When Did I Become That Kind Of Guy?

We had some pretty fierce storms here in the Springfield area last week, and at one point the wind and rain lashed at the west side of our house. We have a walkout basement, and some water dripped in over the door. The next morning, I went out to inspect the door to see how the water was coming in. The door frame is inset from the brick exterior, and the mortar connecting the bricks to the lintel had broken down.

So I did what I was supposed to do: I grabbed a hammer, chisel, and wire brush and chipped out the broken mortar. I brushed the loose stuff out, sanded and painted the lintel, and then thought about the mortar. I found eighty pound bags of it at the hardware store, but that seemed a little excessive, so I used this caulk gun mortar patch to draw and shape a nice bead of caulk all the way across.

Still, at some point as I was tapping away, spraying mortar dust all over my tender little beading hands, I wondered How do I know how to do this?.

My background isn’t in the building trades. My other houses were asbestos shingle (later vinyl siding) and vinyl siding. My sainted mother never did anything like this when I was around. When I lived with my father, who had worked in the building trades and probably knew how to do this, I was a smart ass college kid with no time for that. And face it, my recent readings in Kipling, Epictetus, and handicrafts didn’t cover it.

But there I was.

Maybe I read it in one of the do-it-yourself magazines I took some years ago. Maybe I did see my father do it somewhere. Or maybe well water just has free-floating radical testosterone in it that naturally gives a man the ability to work with his hands.

It always impresses my wife when I do something handy around the house, making a small improvement or repair. Sometimes, though, it impresses even me.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Listen To The Maudlin Rain

Wow, bicentennial quarters sure are getting thin in regular circulation, aren’t they?

For those of you who don’t remember, back in 1976, the United States quarter, the twenty-five cent piece (one quarter of a dollar, you see), deviated from the standard Washington profile/eagle design to recognize the nation’s 200th birthday. On the reverse side, where the eagle would have appeared, you see a drumming Uncle Sam. That was kind of a big deal, since before the state quarters started showing up in 1999, the quarter had the same design for many people’s lifetimes.

You used to find them every so often in the wild, at least you did in much of my lifetime. For 32 years, I’d see them often enough to not think anything of it. However, I guess I haven’t seen one in quite a while.

I found one on my dresser this morning after dumping the contents of my pocket last night. Just for a moment, I thought to put it aside for my mother as I’d done for years, saving bicentennial quarters, Susan B. Anthony dollars, and Sacagawea dollars so she could put them in coffee cans and glass jars for the sheer hoarding joy of it (you can guess where I get it from then).

My mother passed away a year and a half ago, so I guess I haven’t seen a bicentennial since then. So I paused for a moment and thought about her. I wonder if I’ll not have those little moments, those little remembrances as time passes, especially as the incidental artifacts of our shared experiences and minor traditions disappear from the world.

And I’ve taken this quarter from the dresser and don’t know what I’ll do with it. Maybe start a jar, although a small one, of them.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Tomorrow’s Non-Profit Today

I have a great new idea for a non-profit organization, and I’m going to get in on the ground floor and get rich. My stunning idea:

An Urban Chicken Rescue Organization.

Throughout Missouri and probably the nation, people are deciding that they want to raise chickens in their suburban and urban backyards (see stories in St. Louis and Springfield). These people are doing it as part of an environmental nutbar fad and they’re doing it with a bit of Internet research and without any experience in farming or treating livestock qua livestock instead of livestock qua food-providing-pet.

Ergo, when their circumstances change, when they get tired of them, or when they reach the end of the hens’ productive years, people are going to need to get rid of these damn birds. Are they going to slaughter them? Of course not! They’d just as soon slay their bichon frise or lifestyle accessory only child.

That’s where my UCRO steps in. It will give them a conscience-friendly way to get rid of their chickens without having to turn them loose on the streets (although there wouldn’t be much of a pack of stray chickens problem if there are any stray dogs or cats about or foxes, coyotes, or automobiles). UCRO can save cities from the dreaded Giant Chickens in the Sewers rumor, too, although to be honest, I’d rather help perpetuate that myth.

So send your checks and money orders as soon as I get my 501(c) status and start paying myself a hefty salary to help young green hipsters out of their foolishness. For a fool and his chicken will soon be parted for a small gift to my forthcoming charitable organization.

