms.

Nearly 30,000 people a year die as a result of gun violence in the United States. About 100,000 a year are injured and require medical treatment and hospitalization that contributes to our public-health crisis. Fifty-caliber sniper rifles and firearms that combine long range, accuracy and massive firepower are not used for hunting animals — they are military weapons used to hunt people. These weapons can damage large targets, penetrate structures and bring down airplanes.

Wait - I thought you wanted to ban "assault weapons." Now your talking about fifties. WTH? Could it be you really don't care what they are, as long as they're banned? Of course I presume your bodyguards will still have theirs - right, Jesse?

BTW, that wasn't a strafing. In fact at best that was a plinking. This is a strafing, Jesse - if you ever experience one, you'll know.

Water not necessarily wet, says EU.

See, this is why we need government right here.

Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration.

EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

I think the part that most grabs me about this is that it actually took a three-year investigation for them to reach their wildly-wrong conclusion, which they promptly offered to enforce with EU guns.