UPDATE: Hey, thanks for the link, Ms. K. If you readers are in IT, don’t forget to check out my QA blog QA Hates You.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Brian’s Secret Shame (Part of a Continuing Series)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, not only am I a hypocrite, but I am a hypocrite!. Wait, I already bolded it. I need to bold it and italicise it (full on British italicisation, too, not that cheap American knock-off): I AM A HYPOCRITE! You should know how knees-on-cobblestones I am with this whole thing since I don’t use a WYSIWYG editor and actually have to type the tags for those embellishments, and <strong> and <em> even, not the sissy <b> and <i>.

You see, my very first op-ed was in favor of a tax increase.

Behold, the St. Louis-Post-Dispatch letters to the editor from sometime in January 1986:

Brian's secret shame, one of many

In my defense, I was 13 years old at the time (almost 14!), and Mrs. Weissflug made a pretty compelling case that if the taxes didn’t go up, Northwest R-1 and maybe even North Jefferson Middle School might have to let teachers go.

25 years later, I’ve seen a little more of the world and untold similar cases presented pretty regularly on the ballot.

But that does not diminish my sin. Wait, no, I’m not a hypocrite!; I am actually a hypocrite who is also a WAFFLER! FLIP-FLOPPER!.

You may discontinue taking me seriously if you haven’t already. And if you’re that way.

Also, please note that even in 1985, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s fact-checking and knowledge of St. Louis was lacking. Northwest R-1 covers part of Jefferson County, including Murphy, which used the Fenton post office (hence, my address at the time used Fenton as the town). However, Fenton itself is in St. Louis County and was unaffected by the levy. However, they titled my letter based on my address, not, you know, knowledge.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Everything That Is Illuminating Must Diverge

One of the complaints I had about the house in Old Trees is that each room had only a single- or two-bulb fixture high upon the twelve foot ceilings to serve to illuminate the rooms within it. When the sun went down, the brown/tan/beige walls soaked that light up and the home became dark and draining.

Nogglestead is a tad different. And, fortunately, in a way I can complain about: the thing has too many light bulbs in its fixtures, and its fixtures use a plethora of different bulb styles. Maybe two plethora. Maybe a full myriad of plethora. Additionally, each fixture uses instead of one or two 100 watt bulbs, sometimes a dozen or more 40 watt bulbs. It’s bright, all right, and that buzzing you hear isn’t from fluorescence. It’s from the electric meter spinning.

Observe.

This is the front porch fixture:

Lights on the front porch

This fixture has three small-base candle flame candles. Not only that, but to replace them, you have to undo the decorative nut on the bottom, remove the small decorative cover, undo the nut that holds the glass and whatnot up, remove most of the fixture except for the sockets, and then replace the bulbs. I don’t bother if only one is out. I wait for them to all go dark before I do. And I’ve replaced the set twice in the 11 months I’ve lived here.

This is the foyer fixture just inside the front door:

Lights in the foyer

These are 40 watt small base clear bulbs. Six of them.

This is the parlor. It’s a formal dining room, but we don’t dine formally, so it has a piano in it and an elaborate formal dining room fixture.

Lights in the parlor

That’s eight of the same 40 watt small base clear bulbs.

This is the kitchen:

Lights in the kitchen

There are six fixtures in here that I’ve not opened yet. Would it be too much to ask that they’re standard medium base light bulbs under there? Over the sink, there’s a recessed fixture that wants a flood light, but I’ve put in a 60-watt medium base incandescent.

Lights in the dining room

The living room has a ceiling fan:

Lights in the living room

I know, by now you’re thinking it’s not so bad. The ceiling fixture has six more of the 40 watt small base clear bulbs. Oh, but look more closely: it also has a downward facing small spotlight in the center that I have yet to successfully replace. Since the top (or bottom) of the bulb is flush with the edge of its socket, I can’t get a good grip on it to replace it. Currently, it has a new bulb in it, but it’s not lit, so I did something wrong.

Now, onto elsewhere. This is one of the bedrooms in the house. The house relies on medium base floods recessed in the ceiling in a number of rooms, including the offices downstairs, two of the bedrooms upstairs, and the main living area downstairs. I’ve had to replace the ones in the den downstairs a couple of times each (I’ve had these troubles with recessed floodlights before in Old Trees as well). Eventually, I can get away with using medium base regular bulbs. Sometime soon I’ll do that instead of paying for the floodlights.

Recessed lights

In the master suite, we have another ceiling fan. This one uses medium base frosted flame bulbs. It’s the only thing in the house that does so:

A special ceiling fan

All of the bathrooms use medium base clear frosted bulbs. At least they share something with other rooms.

Lights in the master bath

Lights in auxiliary bath

These vanities are in addition to overhead lights, of course.

The garage and the storage areas within the house have simple sockets for your standard light bulb:

Lights in garage

However, in all of these cases (the garage, the laundry alcove, the walk-in closet, the storeroom, and the utility room), the previous owner put CFL bulbs in. Note that all of these fixtures do not have glass bulbs over them. In each of these cases, you’re one errant ladder from a hazmat situation. Also, all of these areas are the ones you’re prone to flip the light on for a couple seconds and turn it off. This is bad for the life expectancy of the CFL. I’m moving them out of the house as fast as I can.

Outside lights by garage

These two fixtures outside the garage are perfect for the light-polluting CFL bulbs. Sadly, I have only two of these external fixtures and something like four or five of them remaining in my house.

So, if you’re keeping track, my house has a lot of light fixtures:

Number Type:
3 Small base flame candles
12 Standard medium base
17 Recessed medium base for floodlights
14 Medium base globes clear
28 Small base globes
5 Medium base external floods
1 Small interior flood

That’s seven different types of light bulbs I need to have on hand to keep this house illuminated, and a whole pile of them on at any one time. I’d lie to you if I told you I’d rather have the lighting scheme of the old home in the new one, but jeez, Louise. I wonder where I’ll be in 2 years when incandescent light bulbs start becoming illegal by writ of Their Majesty, The Royal Congress.

Also, apologies in advance for any future brownouts I cause all by myself.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

The Gaia Option

As some of you know, I got a new dryer recently. This particular unit seems to be imbued with some humidity-sensing technology since its dial no longer has just a dumb timer, but different settings based on, well, how much you serve Mother Gaia, apparently.

The dryer dial

Now, I’m no expert on nuance, so in my black-and-white world, dry is an absolute value. Therefore, the dial that offers me more dry or less dry is probably offering me either dry or damp. Sandwiched between the two poles on the spectrum, the dial offers me the energy preferred option.

Energy preferred? Why not come right out and say it: This is what Mother Gaia wants me to choose. This is how damp and clingy the Earth wants me to wear my clothes. Its acolyte the dryer would like my clothing to retain moisture so that, when I walk around wearing these moisture-enriched clothes, I add evaporation to the water cycle and make the plants grow pretty flowers and vegetables I should not despoil for decoration or consumption purposes.

I mean, come on, why not just have a separate section of the dial for drying your hemp clothes while you’re at it?

Sadly, there are people who wash their clothes with Green cleaning products and then use the less-dry option on the dryer because that’s what they must do to avert global cataclysm. The people who want to avert a global cataclysm but don’t want to deal with the bother of line-drying their clothes, I mean. And they’re walking around in moist, dirty clothes, hoping to be blessed by Mother Gaia with actual dandelions sprouting in their knit sweaters and with lots of helpful bacteria breeding upon their unmentionables.

Meanwhile, I’m always selecting More Dry because of my raging hydrophobia.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

I Can’t Find That In Publication 561

How do you write this off of your taxes?

As she was getting ready to leave the hospital Tuesday with her baby, a tearful Jennifer Robinson knew how to measure generosity.

All she had to do was turn and look at Nicole Hendrix, the woman who had helped the premature baby, Max, to thrive against the odds.

Hendrix had donated her breast milk — gallons of it — to Max after his mother couldn’t make any more.

I can’t seem to find breast milk / gallon in IRS Publication 561, which covers noncash donations.

Of course, it might not be an actual donation, but a personal gift, which is not tax deductible at all.

In somewhat unrelated news, I have some tax returns here to go out and discovered this morning that were on the receiving end of some spilled children’s milk, and I have the choice of asking my former accountant to send us new copies at the cost of $300 or something outlandish (we aren’t parting on the best of terms) or mailing them in stained. Just so you know when I’m investigated and incarcerated by the Feds for sending in stinky taxes, I saved some money on it.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Wherein Brian Violates Copyright

This is just like the time I photocopied an entire book because the professor put all copies in the Marquette University Memorial Library on reserve, which would have meant I could borrow it in two hour blocs in the library itself, requiring a large number of two hour round trip bus rides to cut into my short evenings. No, I had a large number built into the prepaid photocopy card, and I used them. I’d probably do it again because I’m just as bad as any peer-to-peer guy when it comes to flouting the law.

Which is why I am reposting, in its entirety, this copyrighted work in its entirety:

Gas pump printer test page, copyright 2009 Autogas

Remember that any time you want to use the phrase “Print Paper = OK”, you need to credit it to Autogas and perhaps pay them a royalty, or you’re a thief.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Other Trophies, Mounted

I got tired of these old games just cluttering the shelves in my desk, so I decided to mount them on the wall:


Old handheld games mounted on the wall

Click for full size

I put some adhesive-backed Velcro on the back of the games and the loop side of the Velcro on the wall (with a couple of staples to help the adhesive). Now, when I want to play, I can just reach up and grab one for a dose of 1980 electronic blip goodness, and when I’m not playing, they display rather nicely.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Richard Grieco Film, Interrupted

So the other night, I was sitting down for my once-every-sixteen-years viewing of the Richard Grieco film (If Looks Could Kill) when the telephone rang.

It was a student at Marquette University, calling to check my phone number, address, and whatnot and to see if I’d simply overlooked sending them a check.

She asked for my current address, having established logically that my phone number was still correct. Then she asked me the best part of the Marquette experience for my lo those 20 years ago. I’m sure I said something curtly. I was a commuter, essentially, since I lived in my father’s basement for the duration, so my job was way off campus on the Northwest Side and most of my friends where on the Northwest side (either people who worked in the grocery store where I plied my trade at the time or a guy who lived two doors down from my father, whom I’d gotten to know during summertime visits to Milwaukee).

My distance from Marquette as well as my upbringing that differed from the suburban put a lot of distance between me and the school as An Experience. By the time I had spent enough time with any of them to make anything like friends, I was a senior and off to live the life of a wage slave in Missouri while the rest of them prepared for a life in the Academy and the gossamer feel-good shawl of Progressivist thought.

The best part of Marquette University, I realized after the phone call, was the library. In those slightly pre-Internet days, the Memorial Library had books on everything I wanted to read. I spent a lot of time as a freshman blowing off Biology and Sociology to read Black Like Me, then a collection of Langston Hughes to see what the title of Black Like Me was from, then serious scholarly studies of Ed McBain, and some Existentialism for fun. That, coupled with the big Swedish mechanic who lived next door, had a library in his basement, and asked me if I’d read this or read that and how could I be an English major without reading them? made me who I am educationally today more than the Marquette University community and its $11,000 a year ticket ever did.

So I cut short the connect-and-make-them-feel-a-part questions with a declaration that I wasn’t going to contribute. She said okay, and then I asked how much Marquette cost.

$30,000 a year, she said. Without emphasis, because this is the milieu in which she swims.

“It sucks to be you,” I said.

She giggled and said, yeah, but that’s why scholarships are so important and that the tuition was only 3/4 the cost of educating a student.

“Someone’s getting overpaid. You could get a couple tutors and have them spend 40 hours a week with you for that,” I said. And I rang off shortly thereafter. Ringing off happens when you read a lot of British literature, and by British literature I mean “Agatha Christie” and “Alistair MacLean.” See, Marquette wasn’t influential in making me sound like the hoity-toity affected Anglophile.

After I did, I kind of felt bad for her. She was a junior, working the phones to work off part of her $30,000 a year. At some point, $120,000 is too much for what a college degree buys you. It took me fifty hours a week of working while I was going to college and ten years’ worth of student loan repayment (coupled with a good marriage which allowed me to be DINK to pay those loans off in only 10 years). And I left school only $20,000 in the hole with an English/Philosophy degree. For the first couple of years after I graduated, I made somewhere in the middle teens in income, sometimes working two jobs for that amount. I cannot in my mind justify spending what amounts to a middle manager’s salary to go to school. I cannot imagine coming out of school with $60,000 in debt and stacking produce, if I was lucky to have any job in 2010.

Instapundit talks a lot about the higher education bubble about to burst. It’s going to happen, and I feel really bad for the last people in the scheme like this poor kid, calling hard-hearted Hannahs like me for a pittance against her pitiable annual costs.

Oh, and without segue, I’d like to point out I’m a little miffed what college costs have done to my personal puff narrative. Working fifty hours a week while in school to cover the shortfall between my remaining grants and loans, begging the bursar to let me register for the next semester when I was a couple hundred behind in my monthly schedule (he laughed even then, commenting about how much other students owed), and paying off $20,000 in debt. Kids these days are going to look at my hardships and say, “You pansy, you had it easy.” And then they’ll get into grad school to get the Master’s Degree they’ll need to work in outcalling sales in 2020.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

The 2010 Dryer Affair

We’ve had the RCA dryer before we were a we; my beautiful wife bought a Radio Corporation of America (!) dryer when she was my beautiful girlfriend in Columbia. It moved with her to St. Louis, it moved in with us in Sycamore Hills, it moved with use to Casinoport, it moved with us to Old Trees, and then it moved with us to Nogglestead. It had travelled very well and has voted for Democrats in five different Congressional Districts.

But a couple weeks ago, it started making metal-on-metal noises when running. We had to replace our three-year-old washer (bought new when we moved into Old Trees) when it’s agitator passed from this life to the next. A repairman who came to check its pulse said that modern washers and dryers have a lifespan of about seven years. So when the dryer started making noise, I warned that we were going to have to spend money on it before long.

A couple times in the recent past, I’ve opened the dryer to find it full of dry clothes and the timer set to the start time. Sometimes, we loaded the dryer and saved its run for naptime or children’s bedtime to introduce some white noise while they slept. We’ve been doing this since Old Trees, when the dryer lie between their bedrooms and the rest of the house. We hoped the white noise woud mak the noises we made elsewhere. At any rate, I found the dryer had not run and assumed I had failed to start it.

However, one day, I started it at naptime, and it stopped post-haste. I tried it again, and it started again and stopped. I wondered what could cause it. A clogged dryer vent? I went to the south side of the house, where a vent opens right next to our air conditioner (I’d joked with the home inspector, “May the best appliance win!” because warm air blowing out on a running air conditioner makes the air cooling less efficient, but the joke is less funny when you explain it even if the explanation lies in the same set of parentheses as the joke itself). I went out and opened the vent to take a look in, and the vent cover, one of the little louvred vinyl jobs, opened on a 2 inch PVC pipe. That’s odd, I thought.

And then something dark appeared out of my nowhere and hit my knuckle, causing a great disturbance in my pain-free morning. What was that, I wondered? Biting horsefly? Spider? The rest of the hive of wasps that had been hiving in my air conditioner’s casing came out to answer my challenge. So as my middle finger swelled (all the easier to see when displayed, bonus!), I got a can of waspicide and went the whole Anakin on them (I killed them. I killed them all. They’re dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I HATE THEM!). After which time, using the dryer-starting talents of my wife, I deduced that the vent was blocked since no air was coming out of it when she turned it on.

I paced a bit and determined that since we were going to get a new dryer anyway, we should just go and get one that afternoon for delivery the next day. I cannot even dramatically recreate my thinking for you; I was not utterly convinced that the vent was the cause. So we dropped $600 as though we were still DINKs (I even bought the extended warranty given how well our last washer did).

The next morning, the appliance guys came along, put the new one in, and loaded the old one in their truck. I realize I have enough land these days to expose plenty of appliances and derelict automobiles to the elements, but I’m starting slowly to easily acclimate my suburban and sophisticated spouse to the practice. After the appliance guys hooked it up (yeah, I let them do it. One fewer man point for me), I started it and let it run for a couple minutes. The appliance guys left, and I started in on the drifts of laundry that had accumulated in the two days.

When a load finished and was wetted for the drying, I turned on the new dryer and…. it stopped.

Dammit, I thought, it is the vent.

So I checked the vent from the interior. It looked like standard ducting and wasn’t really coated with much lint even though it was a couple of ninety degree turns coming out of the laundry alcove. I went to the utility room in the basement and tried to find the duct that carried the venting from the dryer alcove to the exterior and didn’t see it. What I did see, on the other hand, is that the built-in vacuum was right where the dryer duct should come out and…. Oh. That would explain it.

So I didn’t know where the dryer vent came out and I was at a loss for action. After some thoughtful pacing, I called a company that could clean out dryer vents. That should fix it for me.

Fortunately, the dryer vent company spokesman worked me into his schedule at the same time as my wife was loading the children up to go meet her mother for lunch for my wife’s birthday. The dryer vent guy located the vent in the sill board immediately underneath my deck. So it’s been blowing hot, wet air on the underside of my deck for the entirety of the deck’s existence. Awesome.

My wife finished her child loading and left. The dryer vent guy tapped on the back door with a mournful look on his face. “I can’t clean your vent,” he announced. “It’s not metal ducting, it’s plastic that’s deteriorated. I can show you if you want.”

I looked. It was plastic venting hose stretched under the finished ceiling in my den. Breaking down.

This is the inside of your walls on cheap.

Swell. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen plastic where metal should be on really important functions in the dream home.

The dryer vent guy, who works for an HVAC company, said they could probably tear out 20′ of my ceiling and replace the ducting for $300-500. Of course, they’re not carpenters, so they wouldn’t replace the ceiling or match its paint, natch.

I said, you know, I can just get an interior vent.

You know, those have drawbacks. Humidity and it’s very dirty, he said.

We lived with one of those in Old Trees for three years since that particular rehabber didn’t bother to vent it at all, much like he didn’t bother to install any phone jacks or even hook the telephone line onto the correct interior set of plugs at the exterior phone box ($125 for AT&T to come, diagnose, unplug, and plug in correctly in a manner of 10 minutes). He also charged me $50 for coming out, climbing a ladder, and pointing a flashlight into my dryer vent.

And took fifteen minutes to write up the invoice. I’d thought I could make it to the restaurant to eat with the family, so I called and discovered they weren’t there yet. I was planning to join them, I told the restaurant, could my party call me when they arrived? So I changed clothes and whatnot and realized that I could only get to the restaurant 30 minutes after they sat down, probably, and they hadn’t called, so I assumed they didn’t get the message after all.

So I raced into Republic to buy an interior vent and raced home to beat them back. I did, and I beat the rain, which is good because the old pick-up’s windshield wipers manage to miss the portion of the windshield directly in line of sight for the driver. I put the interior vent on easily–lots of experience with them, you know–and turned the dryer on. I wandered off and….

The dryer stopped, of course.

I was through pacing at this point. I was onto gibbering.

And then my wife called from the restaurant. Of course they’d gotten the first part of the message but not the second. Still, an hour later, they had ordered and had eaten. My beautiful wife ordered something for me, too, and brought it home. Which is good, because at that point I could not have verbally communicated to a server that I needed a glass of water.

The next stop: calling an electrician. The next morning, one arrived and examined the outlet. Then he examined the outlet more closely. Apparently, a loose connection within it was causing it to lose power when it warmed up or when the dryer vibrated it apart. Either way, $100 and a new outlet later, and the dryer works.

Actually, that makes it sound so simple. The actual arithmetic is: One wasp sting and swollen finger, $600 for a new dryer, $50 for a $500 dryer vent replacement, $14 for an interior vent, 20 minutes cleaning up after the interior vent blew lint all over for a couple minutes, $100 and a new outlet, 1500 words on the blog and lots of long retellings with hand gestures, and new innumerable fears about what other dangerous and hidden shortcuts were taken in the course of building this house later, and I can dry laundry now.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

The Tooth Printer

Yesterday, I went to the dentist to have a cavity filled and a crown replaced. I haven’t gone under the drill in a little over 9 years. About that time, I got caught up with all the work I’d lacked in my 20s, so I had cavities filled, roots drilled, and crowns attached.

It wasn’t a bad visit as far as it goes. I was a bit apprehensive, just a tad. Back in the olden days, the aforementioned series of trips a decade ago, I was in the dentist chair every month for a couple hours, so I got used to it. This time, my apprehensiveness melted pretty quickly. I even quipped to the doctor as his drill smoked cutting through porcelain and tooth material that it reminded me that I had an etching bit for my rotary tool that I haven’t tried out yet. I said I was going to go home and try it on a random ceramic tile. He laughed so hard he pierced my cheek for me. Well, not quite. I’m not that funny, although with only half a mouth working, I sure sounded funny.

But the most interesting part of the visit was getting the new crown. In the olden days of 2002, the doctor took an impression of the crown to replace and shipped it off to a lab for milling. I got a temporary cap and, three weeks later, I came back to have the cap cemented on with the special UV penlight.

Fewer than 10 years later, the dentist wheeled in a computer on a cart with some elaborate CAD software on it. He stuck a funny camera in my mouth and snapped a couple digital images. The software plotted my ha’tooth next to the adjacent teeth, and the doctor moused some lines in. He compared the shape of the tooth he was fixing to the bite pattern and smoothed some where the tooth would impact the top tooth. Then he sent it wirelessly to the tooth printer.

It’s not really a printer, but close enough. In a little cubby at the back of the office, he has a computer-assisted milling machine. You plug in a block of ceramic, and two diamond-tipped drill bits carve the crown out of it in about 7 minutes. During the process, one of the bits became dull, so the technician opened the machine and swapped it out just like she was changing the toner. A couple minutes later, the tooth dropped from the remainder of the block, and after some cleanup and firing, they affixed it into my mouth.

In 10 years, we’ve gone from precision lab millwork to an in-office computer peripheral. Frankly, I am amazed and pleased.

And sad that the pace of change is probably going to change once the commissars handle medicine and dentistry for us poor little helpless children in the citizenry.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Important Notice from the Gas Company

I received an IMPORTANT post card from Laclede Gas in St. Louis. Laclede Gas is the gas utility that powers the water heater and a furnace in my old house in St. Louis (a house THAT COULD BE YOURS!).

Apparently, the automated data mining software hooked up to the new smart meters has determined that the vacant house is not using as much gas as an occupied house did. So the gas company sent me a card telling me that I had to schedule an inspection of the meter–to make sure I did not tamper with it, no doubt–within five days. OR ELSE something. As you can imagine, this is an inconvenience to me that I tried to explain on the phone with them. But there are procedures! My glib excuse that no one is showering there is irrelevant!

Now, with their first attempt to install the smart meters, they were not too quick to schedule an inspection if they determined I was using more gas than normal as their botched installation pumped extra gas into my basement store room–gas that I was paying for in addition to was threatened with an explosion by.

No, the errors that add to their bottom line are assumed to be okay.

Were this Facebook, my Doctor of Rhetoric friend would pop up to insinuate that this is a free market problem and that if only the Federal government would nationalize the industry, I would not be threatened with explosion or investigation. However, we in the real world know that’s not true. This little rant is not about corporations being EVIL!. It’s about annoyance with this particular corporate practice.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Benjamin Franklin’s Magazine Loves It Some Central Planning

Two articles of note in the May/June 2010 Saturday Evening Post:

  • The requisite paean to rail travel, “Waiting on a Train”, which goes on again about how awesome rail travel is and how it’s coming back for passenger transportation again. Overlooking, as these things do, how slow it is relative to air travel and how inflexible it is relative to automobile or bus travel. But what’s important is that central planners will decide where it goes and when it goes.
  • An inspirational story, “The Town That Rebuilt Itself”, about a town rebuilding after a twister, except:

    “We had a clean slate, so why not do things right?” says former City Council President John Janssen. City officials envisioned a model for other communities.

    So you get the normal central bureau building it all green and following the latest dictational fads instead of letting the citizens build the city according to how they would use it. You know, the old fashioned way, before city councils got addicted to playing SimCity with their personal ambulatory Sims.

Oh, I’m inspired, all right. Inspired to hit SurvivalBlog for more tips on what to do when society collapses under the weight of these prigs’ self-absorbed, self-righteous busybodiness.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

I Know That Feeling, Sort Of

Frank W. James on the waiting:

The soybeans, however, remain a question mark. Stuff I planted over a week ago has yet to emerge. I’ve had soybeans take as long as 3 weeks to emerge, but I don’t like it. It makes me nervous as all git out.

Every spring that I do planting, I get very concerned that I’ve killed the live plants I put in or that I’ve put seeds in too deep. Then, when they emerge or bloom, I receive a very pleasant surprise.

Of course, I don’t do it for a living, but I bet his senses are akin to when I get a new client, do the work, and send an invoice and have to wait sometimes 30 or 60 days for a check to come. When it does, whoa! It worked! Every time.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Hypocritic Oath: First, Do As I Say, Not As I Do

You know, I’m a small government conservative type, but I have a deep, dark secret that shatters my credibility and totally dismisses any argument that I might have against a Federal mandates for purchasing Obama-approved health insurance: I watch some PBS programming.

It all started, as it often does, with Sesame Street, which I started recording for my children. Because I needed them to see a number of puppets praising Jessica Alba, Jenny McCarthy, and Michelle Obama. Then we started with the Dragon Tales so they would learn to embrace the cognitive dissonance of having a dragon, which can fly, in a wheelchair. That program started catching the beginning of the noon program, which was an adult program. So I started recording those programs for Daddy, which happen to be programs that Daddy can watch while the children are present.

So I watch the following on PBS regularly, even though I don’t think that the Federal government should replicate criminal laws that states already have just so its prosecutors can dip their beaks into headlines when crimes occur:

  • Equitrekking, a program about where you can go worldwide to ride horses. I have a bunch of horses around me now, so I thought I’d like to learn more about them. The program is more about travel, though, to places where you can ride horses. Still, it’s interesting to see different landscapes, and the children catch glimpses of different wildlife than the demonic possums one sees around here. Also, Darley Newman is cute.
  • Beads Baubles and Jewels [sic], a program about making things with beads, which I actively hobbied earlier this year. I get to see some of the people whose books I read and whose blogs I visited in action, and the live demonstrations of the bead stitches helped me understand them better than diagrams in books.
  • Victory Garden, or as I call it, “An Aussie, A Brit, and a Hippie.” This program explores some gardening things and shows off a variety of plants and things to consider while worshipping Gaia. Actually, it does talk a little green and sustainably, but it’s not as bad as P. Allan Smith’s Garden Home, and the voices and accents on Victory Garden are easier to listen to for more than three minutes.

Now that I have unburdened my guilty soul to you, I ask of you: Why are these shows on public television?

Because they’re produced by public television stations!

But why are they produced by public television stations? Look at the content of these shows. Maybe in the 1960s and 1970s, you would not see these programs on the big three networks and might have needed someone to spend tax money to put them on the air, but in the 21st century, cable channels and nowadays the Internet pump these sorts of programs out all over the place. There are entire travel channels, entire crafting channels (well, DIY and HGTV run those sorts of shows), and so on. There are so many profit-seeking channels that quality shows like these are frequent and available. So why is public television still pumping them out?

Because there’s still a public television budget.

Until there isn’t, public television stations will continue to spend tax money to provide duplicate programming that other sources are providing on their own dime. Maybe you won’t get Victory Garden running for 60 years; my favorite programs Creative Juice and Small Space Big Style ran for 3 years and 1 year (IMDB indicates, but I think there were more episodes than that) respectively.

But you do get free market flexibility, and tax money savings the government could put to infrastructure projects or something else. Ha! Who am I kidding? In the 21st century, the government doesn’t spend money on public benefits. It spends money on private wealth transfers and government employees.

UPDATE: I just watched an episode of Victory Garden that included a segment, apparently forthcoming regular feature on the program, whose experts actually have their own program on DIY. You see how this sort of proves my point?

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Gauche or Not, It Keeps The Sun From My Eyes

So I managed to make it up to Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield last week, and as I alluded elsewhere, I bought myself a hat with a Confederate flag on it:

Wilson's Creek National Battlefield hat

I bought it to show my support for the park and because I wear hats to keep my balding head from burning when I pretend to work the land.

However, I’m sort of stricken with the notion that it might be distasteful or odd, to say the least, to purchase a hat commemorating a battle. Men fought and died for honor, state, and country on that battlefield, and I got a hat about it.

Trivializing or commemorating? You decide.

Also, two things I learned at the battlefield:

  • The Old Wire Road that followed the telegraph lines and upon which both armies marched at different times quite probably did follow the edge of my property.
  • From atop Bloody Hill, you can see my house.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

I Don’t Go To Lowe’s For The Salami (II)

Today’s trip to Lowe’s saw me purchase a porch swing, ten sacks of manure, a watering can, a flower pot, and some seeds. When the clerk asked if I wanted to pay $10 to have the swing assembled for me, I told her no. It would fit better in my truck in the box, and I know how to use a socket wrench.

When I got home, you betcha, I was charged $10 for the assembly. I called, and I can go in and get that amount refunded easily, but really.

Lowe’s Point of Sale systems feature a monitor facing the cashier, and that’s it. The customer either has to stand behind the cashier when he or she is scanning the goods to see what’s getting added to the bill or check the receipt immediately, I guess, but damn. Lowe’s is one more bank error in their favor from driving me to Ace Hardware forever.

(First edition of this sad series here.)

.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

The Greatest Invention That Ever Defeated Its Own Purpose

Ladies and Gentlemen, now that I am an industrial lawnmower kind of guy, I need hearing protection. So I bought (and exchanged a defective unit as aforementioned or aaftmentioned depending on whether you read daily or not) hearing protection.

Sort of.

Here’s the unit I bought:

Worktunes noise cancellation, music enablation headphones

They even come preset to the Dana Show (look at the photo of the LCD radio setting, it’s 97.1 FM, which is the talk radio station in St. Louis, he explained parenthetically).

Why do I say it defeats its own purpose?

Because it’s designed to protect your hearing from the lawnmower’s decibels. However, if you’re listening to a rock station, you’re likely, if you’re like me, to substitute the lawnmower’s decibels for Metallica’s decibels. Which ultimately doesn’t protect your hearing at all.

Maybe its purpose is to not to protect your hearing, but to destroy your hearing in a more enjoyable fashion.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories